3:30pm

48: "Where the hell is Stephen?!"

             <Why you wanna try me?>

•°•°•°•

Flashing lights behind my closed eyes. A blend of colors in my darkened vision. Ringing, loud, irritating ringing, in my ears. 

"Wake up."

The voice—muffled, barely audible, seemed to come to me from underwater.

I could feel a throbbing in my head as I struggled against the fogginess in my brain, fought against the darkness that intended to pull me back into oblivion. 

"Wake the fuck up!" 

This time I heard the voice louder, a second before a sharp, painful sting spread out across my right cheek. 

At the slap, which my brain, now fully alert, realized it to be, I raised my head, already awake.

The image of a man with blonde hair, cold, blue eyes and an unpleasant, unsettling smile across his thin lips loomed over me as I slowly opened my eyes.

"I knew a slap would do the trick," the man said, his eerie smile stretching wider.

"Johnny." I breathed. 

It was only a thought, one ever so subtly whispered in my mind, but, unknowingly, I'd voiced it.

"Of course you know my name." The man drew back, standing to his full height and raking his long hair backward and away from his face.

Only then did the realization set in. I'd been knocked out and now I was in some kind of dingy basement room, in a hot seat—literally—with Johnny. And we were alone.

My heart rate spiked at the thought, as tension began to build up in my muscles, knowing there was little I could do to defend myself bound tightly to a chair with a rather uncomfortable padding.

I stared at the man a few inches across from me. From his facial expression, an amused one by the way, he seemed to have noticed that I'd been fully roused now.

The first word that came to my mind on locking eyes with him was "please", and I was damn right about to voice it when, on a second thought, being one who'd seen a lot of movies where the victim began begging while the captor revels in their tears, I bit down on my lower lip. Bit down so hard I almost drew blood, just to stop myself from saying the word.

"So," Johnny started, his gaze trained on me as he reached a hand back and grabbed the metal seat behind him. "You're the infamous Cleo, huh."

He placed the seat before him and sat down, resting his arms on its head. His eyes never left my face all the while.

I wasn't going to show him that I was scared out of my mind. That my heart was doing 360 miles per minute and my hands wouldn't stop shaking. I wasn't about to let him see any of that, so I stared back at him dead on, my hands clenched into fists to hide their trembling. 

"Cleo Petrakovski, is it?" He popped his eyebrows. 

I remained silent, wondering how he knew my name. Has Stephen told him about me? He could have. Probably did. 

But maybe he also didn't. I mean, Stephen had never mentioned anything about this part of his life to me. Not once, although the unintentional clues were all there, just that I was too blind to see them, so him telling some dirty cop about me was out of the question too.

Johnny's smile dropped significantly as he lowered his gaze from my face to my body, down to my legs and back up at my face. And then it returned, his evil smile, full on, this time reaching his eyes.