Hello, Darkness by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online

just as you are,” he said as he clicked off the first shot.
    The flash seemed exceptionally bright. She was good and truly stoned.
    “Don’t move,” he told her. “I have an idea.”
    Move? She was too lethargic to move. Her entire body throbbed, starting with her cheekbone—how was she going to explain a bad bruise?—and all the way down to her splayed thighs. Christ, she still had her sandals on. How funny was that? But she was too tired to trouble herself with taking them off. Besides, he had told her not to move.
    Maybe she dozed for a minute or two. Next thing she knew he was back, bending over her, pulling her wrists together.
    “What’s that?” She roused herself and saw that he was using a necktie to bind her wrists together.
    “A prop for a photograph. You’ve been a bad girl. You need to be punished.” He climbed off the bed and picked up his camera and adjusted the focus.
    That’s when it began to get creepy and she felt the first twinges of apprehension. She had struggled to sit up. “Have I mentioned that I’m not into bondage?”
    “This isn’t bondage, this is punishment,” he said absently as he moved to the lamp. He adjusted the shade, setting it first at one angle, then another, causing shadows to shift across her body.
    Okay. Enough of this. She’d had it. After tonight, no more of him. Posing for him had been fun. It had been something different and, admittedly, it had been a kick to later look at the pictures of herself.
    But he was getting too possessive and too…too out there.
    “Look,” she recalled saying sternly, “I really want you to untie my hands now.”
    Finally satisfied with the lighting, he began setting up the tripod.
    Taking another tack, she softened her tone. “I’ll do anything you want. You know I will. All you have to do is ask. Anything.”
    He still didn’t seem to be listening. While he was distracted, she had inched toward the edge of the bed, calculating the distance to the door. But when she looked at it, something struck her as odd, and a cold dart of fear went through her when she realized that there was no doorknob on this side. Only a brass disk where the doorknob should have been.
    That’s when he had stopped tinkering with the camera. No doubt sensing her alarm, he had smiled down at her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “I want you to untie me.”
    “You moved and spoiled the lighting,” he chided gently.
    “Lighting, my ass, I’m leaving. ”
    Her cheerleading days had paid off. She came off the bed with surprising strength and agility. But she didn’t get far. He caught her by the hair and yanked her back, then shoved her down onto the bed.
    “You can’t keep me here,” she’d cried.
    “You just had to ruin it, didn’t you?”
    “Ruin what?”
    “Us.”
    “There isn’t any ‘us,’ you sick wacko.”
    “You had to cheat on me. Just like the others. Didn’t you think I’d find out? I listen to Paris Gibson, too, you know. She put your call on the air. Thousands of people heard you telling her that you felt smothered by my possessiveness. You were going to take her advice and dump me, weren’t you?”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    He’d stood over her, both fists clenched at his sides as though he were forcibly suppressing his rage. “You can’t treat people like toilet paper and get away with it, you know.”
    And because he had become so freaking scary, she had wisely shut up.
    He had taken a few more photos, then decided that her feet also needed to be tied. She had fought him as if her life depended on it, but he’d eventually slapped her so hard her ears rang. That was the last thing she heard.
    When she came to, she was spread-eagled, her hands and feet tied to the bed frame beneath the box springs, her mouth taped shut. The apartment was empty. He was gone. She was alone, and no one knew where she was.
    Over the passing hours, she had devised a dozen means of escape, but dismissed the ideas almost as soon as she