What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

“What fun would that be?” Razor asks, clapping his
hands together. “Now let’s take this conversation somewhere more private.”

With those words, four men attack Ricky and get him
on the ground before he can get a swing off. He tries to fight them, I can hear
that much. Ricky doesn’t go down without a fight. I can tell that the guys
holding me are itching to join, but Ricky does go down.

Seeing him fall rips out a part of me. I never
thought I would see him brought to his knees by someone, ever.

They kick him a few more times before yanking him
off the ground and dragging him towards his cabin. Razor snaps his fingers, and
the guy holding me shoves me towards Razor. He grips my arm with one hand and
the back of my neck with the other.

“Watch the men. Anyone tries anything, kill
them
. Someone else acts out, pull out one of the women and
shoot them,” he orders.

“Yes, sir,” his man nods.

“You’re coming with me,” he says, pushing me along
with him. “You’re going to make sure that your boyfriend behaves.”

“What do you even want with us?” I ask. I stumble
as he pushes me in front of him again.

“Not you. McQueen. Well,” he says as his eyes rake
over me, “now that we’ve met, I do want something to do with you. And I also
believe that you have a pretty little redhead here that one of my men has some
unfinished business with. Haven’t seen her, have you?”

“You know, I’m having a hard time remembering. I
think it is my severe allergy to assholes. They fog my memory right up,” I
suggest, smiling sweetly.

He shoves me again. I stumble over my feet and fall
forward. I hit the ground face first, unable to regain my balance without my
hands. The impact knocks my breath away, and I struggle to turn over. My arms
are jerked backwards as he yanks me from the ground.

“You really should be more careful,” he chides.

“And you should really go—”

He shoves me into Ricky’s cabin, my head snaps
against the wood door. I fall to the ground, pain radiates from my head.

“Come on, Blondie,” he says, hoisting me off the
ground again. “I have a meeting to get to.”

I try to stand, but my legs won’t support me. Razor
makes an impatient noise and picks me up, tossing me over his shoulder. The
sudden movement makes my stomach flip, and blood rushes to my pounding head.

“Bastard,” I say as soon as I get air back in my
lungs.

“I’ve been called worse,” he replies, smacking my
butt.

He moves with purpose as he opens the door to
Ricky’s cabin. Ricky is already there, tied to a chair. There is a cut above
his eye and blood drips over his face. His lip is busted, and his right eye is
swelling. His shirt has been torn off, and bruises are visible on his chest.

“Don’t you touch her,” Ricky yells when he notices
Razor carrying me. “Do anything you want to me, but leave her alone.”

Razor slides me down from his shoulder and keeps
his arms wrapped tightly around me. The world spins around me, and I fall back
against him. I try to fight him, but I am too weak.
So much
fighting.
All I ever do is fight. My eyes start to drift close.

“
Darlin
’,” he whispers in
my ears. “It’s not time to go to sleep yet.”

He pushes me into a chair; my hands tied behind my
back making it awkward. My head is throbbing, and my eyes are hurting.

“Let’s get down to business,” Razor says, clapping
his hands together. “So many people to torture and kill, such little time.”

April 10

Two hours have passed since Razor started to
torture Ricky, and he is taking a break. Who knew torturing someone could be so
tiresome? He pulls up a chair next to mine, and slides his arm over the back of
my chair. After about thirty minutes of someone having to hold me down, he
eventually tied me to a chair and gagged me.

I tilt my chair away from him, willing to tip the
chair to get away from him. Maybe getting knocked unconscious would be a good
thing. Ricky looks like he’s on the way there now.

“Now,” he says, his breath heating my cheek. His
arm tips my chair back into place, the two legs echo as they hit the ground. “I
have a question for you.”

I turn my face away from him, not wanting to play
this game. It’s like being a mouse stuck in a maze, only there is no way out
and definitely no cheese waiting at the end.

“Why is none of your stuff in that back room? My
source tells me that you used to live here,” he says, he gestures at my room
with the knife, Ricky’s blood still wet on his hand. “Yet you have no clothing
or anything in there. Why is that?”

“Just leave her alone,”
Ricky
says, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear it over my heart, his head
down.

“Oh, right,”
Razor
says.
“I forgot.”

He takes his knife and cuts off the gag. I spit it
out of my mouth, but the soreness from its tight pressure stays behind. It
lands on my lap, limp and bloody.

“What was the answer to my question?”

I press my mouth closed, my eyes on Ricky. He looks
like he’s barely hanging in there. Razor had started beating him, but when he
kept falling unconscious, he got smarter. He’s broken seven of Ricky’s fingers,
every finger but his right trigger finger and thumb on both hands.

“Why are you doing this?” Ricky asks him, blood
streaming out of his mouth.

