Tearing Down Walls (Love Under Construction Series Book 2) (67 page)

V
ic could hear sirens somewhere nearby, and it drove him mad, not being able to let them know where he was. He’d managed to roll to his side and, when he did, his hair fell across his face and he could smell the blood dried in it. It was so dark in the basement that he couldn’t see anything, but he could hear a sound above him, an odd, scraping sound. No – dragging. Within minutes, footsteps sounded on the stairs and the light bulb clicked on.

“Hey, lover, miss me?” Miranda sing-songed as she made her way across the basement floor. Vic squinted in the bulb’s glare.

“Yes. I’ve been lying here thinking about you ever since you left. Am I going to be treated to more of your special talents?” Vic was smearing it on thick and hoping it would work.

“Not right now, lover. Right now I’ve got to do something you’re not going to like, but I’ll be back soon, okay?” She produced a roll of duct tape and tore off a piece. “Now close those beautiful lips for me.”

“You do realize when you take the tape off, it’s going to take off my facial hair, right? Is that really what you want?” Terror was starting to grip him, but he couldn’t let her know.

“It’ll grow back. Besides, I’d like to see what you look like without it. Now be still. Don’t make me hit you over the head again.” Even in the shadows from the bulb’s light, he could see the mirth in her eyes. She slapped the tape over his mouth and stood back to look at her handiwork. “Oh, damn – I probably should’ve given you a drink before I did that, but you’ll be okay. Now you be a good boy and maybe I’ll fuck you when I come back.” She skipped back up the stairs and was gone.

Vic started to wonder what made her decide to tape his mouth when he heard something that almost took him down: Laura. He could hear her voice above him, yelling something, then quiet again.
What do I do?
his brain hissed. But he was helpless.

Everyone was huddled around the desk in Steve’s office at the club when Clayton Walters strode in. He was pale and shaken, and no one knew quite what to say to him. “I’m glad you’re here,” Steve told him and pointed to a chair. “We’re not going to call your mom and dad until we know something.” Steve looked around. “Where’s Butler?”

“She took off out the back door earlier,” Doug answered. “Called Jared up there and told him to man the office and just took off.” Jared nodded.

“Her car’s still her.” All of Steve’s internal alarms went off. “Wendy, can you go through the video feed, poke around, look for Butler?” Steve’s tech nodded from her makeshift work center in one of the private rooms across the hall. “So, what do we know?”

Jared piped up. “According to the crime scene techs, we won’t know for sure until all the testing comes in, but we’re pretty sure the blood at the scene is Vic’s – it matches his type. We don’t know where his car is, and the last address anyone had for his whereabouts is the abandoned house. And we don’t know anyone who would’ve wanted to hurt him.”

Steve stopped and sighed. “That’s not entirely true.”

“What the HELL do you MEAN, that’s not entirely true?” Clayton yelled and jumped out of his chair. “If you know something, you’d better start talking!”

Steve grimaced. “There’s a woman he’d, um, he’d scened with here . . .”

“Performance area or in a private room?” His question told Steve that he knew some things Steve had never imagined.

“Both.”

Clayton looked even more alarmed. “So what about this woman? What was going on?”

“She was call-bombing his burner phone. Stalking him and Laura. Painted ‘SLUT’ on his car in white paint, had to have it buffed off. Slashed his tires. Put flour in his gas tank. I’ve been looking into it. I’m hoping she’s not involved, but I’m afraid she might be.” Clayton looked horrified.

Doug spoke up. “There was this woman I heard talking to him, or, I should say, she was getting kind of aggressive. As she walked away I heard her call him Cabrizzi. I didn’t think anybody here gave out last names. Have we got a photo of the woman you’re talking about?”

“Yeah. It was in the club database.” Steve threw it down in the middle of the desk. “That’s her, Miranda Connors.”

Doug nodded. “That’s the woman I saw. How did she know his last name?”

“I have no idea,” Steve continued. “So we’ve got a visual confirmation from Doug. And we pulled an address from the database.” Peyton walked into the office just as Steve said, “Forty-nine eighty-three Cambridge Station.”

“What about it?” Peyton had a funny look on his face.

“It’s the address of this woman. She’s been call-bombing Vic and stalking him and Laura. We think she might be involved in his disappearance.” Steve pointed to the photo.

Peyton’s face went white. “Forty-nine eighty-three Cambridge Station is
my
address.” He took a look at the photo and sat down hard in a chair, gasping for breath as everyone else in the room stiffened. “Do you know who that is?”

“Yeah. Her name’s Miranda Connors.”

“No, it’s not.” The entire group turned to stare at Peyton as he spoke, his voice so weak they could barely hear him. “I saw her photo on the mantel of her mother’s fireplace in Seattle. Her name is Amanda Wagner.”

