Red & Wolfe Part 4: An Erotic Fairy Tale (5 page)

He turns around again, and I watch the two goons string the rope around the limb. They seem to know what they’re doing. I strain into my pocket again, and this time, I bend my ring finger around the lighter. Holy shit, I draw it out.

At that second, Linn turns and starts to stride over. The air inside my lungs leaks out. No, no, no. He sits down beside me under the mossy trees, and I hold my breath, waiting to see if he’ll grab it away. Instead, he leans closer.

“I’m an honest guy,” he tells me, as I clench the lighter in my hands. “I never cheated in law school. I have a wife, you know? Where my parents are from, they arrange these things. She’s very pretty, but she nags.” His mouth twists. “Nags and nags. Nothing like Cookie.”

“How did you know her?” I rasp.

He sits up straighter, gives me a scowl that tells me he thinks I should know. “I’m the one who tried to help her avoid the marriage clause. Did she never tell you?”

I nod, making my head pound. “I remember now.”

“She didn’t want to get married. Nights and nights she was with me. In
my
office. We drank cheery soda, ate the roasted pork from the little stand just down the way, on Park. I tried my damndest to get her out of it, but the trust…it was airtight.”

“You loved her?” I ask. I’ve got the lighter hidden, I think, clutched in both my fists. I’m working on positioning it so I can open the zippo and strike the flint with my thumb. I’ll have to burn my hands to put the flame to the rope, but I don’t have a choice.

I listen as Linn drones on about his feelings for Cookie. How he cares for his wife, but she’s not what he needs. It occurs to me, ridiculously, that Linn seems about as straight-laced as they come. He thinks I murdered my wife, and still, he looks slightly uncomfortable in his work suit, sitting beside me in the grass. I watch him set my gun down as he talks, and hope fills me. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I wonder why Smythson let him come here. If Smythson sent him here. No way Linn got here by himself—is there?

When his eyes flit over to the ropes, I can see his body tighten.

Good. I don’t know where the other two are but maybe they left. I have the lighter well-positioned. I clench my fists around it and I work on breathing deeply, wiping my mind clean, the way I used to when my father ‘disciplined’ me with his whips and clamps and paddles.

I’m pretty sure Linn’s finished talking about Cookie, because he’s silent for a moment.

I look up at him. “So Smythson sent you?”

Linn laughs. “No Smythson. I want to do you in.”

“He’s been looking for me for a long time,” I say, still not convinced Linn made it to me without some help from someone in high places.

“Not just him,” Linn says. “Everyone who loved Cookie, everyone who works for Robert—we all wanted to see you dead.
Punished
. Like you should have been.” He stands and walks quickly to the men, who have moved back into my line of sight and appear to be perfecting the knot.

I take a deep breath, spread the fingers of my left hand as far apart as I can, and wedge the tip of the zippo between my ring finger and pinkie. Memories fill my mind. Brutal details that I’ve worked to banish from my psyche. Cookie’s tights. The blood. I grit my teeth. Then, with my right thumb, I strike the flint.

The flame is
agonizing.
Sweat pops out all over my body, and my throat spasms with the urge to scream. Immediately, I can smell my flesh burning. I tug in a few huge, desperate breaths, and then look down. Beyond the haze of heat around my hand, I can see the rope turning black.

I grit my teeth so hard the world dissolves into a mess of stars.

Breathe, asshole! Breathe deeply.

I press my lips together to suppress a howl. It doesn’t work; I start to pant, but the rope is burning now. All three backs are still toward me.

Then one of the goons looks over his shoulder. He makes a face as if he smells my burning flesh and then his eyes widen.

I jerk my wrists against the rope. I feel it give in a burst of pain. I lunge for the gun in the grass, hefting it in my right hand. I wrap my fingers around it but the pain dazes me. Goon who saw me is charging. I’m fumbling with the gun. I expect the pain this time. Work past it. I manage to find the trigger. The bullet pops him in the gut. He goes down.

Number two whips around, gun drawn, and I get him in the chest. Linn’s face stretches. He puts his hands over his head. He’s got no weapon. Nothing. I’m up and moving through the grass as he starts pleading.

“No, please! No! No! Please, it wasn’t my idea.”

I reach him in another long stride and aim the butt of the gun at his temple. He goes down like a sack of flour, and I hit him one more time for good measure. One of the goons is silent now. The other is writhing. Crying.

I walk over to him. Roll him over. Grab a knife out of his belt.

“I got kids,” he hisses.

“Fuck your kids.”

Pain is closing in on me as I cut the rope down. My head feels too light. The fingers of my left hand roar their pain.

Tying the three men’s hands requires both of mine. My jaw locks and I start to shiver, but I get it done. I stand on shaking legs, drawing in shallow, humid breaths. The trees around me seem to move and chatter. I wonder dimly if they’re heckling—or if they’re glad I won.

Strong hands grab me by the shoulders, and I whirl around.

CHAPTER FIVE

RED

He drags a paint brush down the inside of my calf. It tickles. My brain knows this, but my body doesn’t move. I’m on lockdown. Gut-wrenching shivers have been reduced to a fine quiver, as if my body is on auto-pilot, just doing the bare minimum. And yet…my senses are on overdrive. The cold breeze. The sun washing out the luscious grass in Gertrude’s yard. The ropes cutting my wrists. The pain of all the cuts.

