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CHAPTER TWELVE

CHARLOTTE

I ’m having a decent sex dream. My ex-girlfriend Maddie, the one who loved to eat pussy, has her head buried between my thighs. But it’s not really Maddie, the way people are never themselves in dreams. She has long black hair instead of her trademark brown pixie cut. And we’re in Jaxon’s creepy-ass parlor, his taxidermied offerings or whatever the fuck they are watching as she eats me closer and closer to orgasm.

But then I slam awake?—

And it’s not a fucking dream.

I’m in that ancient, uncomfortable bed with a chain around my ankle and Jaxon’s head between my legs, his glossy black hair peeking up between my thighs.

I’m also in the midst of the best orgasm I’ve had in months.

Waves of pleasure pulse through my body, and I arch up into Jaxon’s shockingly eager mouth as he presses my thighs wide like he’s trying to dive inside me. And for a split second, I just let him—let him swipe his thick tongue along my slit, let him make me come. It feels too damn good.

But then the reality of the situation slams through me:

I was asleep, I didn’t give him permission, and he’s a goddamn psychopath.

“What the fuck?” Suddenly, I’m acting on some deep-rooted instinct, like something snapped open inside me and is now telling me what to do. Without thinking, I kick my left leg up so I can grab the chain and loop it around Jaxon’s neck, all in one movement like I’ve trained for this my whole life. I have no idea where this coordination came from. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. Maybe it’s the orgasm.

I can’t believe Jaxon made me come like that.

Jaxon whips his head up as soon as the chain is around his neck, eyes wide and feverish, mouth wet with my desire. He stares at me for a second, stricken, and I can feel the same expression on my face.

Then the instinct flares up again, along with an annoyingly sharp pain behind my eye. I ignore the latter and lean into the former, yanking so hard on the chain that the metal digs into the skin of Jaxon’s throat.

He makes a strangled, rasping noise and slides away from me, grabbing at the chain like he doesn’t believe it’s there. I roll out from under him and cling to the chain with every ounce of my strength—and I’m surprised by how much there is.

It helps, too, that Jaxon is thrown off-balance, too. He doesn’t even really try to fight back, just watches at me, his skin turning an uncomfortable shade of red.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” I shout, pulling tighter on the chain. I fantasized about killing him like this more than once. Unlocking myself. Escaping. I can’t believe it’s actually going to happen. I also can’t believe my head is pounding with the start of a migraine. What the fuck is in this house that’s making me sick?

Jaxon keeps watching me, his eyes bulging and shiny with tears, his lips red and swollen.

Then he grins.

“You creepy asshole,” I growl, my arm muscles straining. We’re in a weird position, our legs tangled up on the bed together. Jaxon makes a noise like he’s trying to say something, drool spilling out of the corner of his mouth. He still doesn’t fight back, even though I keep expecting him to launch himself out at me or yank the chain away. It seems impossible that I’m stronger than him.

But he doesn’t, and I don’t question it. This is my one chance to escape and by god, I’m going to take it.

I wrap the chain around my wrist to get more leverage. Jaxon chokes and wheezes, his eyes bulging. The whites are turning pink. And he’s turning a sickly blue color, like a bruise.

But he’s still grinning. In fact, his grin widens.

That’s when I realize that he has his hand down the front of his jeans.

The motherfucker’s touching himself. I’m strangling him, the chain’s metal links digging painfully into his skin, and he’s using the last of his strength to stroke his cock. What’s more, he keeps eye contact with me the whole time, his grin going wider and wider.

It should be gross.

It’s not.

I act like it is, though. “You sick fuck!” I shriek, pulling harder, desperately ignoring the little quiver of heat between my thighs and the burst of pain behind my eye. Jaxon makes a sound that might very well be a moan and rolls his bloodshot eyes upward, thrusting into his hand. His pants have slid down enough that I can see the flash of his cockhead, swollen red like his lips.

My clit throbs, but I tell myself it didn’t.

“Come on,” I mutter, my muscles aching and my migraine a fire searing through my brain. But if this is what I need to do to escape, then I’m going to do it. “Come on .”

