He looked straight at me and shook his head. “There isn’t anything left to say.” He reared back and punched me square in the nose. Stars flashed before my eyes, and I stumbled backward. He hit me again, this time in the eye, and I fell to my ass. He kicked me in the stomach. My breath whooshed out of me.
His knee connected with my forehead, and I fell back. “Not time for sitting, Sunshine.” The nickname Hero used for me dripped with disgust from his mouth.
Harry bent over and threw me over his shoulder. “Let’s get her fat ass over to our place.”
His words were again out loud, but they weren’t meant for me. Harry was having a conversation with himself. He was off his fucking rocker and was hauling me up a ladder to the crawl space above my duplex.
I tried to scream, but I couldn’t get a deep enough breath. Someone would hear me if I screamed. I just had to scream until they heard me.
Harry grabbed the rope that was hanging from my neck and twisted it tightly. My breath whooshed from my lungs again, and I squirmed against him.
He yanked my head back. My body slid off his shoulder and hit the ladder. He pushed my head up into the crawl space and hefted my body through the hole.
The rope on my wrists loosened, and I flipped over on my stomach. My head rolled, and I slammed my eyes shut. Bile climbed up my throat, and I gagged violently.
“Where the hell does she think she’s going?” Harry called.
I had to get up. I had to figure out how to get away.
Harry grabbed my foot and yanked it backward. I fell down on my stomach, and my face slammed against one of the two by fours. I groaned groggily and opened my eyes. Across the span of my crawl space, there was a large hole cut into the drywall that originally separated my place from Harry’s. A bright light shone through the hole, and music echoed up from his duplex.
“Why are you doing this?” I slurred.
A firm hand gripped my hair and yanked my head back. Harry’s mouth brushed against my ear, and disgust rolled through my body. “You were mine. Now you’re his.” He laughed low. “Now you’ll be dead, and we’ll be together.”
He lifted me up and pushed me toward the hole to his duplex. I stumbled, crashing down on my knees. He grabbed me around the waist and dragged me through the hole.
“What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong played loudly through the open hatch to his duplex. “This was supposed to be our song,” Harry drawled. “But then you went and fucked it up!”
Harry was absolutely insane. I had barely spoken to him, and he had us together in his head. “We need to talk, Harry.” Maybe I could calm him down enough that I could get away.
He dragged me to the hatch to his duplex, and I looked down at the white carpet beneath us.
“Sure. We can talk down there.” He knocked my feet from under me, and I fell forward into the hole. My head smashed against the hard wood framing, and my body crumpled on the floor of Harry’s bedroom. The world rolled for a second and then everything went black.
*
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hero
“You know Reva?”
I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head. “Yeah.”
“That her car?”
I looked back at Reva’s car parked in the same spot it always was. “Yeah.”
“Then where the hell is she?”
“You her landlord?” I asked.
I had stopped over at Hair of the Dog, but Reva’s car wasn’t there. I figured she had headed back to her place to meet with her landlord.
“Yeah. I tried to call her when I was on my way over, but she didn’t answer.” He hitched his thumb toward the door. “I’ve been knocking on the door for five minutes, but she’s not answering.”
I stalked to the door and pounded on it. “Reva!” I shouted. A sick feeling rolled through my stomach when she didn’t come to the door. I pulled out my phone and called her cell.