It took Boris weeks to find Janelle in the suspected Budva area. The locals, familiar with Janelle Stone's case since it had made international headlines, were only too happy to point her out with barely any explanation needed.
The impression he got was that the locals steered clear of her whenever possible and the nutjob kept to herself. He could see that once he finally spotted her carrying a ton of grocery bags back to her place with no one greeting her along the way, let alone to help her with her heavy load.
Not surprisingly, the bitch had replaced much of the weight she lost and was no doubt eating like a pig with the money she was living off of—based on the amount of groceries she was carrying—unless she just liked to stock up so she wouldn't have to shop as often.
The woman looked awful. Just truly awful. She was in her late 60s and looked like she was pushing 90. She had always had lousy posture, but now she was much more stooped as she walked. Her skin was sickly pale, and it was obvious that the long, thick, curly blonde hair on her head belonged to a wig.
He wasn't sure if she would recognize him from a distance. Where he was clean-shaven in the past, he now sported a beard and a mustache. Pulling his touristy-looking hat further over his forehead, he crossed the street and began to follow her. A couple of minutes later, they were entering a small house overlooking the sea. There was no way in hell he was going to sit back and let her live in such splendor at a dead guy's expense. Even if the guy had been a monster, Janelle Stone didn't deserve this lavish lifestyle, and he would soon put an end to it. He just had to be careful. He would only be safe when he was back in his own country.
He hadn't rehearsed in advance what he would say when he found her. He knew that planning ahead wouldn't do him much good because he couldn't predict what the situation would be. He definitely had never envisioned becoming her hostage.
He followed the sicko down a short path to her front door, where she placed the grocery bags on the ground to unlock the door. Once she had the door standing open, she spun around quicker than he knew what was happening, grabbed him, yanked him inside, and slammed the door shut.
Instinctively, Boris began to fight back with a slew of punches, all of which bounced off Janelle as if he had been punching a mattress. With each punch he threw, she deflected the blow by batting his arms away, reminding him of Wonder Woman deflecting bullets.
"This isn't happening," he thought to himself as real panic began to well up within him. "This just isn't happening."
"I thought you might hunt me down someday," said Stone. "The obsessed usually do. That's okay, though. I'm bored at the moment and would love to have some fun."
Boris began to shout.
"Yell all you want. The neighbors are far enough away, and this place is built of stone. The house also has soundproof windows."
"You'll never get away with this!" Boris shouted.
"We'll see about that," Janelle said, grabbing him by the wrists and yanking his arms behind him. She pushed him forward. "Come on, baldy. Let's get you tied up."
Despite putting up the fight of his life, Boris was subdued when Janelle stomped on the bridge of one of his feet, breaking the bones. He let out a blood-curdling scream of pain, but true to Janelle's word, no one seemed to hear. She furthered his agony by breaking most of his fingers.
Jet-black eyes filled with fury and devoid of humanity stared at him as he continued to scream in pain.
Janelle then pushed a limping Boris onto a chair, where she tied him up with some rope she quickly ran to fetch. After he was secure, she said, "Now shut up and listen to me."
Boris was crying like he hadn't cried since he was a baby. Tears were literally streaming down his face as he begged for his life to no avail.
"Shut up, or I'll make it worse!" Stone screamed. "One wrong move and I'll break your wrists and the other foot. If that isn't enough, I'll take out a kneecap. Still loud enough, and I'll take out the other kneecap. Then, if I have to, I'll move onto the elbows and shoulders. I will."
Boris, now hyperventilating and in shock, disbelief, and pain like he'd never felt before, did everything he could to comply. He dropped his screams to a whimper.
"That's better," said the psycho before him. "Just one wrong move and I'll take out one bone at a time if I have to."
"Please, please don't," he cried softly. "What is the point of this?"
"The point of showing you what it's like to be held hostage? Oh, that's easy. It's called payback for all the hell you put me through. You ran me out of my own damn country, although in the end, you actually did me a favor. Luke was great to me until I had to kill him when I found out he was trying to sell me when he no longer needed me for his stupid experiments, some of which made me puke my guts out for days, along with other things. I got a free house in the end, a beautiful view, a country that will keep me safe, and a ton of money. What more can I ask for at this point, since most of my family is now dead and there was no getting back with Steven?"
"You'll never get away with this!"
"Sure, I will. I got away with killing Luke after all, and it's been a year."
"That was different. Many people know I'm here," Boris lied, wishing to hell he hadn't kept her for himself after all.
"You know there's no extradition treaty."
"Doesn't matter if you commit the crime here. Montenegro is going to get you for this."
"No, they won't. If anything, they'll protect me when I tell them that some crazy tourist obsessed with me after reading about me online came looking for me and tried to kill me."
Boris hated that, if anything, this was the one and only time Janelle was actually speaking the truth. He was doomed, and he knew it. No one would ever find out where he was. He had booked his flight under an alias and always made sure his online activity wasn't traceable. The best he could hope for was that it would be a swift and easy death that awaited him.
"How did you find me?"
Boris said nothing.
Janelle smacked him across the face. Hot liquid spilled over his lips. "It was your fucking blog!" he shouted.
A flicker of alarm crossed Janelle's features, and she quickly crossed the room and woke up the screen of a large desktop.
"Won’t do you any good to delete it. Things are forever online, and law enforcement all over the world is already aware of it," he told her. At least the first part of that was true.
Janelle said nothing, which kind of surprised him for a woman who had an answer for everything. Instead, she tapped away at the keyboard, presumably deleting her blog. Then she got up and used the bathroom, which was nearby. When she emerged, she went into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a pair of scissors.
His heart rate sped up.
"Okay, come on," Janelle said, instructing him to stand up and follow her. She cut him free and then used the scissors to cut his clothes off.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he demanded.
She faced him and said, "We're going outside, and if you so much as utter a peep, I swear I'll slit your throat and end you right now, right here."
Seeing the seriousness in her eyes, he agreed to keep quiet, but before they got outside, he said, "Are you seriously going to take me outside butt-naked and not expect to draw attention?"
Without answering, she got behind him and shoved him toward the door. He limped in pain, trying not to cry out. His fingers were in agony, so there was no way he could throw punches or grab anything, and she knew it.
Then, stepping in front of him, she pulled open the door and reminded him to stay quiet. Instead of going down the same sidewalk they had walked up, they veered toward the side. Boris was grateful that no one was on the street and there was a lot of lush vegetation around to hide him and his embarrassing state. At the same time, he wanted someone to spot them and save him from this creature from hell disguised as a human.
They rounded the corner of the house, and that's when he saw the car in the carport. So, Janelle Stone had learned to drive.
She shoved him into the back seat, and then they drove for what seemed like quite a while. They appeared to be going away from the coast and up into the mountains. He started seeing more and more trees in place of houses, and a bad feeling was coming over him quickly.
She eventually stopped the car, dragged him out of the back seat and onto the ground in all his naked glory, and then got back in the car and drove away, leaving him without a single object and shivering in the rapidly cooling temperatures.
Boris Brownly knew he would die that night.
ns216.73.216.154da2