Jaxon makes an absolutely horrible noise, a kind of wet, thick choking. Then his head slumps back just as cum shoots out, splattering in pearly, gleaming ropes across the mussed-up bedsheets. I shout and jerk away, the chain slackening.

But Jaxon falls sideways across the bed, all the fight gone out of him. I assume he’s passed out, but I pull on the chain with all my strength. Because I want to kill him. That’s the only way I’m getting out of here.

What I don’t do is dwell on the dark, terrifying thrill all of this has given me. Jaxon making me come while I sleep. Jaxon staring at me as he jerked himself off while I strangled him.

This woozy, dizzying rush of adrenaline pushing past the throb of my migraine.

“This is self-defense,” I whisper, wrapping another loop of chain around my arm. “He’s a murderer.” The chain digs painfully into my skin, but that’s nothing compared to what it’s done to Jaxon’s neck, where the links cut so deeply into his flesh that he’s bleeding.

Jaxon gasps suddenly, wheezing, his eyes flying open. He looks right at me again, and his eyes are a nightmare—bloody and blazing. But there’s something in his expression that turns me cold.

Recognition. Excitement.

Lust.

And then it’s all gone. Blinked out. His empty eyes stare at me and his mouth falls open, slack.

The reality of what I’ve done hits me all at once. I scream and drop the chain, clawing at the place I have it wrapped around my forearm until it falls with a loud, thudding clank. Then I scramble backward off the bed, panting and terrified. Jaxon doesn’t move, his eyes blank and flat.

I did it.

He’s dead.

For a long time, I just stare at him, trying to comprehend what I’m looking at?—

A dead body .

And trying to comprehend what I’m going to do next. Everything happened so fast that I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing. Something whispered in my head to loop the chain around his neck and pull, and that’s exactly what I did.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to calm down my frantically racing heart. At least my headache has vanished. Small favors.

When I open my eyes again, I half-expect Jaxon to be sitting up, grinning, like this was all a game.

He’s not. He’s still slumped sideways, tongue lolling out of his slack mouth, his hair clinging into damp strands to the side of his face. His cock flops out of the fly of his pants.

I should not be looking at his dick.

“Focus.” The sound of my voice in the empty room grounds me, even though I still have a weird woozy feeling in my stomach. It’s not exactly guilt but more a sense that something’s off. Something’s wrong.

Of course something’s wrong you just killed a man.

I push past the feeling. Focus. I need to focus.

I’m still chained to the bed.

The weird, sick feeling in my stomach blooms: how the hell am I going to get out of this? But Jaxon did unchain me yesterday. He had the key on a necklace. I just hope to god he’s still wearing it.

I slide off the bed and walk over to his body, my hands trembling. I keep expecting him to leap back to life, like the killer in a horror movie. Every time the ceiling fan blows dark strands of his hair across his face, my heart jumps. But his eyes are open and red with burst blood vessels. His face is a dark mottled purple color. He’s dead.

I’m going to have to touch a dead body.

I swallow back a surge of bile and reach over to tug down on his shirt. His skin is still warm, which makes it easier, somehow. I can pretend he’s alive.

When I see a glint of silver chain, I let out a loud, gasping sigh of relief. I hook the necklace with my finger and drag it out from under his shirt until I reveal the two keys. But I’m going to have to lift up his head to get the necklace off him.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I slide my hand under his temple, picking his head up just enough to pull the necklace away from his neck. When I let go of his head, it drops heavily against the bed like an inanimate object.

Don’t think about it.

I scramble away from the body, my chain dragging over his akimbo limbs, and then crouch down to the cuff around my ankle. When I slide the key into the lock, I hold my breath until I’m able to turn it, until I hear the click of the lock falling out of place. The cuff snaps open.

And just like that, I’m free.

For a moment, all I can do is stare down at the open cuff. The weird feeling in my stomach intensifies, and I glance over at Jaxon. At his corpse . Because he’s dead.

I tell myself that I killed him in self-defense. He’s a murderer and a kidnapper. No one, not even in Louisiana, is going to fault me for that.

I jump to my feet and run.

