"So… Barney told you that this Allison is the one who took him?" Ted's voice was dubious as he reluctantly followed Robin into the strange apartment. "What happened? Why did you hang up?"
Robin's mouth was tight, her eyes solemn and troubled, as she replied shortly, "Yes, she did… and… she caught him calling."
Confused, Ted frowned, shaking his head. "But, why would she…?"
"Ted… she was hurting him. I heard him…" Robin's voice trailed off and she shook her head, unable to make herself finish that sentence. "There's literally no time to waste with explanations. We need to figure out where she's taken him."
Ted nodded in silent agreement, knowing better than to push Robin for anything more when she was in such a precarious emotional state. He made his way into the bedroom, turning on the light as he entered and scanning the room for anything useful, though he really wasn't sure what he was looking for.
An address, maybe? Something with Barney's name on it somewhere?
When Ted looked in the closet, his stomach clenched with a cold sensation of dread at the disturbing sight he found. Taped to the back wall, behind Allison's clothes, were dozens of pictures – all of Barney. They were the sort of shots that might have been taken by a private investigator – candid, but clearly not taken with the consent or knowledge of the photographer's subject.
With a shudder, Ted turned away from the closet, crossing the room again to look under the bed. On the stand beside the bed, he saw a framed picture of a young blonde woman and a rather trashy looking man, his arm wrapped possessively around her.
Filing the image away for future reference, if necessary, Ted crouched beside the bed, reaching under it. He pulled out a spiral notebook, worn around the edges, and filled inside with page after page of handwritten notes. The shivery, unsettled sensation returned as he read what she had written.
She's been planning this for months… stalking him… it's a revenge thing…
Oh, Barney… what kind of psycho crazy shit have you gotten yourself into this time?
He rose to his feet, taking the journal with him as he headed toward the living room to show Robin what he'd found. He jumped when she unexpectedly met him in the bedroom doorway, a look of purposeful victory in her eyes as she held up a small scrap of white notebook paper.
"This is the address of some vacation cabins for rental in Jersey. There's a phone number, too, and a cabin number, under the name of John Jackson."
Ted let out a soft scoffing sound. "That's a fake name if ever there was one."
"Yep." Robin extended the 'p' sound on the end of the word with an audible pop. "This must be where she's taken him…"
"They," Ted amended with a warning look, stepping back into the bedroom to pick up the picture and show it to her. "If it was reserved under a guy's name, chances are she's working with a guy – probably this one. I think he's her boyfriend. So, we're dealing with two kidnappers, not just one…"
Robin shrugged, taking her gun out of her purse again and holding it up. "This holds six rounds. I think that oughta be enough."
**************************
Barney held his breath, his eyes tightly closed, every ounce of his consciousness focused in on the feel of the sharp blade against his throat.
This is it… I'm going to die…
Given his circumstances, the thought was almost a relief.
He flinched, opening his eyes in startled alarm at the sound of the front door opening. Heavy, now-familiar footsteps crossed the floor – then stopped as Ryan caught sight of the scene before him.
"What happened?" he asked, beginning to move again to close the distance between himself and the living area, where Allison still held Barney on his knees, his head drawn back across the arm of the sofa. "What'd he do, Allie?"
"This little shit," Allison snarled, jerking on Barney's hair and causing him to wince with pain, "snuck into our bedroom and got his hands on the phone. Made a call, too, before I caught him."
Ryan stared down at Barney in cold, calm scrutiny for a long moment before slowly moving closer to him, into his space. Allison released him, moving the knife and moving away a bit to allow her boyfriend access. Barney cautiously lowered his head to relieve the pressure on his throat, instinctively pressing back against the side of the sofa, trembling with dread as Ryan crouched down in front of him. He was on eye level now, but Barney's gaze was locked onto the floor, his breath quickening with panicked anticipation of Ryan's reaction to his defiance.
Barney flinched, drawing in a sharp gasp as Ryan shot out a hand to grasp his throat, pinning him against the arm of the sofa. More slowly, in a smooth gesture of almost gentle menace, Ryan's other hand slid up Barney's side to wrap lightly around the base of his ribcage – directly over his broken ribs.
