by Britney King
Another reason to hate Paris. Everyone smokes.
Slipping into the hotel robe, I walk over to where she’s perched and show her his picture on my phone. She knows I know she knows him. And I know she knows how and where to locate him. The two have a relationship of sorts. “I need to find him.”
She shrugs and mumbles something in French.
“Can you tell me where he hangs out?”
“This, I do not know.”
I smile, walk across the room, and lay the phone on the table. I love it when people pretend not to speak your language but very obviously do. It makes things simple.
“He’s a friend of a friend,” I tell her. “I think he’s your friend as well, no?”
“We’ve spent time together. Yes.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
She takes a long pull on her cigarette and then shrugs as she turns her face to the ceiling and exhales. “La Tempête, perhaps.”
Dropping the robe, I walk over to her and place my hands gently on the side of her face. “Merci.”
Leaning in and kissing her on the mouth, I sigh. She tastes like stale cigarettes and easy lies. “You were wonderful.”
My hands cup her slender face as she takes a long drag from her cigarette. Before she gets the chance to exhale, I snap her neck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Charlotte
The club is everything I expected. When you’ve seen one of its kind, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The decor is black velvet and gold trim, the synthesis of luxury and comfort evident in every detail. You can dance, drink, and—if your pockets are deep enough— have whatever suits your tastes. With its incredible interior, which combines antique furniture with modern atmosphere, every wall is decorated with mirrors, which make the club more interesting, especially when they distort the bodies of the people writhing on the dance floor.
It’s already the wee hours of the morning by the time I arrive. I only have a few hours until daylight when the vampires who frequent these sorts of places will grow tired and take the party elsewhere, retreating to their respective covens.
The hours are weighing on me. I have a long night ahead, and I’m jet-lagged as it is.
Already I’ve put in a full day’s work and then some. It takes a lot to get a dead body out of a hotel room. I don’t know what I was thinking. We really should have gone to her place.
In order to make her fit into my oversized luggage bag, I had to break both of her legs and one of her arms. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been tiny. It’s a small miracle she was fit and trim, even by Parisian standards.
I rolled her straight out through the lobby and into the night. As I walked along the Seine, I thought of her tongue dancing with mine, her slender fingers, her shallow smile, and I wondered who might miss her.
I called home and spoke to Michael and the girls. They were busy living their lives, bickering with each other, sending pointless instant messages. It is not enough to stop and talk to me. I am their mother, a wife—there will always be tomorrow. In their eyes I will always be a given. They have no idea this could be the last time they hear my voice. It makes me wonder who the woman in the suitcase last spoke to by phone. Was it important? Was it someone she loved? Did they make it count?
Pointless questions on my part. I tell the girls I love them and Michael too. Then I switch off the phone, and when I am sure no one is looking, I simply kick the suitcase into the murky, cold black water. No doubt the suitcase will surface in time. The autopsy will rule her death a murder, but by then, I’ll be long gone.
Geoffrey Dunsmore is not in attendance tonight, but there’s no shortage of other people to look at. There are bodies everywhere. Naked, the young and the beautiful and seemingly restless.
It takes speaking to six people before I have an address in hand.
As I finish off my glass of white wine, searching the address on my phone, I glance up every once in a while, pausing to watch the patrons partake in various forms of sex. So far as I can tell, there’s no rhyme or reason to why two or more people partner up, and given the right mood, it might turn me on. Might even make me a little homesick, all the writhing, sweaty, eager bodies. It’s too bad none of them are the one I want.
Listening for the click of the lock, my eyes take a second to adjust as soft light floods the room. I can just make out two shadows through the crack I have left, so I slide the door open just a little more. This time, it’s my turn to watch.
Dunsmore turns to the girl and drapes his arm over her shoulders. He kisses her once lightly on the mouth and runs his hand across her cheek. Then he pulls her closer and kisses her roughly.
Dunsmore pulls away and looks at her through heavy-lidded eyes. Pure desire, barely contained.
The girl is young, but not as young as the ones in the video. This one may even be of age, but not by much. My body tenses, a thousand nerves exposed. The feeling in my stomach is sick, rolling like the ocean during a storm.
Through the doors of the armoire, I watch as he shrugs his jacket to the floor and starts for the buttons on his shirt. I have been hidden, wedged in here for hours now, my bladder painfully full, my head dizzy from stale air and a lack of oxygen.
Leaning forward, I see the girl come into focus. She reaches behind her and unzips her dress, making it clear that this is not her first dance with Geoffrey Dunsmore. It is evident in her eyes. She is aware of her allure. She takes up the space she inhabits confidently. She has learned how to use her body; the question is whether or not she really wants to, how much of this is an act.
Freed of the dress, the girl plops backward onto the bed, propped by her elbows, naked except for a pair of panties. Dunsmore walks slowly toward her, takes her leg by the ankle, and pulls her to the edge of the bed. He pops her foot into his mouth and sucks on her big toe before slowly moving his lips over the rest of her foot, swirling his tongue along the arch, nestling his face in it.
