He crouched down to get closer to the men in the cell. “I’m going to go call you some help. Unfortunately, I left my satellite phone back at my cabin. That’s almost a two day walk from here and I’m feeling tired from waiting you fuckers out over the last week.” He knew his smile was evil as he added, “Don’t worry though, the rangers will find you eventually. In the meantime, you might bleed out. Or die of exposure. If I’m lucky, you’ll hold out for another twelve hours, maybe a day. Give you lots of time to think about your poor life choices.”
Standing, he felt clear, knowing he was doing the right thing, for the first time in a decade. Back then, the location had been the Congo when he’d taken out other men who obliterated entire villages and raped the women. Each time he’d pulled the trigger, he’d felt a sense of peace. Removing a cancer from the world that no one else could.
“Remember her name…Daphne Pierce. She endured almost two years of you scumbags and lived to identify you. Daphne is going to be okay, she’s going to live and start over. You…well, that isn’t really an option.” He gathered their belongings and walked to the mouth of the cave.
“For you, Daphne, they can’t hurt anyone ever again,” he whispered quietly as he headed back to his gear with the men’s screams behind him. He packed up, leaving no trace of his presence, and began the long trek back to his cabin.
Three days later, he emailed Noel Quincy with the location of the cave. He had taken a day to work on his generator and chop more firewood. The need for recuperation caused him to chuckle. He received a reply back thanking him with her phone number.
“Ms. Quincy, Ryan Wallace here. Yes ma’am. I subdued them with a non-lethal kill shot and put them in the cage they kept Daphne in. I guess it’s possible they’re still alive, ma’am.” He cleared his throat, “I marked the entrance with yellow paint. You have the coordinates in my earlier email. No, I haven’t called her. I thought you could do that. No, I…I think it’s better that way. Thank you, ma’am. Believe me when I say, it was my pleasure.”
They hung up shortly after and Ryan cleaned his weapons, showered, and made himself a huge steak with reheated roasted potatoes he’d made before he left and put in the freezer.
He was locking up the house and getting ready to turn in when the satellite phone went off. Lifting it to his ear, he said, “This is Wallace.” The other end of the line was quiet and Ryan sank into his chair. He waited patiently, nervously.
After what seemed like forever, Daphne said, “Ryan…it’s me. I just talked to Noel.”
He said nothing, unsure what he should say. Most people didn’t find it charming when you killed people, no matter the reason. Daphne’s opinion mattered to him. He didn’t want to frighten her with the other side of who he was.
There was a tremor to her voice, “I want to ask you something, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I want to know if…they suffered.”
Ryan briefly toyed with the idea of lying to her, glossing it over, and making himself seem less a monster. Instead, he cleared his throat and admitted, “They didn’t die fast or easy, Daphne. I shot them in the groin and locked them in your old cell. It would have taken…a long time for them to bleed out. They would have been in agony.”
He waited for the fear, the withdrawal. Nothing could have stunned him more than her telling him, “Thank you…thank you so much for making them suffer, Ryan. I’ll sleep better knowing that.”
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “How are you doing, Daphne?” his voice was carefully bland to keep from communicating the turmoil he was in.
There was a deep sigh from the woman currently too far away for his comfort. He wanted to know she was safe, see she was safe and had everything she needed. “I’m very tired, Ryan. I had surgery the day they flew me out. They’ll keep me here until…whenever.” A small gasping sob had Ryan clenching his fist. “I’m angrier than I would have thought. I never thought much about having children. It doesn’t seem like a big deal until you’re told you can’t have them. Suddenly a lot of options are taken away that you never considered.” Her voice broke and he gave her the time to regain control.
“They also gave me syphilis. At least it wasn’t herpes or AIDS, that’s the way I look at it. Always been a ‘silver lining’ gal, you know? I have this crazy high-dose antibiotic and like forty other pills, every new doctor prescribes me a new vitamin, a new anti-depressant, a new pain killer, a new miracle drug that will make me smile when I feel like…well, anyway.”
“Daphne, I’m sorry. I know a hundred people have said that to you and it doesn’t help. Not one fucking bit. Are you close to Janice?”
“Yes, I’m at the hospital in my hometown now so there are lots of…visitors, lots of people I knew when I was a different person. I feel…wrong here. I’m pretending like I belong but I don’t anymore. I don’t see anything the way other people do, Ryan. Not now, not after everything. I’m angry. I feel…violent. I want to hit things. Hurt people.”
Ryan sat back in the chair, “Daphne, you’ve been through severe trauma. There would be something wrong with you if you weren’t angry. Hell, I’m fucking furious and it didn’t happen to me. You need to cut yourself some slack. Stop defining your own behavior as normal or abnormal. Your situation is unique. You went through hell and anger is not only an appropriate response, it should be expected.”
