His Captive, The Unabridged Collection: Billionaire Dark Romance (14 page)

The walk wasn't nearly as far as I thought it would have been, but Rafe's strides were long and purposeful. I struggled to keep up, even jogging to catch up a few times. He seemed to entirely disregard me then, his focus on the fading ring of the chime.

We came to stand in front of a large, unadorned white door. Rafe took a deep breath, exhaling a small, quiet declaration.

“The chapel.”

He opened the door, and I immediately recognized the room as the one I woke in after my encounter with Bronson. The featureless white walls and blinding light overhead made me wince, though I couldn't say whether it was from remembering the terror of being on the gurney or the intensity of the light there.

It did resemble a chapel, with the tiled white walls extending up very high, then arching together at a peak. The light fixtures were hung by gleaming chains from the peak and arranged in a cluster that glowed very brightly with no heat. There were windows along one wall that looked out over the garden, and I glanced up distractedly toward the barred window of my darkened room. Strange, to see the garden from the reverse angle. Everything was the opposite of where I thought it would be.

Rafe stepped past, walking swiftly toward a long table and turning his back to me. I bit my lips together and reminded myself that I had asked to come here. My bare toes curled against the cold surface.

The floor, like the walls, was also tiled in pristine, gleaming white porcelain. It dipped slightly toward the center and a stainless steel grate. Around the outside of the room were small rolling tables in steel and white enamel. Some held shining arrays of blades arranged by size, others held trays of complicated mechanical instruments. I wanted to take a closer look. Everything was so neatly presented, it was like a museum display.

A groan sounded from the middle of the room. I winced and squinted, trying to work up the courage to investigate the part I was unwilling to look at. Rafe turned around and nodded, scowling. He held a clear IV bag in one hand and a coil of plastic tubing in the other.

“Jolie —
Julie…
Are you absolutely certain that you wish to be here?” he said softly, his fingers tight around the equipment in his hands.

I swallowed hard, straightening where I stood and consciously trying to relax my arms.

“I want to know,” I said again.

Do I want to know? Do I, really?

But the look on his face told me everything. His expression calmed, as though I was watching him flood with emotion. What was it? Satisfaction? Relief? His eyes flickered toward mine and I felt it again, that connection. It sparked between us like a telegraph wire and I knew what it meant even if I couldn't parse the message into individual sentences.

I nodded again as if to encourage him. He blinked and straightened, then turned back toward the figure in the middle of the room.

Slowly I slid forward, tile by tile. In the center of the room, a simple medical gurney had been placed, and I recognized it well. There was the hard, cold surface. The leather cuffs at the halfway point and each far corner. The wheels were locked into place but I could almost feel the way the table shifted under me when I thrashed, like an instant replay of the physical sensation.

Rafe glanced at me as he threaded the perforated end of the IV bag onto a tall stand. He shook out the tubing and flicked the plastic gates open expertly. Stepping to the side of the figure on the table, he paused for a moment. His eyes swept back and forth over the trapped body, his fingers poised in midair with the hollow needle. I searched his features for an emotion I recognized. But it was almost beyond me. Was that tenderness? It couldn't be. I couldn't fit what I was seeing to any experience that I understood.

“He was practically dead when Bronson found him, you know,” he said distractedly. His dark brows knitted together as his fingers deftly placed the needle against and then through the bony wrist.

“He?”

I came forward slowly, overwhelmed and curious. The figure grew before me as though in a dream, coming clear inch by inch under the bright, surgical bank of lights. The bolt of cloth across the eyes was not black as I had assumed. It was a deep purple. The strap across the shoulders was lined with sheepskin. I didn't remember that either. I thought it had cut into me cruelly, but now I could see it was almost humane. In all, it was a thoughtfully crafted table on which to keep a person completely helpless.

“I thought — it would be a woman,” I said, hearing my voice come back to me as the words spilled out.

Rafe chuckled slightly. He measured out a few inches of white medical tape and snipped them off, then fixed them across the IV needle.

“A woman?” he repeated, smirking.

I nodded tentatively and walked a few steps toward the feet of the figure, taking in each detail one by one. It was a man, dark-haired and slightly built. He looked to be around 30 years old… No. The skin below his neck was pale and delicate, but his face was lined and pocked like a much older person. I'd seen a few of the people I went to high school with go like this. It was meth, I was sure. Meth could age a person, mask them.

Rafe crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head at the man. He frowned, staring him up and down.

“Why would you think it would be a woman?”

“Well, the other one that I heard… Was a woman, screaming, I am sure?”

I watched him intently. He paused for a few moments then finally nodded, unfolding one of his hands from over his chest and waving it over the man's shoulders as though he were describing a specimen.

“This is Micah Humboldt,” he began. “He ran a youth ministry summer camp for six years under the banner of Fran Farnsworth. You’ve heard of it?”

I nodded uncertainly.

“They took in dozens, maybe hundreds of at-risk teenagers. Took them to the woods, taught them to fish and canoe, and then at night…”

He shook his head fiercely, his black hair sweeping in a fringe across his furrowed brow.

“No, wait, I’ve heard about this…” I started, searching for the images that I had seen on the news. The Farnsworth camp was under investigation for trafficking underage girls and boys. There had been terrible stories from a few of the teenagers who had come back scarred and twisted, but they were met with the sort of derision only at-risk teenagers can understand.

No one believed them for years since Fran Farnsworth was a bit of a hometown hero. He’d been a football coach for decades. But the stories wouldn’t stop, and a few of the teens never came back.