Razor points the knife at him, shaking it slowly.
“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to her.”

“I moved out,” I say before Ricky can say anything
else. He’s barely holding on, and still asking for more.

“I gathered,”
Razor
says,
moving my face towards his with the blunt side of his knife, smearing Ricky’s
blood on my face. “Why?”

“She found out that I was taking people’s
supplies,” Ricky answers, spitting blood out of his mouth.

“Ah, the poor guy was trying to provide for you,
and you didn’t like the way he was doing it, so you left him. Shame on you,”
Razor says, tapping me with the knife. He points the knife at Ricky again. The
preachy tone of his voice makes him sound even more southern. “That there is a
quality guy doing everything for the woman he loves. And I can tell by the way
he looks at you that he still loves you. Do you know that? Can you see it in
his face?”

Ricky looks up at me then, his one eye is swollen
shut, but I can read his face through the blood. For the first time in a long
time, there isn’t a wall blocking his emotions. He lets them all come out. The
guilt, love, anger, and shame is all there on his face. He knows what is
happening is because of him.
 

I look away from him, tears filling my eyes. I had
some hope left. As far as I heard, no one caught Daren, Jack, or Nicole. But
where are they? Why haven’t they come in yet, guns ablaze? The look of
surrender on Ricky’s face dims my hope.

“You love him, too,” Razor says, sounding curious.
“Just not in the same way that he loves you.” He pauses, before leaning in
close and whispering in my ear. “I can end it for you. I can kill him so that
you never have to worry again.”

I try to tilt my head away from him, but he reaches
out and clutches my chin, keeping me from turning it. My eyes meet his, and I
see the playful fire burning in them. The fire that is always in Ricky’s eyes;
it never dies. Eyes that see this world as a game and nothing more, the people
in it pawns for them to play with.
 

“Just say the words. I’ll stop torturing him and
just put him out of his misery,” Razor promises. “Even if you only love him
enough to not see him suffer, which judging by the look on your face you still
do, I can end it so that he isn’t in pain anymore. You wouldn’t have to deal
with him ever again. I’d do that for you.”

“Why did you come here in the first place?” I ask,
keeping my eyes on his.

“Well, I was looking to strike up a deal, but then
he killed my brother,” Razor says, leaning back and letting go of my face. “You
remember that lovely gentleman that you met in the woods? That was
him
.”

“You mean the asshole.
Makes
sense.
I should’ve seen the resemblance. We didn’t get along with him
trying to kill me and all.”

Razor laughed. “Yeah, my brother was an asshole.
Though I highly doubt that he would have tried to kill you. We have other
things that we do to women. I’m sure your pretty red-headed friend told you all
about that.”

Bile rises up my throat at the threat. He’s
taunting me as well as Ricky.

He continues on, his smile growing at my
discomfort. “Anyways, when Liam told me what happened, I knew that I could kill
two birds with one stone.
Or one bullet.
I get to
avenge my brother and get the legendary status of killing McQueen.”

“So you’re here on a revenge trip,” Ricky says. I
break my eye contact with Razor to look at him. “I guess I can’t really blame
you for that one. But I’ll tell you what, if I had known he was your brother, I
would have made him suffer a lot more than just with a bullet through his
head.”

I look back at Razor, a deep chill settling inside
me. Razor doesn’t look at Ricky, but his eyes harden at Ricky’s words.

“I always find it interesting,” he says, keeping his
eyes on me. His words are hard. “I find it interesting that people never seem
to realize when it is time to shut their mouths.”

Ricky snorts and then spits blood in Razor’s
direction. It landed a few feet in front of us, a blob of red lying on the floor.
“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say or do. Might as well kill me
now.”

I glance at Ricky, and he meets my eyes, the corner
of his mouth turning up. He’s enjoying this. It is still a game to him.
Glancing between the two, I wonder who is playing whose game. And who’s
winning?

“I think I’m going to enjoy killing you,” Razor
says, standing up. “However, that isn’t going to happen right now. I have
several more hours of torture left, and I can’t wait to get started again. Did
you know that there are twenty-six bones in the human foot? And you have two
feet. Now two times twenty-six sounds like an awful lot of bones.”

“Quit flirting with me,” Ricky says, chuckling
softly. “I don’t think you want my girlfriend here believing that you are into
guys. Though it would make sense.
A bunch of dirty men
wondering from place to place with no women.
One might get a little
desperate.”

One of the men standing next to him slugs him in
the face. Blood flies from Ricky’s mouth, and his head sags.

He spits blood from his mouth and looks at Razor. I
can’t even believe there is still a smug smile on his face. I had no idea that
someone who was already flirting with death could look so smug.

