Do Not Disturb

“You like what you see…” I flip open the billfold, looking at a driver’s license with a surprisingly stern-looking face, a night-and-day difference from the red-eyed pussy before me. My gaze skips over to his name, my brain skittering briefly. “Marcus Renza.” FingerCutter has a name. A name that tugs on my memory. This is the dickhead from camming. The one with the rape record. The one who was so insistent on meeting. A name that clears everything up in one moment. God. Men and their pussy. I bark out a laugh as I run a thumb over his photo. Wow. First client who’s gone through the steps involved to grace the stoop of my fabulous abode. How neighborly of him. I yank with my foot, rolling him onto his stomach, interrupting his view with one strong motion. “Nice to meet you in person, Marcus. My name, as you now know, is Deanna.” I step back till I am in reach of the counter, my hand sweeping out and gripping my pruners, a Home Depot purchase from today. “And that man… the one you tortured to find me?” I move back, stepping over his body and bending over, grabbing the zip-tie chain and lifting it up, pulling his hands to an awkward vertical angle. “He’s mine. You, Marcus Renza, don’t fuck with what’s mine.” I yank at his wrist, enjoying the tightening of his face. “Now, I’m just gonna need one of your fingers, if you don’t mind.” I skip my fingers lightly over his, till I find and hold his right index finger firmly. “And I’m new at this. So I’m sorry if it takes me a few tries.”

Screams. I have fantasized about them for so long. It is a shame that, the first time I’ve really had a chance to savor them, they are muffled by duct tape.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. An index finger for an index finger.

CHAPTER 93

“FUCK!”

Jamie almost drops the glass at Mike’s yell. Turning off the water, she puts the glass gently into the suds, and hurries to his bedroom, pushing open the door and sneaking a glance inside. His cell is on the bed, his arms pushing at the blanket, any trace of sleepiness gone. “What’s wrong?”

“I need my computer.”

“Lay down. Will the laptop work?” She hurries to his desk, unplugs the laptop.

“Yeah. Bring it here. God, that girl’s stubborn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“She’s up to something. I want to know what.”

“What do you need the laptop for?” She perches on the edge of his bed. Watches as he tries to type, the cocoon that dominates his right hand making the task infinitely more difficult.

“Checking her feeds. See this?” He spins the computer around, showing her a ridiculously gorgeous woman, her body spread out on a pink sheet, her face grinning as she blows a kiss into the camera.

Jamie shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

“That’s Dee. This is showing as a live feed, on her website’s cam. But it’s not live. I can rewind the feed, and it doesn’t show an interruption for the phone call we just had. She’s looping an older feed. A normal person wouldn’t have any way of knowing.” His face winces, and he moves his right hand into his lap, pecks at the laptop keyboard one-handed.

“That’s Deanna? The chick who verbally bent me over and raped my ass?” She can’t put them together. Not this bright-eyed chick with the Justin Bieber poster taped to the wall above her bed. The one with a body she would chew off her right arm for.

He snorts, his mouth curving into a smile. “She’s an acquired taste. But don’t judge her too harshly. At the time of that conversation, she was under the impression that I had stolen from her.”

Now it was her turn to snort. “You’ve been stabbed. Are missing half a finger. Plus, you’ve got the money to cover it. She had to have known you’d pay her back.”

He shoots her a look that indicates the intelligence level of the statement. “Not quite. Few people can cover a million-dollar debt.”

Her legs move on their own accord, pushing her to her feet and she gawks, physically gawks at the man before her. “You took a million dollars… she has a million dollars?” She points a shaky finger at the laptop, newfound respect and appreciation for the maybe-not-such-a-bitch.

He doesn’t respond, his brow furrowing as his one hand moves. She moves around, climbs upon the bed next to him, watching as he types, the screen opening and closing browser windows.

“What… What are you doing?”

“The webcam feed is fake, so I’m tapping into her cameras. Activating them privately to take a look into her apartment, see if she is there. Or if he is there. A normal girl would have taken my advice and got the hell outta Dodge, but she…” He presses a complicated sequence of keys, something that changes the screen and opens a window showing the same angle as before, the pink bed and Justin Bieber poster, but no girl, only empty sheets. He types, and the camera changes. The bare floor, the image grainier than normal, almost as if there is some smoke in the room. Fingers fly over keys. Empty wall. More strokes. The bed. Then another. Then another angle. More strokes.