“Do you have a sister? Or a girlfriend?” Once he replied girlfriend, I asked, “What’s the worst thing that could happen to her in your mind?”
The tension in his jaw intensified before he finally settled on, “She could be murdered.”
I released a single laugh, my hand reaching out to rip his hand from my chin. “Believe me when I tell you there are far worse things than murder.” At least for the girl. A solidary tear pushed past each eye, with more aching to follow their lead. Through gritted teeth, I quietly said, “I begged for death every day.”
After taking the time to deeply think on my comment, he asked, “How many days?”
“The first time or the second time I was taken?”
That silenced him, and I took the moment to turn away and sweep the stream of moisture across my cheeks. Without turning to face him, I replied, “Six months’ worth.” Five months, nineteen days, to be exact.
I sighed heavily, my eyes closing as my head began to shake, as I began to remember that basement prison. The dingy white walls that were rough to the touch. The noxious air choking my lungs, incapacitating me body and soul. I tried to kill myself in that prison, aching for it to come to an end by my own hand. But Charles figured out I was slowly starving myself and threatened to do far worse things if I didn’t begin eating again.
I felt so hopeless. I couldn’t even die.
“And that was just the first time. The second time I was stolen for only a week, but that’s the one I really can’t get past. He’s the reason I’m here.”
Jesse began pacing behind me, his shoes squeaking on the streaked and dented linoleum flooring.
“I have to ask. Even if there’s two of them, why do you think this will happen again? You’ve clearly gotten away twice now if you’re standing here in front of me.”
“Because they’re brothers. Charles was the one who kept me the first time. But I burned down his house to escape.” Jesse couldn’t help it. His eyes fell to my damaged forearm, which I didn’t bother trying to hide, though that uncomfortable feeling I normally got when people did that was begging me to tuck my arm away.
After a moment, I openly admitted, “He died in the fire. Then his brother Zander came for me. I was lucky that time. There was an ongoing investigation that led police to us. He managed to slip away, but not before telling me he’d come back for me once he got reestablished somewhere.” Somehow I found the courage to completely turn his way again. He had stopped his pacing at some point, his eyes dead set on mine in silence. “He’s fucked up on so many levels, but he’s a man of his word. He will come back for me.”
The door squeaked open, but before it could even be pushed all the way, Jesse boomed, “Not now,” without even turning around. But it was Annalise, and her eyes fell to mine once he yelled that. “Are you okay, Megan?” she asked.
I nodded firmly, also telling her with my eyes that I was fine. She offered a short nod in response, but she didn’t leave. “Jesse, you know the rules, and I expect you to come by the office before you leave.” To me, she added, “Megan, you’re free to walk out of this room at any time. If you feel you need a new partner, I can have a more mindful one ready by your next class. Just let me know.” Her eyes had fallen to Jesse’s back for that last bit, but she turned to give me one more reassuring nod before closing the door behind her, leaving me alone with Jesse once again.
We stood in silence for a long moment. Finally, I asked the obvious. “Are you in trouble now?”
“Don’t worry about it. She won’t trade me out unless you ask her to.” His eyes skirted to mine. Hesitantly, he asked, “Are you going to?”
I had to admit, getting it off my chest with someone other than Nick or my doctor felt a little cathartic. Like sharing what had happened to me lifted a small amount of the pressure that shoved against me on a daily basis. It wasn’t much, but trapping me in this room to talk it out hadn’t hurt me any.
“No, I don’t need to trade you out.”
Hell, he got me to respond far quicker than Dr. Vitriz ever had. I always thought a woman would make me more comfortable, but maybe I was wrong in that assumption. Jesse seemed to genuinely care, and his efforts to make me more reliant on myself made me respect him in a way others hadn’t yet.
I sighed deeply. “So what now?”
“Well,” he dragged out, rubbing at his chin. “I’d like your permission to fight you in a way you’re probably not going to like.”
It took a second, but my hands moved to smother my face, rubbing profusely against my brow bones. I knew what he was asking, and my heart quickened its beats. He wanted to make me fight my way out from under him. He wanted to attack me as if he intended to rape me. I automatically groaned at the thought.
“Megan, you know I’d never actually do anything to you, right? We’d just be going through the motions. We can even have a safe word to let me know you really mean for me to stop.”
My hands moved to my shoulders, squeezing tightly. “It’s not that, Jesse. You don’t understand how this guy works. He won’t…” I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “He’s not going to use his body weight against me, because if there’s something going on between us sexually, it’s because I don’t have a choice. I can’t fight him off.”
“Of course you can fight him off. And you always have a choice!”
“Yeah, I do have a choice!” I snapped back. “He always makes sure I have a fucking choice! The problem is, if I’m letting him touch me like that in the first place, it’s because my other choice is far worse! So I won’t be fighting him off me!”
Why the hell was I shouting? Luckily, it seemed the glass to this room was pretty thick, because no one outside working on the mats was paying us any attention.
I tried to steady my anger. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not really, but I’m guessing that once he gets his hands on you, you’re fucked.”