“Your buddy here seems extremely offended. Did I
hit a little too close to home?” Ricky continues, the smug smile still on his
face even as the guy who hit him raises his hand to do it again.

“Don’t hit him again,” Razor says. “There’s no
point in hitting him. He doesn’t care what happens to him. Hell, I don’t think
he even cares what happens to his new home here.” Razor walks behind me and
wraps his arms around me, burying his face in my neck.

I cringe away from him, but there is nowhere to go.
Nowhere to hide from the monsters
who
have invaded our
home. The feeling of his face against my skin brings burning tears to my eyes.
His arms constrict even tighter around me. He takes in a deep breath of my
hair.

“He’s right,” he whispers in my ear, his breath
sticky against my skin. “It is rough traveling with a bunch of guys.”

I can’t stop tears from falling. I try to move away
from him, but there is nowhere to go. He didn’t have to say it, but the message
is clear. Ricky doesn’t care what happens to him, but he does care what happens
to me. I look at Ricky, and he meets my eyes. Even with one eye swollen and the
pool of blood underneath him, he still has a dangerous fire in his eyes.

The last time I saw that look in his eyes, he had
killed Jackson. I look away from him, knowing the fire in his spirit is what
gets us in trouble. Razor understands how to hurt Ricky through hurting me. If
Ricky keeps pissing Razor off, then I’m probably not going to make it out of
this mess with all of my limbs attached. I don’t know how high my pain
tolerance is, and that is something that I never want to find out.

I can’t tell how much of Razor’s sexual threat
towards me is genuine or is just him messing with Ricky. The threat of hurting
me is clear, but I can’t tell if he would actually do it or not. Razor sits
back down next to me, one of his hands tangled in my hair.

“Keeping Ricky alive to torture him makes perfect
sense. Why is everyone else alive?” I ask, his hand in my hair didn’t feel
gentle, but it didn’t feel rough either. His grip was just tight enough to make
it clear who was in charge.

“I believe in the power of recruitment. I’m going
to give your men the chance to join. I know you train them extremely well. I
believe in fostering potential. I also believe in giving people a choice if
they want to live or die. Women will have the option for joining as well. I’m
an equal opportunity employer. I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I offer a
comfortable living and attractive men specimens like myself. I believe that
people want to be safe and secure. I’m giving them that option.”

“You’re numbers must be low,” Ricky says. “You
aren’t the kind of guy who recruits.”

Razor smiles at me
releasing his grip on my hair and moving his hand down on my arm.
“Your boyfriend seems to have heard of me before,
which works because I’ve heard of him. If he hadn’t killed my brother, I was
going to offer him a partnership. Now that I have met him, though, I see that
offering him a partnership never would’ve worked. Don’t get me wrong—he
is good at what he does. But you broke him. Anyone can see how much he loves
you and how he’d do anything for you. I know better than to play with broken
toys. Anyways, aren’t you curious how I got in here?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Brian told you where to find
us. Jackson had a huge mouth and mentioned it. You blew out a huge section of
the wall, had men file in through there and come in through our gates. More
than likely, you set the house on fire to create a smoke screen and to make people
panic. You separated the women and men, to keep them from working together.
Putting the children with the women was smart; you probably didn’t want to deal
with the screaming children. Did I miss anything?”

Razor nods his head, looking interested for the
first time. “Not as dumb as you pretend to be, huh?”

“Not that hard to figure it out. There is a giant
hole in the wall, and, with the distraction it would have caused, your men
would have easily been able to get in through the gates.”

Shouting outside disturbs us. Gunfire breaks
through the night and my stomach freezes. Please don’t let them have found
Daren and Jack.

Razor nods his head, and two of the men run out of
our house, slamming the door behind them. My pulse jumps, wanting nothing more
than Daren and Jack to come in here and rescue us. But that won’t happen. They
are outnumbered.

“You wouldn’t know who’s causing this trouble,
would you?” Razor asks. His hand on my arm tightens. “I felt your heart rate
speed up.” He leans in close, whispering the words in my ear.

He stands up and whispers orders to a man, who then
begins to cut Ricky free. Razor produces a knife, slicing through the rope
tying me to the chair. He pulls me from the chair, and I watch as they lift
Ricky from his, dragging him to the door.

“What are you doing?” I ask, starting to fight
against him.

“I’m going to kill your boyfriend,” he says,
looking down at me with a cold smile. “I figured that it wouldn’t be a good way
to start our relationship. Killing your boyfriend in front of you. I think that
you are going to be a very interesting addition to our community.”

“NO!” I screamed, trying to break away from him. He
grips me around the waist with both arms, pulling me against his chest. I rear
my head back and a crunching sound fills the air as the back of my head strikes
his face. He releases me, and I manage to land on my feet.