I’m barefoot like I’ve been since I woke up in bed, but I have no idea where my shoes are. That’s the first thought I have, that I’m going to need shoes if I want to get out of here. And a car. Jaxon has a car. That was how he kidnapped me in the first place. I need to find the car keys. Shoes and car keys.

A phone, too. If I can find a phone, I can call for help.

I ran down the hallway, slamming open each of the closed doors. The rooms are furnished but look abandoned, the furniture pale with layers of dust. I’ve almost let my guard down when I check the third room, which is full of old bones.

I scream at the sight of them: hundreds of bones lined up neatly on an old twin bed and dark mahogany roll-top desk, the lid pushed up. Without thinking, I pull the door shut so hard the walls shudder.

Don’t worry about the bones. Shoes. Car keys. Phone.

The last door in the hallway is different from the others. It has the same heavy, old-fashioned furniture, but there’s no dust, and it’s immediately clear that this is where Jaxon sleeps. There’s a stack of books on the bedside table, a pile of clothes in the corner. My suitcase in the middle of the floor.

Car keys. Shoes.

I fling it open grab the spare tennis shoes I’d packed and put them on without socks. My purse isn’t there, though. Nor my cell phone or my ID.

I go over to the bedside table, fling open the drawers. Nothing useful.

“Car keys,” I whisper. If I can find his car keys, if I can find his car, I can drive to civilization and get some help.

I don’t see them in here, though, and it occurs to me they might be in his jeans pocket, a thought that makes the queasy, unsettling feeling in my stomach worse. No. I’ll check downstairs first.

I don’t want to look at his body again. At everything I did to it. Because seeing it—the red marks around his neck, the bloodshot, staring eyes, the purple skin—makes me feel weird.

Not bad, necessarily. Just… strange. And that’s unsettling all on its own.

I race downstairs. In the foyer, I immediately fling the front door open—testing it, I think, to make sure it’s not locked. It isn’t. But there’s also no sign of the keys by the door, either. Where else would you keep car keys? The kitchen, maybe?

I run through the creepy living room, refusing to look at the mummified corpses. The dining room is cleaned up, our dishes cleared away, the table wiped down. I shiver, seeing it all. Remembering how he claimed Edie is safe.

But that can’t be true, can it? He’s a murderer. A psychopath. He—assaulted me, technically, even if I’m not particularly bothered by it. Not after everything else he’s done.

There’s no reason to think he’s telling the truth about Edie.

In the end, it’s just another thought I push aside. Another thought that doesn’t matter, because the only thing that does matter is getting away from this terrible place.

The kitchen shows more evidence of our dinner than the dining room does. Dirty dishes are stacked high in the sink, a big silver pot sitting on the counter full of soapy water, the empty wine bottle. I sweep my gaze around, taking in the old-fashioned wallpaper and ancient Formica counters. This place looks like it was last updated in the 1960s.

No car keys.

“Fuck!” I really don’t want to be in the house another second longer, even though it’s the middle of the night and I know I shouldn’t go out into the Louisiana swamp by foot without even a flashlight. I swing around and check the kitchen drawers.

Well, now I have a flashlight.

I go out through the kitchen door, letting the screen slam behind me. A porch light kicks on when I step onto the little cement porch, flooding the overgrown yard with sallow, yellow light—but also throwing the surrounding swamp into black shadows.

This is probably stupid. But there have to be other people around here somewhere. Jaxon brought me here in his car, which means there’s a road. I just have to follow it until I see another house.

I step into the tall grass, sweeping my flashlight around when I leave the sphere of light from the porch. It’s surprisingly chilly, and I’m still only wearing that yellow sundress, my arm prickling with goosebumps. It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll warm up soon enough.

My flashlight beam glides across the metal shed I saw from my room, and that weird sick feeling in my stomach surges again. I feel like something’s watching me in the darkness.

I keep going.

And then I hear a soft, low hum.

“Hello?” I call out stupidly, flashlight dancing on the grass ahead. Is it frogs or insects? But no, it sounds mechanical.

And then something catches in the flashlight. Thin, silver wires.

The sickness in my stomach plummets and all I feel now is a cold, overwhelming dread?—

Because stretching out in front of me, dividing me from the swamp, is a towering fence humming with electricity.