Page 94 of Twisted Enemy
“Was,” I say. “Not part of the plan, but…”
Her eyes widen in surprise. “Not part of the plan,” she echoes. “But I think I just came up with a new plan…”
“I’ll get the car,” I say.
I don’t want to leave her here, barely hidden in the woods, with a corpse and an unconscious trussed-up man. But my usual black clothes offer me decent camouflage—a lot better than her gleaming wedding dress.
“Hurry,” she says.
We considered bringing assistants for this part. Nilsson would do it, no questions asked. I could pay for muscle, enough cash that no one would ever say a word.
But in the end, we decided we had to keep this just between us. That means retrieving the Land Rover from its spot in the nearby parking lot and driving, lights off, across the grassy field to the edge of the trees. I had the back window replaced this morning. Before we ever left the Georgetown house, I turned off the dome light. The vehicle should be just another hulking shadow on an almost moonless night.
As I open the back hatch, Kate retrieves the bag of clothes she left on the front seat. The wedding dress rustles like wind in a cornfield, but she shimmies out of it quickly. She sighs as she pulls on black yoga pants and a matching long-sleeve tee.
We use the dress to drag the bodyguard over to the car, rolling his dead weight onto the yards of taffeta. It doesn’t matter if his head bangs against the ground or the bumper or the hatch as we maneuver him into the vehicle.
When we go back for Tarasov, he’s coming around from the electric charge. I’m about to suggest that we untie his feet and make him walk to the car, but Kate has other ideas. She produces the Taser from the small of her back; I didn’t even know she’d tucked it into her yoga pants.
Tarasov screams behind his gag, begging her to back off. Kate applies the device to the side of his neck, a contact that’s forbidden by just about every police force in the country. He sagslike a sack of laundry. As if to check the quality of her work, she kicks him in the ribs. Hard.
We get him into the back of the Land Rover, but the dress is shredded by the time we’re done. We can’t leave it in the park, so Kate tosses it on top of our prisoners like she’s throwing out the trash. I’m still catching my breath as she uses the flashlight on her phone, making a quick survey of the space around us. She finds a KitKat wrapper and a weather-faded can of Coke, but nothing to reveal what we’ve done beneath the trees.
By the time we’re plunged back into darkness, I’ve steeled myself to get behind the wheel. Kate lets me. That makes me think, for the first time, about how it must have felt to be lying on the metal plate of the merry-go-round, tangled in a polyester nightmare of a wedding dress, pinned beneath the body of the man she hates most in the entire world.
The Apex guards snap to attention as I approach the gate. I roll down my window and ask the one in charge, “Everything under control?”
“Yes, sir,” he says. “It’s been quiet tonight.”
If he only knew… I trigger the biometric lock and drive through the gate, continuing around to the service entrance at the side of the house. The Apex men can’t see us here. I checked before we headed up to Baltimore.
I’m grateful I had the foresight to leave the gardening sledge beside the mudroom door. If I had testified before tonight’s adventure, I would have sworn we intended to have our targets walk down to the basement unassisted. But part of me always knew there was a chance we’d be dealing with a corpse.
At least there’s only one dead body to maneuver to the elevator, and we can still use the tattered wedding dress as a tarp. Tarasov will be able to make his own way, guided by my Glock in the small of his back. Or so I think until Kate opens the Land Rover’s hatch.
Tarasov is glaring at her, hollering something from behind his gag. I can’t make out the words—I’m not even sure he’s speaking English. Kate doesn’t wait to figure out what he’s saying, she just jolts him again with the stun gun.
“Christ!” I say, once he’s out. “We could have made him walk.”
“Oops,” she responds, her eyes as flat as the mudroom floor.
By the time we get both bodies to the dungeon, every breath ignites a wildfire in my gut. Kate walks to the armoire as if she owns the room and all its equipment. She picks up a heavy chain and hefts it like she’s considering an Olympic career in shotput.
It takes her three tries to snag the chain on the steel hook in the center of the room. She tests it like a pro, letting the links take all her weight. Looking at me over Tarasov’s unmoving body, she asks, “It’ll hold him?”
“It will.”
Satisfied with my response, she attaches a triangular cuff-and-bar set to the chain, using a heavy-duty padlock. This time, she asks her question with a lift of her eyebrows. I nod.
She could use my emergency shears and cut Tarasov out of the hogtie I set in the park. Instead, she takes her time, unwinding the rope. At first, I’m not sure why she’s delaying, but then I realize she’s cinching the jute every chance she gets, sawing deeper into Tarasov’s already reddened flesh.
It takes longer than it should, but she finally has him where she wants him. His wrists are locked in solid-steel cuffs that link to a suspension bar above his head. His ankles are spread wider in a second bar, his bare feet scarcely reaching the floor. She uses the shears to remove every stitch of his clothing.
He’s not her sub. She’s never been a Domme. She makes no pretense of gaining consent, and this suspension has nothing to do with anyone’s pleasure. This is brutal, grim retribution.
Kate eyes her handiwork critically, like she’s double-checking her answers before submitting an exam. “All right,” she finally says. “Showers for both of us, upstairs. Then I’ll rewrap your bandages.”
I look at the bodyguard, huddled near Tarasov’s feet. His clothes are twisted against the wedding dress’s filthy taffeta, but his ropes hold fast. His dick still pokes from his zipper like some obscene stuffed animal. Sighing, I say, “Let’s deal with him first.”
