Since I'm writing again, I thought I may as well pick this one up and dust it off, it's so close to being finished anyway. Sorry for the 10 year wait…

Chapter 23

I woke with a clear feeling of dread in my stomach. I had been kidnapped. Again. Ranger was going to be losing his shit. I hoped he had let Woody and Lester live. Still, hopefully I had my tracker on me.

I kept my eyes closed a moment, no sounds of a kidnapper. I cautiously opened my eyes. I was in a small box room. I was sat on a metal chair, with my hands and arms all tied to the chair with plastic zip ties. Fuck. I was in a white flowing smock dress. No underwear. Well, that creeped me out. Deal with it another time, I thought. My kidnapper had left my converses on but nothing else. Well hell, he had probably found the transmitter then. I'm on my own.

I was looking round for something, anything I could use to get the plastic zip ties off. I was feeling the dark tendrils of panic when I couldn't see anything sharp anywhere. The room was completely empty except for me and the chair.

The door to the room burst open and an ordinary looking man was there. He was about 5'8", with round glasses and sandy hair.

"Hi," I said, "there seems to have been a mistake here."

He laughed and it was a bit high pitched, "no mistake Stephanie. My Stephanie. I realise now the other one wasn't meant to be. That's probably why she was so sub par. But you are just perfect."

"Um, thanks. If I'm perfect, why don't you let me go out of this room and we can go for a date."

His eyes darkened and his fists clenched. "No dating! That was my mistake with the other Stephanie. I took her to the cinema and she LAUGHED at me. I just tripped and spilled some popcorn and she laughed at me. And then she wouldn't see me again. She saw me again in the end." He laughed, "wasn't she surprised then? She didn't laugh this time."

All my alarm bells were ringing, this guy didn't have a sane bone in his body. I remember Renee had described one of the guys who had had a lousy cinema date with Stephanie Orrato. Phoenix something his name was. He was on the list that Ranger had. Ranger would be working on it still. I just needed to stay alive until then.

He continued, "and then I found you! The Bombshell Bounty Hunter. You are perfect for me. We'll start tonight when the moon is high. You'll scream and scream to the moon and she will bless you. It will be beautiful."

I didn't reply, I didn't want to say anything to make him start sooner. It was still afternoon time from the lighting. So if he was waiting until night, I had time. Time for Ranger to find me, time for me to escape, time to live a little more without being raped and flayed. Christ.

Phoenix gave me a kiss on the lips and I stayed completely still. He smiled at me, "soon my love, soon." He promised and then he left the room, slamming the door shut.

Ok Stephanie, it's go time. Get yourself the fuck out of here. I needed to free my hands and feet. I looked again at the ties. The metal chair legs! I could free my feet if I rocked the chair back. I carefully pushed my weight back, luckily there was a wall behind me, stopping the chair from falling. With the front two legs elevated I shuffled my feet down so the plastic zip ties fell off the chair legs. Ok, legs free, this was an improvement. I brought my converses up to my right hand and started undoing the laces. When the lace was all but free I then tied it securely to the shoe, giving me a huge span of shoelace to work with, while the other end was secured to the shoe.

Then I spent a good few minutes trying to position the shoelace end under the plastic tie. Eventually I succeeded and I pulled it through. My plan was to use the friction of the lace to snap the zip tie. I tied the free side of the lace, now looped through the zip tie, to my other shoe. I started cycling my legs in a bicycle motion and to my surprise it wasn't even a minute before the zip tie snapped.

Trying to keep calm, I undid one end of the shoelace and repeated the process of threading it through the zip tie. Once that was done I reattached it to the other shoe and I started bicycling my legs again. SNAP.

Ok, stay calm Stephanie. I was free from the chair, but not free from my kidnapper. I checked myself over. Definitely no underwear; no knickers or bra. Creepy. Ok, no phone, no GPS, no weapons. I needed to get a weapon. The room was bare, that meant I had to leave the room. I looked out the window. We were in a normal residential street. There was a car on the drive in front of this house. Probably Phoenix was still in the house. I could try and sneak out, or I could try and take him down.

