Chapter 17

Chuck stepped out of the store, looked at his surroundings, and headed over to his chair in the garden. It was his intention to work outside for the day. This was nothing unusual. He enjoyed taking care of his investments while seated in the garden, particularly on exceptionally nice days. He could see no reason to remain inside an artificially lit building, when he could bask in perfect comfort, outside.

The weather this morning was particularly glorious. The temperature was in the mid seventies, the sun was shining, there was a light breeze from off shore, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. Even the plants appeared to have a little extra color to them, as if they too wanted to enjoy their time in the sun.

He wore a ball cap in order to keep the sun out of his eyes. He carried his laptop in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He put the laptop and bottle of water on the small table by the chair in which he normally worked. He looked up at the sky for a moment double checking the position of the sun.

He fussed for a moment getting his chair positioned just right. He wanted a nice view of the street, and the front of his store while taking advantage of a little shade from the trees around him. He had learned through experience how best to position the chair to keep the glare from the sun from making it difficult to see the screen on his laptop. Over the course of the day, he would have to make minor adjustments to the location of the chair.

He sat down, grabbed the bottle of water, and opened it. After taking a quick sip, he put the bottle back on the table and picked up the laptop. He raised the lid, flicked the on switch, and watched the machine come to life. He looked around while the computer did it’s thing.

One of the neighbors, a regular customer at the store, drove past in her car. She slowed down and waved at him before speeding up again. He waved back at her figuring that she’d probably stop by when she was on her way home from where ever she was headed.

His computer finished booting. He opened his browser and stared at the screen for a minute trying to decide what to to do first. He had a choice between checking up on the status of all of his holdings or to see what was happening in the rest of the world. He chose the former figuring that he needed to know where he stood before searching for other options.

The next few hours passed quickly. His holdings were doing well. The towing companies were bringing in abandoned cars that could be salvaged for parts until the supply line was fully restored. The parts houses were acting as a conduit for parts between the salvage operations and his repair shops. The repair shops were trading parts for phone minutes. Since he owned a piece of each company, he was collecting quite a few phone minutes in profit.

In addition, some of his partners had expanded their operations. He now was a minor owner in an appliance store, a laundromat, two clothing retail stores, and three fast food places. The fast food places were still losing value, but he was pretty sure that was only going to be a short-term situation.

His share of the businesses meant that his net worth was still increasing. He had enough profits to invest in additional businesses. He was still hoping to get into other business areas other than automotive, but he understood that there was still room for savvy investment there.

There was a small windshield wiper company that was struggling to remain in business. He could help them. If he could find a good source of rubber then he could save the company. He didn’t know anything about rubber production. He decided that it was time to find an expert and started searching for one.

His effort was interrupted when a man asked, “Are you Chuck Cole?”

“Yes,” Chuck said without looking up.

He was hit with a tazer.

Chuck slowly regained consciousness. The first thing that he noticed was that the back of his head hurt. Then a pounding headache forced his attention on his mental state. His thoughts were foggy and confused.

It was as if his mind was going through a mental checklist of what felt okay and what didn’t. The list of what hurt was more than long enough to be worrisome. He was pretty sure that whoever put him in that state wasn’t concerned with his continued good health.

His mouth was dry. He opened his eyes and looked around for something to drink. He was in a small room with concrete walls. There were pipes running along the ceiling. He had the feeling that he was in a basement somewhere. The oppressive quiet, an almost complete absence of noise, suggested that he was in an abandoned building.

He tried to move and then realized he was tied to a chair with his arms handcuffed behind his back. His hands felt swollen and throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The cuffs were too tight. His ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. It was a metal office chair, the kind without arms that was in front of the desk rather than behind it.

Of course, all of the Hollywood cliché moves on how to escape flashed through his mind. The chair was solid enough that he’d never escape by breaking it. Since his hands weren’t tied with ropes, he wasn’t going to be able to rub them against something to break his bonds. He didn’t have a lock pick stashed away anywhere; and even if he’d had one, he didn’t know how to pick a lock. He didn’t have the strength to break the cuffs.

Super hero fantasies would have been nice to live, but they were just that – fantasies. He was a realist and took an honest stock of his situation. It wasn’t good.

The lack of a gag in his mouth was just further indication that he was in some remote place where no one would hear him scream. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he wondered what was going on. He feared that he’d find out soon enough. Unfortunately, he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to like what he would learn.