This goes on forever, as my bladder screams at me, until finally, he places the girl’s bent leg on the bed with a pat, and slithers toward the headboard like the snake he is. He is eager, his mouth hard at work, until he reaches the utmost point of her inner thigh. I register the sound, the tearing of panties, the rhythmic sound of the mattress.
As the rocking grows louder, erratic, and less predictable, I know this is my chance. Moving in time with Dunsmore’s grunting, I push the armoire door forward and slowly climb out.
He is on top of the girl, pumping away. I tiptoe across the room. The huffing grows as he moves harder and faster. Apart from the pale yellow glow flickering across the room, the moaning and skin slapping, I am surprised that I feel calm and in control.
Dunsmore’s naked backside comes into focus as I wrap the wire tightly around my fists. I lunge forward onto the bed, cat-like, and, kneeling over him, I place the steel wire across his throat. It sounds like percussion as I draw it tight, cutting into his flesh. He bucks against my legs, flapping like a fish out of water as his hands scramble for his throat. I can feel him tugging, pulling at the wire, although he is unable to make any headway, because the more he struggles, the tighter I pull.
With a yank upward, the steel wire brushes his windpipe, and I feel a slight give in his flesh. My eyes meet the girl’s. She stares uncomprehendingly up at me, her mouth open.
His fingers move as though he is playing a frantic piano tune, desperately trying to get a fix on the wire. In time, his body begins to convulse, shaking violently like a puppy attempting to shake a lead.
The girl begins to push at his chest, writhing to break free, hopelessly trying to avoid the blood that is raining down on her. Blood from Dunsmore’s severed neck paints the girl’s face, chest, and hands. Even as the convulsing begins to ebb and wane, the gurgling continues.
I do not let up on the wire, allowing it to move through his flesh, through his windpipe, severing his neck to the extent that my upper body strength will allow.
&n
bsp; Geoffrey Dunsmore is not a small man. My arms ache, my throat burns, breathing is shallow and comes rapidly.
When the tremors start, I cannot be sure whether they are his or mine, but eventually his body sputters like an old car running out of gas, and then the whole room goes still.
For a full minute, the girl stares at me before she moves to the far corner of the bed, covering herself, cowering in the corner like a frightened animal.
I climb over the corpse, search for his arm, his wrist tucked carefully under his giant belly. It takes some effort, but I manage to wriggle it free. Quickly, I remove his watch. The girl begins to cry, producing massive racking sobs. Only when I hold it up, does she pause. “A Rolex, of course,” I say, and then I smile, thinking Henry would be proud.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JC
It’s been a pretty rough twenty-four hours. First, I followed her to France, where I learned that not only does she have a penchant for sex clubs, she has a thing for old men. Disappointing, to say the least.
This is why you can’t leave people to their own vices.
This was apparent as I watched her in Paris, from a vantage point directly across the street. She wore a short blonde wig and heavy eye makeup covered by thick-rimmed glasses, making it obvious she didn’t want to be recognized.
The wig fell pleasantly around her face, and a heavy frown played across her face. She fidgeted often, alluding to a sense of nervousness that could only be explained by being in a foreign country, alone, at night.
She is the kind of woman who can’t bear to be on her own, something I find suitable to my tastes. This knowledge manifested as I watched her pick up a woman on the dance floor and take her back to her room. She’s full of surprises, this one. I wanted to be inside that hotel room, I wanted to see what she was like when she was undressed, when she made love, when she thought no one was looking.
I’d grown accustomed to this privilege, and there on that street corner in the cold and drizzle, I couldn’t help but feel cheated.
I waited a long while on that corner, standing in the dark, before I gave up. Fearing I might be noticed, I retreated to my room, stopping first at the front desk, where I paid the night attendant to text me if and when Charlotte left her room.
Women are so willing to sell other women out. She has no idea. This is why she needs me. This is why she needs to be careful. People will do almost anything for a buck.
I don’t know if I was surprised or not when the text came through. Watching her stroll along the banks of the Seine, I worried for her safety. She brought along her suitcase, which didn’t help her cause. She looked like a tourist. She was distracted, with her nose in her phone. I was concerned that she might have decided to head back early, but then she kicked the suitcase into the water, and I realized I had a lot more to worry about than being left behind.
What are you up to, Charlotte? I thought as I watched her enter that seedy club. Seeing her there, seeing her in that context, caused something in me to shift. She is a wife and a mother, but she is acting like a whore. I felt an anger building. Perhaps there was the sense of injustice, a level of disappointment I was coming to understand. Maybe she can’t be what I want her to be. Maybe she can’t be what anyone wants her to be.
All I know is, there is only one way to find out.
Can she sense that things are about to change—that life as she knows it hangs precariously in the balance? Can she feel my eyes on her? Does she have a sixth sense when it comes to monsters? Thinking about it makes me happy. Perversely, there is a part of me that hopes she does possess an extra sense for detecting evil. But I’ve been watching her for weeks; I know she is completely oblivious to my presence. Even when she is aware that I exist in the same space, she stays fixed in her own world, easily banishing me to its outskirts.
