A few seconds later her mouth dropped low and her head swung sideways. Just as O’Neill’s voice mail beeped at me to begin leaving my message, Rachel’s hand slightly dropped the phone against her ear. “What?” I asked fearfully.
Frightfully, she whispered, “Thea’s missing.”
NEARLY UNDONE
(Nearly #3)
I'd risk anything to save her – even my freedom.
Megan Whitaker thought she had them beat – and then everything went to shit. Zander got to walk and Friggs was in the wind, and unfortunately, both were still hell-bent on making her his. Megan and Nick might’ve given Friggs the slip by hiding away in witness protection, but when Thea goes missing, nothing will keep Megan away. Not when her sister’s abduction was her fault.
Thea Whitaker’s dark new reality was something made of nightmares. Friggs might’ve only stolen her to lure out her sister, but it doesn’t keep the sadistic man from taking out his issues on her. Now it’s her turn to be on the receiving end of unspeakable acts, and though she prays her sister can find a way to free her, Thea also fears it, because she knows if Megan fails, Friggs’ will never let either of them go.
With Thea lost and no hope in sight, Megan begrudgingly beseeches the help of the one man who has the connections to find her. But enlisting Zander’s help will come at a price, and for Megan and Nick, it might just cost them everything they’ve been fighting so hard to protect.
Strength does not come from physical capacity.
It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi
Dear Diary,
Can I even say that? I feel like I’m too old to be saying that. The last time I even thought about writing something I was twelve.
Dear Journal,
January 18th
This feels stupid too but I need to get this down. I have to get it out and since I really can’t tell anyone, this is the only way it’s gonna happen. And I’m dead serious that I can’t tell anyone. Not after what happened to Claire. Who’s Megan now. Diary, I was so dumb. So fucking dumb. I had like the dumbest moment ever. Possibly life-threatening. A fucking ten on the Richter Scale. I’ve always paid attention to my surroundings. ALWAYS!!! But tonight the rain was pouring down like a fucking tsunami. My car died on the way home from work and my mother-fucking phone fritzed out and had zero reception. Worse, I had to take a detour I wasn’t completely familiar with because those freakin’ work crew morons blocked my usual route. All those things scream find a cab, right? Trust me, I tried. But with the damn weather it would take forever even if I found a phone. So I grabbed my cheap-ass umbrella and hoofed it.
Needless to say, I was not feeling it. I was still in my work skirt and heels and the rain was determined to be a bitch, my feet were sopping wet and the wind was blowing crazy. Seriously. I wasn’t kidding about the tsunami bit. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Okay, so you had a bad fucking night. I’m failing to see the uber-stupid part of this long-winded story.” Trust me, it’s coming.
So I’m walking down Mid Lane (I think) and I’m literally hunched into the tiniest ball ever trying to stay dry. The rain is pounding so hard on my umbrella that I literally can’t hear anything else. And I knew better. I KNEW!!! Especially in the dark.
And that’s when it happened.
One minute I was hurrying down the sidewalk shivering my cold, wet ass off and then suddenly some mother-fucking monster snatched my arm and threw me into the alley. Believe me, I screamed my ass off, but no one heard me. Hell, I could hardly hear myself over the damn rain crashing down.
I can’t tell you how many times I tried to get to my feet, but whoever that guy was, I couldn’t get him off me. I took a self-defense class after Megan went missing, but let me tell you, nothing I learned in that class helped me even a little. It’s like the guy knew every move I made before I made it. Like we rehearsed the fight over and over until we were fucking in-sync. It was that perfectly defended. And what’s worse? I think he actually did it to play with me. He was fucking laughing about it. It wasn’t until he got tired of the game that he just slapped the shit out of me.
And it fucking hurt.
It’s been hours and my cheek is still pink, but now the bruises are beginning to show, despite the icing I did. I won’t even be able to go to work for a couple of days because no makeup in the world is gonna hide this.
I’m fucking lucky this guy didn’t rape me. Not that he wasn’t trying. I was kicking and hitting and yelling and he was kicking and hitting and trying to keep me from yelling, but somewhere in the middle of all that he managed to rip at my clothes. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if that guy hadn’t shown up. One minute I was seriously in the depths of hell and the next I had an angel of mercy interfering on my behalf.
And I thought I was getting beat up. My angel laid a wallop on that asshole and sent him running on the wake of words I’d never heard strung together so effectively before. I’m not even gonna attempt to try and write them down. No way I could do them justice.
Unfortunately, my knight-in-shining-armor (NISA) (yeah, I know it should be KISA, but NISA just sounds better) didn’t escape unscathed. He had a cut above his eye that was bleeding way too much. He wouldn’t go to the hospital – too damn stubborn I suppose. Or maybe he thought it would make him look weak. NISA men just let it bleed, right? Nothing’s supposed to hurt them even when something does.
It took some profuse nagging on my part to get him to come home with me so I could clean it up for him.
…
…
Okay. Fine. I admit it. I wasn’t nagging so much as I was begging. Profusely. I didn’t want to walk home alone, okay? I was high on adrenaline and I needed to get home before it all crashed and I completely broke down.
