Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,20

metal. This must be some sort of shed or warehouse. The new ray of moonlight exposes only his hands where he wears a single handcuff around each of his tattooed wrists. There’s something gleaming in his grip. A knife. And not just any knife. One with a long menacing blade with sharp jagged teeth at the end. He toys with it, turning the sharp point against the center of his palm.

Blood rushes through my ears so loud I can hear my pulse beating inside my pounding head.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks. His deep voice is an angry punch to my chest.

“Where…where am I?” I ask, choking on the thick swell of fear rising in my throat. “How did I get here?” I search for my last memory and, for the second time in my life, I can’t find it.

He lifts a small remote from the arm of the chair, his thumb hovering over a red button. “Wrong answer.” Again, I’m assaulted with the flash of lights burning my eyes and the screaming alternative music that sounds and feels more like a bomb exploding than lyrics set to a beat.

It cuts off suddenly, and my shoulders fall forward, my chin meeting my chest. It’s over. I try to take a deep breath and calm myself down long enough to assess the situation, whatever it might be.

I hear Papa’s voice in my head. Think, Mickey. Use that big brain of yours. You can’t get yourself out of here unless you know how you got here. An experiment can’t be conducted and concluded unless you have a working hypothesis.

“Who. Are. You?” the man asks again, cracking his knuckles.

“Please, don’t hurt me,” I beg, hating how weak I sound. I’m not this girl, or at least, I’m not this girl anymore. I’m someone stronger, but who? I want to scream and not because of where I am or because of the lights and music but because I can’t unscramble my thoughts long enough to focus on a single on that can help me right now.

My silence is rewarded with another light and music show. It stabs into my ears as if he’s using his blade. The lights are blinding through the thin skin of my closed eyelids. This time, when it’s thankfully over, I feel like my skin is trying to jump free from my muscles. My bones rattle. Someone is screaming.

It’s me. I’m the one screaming.

“Answer the fucking question! Who the fuck are you?” he demands. I feel the warning in his words as he launches them at me like live grenades. “I can do this all night. Answer the fucking question.”

The man behind the voice steps out of the shadows, into the moon light, and into my new living nightmare. His feet are bare and so is his chest with the exception of the array of tattoos decorating his muscular chest and washboard abs. He’s even larger than his shadow suggested. Well over six feet of pure intimidation. A monster lurking in a child’s room. His hair is the color of wet hay, untamed, and long enough to brush over his ears. His goatee is the same color as his hair except in the center where it comes to a point it’s a few shades lighter. His jeans are low and tight.

It’s his hate colored eyes that have my lip trembling as he slowly approaches the bed. Dark and wild, simmering in unleashed rage.

A dagger of pure unadulterated terror stabs into my spine, tainting my blood with poisonous fear.

The villain of my story looks like an angry angel. There’s no way this man was sculpted from the same clay as the rest of humanity. Perfectly lean, chorded muscle wrapped in tanned, tattooed skin. The only reminder that he’s actually human are the few faded and jagged scars beneath his left eye and the slight bend in his nose.

A memory file opens in my brain, presenting me slow motion details. It’s from that night. The first time my memory failed me.

It’s him.

“I know you,” I whisper, unable to believe that it’s the same man. He’s got the same eyes and hair although his shoulders are much broader. His jaw more defined. The biggest difference is the one that matters most in my current situation. Years ago, he had a shred of kindness in his eyes.

Now, there is none.

“You don’t fucking know me,” he spits. He stares at me for a few beats that stretch on in silence as if years are