From France, she stewarded my return flight to Dallas, on which she spoke a total of eight words to me. She has to be the worst flight attendant in history. Of the three businessmen and me, everyone said it, at least once.
It’s hard to be good at your job when you’ve spent so much time on nefarious distractions. I’m worried about her. She looks sickly, her face gaunt and pale, truth be told. With heavy bags and dark circles under her eyes, it’s blatantly clear—the nightlife is not for her.
Once the passengers deplaned and we refueled, she was scheduled for my chartered flight to Anchorage. After a brief layover, and a change of crew, we set course for Alaska.
Now, it is just the two of us. Exactly as it should be.
You really have no idea what it takes to get her alone.
The pilots are with her too.
Although, they don’t count. They’re dead.
So, it’s just me up here in the cockpit. Me and a dispensary of half-empty pill bottles. Xanax, Valium, codeine, Adderall—pretty much anything you could want— I have it all lined up in a neat little row on top of the instrument panel.
Maybe it’s worth mentioning, I’m not usually this laid back. Second thing you should know, I don’t typically fly while under the influence, but this is what you could call a special circumstance.
Up here, where the air is thin, there’s just us trying to stay above the weather.
Well, at least one of us is trying.
The other one is all sad-eyed and what you could call emotional. Could be the zip ties. It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of taking things too far.
That and well… she doesn’t particularly care for the term “hostage.” Obviously, this is more than that. If anyone has been the captive in this whole ordeal, it’s me. Could be, too, that she’s thinking about her children. They’ll be fine. I did my best to assure her. They’re old enough to make their own food, tie their own shoes. They have a spare parent. Not everyone is so lucky, I said. Not everyone gets to have two.
She didn’t seem comforted by this, but then, she’s always had a bit of a poker face.
Maybe the two of us are more alike than we are different.
Originally, my plan was to take us down over the Pacific.
A suicide mission with an unwilling and unsuspecting victim.
But the better I feel, the more the pills kick in and work their magic, the more I see the possibility in a shitty situation. It makes me think I’m not yet ready for this fantasy to end.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Charlotte
I wake with a headache that feels like my head has been split in two. Right away, I notice several things at once: it is dark, my breathing is labored and shallow, and in a terrible twist of irony, I am folded in an impossible position and wedged into a very small space. Am I moving? My vision is hazy, my eyes open and close rapidly, out of instinct, to gain a semblance of balance, recognition of anything I can use as information. Knowledge is power, and I know this from SERE training: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. In this situation, every bit of information counts.
What I know is I am in a moving vehicle. Ripped vinyl tears at my back, a sensation made worse with each bump and groove in the road. My hands are still tied behind my back, just as they had been on the plane. My ankles are bound by duct tape and my legs are decidedly very heavy.
Flexing my feet back and forth, I wiggle my toes, trying to get blood flowing. Any attempt at an escape is going to require running. Having the use of my legs is not optional. It is imperative.
My first instinct is to fight. It’s a battle between what my brain and my body is telling me to do. That’s what you do when your worst nightmare is playing out in front of you. It takes everything in me to metaphorically step back and evaluate the situation. For the most part, this is an involuntary response, perfected over millenniums, a flood of chemicals that contribute to the flight or fight mechanism hardwired into our brains. My training reinforced that, teaching me how to override it.
Taking a deep breath in, I hold it. Then let it out. I repeat the process over and over until I’m lightheaded but almost calm. I remind myself that h
alf the battle is in waiting for a time to escape that maximizes my chance of being successful. Most captives do not get the chance to escape twice.
My nervous system will assist me, I know from SERE, but overriding my sense of fear is critical. It will be a hindrance. Physical skills will be worthless if I’m so frozen or paralyzed by the psychological and mental aspects of events going on around me that I am helpless.
As my breathing steadies, I think back on what I know about escape. Awareness and attitude are at their peak for the first 24-72 hours. Before captors have introduced any sort of routine. This is, of course, if they plan to keep you alive. Fact is, most of the time they don’t.
I have to use this initial time to my advantage. In any abduction, the best chance of escape happens while your captors are on the move and during that initial two to three days.
I tell myself this, force myself to think about these things, but all of this knowledge, this training, means nothing now. Not until it happens can you really know what to do and how to act. Until the training is put into action, it’s just information. And what they don’t tell you, what you can’t know, is how the fear settles deep in your bones, embedding itself in every fiber of your being. This has always been the worst of all my fears, being detained and tortured until I’m ultimately killed. I’d been careful to avoid it. I followed the rules in terms of becoming invisible. I’ve kept my head down. I changed my appearance, I took what I thought were calculated risks. And still, my worst nightmare has found me. I can hear my father’s voice in my head, asking me, “What now?”
I drift in and out of sleep. The truck rocks along slowly. I am slung haphazardly over the seat in the small cab. I know I have been drugged. My head swims and bounces across the worn vinyl seat heavily. I don’t think I could lift it if I tried.