Blunt and literal. Awesome. My reaction was just as direct. My head tipped to the side in a mocking kind of a duh… fashion.
“So we need to do what we can to keep you from getting taken in the first place. How did they take you the first two times?”
“I don’t remember the first time. They apparently hit my car and I did a disappearing act, but I can’t remember any of it. Last time Zander shot my boyfriend and threatened to kill him if I didn’t go with him.”
His mouth dropped open a little. “You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?”
“He’s a master fucking manipulator. If he finds me, I’ve already lost.”
Now I was the one pacing. I’d spent many nights trying to think of ways to get me out of going with Zander, but it all came down to one thing. I couldn’t let him find me. There was no saving myself once he was close enough to see with my eyes. Even if we both had guns, I feared I’d still lose.
“Maybe you’re going at this the wrong way,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
“How so?”
“Well, you’re here to learn to defend yourself. Don’t get me wrong, you definitely should know how to do that, but that’s not what’s going to save your ass if the guy’s pointing a gun at you.”
“Okay…”
“What you need to be focusing on is how to be found once he does take you again.”
“If you’re thinking of involving the police, I’m going to stop you right there. They’re the reason Zander found me last time. That asshole has people working for him everywhere. And I mean everywhere.”
He paused to give me a what the fuck look, but quickly moved on to reply, “I don’t think you’ll need to involve the police with this until you’re taken, and by then you’re already taken, so they’ll just have to move fast enough to find you before he realizes they’re tracking you.”
“Tracking me?”
“I was thinking GPS.”
“GPS,” I parroted, shrugging my shoulders, not really agreeing with him. “It’s not like he’s going to let me keep my c
ell phone. And I’m pretty sure he’ll destroy everything I have when he takes me.”
“I was thinking more on the lines of like an internal lojack. You know, like they do with animals.”
I paused to think on it. Did they do that with people? Zander wouldn’t know about it, and he couldn’t destroy what he didn’t know about. My heart fired up, picking up speed as the excitement grew within me. That could actually work. “I don’t know anything about GPS. How would it work?”
He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. “I don’t really know either. But I have a friend in the security business. Let’s ask him.” He was already dialing, and after confirming that someone named Carlos was indeed at the store tonight, I was following Jesse on his motorcycle for half an hour as he led me to some street on the north side of Seattle. I parked beside him and scanned the store in front of me – Herrera Security Technologies.
“My friend’s name is Carlos and his partner is Miguel,” he told me as he climbed off his motorcycle, securing his helmet in his hand. “They’re good people but if you don’t want to tell them anything personal, we can just ask them some things hypothetically.” I nodded as he pulled the door open to let me in.
I don’t know what I was expecting – an office full of people monitoring home security systems or what – but what I got was an actual retail store specializing in all things security. There were hidden cameras like the one’s I’d been looking up, a selection of microphones and microchips, stun guns, heat sensors, even those alarm tags used on expensive clothing. Basically, everything but guns. It was like the Sharper Image of spy and security items.
“Huh,” I muttered, casually drifting case to case while Jesse disappeared in the back. I took it the guy behind the counter who said hello wasn’t Carlos or Miguel. A minute later he came back with two Hispanic guys. One had a round face with a thin beard that traced his jawline, the other more oval and clean shaved. Both had similar shades of light brown skin and dark hair. Carlos, who I was introduced to first, was the rounder one, and Miguel the taller, lankier one.
“I was asking them whether or not there were lojacks for people…” He led off, and it was because he expected one of the other two men to pick up, but it took several seconds for it to click for Carlos.
“Yeah, right. Um…those ones they put in animals are not GPS. They’re basically just a microchip that stores an identification number. Pet goes missing, microchip gets scanned, then the vet can look up the ID in a database and return the animal to its owner. Internal GPS isn’t easy.” I inwardly groaned, my balloon of excitement that lifted me to higher ground slowly deflating with each exhalation. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone out there is selling them. It’s just with GPS, there has to be a power source for the chip to continually send out its radio frequency, and you have to have a program set up to receive and record the transmissions. As you can imagine, we have no long term power source, so even if one was used internally, it would have to be removed time and time again to replace it or recharge it.”
Like I even cared that I would have to be cut into on a regular basis. So long as I could be found.
“But it’s still possible?” I asked hopefully. I didn’t care what the hell had to be done to get it into my body or the maintenance that came along with it. My only concern moving forward was the cost. Too bad there wasn’t an organization out there collecting donations to GPS people in dire need. That would’ve been an awesome help.
“Yeah, certainly. But you’re talking about something that’s probably experimental and really tiny, like the size of a single piece of rice. So the battery would have to be super tiny too. You’d be lucky to go a year before needing it pulled out.”
“Which would be super fun,” Miguel chimed in sarcastically, crossing his arms, “because by that point your muscles and fat or whatever was around it, would’ve begun to grow over it, maybe even covered it up.”
I couldn’t help but make an ew face. But still… “I don’t care. How do I find out if someone out there actually sells these things to the public or offers them up for beta testing?”
