Page 106 of Tormented
“You’d feel good about yourself, right?” A clean patch of drywall catches my eye.
“I guess so.”
“So imagine how you’d feel then, watchin’ that dress grow filthy with your blood, turn some fuckin’ ugly shade of brown after weeks or months in confinement without a shower.”
“I’d feel dirty, used, and unwanted.”
“Exactly.” On closer inspection, the clean patch is exactly what I’d thought it might be: a hole that’s been fixed recently. “Put a person in a generic sack, and they can disassociate. Put them in their own clothes and remove their control over how they look in them, and they realize pretty fuckin’ fast that they don’t have control over anything anymore.”
“I never thought of it that way, but I guess you’d be right.”
“Got a bit of experience in it,” I say, prodding at the clean plaster.
Do you ever . . . .
“What are you looking at?” Abbey steps over to where I have my head against the wall while I tap along the expanse in even steps.
“This.” Taking a step back, I ball my fist and then drive it straight through the patch. Plaster dust rains down onto the floor, and I shake the particles from my hand before ripping into the edges to make the hole bigger.
Abbey stands off to the side, arms folded, and her eyebrow cocked. “Clever.”
“More than him.” I smirk. A smart man would have smeared dirt on the new plaster to make it the same dull cream color as the rest, rather than white.
Or at least hung a picture . . . a little art could really give this place some culture . . . .
Yeah, or that.
The space between the drywall and the dirt behind is narrow. My meaty arms are too damn bulky to reach between the beams and the earth supporting the rest of the house.
“Somethin’ has to be behind here, otherwise why would he bother?” I rip another section of wall off, tossing it on the growing pile.
Abbey lifts a hand and ushers me away with the backs of her fingers. Any given day, a person who dismissed me with that kind of attitude would be missing a couple of smartass fingers. But Abbey?
I step back and gesture with both hands at the wall. “All yours, m’lady.”
She pulls my phone out of her pocket—forgot she still had that—and swipes up to turn on the torch feature. I stand back and watch as she pushes up on tiptoes to see into the hole, torch pointed down in the gap.
“Definitely something down here. Can you hold the light?”
I take it from her, and then watch as she jams a slim arm down in the space, head in the wall also.
“Here.” She reemerges with a handful of plastic cards held together with a rubber band, passing them over before going back in for more.
Out comes a sequined purse, two billfolds, a set of keys, four phones, and a couple of GPS units. Odd. She saves the best for last, wrestling a trash bag out of the gap and onto the floor at our feet.
It contains the girls’ clothes.
“Nice work, babe.”
I flick through the cards while Abbey checks out the clothing. To look at the photos on the licenses, you wouldn’t have a damn clue that these are the same women spread over the dirt floor. Gorgeous, painted faces stare up at me, a snapshot of life as it was. These women are twelve out of tens, real catches. No wonder Cash took interest. How he lured women like these home with him, though, I wouldn’t know.
Couple of roofies go a long way, you know . . . .
True.
“Real shame,” I say, pocketing the licenses and tossing the credit cards and whatever else onto the pile of limbs beside me. “You ready to go now?”
Abbey sits cross-legged amongst the clothing, a black stretchy dress in her hands. “What happens to the bodies?”