My mind is a kaleidoscope of Mom and me, of Katie and me. Chinese food with Carl. Type, type, typing on my keyboard: bliss. That night at the frog pond, gliding as I apologized for not recording the James Wolfe documentary. I can smell the shampoo in Gertrude’s bathroom. Feel the ache in my jaw as I take Race’s cock way down my throat.

This guy told me Race is dead already, but I can’t believe it.

It’s impossible for me to imagine anyone getting Race. And yet…half of my body is already bathed in red paint. It stings the two slashes on the inside of my stretched out bicep. Stings the long, shallow cut from my butt cheek down the back of my thigh.

He paints over the first and deepest cut he made, the one on the front of my right thigh, and the burning sensation of paint oozing into the wound makes me lose my breath.

“You know he was a sexual killer, right? That’s why I’m doing this. I wish I wasn’t,” he says.

I think dimly what a contrite fuckwad he is.

He drags the paint brush over my belly, toward my crotch, and a tiny little sob escapes my throat.

“You’re a bastard! I bet your mother would disown you…if she knew!”

He backhands me, and I vibrate in my ropes.

“Nobody talks about my mother! Not a whore like you.”

“You’re gross.” I can’t control my mouth. “I hate you. You’re disgusting and I…still think your mother would be ashamed of how you’re…treating me!”

I give myself silent accolades for sounding so coherent. I’m shivering violently again, unable to hang loosely in my binds. Which sucks. I realized a long time ago that I sway less if I make my body dead weight.

“Don’t talk about my mother, bitch.” He waves the knife at me.

I smirk, because why not?

“Who’s your boss?” It’s a random question, and I ask without hesitation. What’s the point of hesitating now? He rubs his gun. “We considered killing you, but instead I’ve got this.”

From some unseen pocket, he produces a syringe. “Lots of ketamine in here. We’ll bring you close as we can to an overdose and leave you like that. You try to squeal, no one will believe you, all drugged up like that.”

He grins, but it’s a leer this time. “I don’t think you’ll remember anything anyway. Ketamine compromises the memory.”

He reaches up and pinches my nipple, and there’s no art in his touch. The physical sensation reminds me of the time a college boyfriend groped me in my sleep. I know he’s touching my breasts, but I can’t really feel it.

I close my eyes and I imagine Race.

I see him smiling earlier this morning.
“You’re always welcome, doll.”

I kind of liked the way he called me fuck doll.

CHAPTER SIX

WOLFE
Six years ago

Bryson Paige lives in Greenwich, in a sprawling estate his parents vacated just for him. I know exactly how to get there from my place in Lenox Hill, because when Cookie doesn’t tell me where she is, I track her cell phone. Yeah, I know. It’s fucking nuts. But I can’t stand to go to sleep unless I know she’s safe, and I won’t bow and just request she tell me. I won’t be that guy. So I’m this one.

As I drive, I check my phone obsessively. I don’t know what I think I’ll find. A missed call? Voicemail? 

My fingers, locked around the steering wheel, ache. My neck hurts as I whip my gaze from the rear view to the side mirrors, over my shoulder, across the bustling lanes of 278. I think I’ve got the fucking flu. My head throbs and my eyelids burn so hot they make my eyes feel dry.

Fucking Cookie.

I told her to calm down with Paige. That guy’s a pussy. She doesn’t talk about him much, but I’ve got a pretty good feel for him. I’ve been with a lot of subs, starting back before I called them that, back when I was just a horny kid. Paige sounds like one who doesn’t know his limits. He’s broken it off with her twice lately. Then comes crawling back, begging, the second he hears she’s domming someone else.

I look at my phone, locked into its holder, on the dash of my Lambo. The screen is dark. I wish it would light up again. Her call was short, telling me nothing except she’s in trouble.

“Help me, Jimmy! I’m at Paige’s house in the garage!”

I change lanes and grit my teeth. There’s no way that fucker hurt her, is there? Sometimes a sub will break. I’ve only had it happen once, and she was small. But Paige is probably twice Cookie’s size. Fucker could really hurt her. I lick my dry lips. If he hurts her, I will kill him.

I try the number Cookie called me from twice more as I get on 95 and start to fly. Each time, my chest gets a little tighter, my foot a little heavier.

My head throbs. My throat is so dry, but I forgot to bring a drink. I swallow, over and over, which only makes it ache.

I’m going more than a hundred miles per hour when I exit the freeway, hit the brakes so hard the car’s rear fishtails, and shoot off down a winding residential road. It’s good I’ve got a photographic memory and a good GPS system on the computer in my study, because I can tell when the road starts to curve a certain way that I’m close. A few more miles and there it is, an overstated iron sign that says: Paige Place.

I hang a sharp right, stomp the brakes so hard the tires squeal, and blink at the keypad to my left. Fuck! I don’t know the code. I glance out in front of me, and for once I catch a break. The arm is already up. I punch the pedal and take the long driveway going almost sixty.

When the driveway curves into a huge circle, I slow at the valet booth. Empty. Because it’s Sunday. Sometimes help gets Sundays off. I drive up to the house, still glancing around for a valet. When I see none, I drive over to the long, one-story stone structure on the left side of the house.