Page 63 of Reignite

I hardly noticed the dripping of the hot liquid on my skin now.

“That was taken last month. Sixty days after our little showdown right here.”

I shook my head. It couldn’t be. Gray wouldn’t do that to me. I used my tongue to push at the gag. It wasn’t tied in and eventually I worked it out.

“This is all fake. Gray would never—”

“Push the button, Angelina.”

I looked down and in my numb hands was some sort of remote. For a bomb?

“It’s for the projector. Push the button and you’ll get to see more of your precious Dom. But, be warned. There will be consequences. Your predicament. Your choice. Pain for your pleasure.”

He thought this was pleasure? Seeing Gray alive was pure and absolute torture. Still, I concentrated very hard and made my fingers push that button.

A new image flashed onto the screen and I cried out as a new splash of the burning liquid hit me, dripping down my chest and over the ropes binding me. I could turn my head just enough to be able to see red hot wax snake its way down to my belly and then pool on my leg.

I didn’t care.

Foster’s voice and words faded from my awareness. I pushed the button over and over, seeing pictures of Gray from close up and far away over the course of the last three months. Each time I advanced the show more wax fell on me from all different angles and places.

It burned. I felt nothing.

“Baker was good at staying away from you. Even I thought he was dead for the first month. This one is the picture that gave me the idea to grab you for bait. He just couldn’t resist seeing you again.”

The picture, so lifelike in front of me this time was Gray walking toward Jim’s car in the parking lot of Devils and Angels. A white envelope in his hands.

“Yes, he was here. Only yards away from you. He watched you find that note. He watched while you cried. As did I.”

“Bastardo—”I screamed the word not sure if it was meant for Foster or Gray.

“He always was a sadist.”

Foster didn’t know Gray at all. If anything Gray had always taken all the pain from everyone else around him. He’d torturned himself waiting for me to understand who I was. He’d hurt himself over and over trying to save Foster’s estupido ass from his death spiral. “Where are you, you coward. Untie me and let me show you what sadism means.”

I got no reply.

I jerked against the ropes and the chair, screaming every curse I could at Foster. Something moved near the stage and I thought finally he was going to be man enough to come torture me himself.

It wasn’t Foster. It wasn’t Gray either. A tall woman, with dark skin, Middle Eastern or Asian maybe squatted behind a chair a few feet from the glass room door. She wore a dark suit and flashed a badge at me then held a finger to her mouth to indicate I should remain quiet.

Had they caught Foster?

She looked right and left, then bolted across the remaining space and put her back to the wall next to the door.

She cracked the door open slowly. Angelina Cruz?” Her voice wavered.

“Yes. Is it over?”

She sucked in a breath like she hadn’t done it in a long time. “No, when’s the last time you saw Foster?”

She didn’t say Foster Bennett. She didn’t say the perp or the unsub. She’d called him Foster. Like she knew him.

I didn’t like this and had a bad feeling. “Who are you?”

She didn’t respond but turned her head and nodded to someone in the shadows.

“Your safe now, Angel.” A low voice, gruff and tired, said my name.

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