“Well, we can look into it for you if you can give us a few days,” Carlos replied, waving his hand between him and Miguel, looking to him for agreement. Miguel nodded his head amiably. “But are you sure you wouldn’t prefer something external? They’re vastly more available and will be a hell of a lot cheaper.”
I pressed my lips together and strongly shook my head, looking toward Jesse. He’d remained silent through this whole conversation and he returned my pressed smile. Obviously, if he planned to tell them the truth of why I wanted internal GPS, he hadn’t done it yet.
“All right. Well, we’ll let Jesse know what we find and get together then.”
I told them thank you and goodbye, even to Jesse, who was going to stick around a few minutes before heading back to catch the lesson that followed mine. Now he was probably going to tell them my dilemma, so I was more than ready to check out and head home.
I texted to let Maggie know I couldn’t meet her afterwards for coffee like we had planned. Technically, I could’ve still made it, but I just wanted to get home and share my good news with Nick. I laughed to myself when I reached to use the GPS on my phone to get me the hell back to a part of town I recognized. Who knew the answer was right there in front of me this whole time? Now more than ever, I was glad I stuck it out and kept Jesse as my partner. And for letting him know my secret. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t feel so jovial, because in just a few days, I might have a brand new way of staying safe. And for once, I felt really happy. Carefree. Like life was worth living again.
I heard the garage door open and close in the laundry room, followed by the five musical notes that activated our alarm, and I walked into the living room to meet with Megan. She was half an hour early. Stunned by the look on her face, my feet literally stopped. It was…a real smile, something I hadn’t seen in forever, and my own lips began to curl in response. She hadn’t smiled like that since she was sixteen and living without a care in the world. It was the before smile, and for those few seconds, it almost felt like nothing had changed between us, that her world hadn’t taken that devastating turn. It was the kind of smile I expected to see in that alternate universe where our lives went merrily on their ways without contest and Megan still went by the name Claire.
“Hi,” she said excitedly, dropping her bag on one of the barstools, her motion never even pausing as she practically skipped her way toward me. Her hands reached out and fixed themselves on the back of my neck, bringing my lips down to greet hers.
I was dreaming, right? In this reality, Megan didn’t act this way anymore.
But hell if I wasn’t going to take advantage of a decent dream for once. My arms slid around her waist, pressing her closer and closer against me. My mouth was hungry. Starving, in fact. I could sense the growl building inside my chest, ready to unleash as my hands braved a more exploratory mission, one going straight to cup her ass while the other longed to get knotted within her silky locks, even if they were still slightly damp from her workout.
She moaned, but still pulled away, leaving her arms draped around my neck. “No, wait. I want to talk to you.”
Damn. I rolled my head back, letting my eyes go even farther, my hands retreating back to their starting positions. Yep. I knew this couldn’t be real. “To hell with my life. Even in my dreams you turn me down,” I mumbled in frustration. My cock was twitching, actually get pissed by the teasing visuals my mind was already skipping ahead to.
She playfully smacked my chest. “You’re not dreaming. Look, for once I feel ecstatic inside, okay?” Her hands went up to rest flat against my chest, but she didn’t try to break free of the hold I had on her waist. “Jesse took me to meet these two guys who run a security company. And they think they might be able to get a hold of some kind of GPS device that I can insert inside my body that’ll act like a tracking device.”
“Like in the movies? People reall
y do that?”
“Apparently. They’re not popular, probably even experimental, but it’s something, right?” She didn’t wait for me to answer, her eyes lighting up and her smile shining brightly. “So forgive me if I’m out of character, but for once I feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. That I don’t have to fear the day when Zander comes, because I’ll know there’s a way to keep him from keeping me. That you and the police can actually come find me, and him in the process. Stealing me will actually be his downfall the next time I see him. And it makes me giddy inside. Fucking giddy.” She shoved me even harder, but I was brick wall compared to her, so I barely even rocked back.
“And you know how I want to celebrate?” She fisted my t-shirt and yanked me closer. “I want to sleep with my boyfriend, because for once, I actually want you to touch me and claim me for your own. Because I am yours.”
I couldn’t contain the smile that had been creeping upwards. I leaned in to kiss her but she cut me off at the pass. “But seriously, I need to shower first. I practiced with Maggie before class. I’m ick.”
I groaned and banged my head for effect as she slipped into the hall. She was finally willing to mess around again. If she seriously thought I was going to stand back and let her hands be the ones that got to lather soap all across her body, then she was certifiable. I gave her a three minute head start, then followed her down the hall, stripping my shirt and hopping to remove my pants before I even passed our bedroom threshold.
Before she could even say no, I shut the shower door behind me and drowned myself under the flow. My eyes were closed but I could hear the entertainment painting her voice. “What are you doing?”
“It seems we both need a shower. Figured we might as well share.”
“Uh-huh.”
Of course she didn’t believe me. I was always showered and ready for bed by the time she got home from class.
“Can I at least finish washing my hair before you accost me?”
Accost? She really was feeling good if she could use that word and mean it in a playful manner. It was cute the way she puckered her lips in a twisted way, her hand firmly covering up one side of those hips I loved to grasp.
NEARLY Trilogy Page 34