A Love So Deadly Read Free

stop him, no one riding to the rescue. No one will ever think to look for me here except Gabe, and Gabe is gone.
    I have to get out; I have to fucking get out.
    I find the source of the pain around my ankle. A handcuff circles my leg just above my anklebone. The other half of the cuff is attached to a length of heavy chain tied around one of the support beams not far from the mattress. I pick up the chain and track my way down it with trembling fingers, but every link is strong and there’s no way I’m going to be able to knock over the thick, wooden support beam without a sledgehammer.
    I’m caught. Trapped. There’s no way out.
    The truth is still settling in—hands wrapping around my throat, promising to choke the life out of me—when the trap door on the far right of the attic opens and the collapsible stairs descend. A shaft of brighter light pierces the orange gloom, casting a jagged, sharp-edged square of white on the wall.
    I back away, arms trembling at my sides, getting as close to the window as I can. But I’m still two feet from the sill, far enough that no one looking in would see me, and I know this house is so deep in the middle of nowhere there will be no one to hear me scream.
    Still, I have to grip my throat with one hand to hold back a panicked whimper as Pitt appears at the top of the stairs and steps into the attic. He’s wearing all black—black jeans, black tee shirt, and a black sock cap that covers his thinning blond hair—and I’m possessed by the nasty feeling that the tables have been turned, and I don’t like it.
    Not one little bit.
    “You’re awake,” he says, his tiny, pink-rimmed blue eyes looking even smaller with the bulb overhead casting dark shadows above his cheekbones. “I was worried. You barely moved the entire time I was carrying you.”
    I don’t say a word. I watch him, fighting to keep the fear and panic from my face, resisting the urge to pull my pink sleep shirt lower around my thighs. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified I am. Terrified—for myself, and for the kids, who are going to wake up tomorrow morning and be scared out of their minds when they realize I’m gone.
    “I’m not going to hurt you,” Pitt says, in that same smug, condescending voice he used when he talked about Danny’s behavior problems and lack of potential at all those stupid conferences.
    I can’t believe I sat across from him and talked about my brother like I was talking to a halfway reasonable person. I always knew Pitt was a jerk and a bully and probably had a penis the size of a shriveled gherkin—no man with even an average-sized dick would be so petty—but I’d never dreamt he was capable of breaking into someone’s house and kidnapping them. Even when I learned what he’d done to his mom, I hadn’t imagined he’d do the same thing to anyone else. I had assumed it was a twisted, mother-son thing that had played out its sad, miserable course, and been put to rest.
    Obviously, I was wrong, and I’m not near as smart as I think I am. If I were, Pitt would never have traced that blackmail note back to me.
    That has to be it. That has to be why I’m here. Somehow, he must have figured out that I wrote the note, no matter how careful I was to type the entire thing and print it out at the copy shop in town instead of using the printer at home.
    But how? How the hell did he—
    “Did you hear me?” Pitt breaks into my thoughts, making me flinch as he takes a sudden step closer.
    I try to take a mirror step back, forgetting I’m tethered, and nearly fall.
    “Careful.” Pitt chuckles. “You’re all arms and legs aren’t you? Like a little filly.”
    “You have to let me go,” I say, liking the affectionate note in his voice even less than the smug one. If Pitt thinks I’m going to play house with him, or touch him, or do anything else with him, he’s very fucking mistaken.
    I’ll chew my own leg off first.
    Pitt shakes his head,