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That’s what I thought.
He leads me through an empty living room, down a hallway, and to a kitchen. It’s not until he stops at a door that surely leads down to a basement that my stomach does a somersault.
“They’re going to be pissed, you know?” he murmurs, opening the door. Voices drift from downstairs, followed by the disgusting smell of blood and ammonia.
Okay . . . this was definitely a bad idea.
“Have fun,Mason’sHannah.”
Dick.
He shoves me onto the landing and closes the door behind me, sending me into the dim lighting of the basement stairs. Slowly, quietly, I descend, making my way toward the bottom when I hear the gut-wrenching sound of flesh on flesh.
The painful kind.
Mason shakes his hand when I reach the bottom of the stairs, having just punched the guy who tried to kill me so hard, his head fell back. His back is to me, but the strong lines of his shoulders are tense under his t-shirt.
They’ve been at this a while.
A two-way mirror separates this room and that, but the small intercom on the wall lets me hear every word as if they’re wearing microphones.
Mason’s voice drifts through the speaker, cool and deadly and unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him before.
Ice fills my chest. This isn’t Mason. This is the devil.
“Do you like choking women, Montclair?”
“No,” the man whimpers, clenching his eyes against the blood and sweat streaming down from his forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t believe you,” Mason murmurs, voice like a purr.
There’s a strange soft hum and then the man in the chair—Montclair—is screaming in agony, his back bowing off the harsh metal.
“This is madness,” I whisper to my own reflection shining back at me in the mirror.
The hum cuts and Montclair falls forward, his chin resting on his chest as violent shivers rack through his body.
Still, Mason’s voice comes out low and concise.
“You attempted to murder her, in turn attempting to steal from me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”
Oh, fuck. He can’t possibly be—
Mason hushes him and Logan lands another shot to the man’s face, cracking his knuckles after, but it’s what’s under the chair that really makes my stomach turn.
A battery. Two long jumper cables.
A lack of . . . pants.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, panic surging through me.
The room smells awful. Like body odor, blood, and urine. But it’s the sickening heat that really takes its toll, turning everything tenfold.
“You won’t answer our questions,” Logan Prince chimes from beside Mason. Other people I recognize from that night at my house stand around, but no one notices me as I stand in the shadows for a moment longer. “You say you don’t remember what happened to you or how you gotthisin your stomach.” He holds up a plastic baggy with something small and reflective inside. “I for one am tired of asking. I’m going to start cutting things off soon.”
The man whimpers as fear takes hold, sliding down over the bruises covering his face.
