Leopard 03 - Burning Wild

cigarettes out on him. Cathy was. Her lovers did sometimes, just to please her.
    She could make them do anything she wanted no matter how cruel or humiliating. He knew them by sight, by scent, and someday he would ruin them. Money. Power. That was what they had and he needed.
    “Nobody cares, Ryan,” Cathy said, annoyed with the conversation.
    “Someone is going to see those burns and a reporter will get hold of it. We’ll be front-page news.”
    Ryan swung around, pointing a finger at her, his voice hardening. “I let you do what you want within reason, Cathy, but you aren’t going to ruin us with your senseless little games.”
    Cathy stabbed her cigarette into the tray. “Really?” Both eyebrows shot up. A crafty expression crossed her face and Jake’s stomach tightened. “We might get some great publicity, Ryan, if we can work it right. Our little boy beaten and abused by a trusted member of our household. Tears in front of the camera, me leaning on you. We photograph so well together. A close-up of our child in the hospital looking frail. We could run with that for a long time. I could host a charity event for battered children.
    It would open more possibilities and get us some great press.”
    “Agnes will be prosecuted and put in jail. She knows quite a bit about us.”
    “Don’t be stupid. If we do this, Agnes has to disappear.”
    “Cathy, you can’t be serious.”
    Cathy rolled her eyes. “You’re such a sniveling coward, Ryan. Do you think I’m going to let her talk to the police? Or to the press? Hardly.”
    Ryan turned his head slowly, something feral and predatory in his eyes. Cathy stiffened and lowered her eyes. “We have a very good arrangement, my dear, but perhaps you need another lesson in respecting your husband.”
    Jake felt his heart hammering loudly. He had never considered his father to be dangerous, but that look, that small movement, just a flexing of muscles, showed that beneath the seeming apathy, Ryan was every bit as cruel as Cathy, or even more so. He’d given himself away.
    Cathy pushed a hand through her hair. “No, no, of course not, honey. I’m sorry.”
    She was genuinely afraid. Jake, hidden as he was, could scent her fear permeating the room.
    The tension drained from Ryan and he forced a smile, but his eyes were flat and cold. “How are you going to keep the kid from talking?”
    Cathy visibly relaxed, and, even in the shadows, Jake felt the impact of evil. “He won’t talk. I can guarantee that. I have to plan this very carefully. We need a few warning signs, some things we can have on record that we discussed with the doctors, expressed our concerns, but no one can substantiate.” She rubbed her hands together. “This is good, Ryan. Maybe that skinny little rat will be worth something to us after all.”
    Instinctively Jake knew he was in for trouble. He had already made up his mind to survive, to beat them at their own game. He could be stronger. He’d seen how to do it. He had to be smarter and faster and more ruthless than any of them. He couldn’t stop them yet, but he could endure, and that too would strengthen him.
    He opened his hand and looked at the burns there. He had let her and her friend put out their cigarettes on him. He had been fast enough to get away, but he hadn’t been stupid about it, and he needed to remember this one moment, to mark the occasion so he would know he could be smarter, use his brains to defeat them. Down in his room, when he was certain he was alone, he took out a knife and slowly drew it over his thigh, making the first of many marks to prove to himself, to remind himself, that he had deliberately taken their punishment, that he had allowed it.
    SIX YEARS
    JAKE watched helplessly as Cathy and Ryan killed Agnes. They took tremendous pleasure in it. And they hurt her for a long time before they killed her. He was tied up and forced to watch as they systematically beat to death the woman who had raised him. Agnes had been cruel at times and apathetic at others, but at least she’d taken care of him. He knew what was coming next, because Cathy had told him what would happen to him. She’d smiled as she told him.
    When they were through beating him, Jake spent the next two weeks in the hospital, and he never once denied the allegations brought against his former nanny. She’d disappeared after viciously beating their son, Cathy and Ryan claimed.
    The police tried to question him, but he was broken, his bones