Stumbling to a stop, Cole realized what he’d just been thinking. And though his head shied away from it, his heart knew the truth. He would love Genevieve forever—with her formidable intelligence and awe-inspiring temper, with her sweet heart and hot body, he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone, even his sister. And he would do anything, give up everything, if it meant that she was safe.
With fear a living nightmare inside of him, he reached for the phone and dialed the precinct, only to realize she wouldn’t be there. With shaking hands, he tried her cell phone. And waited impatiently, each ring a painful eternity, for her to pick up.
He was about to give up, to slam the phone back onto its charger when the ringing stopped. But it wasn’t Genevieve’s voice that came on the line. Instead, it was a male voice; high-pitched, a little deranged, it struck terror into his heart like nothing else ever had.
“Genevieve’s sorry, she can’t come to the phone right now. She’s a little tied up. But maybe I can help you?” There was a hysterical giggle followed by a silence that chilled his blood.
“Who is this?” he demanded. “Where’s Genevieve?”
“Geez, Cole, could you at least try to play along? Make this a guessing game. I mean, you don’t actually think I’ll tell you where she is, do you?”
“If you f**king touch her, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands.”
There was a long silence, broken only by what sounded like Genevieve’s pain-filled scream. “You’re a lot dumber than you look, Cole, I’ve got to say. Issuing ultimatums like that just pisses me off. That one just got your little sweetheart sliced open from sternum to waist. But don’t worry, I didn’t cut deep.
“At least not this time.”
The phone went dead in his hand and Cole stared at it for a good fifteen seconds, horror rocketing through him. And then he was throwing his head back, a bellow of rage like nothing he’d ever felt before rising from within him.
He was going to find that son of a bitch. If it was the last thing he ever did, he would find him and kill him before he killed Genevieve.
Throwing on clothes on the fly, he dialed the police station and her partner. Surely Shawn would know where she was.…
* * *
Genevieve trembled in horror as Chastian hung up her cell phone and turned it off. Cole was looking for her, trying to find her. Elation warred with a bone-deep fear that he would find her like this—but too late to do anything but torture himself for not getting here in time.
She was spread-eagled on the huge four-poster bed, nak*d and blindfolded. Completely at Chastian’s mercy. He was taking it slow; a slap here, a pinch there. A tightening of her bonds until she lost all sensation in her arms and legs.
He’d keep her like that for a while and then loosen one of the knots so that blood—and painful sensation—rushed back to the body part all at once. And then, once the sensation had returned—painful second by painful second—he would tighten the bonds until the circulation was once again cut off.
And Shawn—Shawn hadn’t moved from where Chastian had dropped him. She’d tried to tell herself that he wasn’t dead, that he was just unconscious, but every minute that passed seemed to make a mockery of her prayers until fear for him and herself was a crazed animal within her.
Part of her wished he would just get it over with—that he would move on to bigger and badder things so that it would all just be done with. But the other part, the one that longed to feel Cole’s lips against hers just one more time, wanted to prolong the inevitable. That side of her prayed for Cole or Roberto or Luc to come through that door and realize what had happened.
She knew Cole was aware of what was going on—though Chastian had gone into the next room when he answered the phone, she had heard every word of the conversation. Her only question was whether or not Cole would figure out where she was in time to save her. And what kind of shape she’d be in when he got here.
Suddenly, she felt the cold tip of Chastian’s knife against her throat, yanking her out of her thoughts and back to his little shop of horrors. “Sorry to interrupt your daydream,” he murmured, “But I was getting bored.” She felt the prick of the knife as he nicked her skin for the first time.
“So, is this what you like, Genevieve?” She heard the sneer in his voice. “Does it turn you on?” The knife moved over her right breast, sliced just a little deeper.
“Goddamn it, answer me! I can’t believe you let that bastard touch you. Let him tie you up and f**k you like a whore! I would never have done that to you. I would have treated you right!”
She bit her tongue, resisted the urge to point out just what a non sequitur that little trip to Crazytown was. Seeing as how he had barely gotten started and she couldn’t find a part of her body that didn’t hurt.
“Why won’t you answer me?” This time the question was a sob. “I wanted to take care of you, to love you. To treat you right.”
Suddenly, the blindfold was ripped away and she was staring into her lieutenant’s deranged eyes. “Why did you make me do this to you?” he demanded. “Why couldn’t you love me back, just a little?”
“Rob.” She kept her voice deliberately gentle when what she really wanted to do was scream at him until she was hoarse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand—” Her voice broke and she had to try again. “I didn’t understand what you wanted from me. I should have listened better.”
“Yes, you should have.” He shuddered, and the knife came perilously close to cutting her again.
Fighting back a wave of fear-induced nausea, she murmured, “Tell me now.”
The eyes he turned on her were bewildered, like a confused child who couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten there. How could she have missed this, she wondered. How could she have worked for this man for three years and not have a clue he was so far gone?
How could any of them?
“It’s too late, Genevieve. Everything’s ruined.”
“No, no it isn’t. Not everything. Not if you don’t want it to be.”
“But I saw you with him,” he repeated. “You never should have done that. You were mine. “Mine!” It was a primal scream of rage, one that had her blood running cold and her body shivering despite the sweat blooming on her body.
“I didn’t know.” She forced the words out, tried desperately to keep her voice from trembling as her fear seemed only to incite his sadism.
“You didn’t want to know. I tried everything to get your attention. Followed you around. Called you into my office every chance I got.”