For the next hour, he was stuck there wondering who had brought him there and why. His imagination was able to generate a hundred different reasons for him to be there, most of them, he knew, were nonsense, such as the idea that it was some woman who was after him for his body. He almost laughed when the thought of that possibility crossed his mind.

It was possible that his abductor was someone who was upset about having lost a company to him as a result of his aggressive investing, but he didn’t think so. He hadn’t taken anything away from anyone. At most, he had become a minor partner.

One thing that he was confident about was that it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. His abductor had verified his identity prior to abducting him. He hoped that it was a simple case of being held hostage for money or something. He was wealthy. Betsy was wealthy. Maybe someone wanted some of that money and wasn’t willing to earn it through legitimate means.

Of course, thoughts of why he was there were frequently displaced by thoughts of what was going to happen to him. Would they kill him after getting the hostage money from Betsy? Or were their motives even more sinister than that. Maybe they were going to torture him thinking that they might learn where he had hidden his wealth.

Once he even thought of torture, his active imagination ran away with him. He imagined that his fingernails would be removed, fingers broken or cut off, and knees smashed with a baseball bat. Those were bad enough, but it was the thought of torture through electro-shock and genital disfiguration that really got to him. He wondered if this long wait alone was intended to give his imagination enough time to imagine the worst. Despite knowing what he believed his capturer’s strategy was, he knew it was working.

He had no idea how much time had passed before he heard someone moving around. The noise was muted. It was coming through a closed door which he assumed connected his cell to a room outside the one in which he was being held. He tried to pick out any details of the noise that would give him a clue as to what was happening, but it was just too muffled. The noise disappeared for ten minutes and then returned.

Although he couldn’t see it, he could hear the door to his room open. He tensed and tried to look over his shoulder at the door. A man was standing with his back to him and was in the process of closing the door. Based on the man’s clothes, he was the same man who had approached him at the shop.

Turning his head to follow the man’s path to a position in front of the chair in which he was bound, Chuck had the unsettling thought that the man wasn’t concerned about him seeing his face. He knew enough to know that did not bode well for him.

The man said, “You are Chuck Cole.”

“Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not.”

“You are Betsy Carter’s boyfriend.”

Chuck was surprised by the statement. Even though he had considered that his abduction might have something to do with Betsy, he hadn’t really considered it seriously. After all, he was just the boyfriend.

“Betsy who?”

“Don’t play the fool.”

“Since you think you know so much about me, I’m at a severe disadvantage. Who are you?”

“I’m Dan Travers.”

Perhaps because the name was unusual, Chuck knew the name sounded familiar. He had heard it before. The problem was that he couldn’t quite place the circumstance under which he had heard it. Still, it sounded familiar.

Then it dawned on him that knowing the full name of his captor wasn’t a good sign of things to come. Chuck realized he was a dead man. The only question was how much he’d get hurt before being killed.

“I’ve never heard of you. What do you want from me?”

“Information.”

Thoughts of torture came unbidden. Chuck asked, “About?”

“I want to know everything you know about the layout of the Carter house,” Dan answered.

Chuck felt an almost overwhelming need to piss. He wasn’t sure if it was from fear or just a natural consequence of not having taken a piss in a while. He suspected fear, but hoped it was just nature.

He swallowed heavily and then replied, “You might as well kill me now. I’m not going to...”

The blow to his stomach came before he was able to declare his intention not to tell the man anything that might hurt Betsy. He doubled over putting a horrible strain on his cuffed wrists. Not only were his wrists cuffed to each other, but the handcuffs were cuffed to the chair leg. Things were bad and getting worse rapidly.

“You’re going to tell me everything I want to know.”

“No,” Chuck said trying to sit up straighter to relieve the strain on his wrists.

Dan slapped him across the face knowing that a slap was often much more effective in breaking a man’s will than a solid blow. Slaps stung without creating damage. They reminded the person that there was much worse that could happen. In a way, it was almost a promise that worse was coming.

There were also other psychological implications to a slap. It was an attack against a man’s masculinity. Women got slapped while men were punched.

Chuck recognized that things were only going to get worse. He had a choice, he could do as the man wanted and tell him everything he wanted to know, or he could resist and try to tell him nothing. If he did what the man wanted, Betsy would get hurt or killed. If he resisted, he was going to be beaten. No matter what, he figured that Dan was going to kill him.

