Unhinge Me (22 page)

“Well, that’s the easy part, dear. He took away what meant most to me and now I am going to take away what means most to him.”

A chill ran down Alex’s spine.

“You assume I mean that much to him, but I don’t. I barely know him!” she lied.

Paul didn’t believe it for a second.

“Tisk, tisk, pretty little liar. I have been watching him, and you, for far too long to believe that.”

Alex’s eyes widened. That day in front of the coffee shop, that’s why he was there. The creepy feeling that she was being watched all the time. She was right, she
was!
He had been watching them! Everything had been him all along.

“The letters?” she asked him quietly.

“Yup. I tried to warn him and make him go away. He doesn’t listen very well,” he told her.

Alex paled. Caleb thought those letters were coming from England. He was on a completely different track and would never think to look for her there. She wasn’t going to make it out of there and she knew it.

“I’m still confused about one thing,” Alex said. “If you want to get rid of me, then why didn’t you let me get hit by that car the other day? Why did you save me?”

Paul nodded. “A good question… That would have been much easier.” Then he looked at her with a mean smile. “But then it wouldn’t have really made him suffer, would it? And I want him to
suffer
. I want him to know that not only are you gone, but that I had my way with you first. And that I took… my… time… which I fully intend to do,” he promised and lurched toward her, catching her off guard.

In seconds, he was on top of her and pulling her top off. She fought him as hard as she could, but it was difficult with only one hand. He pushed himself between her legs and started unbuttoning her shorts.

“Yeah, fight me!” he coaxed her.

She reached her head up and bit him on the cheek as hard as she could. He howled and, reaching back, punched her in the head.

Alex’s whole mind went fuzzy with the force of the hit, and a loud ringing was in her ears. She realized that was it, she was going to die. All of a sudden, she got very calm and very determined. It was a shock even to her, but there was almost a peace to the way she felt. She knew if Paul was going to kill her, he was going to do it whether he raped her or not, and she decided she wasn’t going to let that happen. She wanted Caleb to be her last and she wasn’t going to let this pathetic man take that from her.

She knew he was getting off from her fighting back, so she suddenly went still.

Paul, who had almost gotten both her and his pants undone, suddenly stopped and looked at her.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

She didn’t answer him.

He reached down to pull his pants off and showed himself to her. A little bit of Alex went crazy in that moment of panic and without thinking, she laughed. It was a nervous laugh and Alex couldn’t believe she had just done it. But, she noticed, it made him pause.

Then she got an idea. It was a long shot, but she had to try. She knew Paul wanted her to know his strength, wanted her to be afraid of him and to panic, so she pretended to do the opposite.

She started laughing at him, quiet at first, and then she got louder. In her fear, the laugh started out fake, but by the time she was done, she was laughing like a lunatic. She felt like one too.

“That’s the smallest, most pathetic dick I have ever seen!” she yelled at him.

Paul’s look of anger almost made her slip until she looked down and noticed it was working.

He punched her in the stomach and she doubled over in pain, coughing and wheezing while he tried to fix the problem at hand.

She tried to ignore the pain and smiled instead, a deep-rooted strength she never knew she had coming to the surface, fueled by anger.

“See, you know it’s true. Women didn’t stop paying attention to you because of Caleb. They did it because you are a loser and your glory days are over!”

He hit her again, and again. Clearly frustrated at not being able to take her, because he was now softer than a limp noodle, he unleashed his power and kept hitting her.

Alex tried to escape and started to fall off the mattress onto the floor.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Paul commanded and pulled her back on the bed.

Her free hand bumped something cold.

“If I’m not going to have you, then I will beat you until he doesn’t even recognize you. I will make him, and you, pay for this either way.” He finished the sentence with another slap. Then he put his clumsy hands around her neck and squeezed.

Bleeding and gasping for breath, Alex started losing consciousness again. It filled her with a cold dread. Unlike when she was drugged, she felt like this time, if she fell asleep, she would never wake up.

A small part of her mind remembered the cold object and she reached to see what it was. It was the fork from the tray. Feeling like she only had seconds left, she looked up at Paul through her already swelling eyes and found the spot in his neck she wanted to aim for.

With one last, ragged breath that she couldn’t even complete because she was in so much pain, she reached up and plunged the fork into the right side of his neck.

Everything froze. Paul stopped and looked at her, fear making his eyes bulge nearly out of his head.

“Fuuuck,” he stammered and fell off of her, grabbing toward the fork. It was too deep though, and his strength was sapping fast. He rolled to the ground next to the mattress and laid there, sputtering in his own blood for a few seconds. Then all was still.

Caleb walked into the Literature building on Monday morning. Graham was in the car and they were going back out to look for Alex again. He just had to drop some things off for the teacher’s assistant who was covering the class for him.

The police finally joined in the hunt on Sunday and there were what seemed like hundreds of people looking for Alex now. But no one had found her.

Caleb walked slowly down the hall to his room. He was numb with pain from not having found Alex. In his heart, he knew he wouldn’t be able to live without her. She had breathed new life into him and without her he was empty, alone, and dead all over again.

As he turned to go into his room, he heard talking in Paul’s room and recognized that Paul’s voice was not one of them. Turning to look, he saw the Dean of admissions and another man.

“I have no idea where he could be! He has never missed a day in his life,” the Dean yelled at the other man.