Doug’s eyes went wide, “You mean she’s . . .”

“Cletus Wagner’s sister.” Peyton started to visibly shake and José was trembling. “Where’s Laura?”

“Steve!” Wendy called from the back. “I’ve got something everyone needs to see!”

Once they were all crowded around Wendy’s laptop in the makeshift electronics center, she told them in a shaky voice, “This is the video feed from the camera out back. Look.”

They watched as Vic’s car pulled up behind the club. Someone far smaller than Vic got out and pulled out a cell phone, punched some buttons, and disappeared from view. In less than a minute, the back door of the club popped open and someone ran out.

Laura.

They watched in horror as the figure hit her on the head with something, then dragged her to Vic’s car and drove away. In seconds, the car was gone from the camera’s view.

“Oh god,” Peyton murmured. “She’s going to kill them both.”

Laura drifted in and out of consciousness. When she was conscious, the throbbing in her head made her so sick that she threw up. She couldn’t make sense of anything. Where was she? What had happened? Who had brought her to this place she didn’t recognize? And where was Vic? As she lay there, in and out of consciousness, he floated across her mind, that smile, those eyes. God, she loved him. She wanted to see him, wanted him to hold her, to kiss her, to make love to her. She had to get to him. Where was he?

“Well, hello there, sleeping slut! Feel good enough for me to kill you?” A face invaded Laura’s line of vision. Who was that woman? In her haze it took Laura a minute or two to figure it out, and then she remembered: Miranda. From the club.

“What do you want with me?” Laura mumbled. “Where’s Vic?”

“Oh, Vic’s fine, honey. He’s with me! He doesn’t want you anymore. He said you were a lousy fuck anyway.” Laura knew she was lying with that one simple statement. Wherever Vic was, he wasn’t with her, at least not of his own free will. Then she said the most terrifying thing Laura had heard in a long time.

“I sure wish my brother had done you in when he had the chance.”

A swishing sound set up in Laura’s brain, and she realized it was the blood triple-timing through her veins and arteries from her hammering heart. This woman was
Wagner’s sister
? She’d thought all of that was behind them, and here it was, all over again. Her first thought was loud and plain:
If he’d killed me, Vic wouldn’t be in danger now. I wish he’d done me in.
If anything happened to him, she decided she would kill herself, because it would be all her fault. She wouldn’t have any reason to live anyway.

“We’re just going to drive back and forth, over and over, and keep our eyes open. I don’t know what else to do,” Peyton told Steve on the phone as he headed toward the Tedesco Lane neighborhood, José riding shotgun. “I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, but we’ll know it when we see it. I just have this feeling that she didn’t go far. Too many good hiding places in that neighborhood.”

“Good enough. Let me know if . . .”

“Immediately. Later.” Peyton looked at José. “How’s Molly taking all of this?”

“She’s torn up. She thinks the world of Vic and, from what I can tell, the feeling’s mutual. I wish I could’ve stayed with her longer, but I wanted to be here. I told her to lock up the office and go to Louisville, stay with Clayton and Brittany so she won’t be alone. Vic’s got a guy who can handle anything that comes up.” José looked out the windows as Peyton’s sedan turned the corner onto Tedesco. “So I’m thinking we should be looking for movement?”

“Yep. That’s all I can think of. We’ll just keep watching. Between the two of us, maybe we’ll see something.”

José looked at the coworker who’d become his best friend. “I hope we do. If we don’t find them pretty soon . . .”

“Just stay positive and keep watching.” Peyton stared to the left as José watched to the right and, as he drove, his mind hummed over and over,
Please, please, let them be okay.

“I see you’re ‘up,’ lover!” Miranda giggled as she came up for air from Vic’s cock long enough to grin at him. “Want to watch me love you? I know you like my tits – I can see it in your eyes.” She’d brought down a small bottle of vegetable oil and worked until she got the tape off his mouth without tearing out hair or skin. Then she’d used some of it for lube.
How efficient,
he thought.

The mattress on the basement floor had become more than Vic’s prison; it was his greatest shame. To make matters worse, he had to hide that fact and hide it well if he wanted both of them to stay alive. Miranda positioned herself over his erectness and slid down in one easy motion, and Vic thought he’d better say something. “Oh, baby, you’re the best. Ride me, lover.” It chafed everything inside him to say those words, but she had to think he wanted her.

“I knew you’d come around. I’m a better fuck than that slut any day,” she boasted from above him as she slid up and down on his shaft.

“That’s sure as hell true. Damn worn-out whore. But you’re something else, baby.”
Yeah, really something else, psycho-bitch.
“I could do this all day and all night.”