He knew there was no chance of getting rescued and that any kind of delaying tactic would only draw things out longer. If a rescue was coming, then it would have already been there. Logic dictated that since no one had showed up, no one was coming. He made a very difficult decision knowing that it was the only decision he could make.

It wasn’t very often when Chuck’s stubborn streak emerged, but when it did it was nearly impossible to get him to accept even a minor compromise. His whole posture changed to one of defiance and resistance. The set of his jaw and the defiant look in his eye advertised that he had just taken a stand and wasn’t going to budge.

Committing fully to resisting, Chuck said, “I’ll bite my tongue off before telling you anything.”

That comment caused Dan to step back and reconsider his captive. In his opinion, the man looked like he was a Caspar Milquetoast, but there was an edge to his voice that spoke of an inner strength. For some reason, he believed that Chuck would actually follow through on his threat, or at least attempt to follow through. He didn’t know if anyone could actually bite their own tongue off or not.

Things had just gotten a lot more complicated.

Trying to sound reasonable, Dan said, “I just need a little map of her place. You give it to me and we’ll be done.”

“Fuck you,” Chuck said putting as much disgust and disdain into his voice as possible.

“Fuck you,” Dan shouted.

“Suck my dick,” Chuck said.

He figured that if he got Dan angry enough that he’d put an early end to this. For a moment, it appeared that his strategy had worked. Dan’s whole face turned bright red. Furious, he hit Chuck in the stomach several times. When that didn’t have the effect he wanted, he threw a right cross at Chuck, hitting him in the left cheek. Chuck’s head swiveled and he was suddenly seeing double. Dan followed that up with a left cross to the right cheek.

Unprepared for the onslaught, Chuck passed out. His head bowed and his body sagged.

“That didn’t go well,” Dan huffed while breathing heavily. “I’ve got to control my temper.”

Dan stood there glaring at Chuck. He slapped the man a couple of times shouting, “Wake up.”

When his attempts to revive Chuck had no effect, he stomped off and returned with a glass of water. He threw the water into Chuck’s face. It had the desired effect of rousing the man.

Leaning down, Dan said, “You’ve pissed me off. Now we’re going to do this the hard way.”

Chuck spit in his face. Without thought, Dan backhanded him. Chuck’s vision doubled and then he lost consciousness again.

“Shit! He’s out again. I’ll never get anywhere if he passes out every time I hit him.”

Chuck slowly came awake. He had a splitting headache and his whole body was stiff. In fact, it felt like he had been tazed again and he wondered if Dan had tazed him while he was unconscious. Once again his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. He had a throbbing headache and it was hard to organize his thoughts.

He hand no idea how much time had passed. The dampness in the crotch of his pants let him know that he had pissed himself. He guessed that pissing yourself after being beaten unconscious was okay. It wasn’t like he was incontinent or something.

It took him a second for him to realize that his situation had changed. A table had been brought over and his wrists were now tied into place on it. It was a simple binding with the rope that was tightly wrapped around his wrist disappearing through holes drilled in the table. He tried to move his hands, but the restraints around his wrists didn’t let him do much more than close his fists.

His cheeks felt like they were burning. He never realized that he had a glass jaw. He worked his jaw and was somewhat pleased to see that it still moved correctly. He looked up and saw Dan was glaring at him.

“You’re just a cock sucking cornholer,” Chuck said.

“You are not going to like what I’m going to do to you,” Dan said finding it hard keeping his anger under control.

He was sure that Chuck knew about how he had been treated in jail and the kinds of things that he had been forced to do. It had been rape, but Chuck’s comments made it sound like he had done those things willingly.

Seeing that his taunts were having an effect, Chuck said, “Let me guess, you use your teeth when you’re sucking a dick.”

Dan grabbed his left hand and held it flat on the table. Chuck was not expecting the hammer blow to the joint of his little finger nearest his fingernail. It hurt. Rather than even attempting to be macho about the whole thing, he screamed. He wasn’t even embarrassed about screaming. In a way, it was more a scream of frustration at not being able to hit back than one of pain.

“You’re screaming like a little girl.”

“You like fucking little girls, don’t you? Or maybe you prefer little boys.”

Dan hit him with the hammer on the second knuckle of the little finger. Chuck screamed while thinking about what he’d do to the guy if he had a chance. His thoughts were not pretty.

Dan waited for him to stop screaming and asked, “Are there sensors around her place?”