“And he won’t answer his phone?” the other, shorter man asked hopefully. The Dean obviously intimidated him.

“Don’t you think I would have thought of that? No, he hasn’t, and I can’t get anyone in here until noon, so just cancel the morning classes,” the Dean commanded and, shaking his head, walked out. When he saw Caleb, he stopped and looked at him.

“Hey, you didn’t happen to see Paul at all today, did you?” he asked.

Caleb had to clear his throat to speak.

“Uh, no. No, I haven’t. Sorry,” he mumbled.

The Dean looked Caleb over and seemed like he was going to say something for a moment, but the moment passed and the man just shook his head and walked away.

The other man came out in to the hall and looked at him nervously. He asked Caleb if he knew where Paul’s extra lesson plans were. Caleb took pity on the small man. He sighed and decided to quickly help him.

He walked into the classroom and opened a few of the drawers in Paul’s desk.

“I think it’s in one of these drawers,” he told him.

When he got to the bottom drawer and opened it, something caught his eye and he pulled it out. It was a small stack of thick paper. The exact paper the notes Caleb had been finding on his desk had been written on.

The revelation hit him like a brick. A low, strangled sound escaped his lips, startling the little man. He rushed past him and out of the building before the man could even blink.

He ran to the car, his thoughts running a mile a minute with him.

When he got to the car, he slammed the door and jerked the car into gear before even putting his seat belt on.

Graham looked at him with alarm as he tried to get him to talk to him and tell him what was going on, but it took a minute before Caleb could get a coherent word out of his mouth. Anger and fear were choking him as he drove. His face was getting red and Graham had to shout to get his attention.

“What the hell is going on?” He punched him in the arm to try and get his attention any way he could. He had never seen Caleb like this and he knew what his cousin was capable of. He needed to calm him down.

Finally, Caleb spoke.

“It’s not from home… the letters… they were from here the whole time. How could I be so stupid?” he yelled at himself.

Graham shook his head in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Caleb explained his revelation as he drove. If Paul had been the one sending him those notes, then it was Paul who had threatened him. And now both Paul and Alex were missing. The thought made him sick to his stomach.

“If he has her… I’m going to kill him,” Caleb said simply, not even taking his eyes off the road.

Graham looked over at him. He was serious and they both knew it. Graham was going to have to find a way to help Caleb and keep him out of jail if this hunch was right.

Caleb had only been to Paul’s once for a party and it was when he’d first arrived in the states. Paul had told him that it was going to be a mix of the best teachers and students, but when Caleb got there and saw mostly sad or slutty college girls and a few sleazy teachers, he’d taken off. He tried to stay calm enough to think of how to get back to his house. It was a bit off campus, but he got there quickly since he didn’t mind any speed limits or stop signs.

Both men finally ran up the steps of the old colonial house. The door was locked so they ran off in opposite directions to look for another way in. A few moments later, they both met back at the front of the house, neither having found one. Walking up the brick steps, Graham started looking for a spare key hiding place. Caleb looked into the window to see if he could see anything.

The living room in the front looked normal enough. It looked like it hadn’t been decorated in thirty years. The furniture was all old but expensive and the walls were covered in paneling, but it was clean and well taken care of. Then Caleb saw it: Alex’s purse, sitting on a side table. Rage took over as he looked around the porch for something hard. He found a lose brick and, without warning or saying anything to Graham, used it to break the window on the front door. He reached in to unlock and open it. Graham looked at him in shock, then rushed over to stand in front of Caleb for a second.

“Stop! Listen to me!” he tried to reason. “Let me look while you calm down for a second. Please! Promise me you will not do anything crazy!” he pleaded.

Caleb ignored him and ran toward the back of the house to look for Alex. Graham swore under his breath and, giving up for the moment, ran up the stairs to look there. Finding the two bedrooms and a bathroom empty, he ran back down and found Caleb coming back into the kitchen from the back porch. Both just shook their heads, telling each other they hadn’t found anything. Then Caleb looked over at what looked like a basement door. They stopped for a moment before both rushing at it to get there first, Graham wanting to save Caleb from whatever might be down there and Caleb hoping this last place would give answers.

Caleb got there first and, as he tumbled clumsily down the steps, he heard a rip as a stray nail cut through his jeans and into his leg.

Not even feeling the pain, he looked over and saw them. Alex lay on a dirty mattress on the floor and Paul lay next to the mattress, on the cement, in a pool of his own blood. Ignoring Paul for the moment, he ran to Alex’s side and fell to his knees.

“Oh my God,” Graham said as he looked at the scene before him. He walked over to Paul’s body and didn’t even have to check his pulse to know he was dead. He looked over at Alex, assuming she was too.

Caleb looked down at the love of his life, his broken little doe. He almost couldn’t recognize her, her face was so swollen. Huge bruises, cuts, dry blood, and red welts covered her face and chest. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And she was breathing.

Tears ran down his cheeks as he slowly tried to pick her up and carry her away, when Graham stopped him and pointed out her chain. Rage and pain shot through him like an arrow through the heart. He looked over at Paul and Graham lay a hand on his arm.

“Dead,” he promised.

It took a few minutes to find the key in Paul’s pocket and get Alex free, but when she finally was, Caleb gingerly lifted her and carried her out of her hell while Graham called 911.