Ryan's voice was deadly soft, falsely patient, as he met Barney's wide, frightened eyes.
"Who'd you call, Barney?"
"Th-the… police…" Barney's voice was shaking with mounting panic as he struggled to respond. "9-1-1…"
Ryan glanced up to Allison, who was standing behind Barney now. Apparently he didn't like whatever she silently communicated to him, because his large hand tightened cruelly over Barney's damaged ribs, eliciting a choked cry of anguish from the smaller man's trembling lips. Ryan's tone was unchanged as he repeated his soft question.
"Who'd you call, Barney?"
Barney hesitated, his lips parted to respond, but at a loss for a convincing answer. Apparently, Allison had heard enough of his conversation to tell her that it hadn't been the police – but exactly how much had she heard? Before he could speak, Allison offered a partial explanation to both his questions and Ryan's.
"It was a girl. He called her Robin… and he told her my name."
Ryan smiled coldly, his face intimidatingly close to Barney's as he loosened his grip on his ribs, tracing his fingertips slowly, suggestively up and down his side. "Shouldn't be too hard to look up in your contact list. Maybe we'd better pay a little visit to your friend next, huh? Make sure she doesn't tell anybody what you told her."
Barney's eyes widened with terror, and he shook his head in a silent, desperate plea. "Don't," he whispered when he could draw breath to speak. "Don't hurt her…"
"You haven't given us a choice, Barney." Allison shrugged, malicious glee in her voice. "Your stupid mistake is gonna cost her her life. We can't let her go to the police."
"She probably already has," Barney spoke up, unsure where the note of defiance in his voice had come from. All he knew was that he had to dissuade them from trying to harm Robin. "It's… it's too late to stop her. I bet she… she probably called the police as soon as… as…"
Barney's voice trailed off as Ryan leaned in closer to him, a cold smile on his lips, eyebrows raised as he listened to Barney's desperate words. As fear overcame Barney and he fell silent, Ryan pushed his head back with his hand around his throat, his free hand sliding downward to cruelly grasp Barney's damaged, raw genitals. He ignored Barney's choked scream of pain, his voice soft and even as he spoke quietly next to his ear.
"Are you proud of yourself, Barney? You proud that you managed to get one over on us, you stupid little bitch?"
Barney's instinctive impulse was to shake his head, to plead for mercy, to do something to try to placate the monsters who were tormenting him – but he knew by now that they would not be appeased at this point. The torture and degradation of the past few days began to swell up in his thoughts, his emotions, becoming a muddled wave of fear and frustration and shame and anger.
They're going to kill me anyway… might as well make it quick…
His jaw set with stubborn defiance, and Barney nodded slowly, deliberately, before looking up to meet Ryan's gaze, his ice blue eyes blazing with hate. "Yes," he whispered. "I am."
Ryan's eyes narrowed with vindictive rage, and he crushed Barney's throbbing balls in his huge fist, a vicious smile forming on his face at Barney's pathetic cry of agony. Ryan released Barney abruptly, allowing him to slump forward onto his face as he rose to his feet. A vicious kick to Barney's stomach, then another to his broken leg, drew silent, agonized sobs from the smaller man's throat. Ryan grabbed Barney's hair and yanked his head up again, snarling into his face with savage menace.
"Let's see what we can do about that…"
Barney flinched, his bravado fleeing in the face of the promise of greater torment. He knelt there, trembling with agony and terror as Ryan held him in place, turning his attention to his girlfriend.
"We're a good… what? Three hours drive from the city?"
"At least." Allison nodded.
"And it'll take 'em a while to put the pieces together, figure out exactly who they're looking for… and where…" Ryan mused. He was silent as he drew Barney's head back, waiting until he could meet his eyes to offer a cold smile of cruel promise. "I'd say we've got at least an hour to spare."
It was an hour of hellish torture beyond anything Barney could have imagined – at least, before the last three days.
