Page 71 of Blood Revealed

She’s left a sexy, lacy, pink satin negligee, again with no undergarments, lying out on the bed. I slip it on and let my hair down, fluffing it out with my fingers before walking to Escalante’s suite.

He’s not in the room when I get there. My mind is racing. What can I use for an escape? There’s a rug on the floor over the hardwood flooring. There’s another heavy, crystal whiskey decanter on the bedside table…Hmm…

A brilliant idea hits and I set about staging my escape first by bunching up the corner of the rug closest to the bedside table and then sit on the edge of the bed, with my hands folded in my lap, directly in front of that portion of the rug.

Escalante must have been on a phone call because he leaves me sitting in that spot, waiting for him for a half an hour. When he comes in, he’s not looking at anything but me, in the negligee, sitting on his bed, as he unbuckles his belt. There’s a look of utter surprise on his face when he hits the bunch in the rug and tumbles forward. He lands on me, his face in my chest, and I reach for the decanter, knocking him over the head with it. But more importantly, knocking him clean out.

Then I push him off and get the hell out of there, closing the door behind me to keep anyone from finding him too soon. If anyone asks, it was an accident and I ran to find help.

What I need to do is run as far away from here as possible. What I do is make a turn to head for the monster’s room instead but get sidetracked to the back patio. I throw up in my mouth a little when I see him going at one of the shock-collar girls from behind. They’re both naked. I want to help her, but there’s literally nothing I can do for her right now. As quietly as possible, I crawl over to his discarded pants. While he groans and slaps her ass, I dig through his pockets to find his keys.

My biggest problem is making it to the stable without being seen. Keys in hand, I say a prayer to the universe, and while he’s distracted, I make a run for it.

I’m almost to my destination when I hear him yell, “The fuck?” And I know I’ve been made. In my nervousness, I fumble the keys, dropping them once. Then it takes me a couple of tries to find the correct key to unlock the stable door. He’s almost on me when I get it open, slamming the door and relocking it.

He’s outside, pounding on the door—literally pounding hard enough to make the wood splinter. Again, in my haste, I fumble the keys, trying to find the correct ones to open each stall.

The wooden door is about to give. “Stay in the stalls,” I order in a whisper. “Pull the glass closed so he doesn’t know I’ve unlocked them.”

That last sentence barely has time to register with the women when the door cracks open. The monster is naked, bloody and raging. “You stupid fucking cunt,” he roars. There’s only one way out and he’s blocking the exit, but I attempt to dodge him and run, easily being overtaken by the massive man.

I fall to the ground with his hands around my neck squeezing the literal life out of me. It hurts. Orange and red spots pop in front of my eyes. My lungs burn, unable to take in a breath. He’s crushing my larynx. He’s crushing everything.

“Run!” one of the women calls, but he doesn’t know she’s ordering the other women in the stable. The doors fly open at once and he’s taken so off-guard that he neglects to stop their escape.

All that achieves for me is to piss him off more. My consciousness begins to wane. This is where I’m going to die. I wish for so many things in my final moments. That Raif is okay. That he finds love again. That my sister is happy, that she and the baby are healthy.

Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, but I think they’re from the pain of choking more than my imminent death.

Before my eyes close for the last time, the form of a woman appears behind the monster. She’s like a mirage. I’ve seen her face; she was locked in one of the stalls. The shirt she was wearing is raised up over her head, while he’s trying his best to kill me, she flings the fabric around his neck, capturing the end and twisting. The monster bucks and swings as he tries to grab her and dislodge the pink cotton choking him.

The way he swings at her forces him to release me. I’m too injured to take in the large, gulping lungful of air that my brain tells me I need to take in. The small, shallow ones through my nose have to do. Air is air.

As I scramble, I’m slow and awkward from the lack of oxygen, I notice a healing17carved in the woman’s shoulder. Number 17, that’s what she called herself. Nicola.

He swings out, catching her in the ribs, and her hands slip. She fights to right herself and not lose momentum with the tourniquet when a second woman runs into the barn. She’s wearing a shock collar and bikini bottoms, as if that was as much time as she had to dress. This is the woman the monster had by the swimming pool. She shoves a thick stick down between the twisting fabric and the monster’s neck. “Knot it!” she shouts at Nicola. The women work together. She tries to keep the pressure on his neck while Nicola knots the shirt. Then together, they twist the ends.

His face turns red, then purple as his eyes bug and turn red, too, from the capillaries bursting. Veins protrude under the skin of his forehead. He’s gasping for breath, clawing at the ligature, bucking his back as his strength wanes. The women keep twisting until he collapses on top of me. A pinkish-white foam froths from his mouth and I gag.

The monster is dead. The two women release the stick to roll him off me, then help me up. I’m woozy and sway when I stand. Escalante’s soldiers will be on us if we don’t get out now.

“Where are his clothes?” I ask the woman in the shock collar, garbled and barely in a whisper from the damage to my throat.

She looks at me, her brows wrinkled. “By the pool.” After a beat, it dawns on her. And the two of them help me run. She veers off to run back to the pool, throwing his gray T-shirt over her body, but more importantly, grabbing his belt and holster.

“I got away once before. I joined a group to help rescue the other women. I was tagged the second time helping them escape,” Nicola says. “We’re close to the gulf. There’s a rocky outcropping where we can hide until dark. That’s where I sent the other women.”

Keeping our heads down, we run. It’s difficult for me to take in a breath while walking, which makes running that much more painful. My head starts to spin, but I push through the pain.

“Keep going, ladies,” she orders us. “We’re getting close.” I start to feel like we just might make it when pandemonium breaks out back at the mansion. We don’t waste time looking back but can hear the shouts and screams of Escalante’s soldiers. “Faster!” she shouts, and despite my injuries, I try for faster.

The moment we hear the chopper engine fire up, I know if we don’t reach the outcropping of rocks soon, we’re dead. No second chances. A man like Escalante doesn’t keep choppers for fun. They’re armed, just like his soldiers.

16.

Raif

Hours before the women’s escape…

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