Sneaking out meant this wasn't over. He could just keep coming. True, I knew who he was still, but it wouldn't be over. I wanted it to be over. I wanted to be able to use Ranger's pool in the batcave and say one long word to him lots of times. Dammit. My eyes filled up. This wasn't the time to get emotional Stephanie, I told myself. Denial land was far away today.

I re tied my shoelaces. Just my luck if I break my neck going down the stairs because I tripped over my laces. Ok it really is go time. I went to open the door, it was jammed a little. Guess that was why Phoenix had a dramatic entrance and exit. I tugged a little more and the door opened quickly, I just managed to stop it banging into the wall. I was at the top of a stairway on a landing. 3 other doors on the landing. Phoneix could be behind any one of them.

I debated clearing all of the upstairs but I was pretty confident I had heard him go down, and I didn't want to alert him by creeping around upstairs, this could be a creaky floorboard house. My heart was hammering.

I creeped slowly down the stairs, painfully slowly. I could hear noises downstairs. Phoenix had the TV on. One of the doors downstairs was halfway open. I crept up to it and peeked round it.

It was a kitchen diner. Phoenix had his back to me. He had a wall mounted TV on the kitchen wall, and he was watching a game show. Behind him bacon was frying in a frying pan on the stove. This was my opportunity. I skirted round the open door, lifted the frying pan from the stove and hit him round the head as hard as I could. As he fell his head struck the marble kitchen counter and blood started pooling around him instantly.

I stood over him, frying pan at the ready if he so much as twitched. I was terrified. After a very long minute I looked around for a phone. There was a wall mounted phone on the far wall.

I had seen a lot of horror movies. And the supposed to be dead guy always grabbed an ankle as the heroine went passed. I walked slowly around him, feeling close to hyperventilating. I kept my eyes locked on him and the frying pan ready. I was going to bash his brains out if he moved. He wanted to rape me and whip me. I wasn't going to let him do that. No way, no how. I unhooked the phone and dialled Rangers number from memory, keeping me eyes on Phoenix.

"Yo." Came his voice and I almost lost it right then and there.

"Raaaanger." I wailed.

"Babe? Tell me where you are."

It took a few breaths before I could speak, and when I did it came out as a stutter. "F..F…Phoenix's house. One of the Ex's Renee told us about."

"En route. Talk to me." He said soothingly, "are you safe?"

I looked at the prone body on the floor. He hadn't moved for a solid 5 minutes. "I think I've k…k…killed him." I was shaking so badly I could hardly hold the phone, I slid down the wall, still keeping my eyes on the body.

"Dead is good," Ranger said, "are you hurt?"

I shook my head no and then realised he couldn't see that. "He took all my clothes off when I was unconscious. I don't feel like he did anything…but I don't know." And that was a realisation I'd been trying to hold off thinking about or articulating. He had planned to rape me, did he care if I was conscious or not?

"We'll get you checked out," Ranger reassured me, "everything is going to be ok. Just a couple of minutes away Babe."

"Ok," I said. "Ok. There's a lot of blood. I hit his head with a frying pan. I didn't mean to kill him. I just wanted him down. But he hasn't moved Ranger." I was close to wailing again.

"Self-defence Babe, he was going to kill you."

"I know, I know he was. He was going to do it by moonlight he said. He was fucking nuts."

A thought crossed my brain, "Oh my god, Mary Lou, is she ok?"

"She's fine Babe, She's a bit upset but she was just stunned."

"Oh thank God." I said and the relief she was fine made me start to cry.

"I'm here Babe, one minute out." And I could hear the strain in his voice that it was hard to listen to me cry and not be able to hold me.

"Everything is going to be ok Babe, you're safe, you're ok." He repeated the soothing litany over and over. Then the front door was kicked open and in a moment there he was. Still holding his cell to his ear.

"Here you are." He said softly. He hung up the phone and pocketed it. He stepped around the body and the blood carefully.

"Let go of the frying pan Babe."

Everything felt kind of distant and funny. I felt myself nod and drop the pan. He picked me up and carried me bridal style out of the house. He sat down on the front lawn with me in his lap. Tank was on his phone. Calling the police I expect.

"I killed him?" I said to Ranger. He kissed my forehead. And I guess that was answer enough.