They dragged him to the banister of the stairs leading up to the second floor, then used a pair of handcuffs to bind his wrists around one of the rails so that his feet barely touched the floor, and the entire back side of his body was helplessly exposed to their every sadistic whim.
Allison took her time with her toys, burning the backs of his legs, his buttocks, his back, with the lighter she had used on him countless times in the past few days. When she got bored with that, she took out her switchblade and began cutting patterns into his sensitive flesh, laughing viciously at the shivers of agony that racked his body, and the plaintive whimpers and pleas that escaped his lips.
Finally she was finished – but it was not a mercy. When Allison moved back, Ryan took her place, grabbing Barney from behind and slamming into him without preparation or restraint. The searing pain in his damaged, raw backside was only the beginning of Barney's suffering, as the repeated impact tore at his abraded, infected wrists, his cracked ribcage… his entire aching, brutalized body.
When Ryan was done, they unchained him from the banister, allowing him to drop to a crumpled, limp heap on the floor – but they did not leave him there. Allison pulled his head up, pressing the blade to his throat as she smirked at him, her voice a soft mockery of compassion.
"Aww, sweetie… worn out so soon? But I haven't had my turn yet!" Her tone hardened as he searched her eyes, not understanding in the haze of pain and confusion that overwhelmed him. "You're not finished yet, whore. You're gonna get me off, too."
Exhausted and in shock, Barney still had no choice but to obey. Ryan caught his wrists and drew them behind his back, binding them there and maneuvering him into place as Allison braced herself against the wall. As Barney did his best to please his captor, to prevent any further suffering, Ryan knelt behind Barney and ran his hands suggestively, invasively, over his body, keeping up a litany of malicious, terrorizing words in his ear.
"You know what I was doing before I came in, Barney? Where I've been the last couple hours?" His voice was hushed and secretive as he viciously confessed, "I've been digging your grave, out in the woods… and trying to think of fun, creative ways in which we might get rid of you…"
Barney did his best to focus on what he was doing and to shut out the cruel words, as Ryan described various painful and horrific methods of murder he had considered. But it was not a way to kill him that left Barney the most shaken.
"Really," Ryan whispered, running a possessive hand over Barney's ass, stroking up between his legs to toy with his exposed genitals, "there's no reason we have to kill you at all, is there? I mean, we could just put you in the grave… and let nature do the rest. That'd be slow and painful enough a death for a worthless piece of trash like you, wouldn't it?"
Barney wasn't sure whether it was from his half-hearted efforts, or Ryan's sick fantasy, but at that moment, Allison came, and he fell back onto his knees, trembling violently, shaking his head in a frantic plea, his shoulders quaking with panicked tears.
"No," he sobbed out. "Please don't… please d-don't do that…"
Allison stepped forward with an ugly sneer of disgust, slapping him hard across the face and silencing his pleas. She grabbed his face roughly, forcing his head up to look at her as she crouched in front of him.
"Don't you get it yet, baby?" she crooned with malicious amusement. "What you want doesn't matter. You… don't matter. We'll do whatever we want to do with you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!"
Her hand grasped his hair, painfully jerking his head down so that his face was against the carpet as she snarled imperiously in his ear.
"What are you, Barney?"
She'd already played this particular game of degradation with him more than once in the past few days, and Barney knew exactly what she wanted him to say – but it didn't get any less humiliating with repetition. His voice broke over the despairing words as he choked them out in helpless obedience.
"N-nothing… no one… worthless…"
"That's right," Allison agreed with satisfaction in her voice. "You're nothing but a worthless, filthy little whore who doesn't deserve to live." She smiled as she leaned down close to his face to add, "So you won't."
"Would you look at the time," Ryan remarked as she released Barney and stood up straight. "Time to get a move on, sweetheart."
They dragged Barney to his feet between them, and Allison smiled cheerfully up at him, a vicious gleam in her eyes as she clarified cruelly.
"That means your time is up, baby. Time to dispose of the body before we skip town."
Barney was too weak, in too much pain to fight, as they led him out the front door of the house and deep into the woods.