I know, I know. It’s probably not the best idea to bring some stranger into my home right after another stranger tried to rape me and God knows what else – the reminder was there every time I looked down at myself making sure the wind hadn’t blown my torn blouse open. But all I was thinking at the moment was this guy was safe. He was safe to be around. If he wanted to hurt me he could’ve just done it there in the dark alley like that other creep was trying to do.
So shoot me for being clingy in a moment of weakness.
Anyways, I finally get home. My nerves are completely shot, clothes completely soaked – and ruined by massive rips…dickhead. I didn’t have any clothes for NISA, who hadn’t even told me his name yet, so all I could do was offer a towel to catch the drips. We were both soaked head to toe and looking pretty ragged. The rain had washed the blood away but the stain of his bravery lingered on the white button-up shirt I’m sure was starched and crisp before he met me.
He was in work clothes, too. Even saturated I could tell they were expensive. Made me wonder what a guy wearing that was doing out walking through the rain. But I didn’t ask. I was coming down from the adrenaline high and the facts of the evening were beginning to weigh me down. I could feel the humiliation kicking in. And the anger. Not for being attacked, but for letting it happen. The way I put myself out there like that, all vulnerable, just made me feel all the more stupid.
I was so dumb. How could I not sense that coming? How could I walk by myself at a late hour and not keep better track of my surroundings? God. All Megan did was pull over after getting hit by a following car that baited her into it. She was young and probably freaking out that Mom and Dad would kill her for getting into an accident. Me? I stupidly walk around asking for it. And I don’t have the naivety of age on my side.
I hope to hell I never let this happen again. I know better. I know how easy it is for a loved one to be ripped out of your life. God…had something happened to me tonight… My parents… I can’t even. They would’ve been so horrified. To have something like that happen to both daughters?
Like I said. Stupid.
…
…
His name was Matteo, by the way. The NISA guy. I don
’t remember much of the time I spent with him cleaning up his cut because I was seriously beginning to daze out at that point, trying to keep myself from breaking down right in front of him. So I don’t remember much. I’m not even sure if we talked. All I know is that he saved me tonight. In a big way.
And I don’t even know his last name.
January 27th
I don’t know how Megan lived through it. I really don’t.
Over and over again.
I can’t get it out of my head. It still feels like he’s grabbing me. Like he’s watching me. Waiting. And that awful cologne. Even saturated with rain it reeked to high heaven. It’s like his scent is stuck in my nose and out of nowhere I’ll suddenly smell it. It stops me dead in my tracks. Makes me sick to my stomach. Today I caught a whiff of it on this guy in the office and I couldn’t help but think, was it him? And even though he looks nothing like the guy, I can’t be around him. I avoid him all day long. Just because the smell makes me fall apart.
So how in the hell has Megan done this for so long? How does she not blame every other guy for what that one did?
I wish I could ask her.
February 2nd
What. The. Hell?
NISA guy came by tonight. Yeah. That one. Seriously.
I’m sure my words sound dumb because I’m still in shock.
He came by to check up on me. How sweet is that? I even agreed to meet him for dinner this weekend.
It took everything I had just to open the door because everything about that night still freaks me out. I almost didn’t go to the door, and trust me, I didn’t get there fast. It took me a moment to figure out who he was. I was standing there dumbly peeking through the hole just staring, my heart just pumping. My freaking hands were shaking. SHAKING! Because some random dude was outside my door. Apparently, that’s my new effing normal.
He must’ve figured I was there because he announced who he was. And I kinda had that “Oh!” moment. Can I just say that when he’s dried and cleaned up – Damn! I knew the guy was older than me but he’s still freaking hot. I’m guessing late thirties. Maybe forty? Either way too old for me.
February 4th
Did I say Matteo was too old for me? Age is but a number right? Especially when the guy has tighter abs than any guy I’ve ever dated that was my age.
Okay, I’m sure if you could talk you’d be like, “Wait. Hold up. How the hell could you know this?”
Dinner went really well. Like really well. And when he insisted on following me home there might have been some kissing. And touching.
…
Okay, okay, we might’ve ended up doing both of those things naked.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The guy could be twice my age because I still haven’t asked for a number. All I know is that man knows how to screw. And kiss. And touch. I’m tingling just thinking back on it. Maybe guys learn it with age because no guy I’ve been with could do all that! He had me in positions that had me orgasming in ways I didn’t know were possible. I never would’ve thought I’d like to be controlled like that. And I honestly can’t believe I did everything he said without hesitation. I’m still trembling from all the aftershocks.
And I seriously want more.
February 10th
OMG! OMG! OMG!
Please tell me I’m not in love. Is that what I’m feeling? I’m all crazy inside. Like those annoying butterflies have escaped my stomach and are giving me those damn flutters freaking everywhere! Especially where I want a certain dick to be constantly fucking me. He’s so damn passionate about it. Hard. Smooth. And the way his eyes stare me down… Like I’m the most delicious thing he’s ever devoured. But predatory at the same time. Like I was his to have, and only his.
Maybe it’s lust.