It took dozens of reports corroborated by other teens before anyone would listen. By the time the story broke the old coach had conveniently gone mute after a devastating stroke, and one of his assistants had left the country. His disappearance was as sudden as it was predictable. He left a wife and three troubled children of his own. But not before laying the blame on the camp administrator, Micah Humboldt.

“You found him?” I whispered, incredulous. “This is the Micah Humboldt who was on the news?”

He nodded.

“Rachel said it was a terrible time to be a child molester…” I said vaguely, my voice trailing off.

Rafe drew a hand hard over his face. “I suppose I can take that as a compliment.”

“But how are you…”

“For all his shortcomings, Bronson possesses an unparalleled skill in finding people who do not want to be found. We had been looking for Micah for six months at least. Bronson liberated him from a fishing shack in Iowa.”

“How?”

“There are no secrets anymore, Julie. Anything you want to find out can be found out, if you’re willing to pay a high enough price.”

He shrugged one shoulder, glancing at me, measuring my reaction. Was he waiting for me to cry? Crumple? Run from the room?

The figure on the table let out a long, low groan. Rafe's hand drifted toward the plastic gate on the IV tubing, notching it open or closed, I couldn't tell. He had the efficient, practiced moves of a surgeon, and I couldn't help but admire the elegance and economy of his motions.

“So this is… revenge?”

Rafe shook his head, his nostrils flaring as he let out a deep breath.

“This is justice,” he finally growled.

Justice. I turned the thought around my mind. As the slender, bony figure shifted slightly under the restraints, I looked him up and down. He could have been anybody. Just some stranger on the street, or some barfly from back home. But he was worse: he was a man who had at least procured and sold teenagers to other men to do whatever they wanted. And he had probably done terrible things himself. Once this kind of person knew that their victims couldn't fight back, they generally seemed to lose all control.

But here he was, captured. Helpless. How many other people had felt helpless once they realize they were trapped with him? Just regular hard-luck kids who thought they were getting a free chance at a summer camp? What had they thought about, the first time they realized what was really going down?

I knew that feeling. I remember when my mother brought Ricky home the first time. I was seven. He was hilarious, trotting out magic trick after magic trick until I was convinced my ears were filled with quarters. By the time school started, he was living with us and mom told me to start calling him daddy. And then sometime soon after that, I started waking up with him in my room, silhouetted dark in the doorway against the feeble hallway light. And then sometimes he would be on the edge of my bed. And then sometimes I would wake up with his fingers creeping under my nightgown.

When I told my mother, she called me a whore. Her eyes went wide and frantic, searching all around the small kitchen as though looking for answers there. She said I did it on purpose. She said I wanted him for myself. She said I ruined her life, and I realized later that I probably did.

I cocked my head at Micah, feeling emboldened by his imprisonment. I could get right up and inspect him. Was there some kind of mark on him? Some kind of sign? I looked him all over as he was laying there, unconscious. He looked like a regular man, if smaller and more brittle than most. He looked like he'd been starving, maybe while he was hiding from Rafe. I tried to imagine what that was like for him, as though maybe he knew Rafe was coming for him. Did he feel safe in Iowa? It was easy to imagine Bronson all chummy and sly, coming up to talk to him like he did to me. Then taking him down, choking him out and tossing him in the back of the SUV. Suddenly the memory of that seemed less frightening. It seemed righteous.

“You don't seem scared,” Rafe observed.

I shook my head.

“They always get away with it,” I whispered.

Rafe took a deep breath, standing up under the lights, tall and strong and determined.

“They don't always get away with it,” he growled. "Why would you say that?”

I shrugged, suddenly shy. I wasn't going to be able to tell him about Ricky. The shame of my mother’s accusations still echoed in my heart even though rationally I knew that couldn't be true. But I could have been quiet a little longer, for her sake. I wish I would have.

Suddenly he sighed. “Oh, Julie. I understand,” he said softly, turning to me fully. His eyes met mine and I felt that connection again, only this time I understood what it meant. He knew. He really had seen right to the middle of me, just as I had thought. He nodded as though answering a question I hadn’t asked.

“Because of my… position, I am able to affect certain changes. What we are looking at now is nothing more than my duty. The authorities had been searching for Micah halfheartedly for two years. When coach Farnsworth had a stroke, the investigation was all but abandoned.”

“You — you know this?”

He raised his chin, casting his eyes toward the ceiling.

“I have connections,” he said simply. “Sometimes a situation will get beyond the scope of good people who are trying to work within the social structure. I don't have to work within that structure. And so, regretfully… Occasionally it will fall to me to do the things they cannot.”

I shook my head, trying to wrap my mind around what he was saying.

“You're telling me that people know? That he's here?”

He cut his eyes toward me almost suspiciously. I stood my ground.

“Are you telling me that you were
asked
to do this?”

He spread his hands in front of him, palms up toward the ceiling. “Sometimes the only thing that can be done against evil, is evil. I can't tell you how much I regret the decisions that I have had to make —”

“— like me?”

He nodded slowly, standing to face me.

“But I didn't do anything,” I shook my head.

“No, you didn't. But that wasn't because you were being noble, Julie. Hm? Let's be honest. If Bronson hadn't… er, escorted you here, no matter how misunderstood the circumstance, you would've gone further down the path Rachel was leading you, now wouldn't you?”

I wanted to object. A gasp caught in my throat and my jaw opened and closed several times. What could I say?

“I'm — I'm
nothing
like this guy here,” I blurted out, gesturing at Micah. The tone of my voice must have reached him, and he began moving his head from side to side.