Love Me To Death. Steve Jackson

      Suzanne Scott lay spread-eagled on the mattress, her wrists and ankles bound by rope to eyebolts that had been screwed into the living-room floor of the town house. Her tormentor, “Cody” Neal, had left her like that—naked, covered head to toe by a blanket, mouth duct-taped, surrounded by a living nightmare.

      Shaking with fear, she listened for “the others” to come down the stairs. He’d said that they were up there and that if she made any noise or called out for help while he was gone, they would rape and kill her.

      She had no reason to doubt him. She could still feel both the cold steel of the hunting knife he’d used to cut her clothes from her body against her skin, and the terror of the bloody piece of skull he’d placed on her bare stomach. In her mind, she could see the lifeless leg of a woman that he’d lifted from beneath a blanket over near the fireplace and the mummy-shaped object in black plastic over against a wall. He’d kicked the object, hard, and said that it was another body.

      Neal had asked her if she wanted to die. She’d told him no, but she didn’t think that he was going to let her live. Not after what he’d shown her. Not after what he’d done. She was only twenty-one years old, a beautiful young woman whose life up to this point had consisted of nothing more frightening than a childhood nightmare. Now she fought to keep from crying and disturbing whoever it was that waited at the top of the stairs. She would do whatever it took to survive for as long as she could.

      She’d trusted Neal when he said he wanted to show her “a big surprise” that he was going to give her roommate and his girlfriend, Beth Weeks, and then brought her to this house of horrors. They’d all trusted him—“Wild Bill Cody” Neal in his black cowboy hat, black duster, black shirt, and cowboy boots. The big-spender, who spread money like margarine on limousines, dinners, and parties, extravagantly tipping bartenders, drivers, and strippers to pave his way through the world. No one knew where he got all the cash. He hinted at trust funds and big business deals; others, who clung to his stories at his favorite dive bars, said that they’d heard he was a bounty hunter or even a hit man for the mob.

      Scott had sensed something different about him. He’d offered her a job and a lot of money to work for him. When he added that they’d have to first fly to Las Vegas to get the OK from his lawyers, she’d hesitated and asked Weeks if she felt he could be trusted. They’d talked it over—he was a little mysterious—but Weeks had concluded that he would never hurt either of them.

      So much for woman’s intuition.

      Neal seemed to be toying with Scott. After he’d removed the piece of bone, she’d expected him to rape her. But just as he seemed to be working himself up to it, he’d stood and said that he needed to go get someone else. That’s when he’d warned her about “the others” and then covered her with a blanket before leaving the town house.

      To keep her mind from disintegrating into terror, she listened to the country-western music station that he’d left on the television for her entertainment. She’d counted two music videos and two commercial breaks when she heard the garage door opening again; she tensed as he came into the room. He had brought someone else with him, a female by the sound of her voice as they giggled and whispered. Scott kept as still as possible, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

      Scott heard the woman take a seat in the kitchen chair that she’d noticed at the foot of the mattress before Neal had covered her with the blanket. There was the sound of duct tape being pulled from a roll. After a minute, she heard Neal ask in his deep, gravelly voice, “Can you get out?” Apparently, the woman could, because there was the sound of duct tape ripping, followed by that of more tape being applied.

      “That’s better,” she heard him say.

      A