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“Oh, look at you… This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The cool rag against his skin made Sean flinch, dragging him to half-consciousness. His cheek stung and his vision swam. When he swallowed, he swallowed around a throat thick and gummy with blood.
Sean tried to lift his head, tried to remember what had happened prior to waking, but found he didn’t have the strength nor concentration. His eyes rolled uncomfortably. The backs of his lids were gritty as if from eons of sleep. His lashes were crusted shut.
“Where…?”
“Shhh, shhhh… Quiet, now.” The rag brushed under his jaw and up to his battered lips. “You, Sean, have no idea how lucky you are. I wouldn’t have found you at all if it weren’t for the snow. All that blood… It was the only thing that led me to you.”
Snow. Snow, yes, that was right.
It was early January, just after his little brother’s Christmas break from school. He’d gone home over the holidays to see his family and had been on his way back to St. Louis. It had snowed the night before, the roads had been slick, and… Oh, fuck.
A spike of pain lanced through his skull. His lolling head was caught by a warm, gentle palm.
“Easy, easy… I know it hurts.”
Sean groaned. He remembered the bright flash of headlights as he had turned the curve—a car coming in too hard and fast. He couldn’t grip his steering wheel in time. Couldn’t swerve before—
The scream of tires against the asphalt rang in his ears. He thought he could remember his head coming up, smashing against something. The ceiling of his car? The windshield?
Fuck. Fuck. He couldn’t think straight. Everything was white with hurt.
Careful, his saviour cleaned the blood from his tacky eyelids until finally, blinking against the glare of sudden light, Sean could see.
A wide slash of teeth grinned down at him.
“If only you had been good…” Long, cold fingers gripped into Sean’s jaw and forced his chin higher. Cale tutted. “None of this would have happened.”
“You—!” Sean’s heart lodged itself in his throat. Panic gripped his limbs and he jerked, reeling backward—
But there was nowhere to go. Thick leather straps kept his wrists bound to the chair, and a third strap as broad as his forearm spanned across his chest. Sean thrashed. The metal legs rattled fruitlessly against the floor.
“No,” he gasped. “Nononono…! This isn’t real, you’re not real. I’m–I’m having a n—”
Cale struck him across the face.
Sean’s head whipped back.
“I can assure you, I’m very real, and you are in very big trouble.” Cale jammed his hand through Sean’s curls, knotted his hand into a fist, and held his head firm. “Do you want to know why? Hm? Because you had to play hero. You had to stick your snotty, filthy little nose into my business… You had to disrupt my routine!”
Spittle flew from his mouth. Then, gradually, the fist in Sean’s hair gentled but didn’t leave.
“You don’t deserve it,” he said, “but I’m going to be merciful this time, Sean. This,” a slight tug against dark roots, a whisper of a threat, “is a mercy. You weren’t supposed to get involved, but you did. You weren’t supposed to be an issue, but you were. I would go ahead and kill you now, but I had some time to think while with your Federal buddies, and I realised that instead of being angry with you, I should thank you. You made things interesting. You were a challenge! Not many people are capable of that. You should be proud. I am.”
Cale leant in. His breath was hot against Sean's face and over-sweet with the smell of mint gum.
“So, you wanted to play in my sandbox, Sean?” he asked. "Be my guest. But if we’re going to play, you have to play by my rules. Understand?”
Sean gawped stupidly. A runner of spit and blood dribbled down his chin.
“I said,” Cale snarled, “do you UNDERSTAND?”
The next hard yank made Sean yelp.
“Yes!” he cried. “Yes, I…” A hiccup, a shudder. Residual pain clawed up and down his scalp. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good. Good boy.” Cale’s fingers uncurled from Sean’s hair and slid to cup his cheek. “Now. Let’s get you cleaned up. You look like trash.”