Fuck. Something’s wrong. An alert of some sort, blaring through Mike’s brain, not loud enough to cut through the pain. Not loud enough to stop his head, which is now nodding, the dots of nausea returning. He needs an ambulance. He needs help. He—

“You piece of shit motherfucker.”

That his brain hears, his head snapping back as he cranes his neck over, sees the photo the asshole grips in gloved fingers, her sunny smile shining at him across the room. His eyes close.

Yeah. That was it. The picture. Two years old, printed out because he couldn’t help himself. She’s in underwear, covering her breasts with both hands and laughing. He’d taken a screenshot, captured the moment, one of her real ones. The ones that made him think he was different than the others. That they had some sort of real connection that the others only dreamed of. It was his screensaver for a bit, then he printed it out. Taped it to the corner of his mirror so he can see it every morning. Reminds him that there’s a life outside this house. A girl, like her, out there, that he will one day be with. Be good enough for.

“Just kill me.” His eyes are closed when he says the words, when they stumble off of his lips, but he means every word of them. He will protect her to his death, a final destination that seems to be quickly approaching. There can’t be a pain worse than this one. If there is, his fragile state can’t handle it.

Steps sound against the floor, his presence felt as he nears, and Mike repeats the words, just in case this son of a bitch missed them.

“Just kill me. I won’t tell you anything.”

He’d like to say that he made it. Retained his silence. Was the hero. That when his eyes opened and the rapist is there, kneeling down before him, at a height that puts their eyes level, the stranger’s face close enough to bite, that Mike doesn’t shake. He wants to say that he stares him down and isn’t nervous. But then the man reaches over his body to the side table, and what he lifts up causes Mike, the parts of him that still have movement, to shake. Shake like the ten-year-old boy that he still very much is.

Wire cutters. Heavy duty, with green plastic grips, the kind that allow a handicapped man to cut through computer mainframes, hard drive harnesses, and impenetrable plastic casing. With dead eyes he watches the man’s hands, long fingers that don’t match his short stature, that damn Breguet watch glinting in the dark, the cutters loose in hand, carried with the same easy nonchalance that the knife had afforded, the knife that still sits, butt-deep, in Mike’s shoulder. Mike moves his hands to his lap and clenches them tightly, looking to the side, away from the hand, away from the eyes, and swallows nervously.

He had wanted to do it. Had wanted so badly to be strong for her. To be her hero.

CHAPTER 65

MIKE’S EYES WATCH the sharp blade of the cutters, a stare of desperation as the man pulls his hand closer, placing his right index finger in between the metal blades. Mike tugs against his hand, straining to free the finger, all movement halting when the asshole squeezes the handles. Just an inch, just enough to bring the blades closer and to create a sharp pinch of pain. He freezes, looking up into the man’s face.

I am weak. She deserves a better protector than me.

“Please. Just kill me,” he whispers through weak tears of anticipation.

“Who is she?”

“Jessica Reilly.”

The man squeezes the blades enough that he screams, a gargled, girly sound that he should be ashamed of, but isn’t. Ashamed got left behind when he realized that he was going to die. “Stop wasting time. We’ve done enough of that already.” This man is used to being in control. To giving orders that get followed, are respected. And the more subservient, the more he seems to swell, grow confident in his footing. There is no way to gain an advantage. No way to win.

“Know what’s worse than death? Your life, how I could make it.” He depresses fully on the clippers, and Mike bucks against the chair, the pain so intense it brings fresh tears, the spots in his vision giving him a brief hope that he will pass out from the pain. Oblivion would be heaven right now. He blinks rapidly, afraid to look down, the drag against the hand telling that the digit has not yet been severed. But the moment had been felt when those blades touched bone and literally tested the strength of his marrow.

He closes his eyes tightly and the final piece of his strength breaks.

“Deanna Madden. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Please, stop. Please. Just kill me.”

His head is spinning, his fingers throbbing, the blood flow unnecessarily rushing to a place it doesn’t need to exist. This man will kill me. He will torture until he learns everything, then he will kill. There is nothing else that can be done to protect her. Her fate is already sealed.