Lust is okay. But what if it’s love? I can’t tell my parents I’m in love with a thirty-eight year old man! I’m twenty-three! They’d totally freak out.
It’s fine if you want to say I have zero self-control. Whatever. But I seriously can’t quit him. And he’s apparently having the same problem because we’ve repeated that first evening every night this week.
I can’t tell you how sore I am on the inside. Night after night of that. I feel like I’m probably walking funny. And it’s either that or this astronomically wide smile on my face that has every one I’m working with giving me the look. You know the one.
But for some reason, when we’re together, all that discomfort goes away. Credit the endorphin rush if you will. Love or lust, I just don’t see myself stopping any time soon.
That was the last entry Thea made. She went missing before she could make another.
I closed the folder and stared down at the solid black cover, lazily rubbing my fingertips over the mildly bumpy texture of the folder.
It’s been three days since she didn’t show up for work. Two nights have passed and no guy named Matteo has come by like he apparently did every other night leading up to her disappearance. Call me crazy, but I doubt she had a fight and ordered him to leave her alone. Not after reading all that.
I didn’t care if it was Valentine’s Day weekend, she sure as hell wouldn’t go off without telling anyone. Like her journal said, she’d never do that to our parents after everything that happened to me. So that right there told me her disappearance was anything but voluntary.
This awful feeling has been festering deep within, rotting me away from the inside out. It worsens every time I force myself to read her journal. And every time I read it, it becomes even clearer how this was all a setup. The attack in the rain. The NISA coming to the rescue, then reinserting himself back into her life once she had the chance to settle back down. She didn’t write about the dates, but I was sure he said all the right things, made all the right moves. He was older, attractive. Behaved in a protective manner. Strong and attentive in bed.
The fact that he hadn’t come around again was the biggest red flag in history.
But unfortunately, Thea never told anyone about him. If she hadn’t written the journal, we wouldn’t even know he existed. Probably wouldn’t find it suspicious that bed linens had been thrown into the wash but not the dryer. They might not have searched her apartment for prints – which completely failed because apparently it was so thoroughly cleaned that even her own fingerprints were missing. All that remained were her roommate’s, who worked nights and never knew a guy had been coming around in the first place. Like he was trying to go unnoticed. The police were exhausting every effort to find this so-called Matteo, but I already knew it was a waste of time. Because to me the truth was obvious.
Matteo was really Friggs.
I thought she was safe. Everyone was in hiding. Had new names. But somehow he found her. And he took her. I knew he was doing this to hurt me. That he was trying to draw me out. Problem was, I had no way to find him. He was as much of a ghost to me as I was to him. He at least had the advantage of knowing my real name, and those of my family and friends.
But I had nothing. Friggs wasn’t even his real name. It was just the name he used in his underground black market world of slaves. As for that other name Zander provided, Carter Monroe? Turned out it was another alias that led nowhere. Sadly, the police didn’t know much more than I did. And unfortunately, there seemed to be only one man who did.
I stood to my feet and faced myself down in the mirror. The more I looked, the more I didn’t recognize myself. I’d spent so much time indoors and away from the sun this past year that I looked nothing like my before pictures. My long brown hair has darkened. My skin has lost its sun-kissed glow and was paler, more like Thea’s now. Even my brown eyes seemed duller, both in color and life in general. The world they’ve seen has deadened them some.
My fingertips grazed my cheek. It was like the more I stared, the more my features changed before my eyes. My skin didn’t look like my skin. The shape of my nose seemed different than what I remembered.
My fingertips lightly touched the skin where my v-neck e
xposed my chest. I used to have cut marks there. Used to have burn marks in several places across my body. Thanks to all those laser treatments, the only splotch that remained was on my right arm, where my skin looked lightly sunburned on a permanent basis.
Three years, three months, sixteen days since I was first stolen, since my life took such a disastrous turn that my life no longer felt like my own.
Who was I really? I’d been given so many names. Megan. Natalie. Apparently I was once a seventeen year old girl named Claire who had her whole life in front of her. Now? That innocent and naïve Claire in love with her high school sweetheart was long gone. Natalie was just a name Zander gave me. Megan? Megan might’ve suffered the worst because she had to deal with the aftermath of this never-ending nightmare.
Right now I was Rachel Givens, married to Jason Givens, who I wasn’t even really married to. Whose real-life sister was stolen.
My life was so fucked up.
I sighed deeply as I continued to stare, my reflection so blurred all I saw was a splash of ivory skin and a blob of brown hair morphed into the blue shirt I was wearing. More blurry blobs suddenly added to the mess and soon hands began kneading my shoulders. Gently. Lovingly.
Nick had been as frustrated as I had these past several days. Even though Thea was missing, we couldn’t come out of witness protection. Couldn’t do anything but exchange phone calls with the detectives who we’d dealt with in the past. The only reason I’d been given a copy of Thea’s journal was in hopes I could see something the detectives couldn’t. Not surprisingly, there was nothing there Thea was trying to write in some sisterly code that only I would recognize, no matter how many times I read it.
NEARLY Trilogy Page 61