Shock ricocheted through her as the meaning behind his words hit her. He’d made her life a living hell these last years not because he didn’t think she could do her job, but because he’d wanted her attention.
“I didn’t know.” She was beginning to sound like a broken record, but she could think of nothing else to say. She felt like Alice, felt like she’d tumbled down a rabbit hole where everything was topsy-turvy. Only instead of Wonderland, she was stuck in hell.
How could this be happening?
How could Chastian be the killer they’d been hunting for months?
How could he have gone so far insane without any of them knowing—or even suspecting?
“That’s not good enough, Genevieve. Not knowing isn’t an excuse.”
She bit back the sharp retort that trembled on her lips, tried to strike a placating tone when all she really wanted to do was rip his f**king eyes out before putting a bullet in his brain.
“I know it isn’t, Rob. But I didn’t understand.”
“Nobody understands,” he screamed, and she cringed. She’d meant to draw things out, to calm him down, but everything she said was just inciting him more.
“I’m sorry, Rob.” She nearly choked on the words, but she had to keep him talking. Keep him occupied. Cole would find her and Shawn. Cole and Roberto and Luc; she just had to stay alive long enough for them to get here.
It had been nearly twenty minutes since Cole had called—surely he wouldn’t be much longer. “Rob—” She opened her mouth to keep the conversation going, but he interrupted her with a scream that was so filled with rage and insanity that it turned her blood ice-cold in an instant.
“Sorry doesn’t work, Genevieve! Nothing will ever work again.” And then he was reaching for one of the candles he’d lit and set by the bed. Holding it over her stomach and tilting it, so that the searing-hot wax splashed onto her skin.
She couldn’t stop the whimper from escaping, her body jerking wildly against the restraints as agony razed her nerve endings.
“Tsk, tsk. I expected better from the Ice Queen. But you’re just like the others—nothing but a weak little whore.” Chastian’s voice was back to that insane singsong, the one that made her blood run completely cold. When he was rational—or at least as rational as he could get—it wasn’t so bad. At least she could keep him talking, could distract him.
But when he was like this … she shuddered. When he was like this, all she could do was pray to survive whatever he had planned.
Just a little longer, she told herself. Hold out a little longer, and they will find me. And Chastian would be dead—if not by her hand, then by the hand of one of her friends.
That thought was the only thing that kept her sane.
But when Chastian unbuttoned his pants and climbed onto the bed next to her, her brain shut down. Disconnected. All the warnings that she’d given herself just disappeared as panic, deep and overwhelming, set in.
She could handle the pain—both emotional and physical. She could deal with the fact that her boss was actually a psychopath bent on her destruction. She could accept all of that. But she could not, would not, die with him inside of her, in a macabre mockery of what she and Cole had shared.
She would rather he kill her now—right now—than live through him killing her as he raped her. She looked into his eyes and knew that this was it; he wasn’t going to wait much longer. He was as aware of the clock ticking down as she was, knew that it was now or never.
She was determined that it would be never.
* * *
Fear, urgent and uncontrollable, rocketed through Cole as he sat in the police car next to Roberto Torres. They hadn’t been able to find Shawn, didn’t know if he was lying injured somewhere or if he was dead.
But Genevieve’s phone was department-issued, and as such was equipped with a GPS chip that let them find her anywhere. According to Roberto, she was still in the house on Burgundy where he’d left her—or at least her phone was.
Hurry up, he urged the cop silently. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. It had already been almost half an hour since that psychopath had answered her phone. Genevieve couldn’t last much longer—he didn’t know how he knew this, but he did. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself it was just fear talking, he knew it was the truth. It was almost like he could feel her spirit weakening despite the fight he knew she was putting up.
“Can’t you go faster?” he demanded.
“Not without running over a damn pedestrian!” Torres answered grimly. They were going in quiet, sirens silent. They hadn’t called for backup, not yet. Roberto had wanted to see if there was anything to Cole’s wild accusations.
“Open the glove compartment.” Roberto’s voice was clipped. “There’s a gun in there. Do you know how to shoot?”
He grabbed the gun, relieved by its comfortable familiarity in his hand. But all he said was, “Yeah.”
“Don’t use it unless you have to.”
He nodded, though he knew he would do whatever it took to keep Genevieve safe. If that meant killing this bastard in cold blood, he would do it, and to hell with the consequences. His woman was more than worth it.
Roberto pulled up to the curb, and Cole was out of the car before it even stopped, running toward the house as fast as he could. All he could think of was getting to Genevieve, of holding her in his arms, of never letting her go again.
“Stop!” Roberto yelled, but he didn’t listen. He couldn’t. He was too far gone, images of Samantha dancing in his head, Genevieve’s face superimposed over her mutilated body.
He couldn’t lose Genevieve, he just couldn’t.
Suddenly, he was flying through the air, taken down by a running tackle from Roberto. He rolled, pulled back a fist and prepared to land it in the other man’s face.
“You’re going to get her killed! You just can’t go running in there like—”
Suddenly, a high-pitched scream, in a voice he recognized immediately as Genevieve’s, rent the air. The cop must have drawn the same conclusion, because he stopped fighting him and started moving—silently and low to the ground—around the house.
The side door was open and they slipped inside, more quietly than Cole would have dreamed possible. Roberto gestured for Cole to follow him and he did, even though everything inside of him strained to get to Genevieve as quickly as possible.