Page 77 of What About Love

“Shut the fuck up.”

Angie flinched as Stapleton let a wicked backhand fly, sending the woman who had abducted her hard to the floor. She cried out in pain, cradling her injured cheek in her hand. When she looked up at him, tears flooded her eyes and blood welled from a gash in her lip.

Helpless to do anything except watch, it surprised her when the woman didn’t respond in kind and make the smaller man pay for the vicious blow.

Instead, she whimpered, gingerly touching her lip. A moment later, when she held up her hand and saw blood, she muttered under her breath, “Goddamn prick.”

That seemed to be the consensus of opinion where Stapleton was concerned.

“Fine,” she said more loudly. “You can have her, but give me what you owe me now.”

Stapleton stalked across the room to a tall chest and took a small plastic bag from the drawer. Crystal meth. Angie had seen it many times. He flung the bag at the domme.

“Take it and get out. I’ll call you when I need you again.”

When the door banged loudly behind her, he bolted it and applied the chain then walked over to Angie. She leaned away as much as she could when he reached for her, grimacing as he picked up a curl from her shoulder and rubbed it between his fingers. After a moment, he gave it a ruthless tug.

As tears filled her eyes from the burning pain in her scalp, he laughed. “I won’t need her again for a very long while.” He bent and whispered in her ear in explanation, “I’m going to take my time with you.”

She felt the wet glide of his tongue along her neck and jerked away, gagging. With deep gulping breaths, she fought back the nausea enough to speak imprudently, considering her situation, and with a generous amount of loathing. “Getting your rocks off with subs that look like me; you’re one sick fuck, Dastardly Dick.”

Pain exploded across her face as he slapped her, his palm connecting with her cheekbone and whipping her head around the other way. When the flashes of light and chirping birds faded, and her vision cleared, she lifted her head, gazing up into his despised face with hatred. If not for her dry mouth and cracked lips, she would have spit at him.

Something had gone seriously wrong. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but the Rossi team should have been there by now. It had been long enough for her to become parched, which wasn’t a good sign. Maybe the awful chloroform had something to do with it.

Across the way, in what apparently served as a kitchen, a cheap plastic clock hung on a wall covered in ripped wallpaper. It was also stained with brown blotches, the origin of which she didn’t want to hazard a guess over. The clock wasn’t centered with the twelve in the right place and, after the chloroform and the slap, to make it out, it took a moment of concentration to make it out.

3 a.m. Shit!

Almost three hours had passed since she left the club. Plenty of time for T and Eric and Kieran’s men to track her, come up with a plan, and enact a rescue. The delay didn’t shift the outcome of this jacked-up mission in her favor.

The only explanation was that they’d lost her. Glancing down at her foot, she found it bare, the toe ring gone. Panic surged in her chest. She tilted her head to the side then gave it a little shake, trying to check for the earring transmitter. She couldn’t feel it dangling anymore.

Her last hope was the wireless tracking button in the seam of her dress. As she took in the jagged edge of the dress where a large section had been cut away, her heart stuttered painfully.

Stapleton’s evil laughter sounded again. “I’m not an idiot, Hixson.”

A deluge of hopelessness washed over her as images of Elaine Danson’s brutalized body flashed in front of her eyes. Like a slideshow set at slow speed, one by one, his other victim’s faces became superimposed on Elaine’s body, the final one being herself. When it began repeating, as if set to perpetually loop in her head, the despair she felt changed to anger then to steely determination.

It might be foolish to incite this psychopath’s anger, but she’d much rather go out fighting than to roll over for his rape and torture. Preferring a quick death over a long drawn-out lingering one, as he’d already inferred, she pushed him.

“They found Elaine Danson’s body. Did you kill the other three women already?”

He made a tsking sound with his tongue. “Now, Angela. Knowing me as you do, what do you think? Am I one to leave a job unfinished?”

“You disgust me. You also won’t get away with this. Cap Rossi knows it’s you and won’t rest until he shuts you down, permanently.”

“Perhaps,” he said with an unconcerned shrug. “Too bad it will be much too late to save you.” He rubbed a finger along her throbbing cheek, chuckling as she winced and jerked away. “You do not know how many times I’ve fantasized about this, Hixson. You were a thorn in my side for a very long time. I’m looking forward to payback.”

“Your old boss, Victor, would be proud.”

He grunted. “Victor was a grave disappointment. If I’d have been in charge of the cartel’s business in San Antonio, I’d still be living the good life.”

Angie pointedly looked around at his dump of an apartment, grimacing as she saw a roach crawl across the table. “Yeah, how the mighty have fallen.”

He grabbed her jaw and squeezed brutally. “You always were a smart-ass cunt. Shut up or I’ll gag you.”

As she struggled to be free from his grasp, he grinned, clearly enjoying her pain.

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