They talked for over an hour, until Daphne was falling asleep on the other end of the line. He didn’t want to say goodbye. Hearing her voice after the time they’d been apart, after the things he’d done, was soothing. She needed her rest; there was no telling what medication they had her on. “Get some sleep, Daphne. If things get to be too much, call me. Anytime. I’m here.”
“Thank you, Ryan. For letting me rant and rave. Sleep well. I miss you. Goodnight.”
Ryan disconnected the phone, not moving as he thought about their conversation and what Daphne was going through. After a long time, he locked up and went to bed. He moved the phone to his nightstand, not wanting to miss her call if she woke up alone and afraid in the middle of the night.
For a long time, he stared at the place beside him, remembering Daphne sleeping there, pretending she was there now. When he reached out with one hand and smoothed the pillow, he mumbled to himself, “You’re an idiot, Wallace.”
Chapter Seven
The next several months passed in much the same way. Ryan hiked and read during the day. Occasionally, he did some remote consultations with doctors who sought his particular expertise. Really though, he waited for Daphne’s call. When it was just getting dark in his area of the world, she would call him. It was much later for her and he knew she was having trouble sleeping.
It was a couple of months after her hysterectomy before she was cleared for physical activity but when she was, she joined a women-only gym that offered martial arts classes. Every night, she’d tell him about her progress and he encouraged her to keep going.
“I love hitting the heavy bag, Ryan. I picture what I should have done, what I could have done. I was a wimp; I didn’t know any of this stuff. That will never happen again. I kick and hit that thing until I can’t lift my arms, until I can barely stand up. It’s the only way I can sleep.”
“That’s why I hike so hard. Stress relief that also keeps me in shape. You keep doing what you’re doing. And there was nothing you could have done back then, Daphne. Three violent men ambushed you. Surviving…everything you did…that was enough. You did enough. I’m just grateful every day that you survived.”
“I won’t ever be a victim again, Ryan.”
“I know you won’t. You were always strong. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have made it. Now you’re focusing on making your physical abilities match your mental abilities. You’re making yourself a serious badass.” That made her laugh, pulling her out of a particularly down day. Hearing Daphne laugh was the best reward, it lit him up inside, better than any alcohol buzz.
Her frustration hit a high n
ote after a long week of organized physical and psycho-therapy. She was exhausted mentally and physically. “I have fucking therapy three days a week now. Ryan, I’m going to lose complete control of my senses and strangle the woman with one of her stupid scarves. She always wears a scarf to match her outfit. She must have a hundred of them because I’ve never seen the same one twice.” She gave a laughing snort and it made Ryan grin.
“If she says, ‘and how does that make you feel, Dah-phne’ one more time, dear God, I’m going to lose it. I want to tell her, ‘look, stop pretending like we’re on the same wavelength because you have no fucking clue’. She doesn’t know, Ryan.”
“No. She doesn’t know, honey. No one can really know how it was for you. That must make you feel pretty isolated sometimes.”
“I love that you get that. That you hear me.”
“I hear you, Daphne.”
“They put me in a group session every Friday with other victims of sexual violence. I could stab out my eardrums, I swear to you. I get that everyone handles things differently, but there are women in there who cry all the fucking time. This woman was date raped and that is fucking awful. I can’t imagine being brutalized by someone you know. But she cries non-stop and I guess I don’t understand. I don’t get it. Get angry. Beat the fuck out of something and remember you can always fight. I won’t cry about it again, Ryan. I’m not sad about it. I’m furious.”
Two weeks later, she started running. She was working herself into physical exhaustion daily, trying to force her mind to quiet so she could sleep. Sometimes it worked. Too often, it didn’t. Daphne’s calls were coming several times a day at erratic times and Ryan realized she was calling him when she woke from nightmares.
He charted her progress for almost a month, amazed at how well she was doing. “I ran six miles today, Ryan. Before all this happened, I’d have been lucky to run a mile without stopping. I’m getting stronger.”
“I could not be prouder of what you’re doing, Daphne. What does Janice think?”
There was a long pause. “I tried to get her to run with me but she said she would pass out. I don’t think she knows how to talk to me anymore. We’d been the same once…now we couldn’t be more different. If someone asks me a question, I answer it. Sometimes, I’m too blunt but I don’t realize I am until she tells me. In my old life, I lived to please everyone around me. My happiness didn’t really matter. Not to me and not to anyone else. I won’t live like that now.”
“You can’t go backward. No one expects you to. She loves you, Daphne. I doubt that she doesn’t know how to talk to you. I think she’s censoring herself and I bet there is a lot of guilt in her heart.”
“Why should she feel guilty? She didn’t do anything. She looked for me the whole time.”
“But she was never able to find you, Daphne. Two years and she never found a trace. Then one day you manage to escape and walk out of hell. She has to be furious at herself.”
“I…I didn’t think of it like that, Ryan.” She was quiet for a long time, then said, “It changes how I look at the conversations we’ve had over the last several months. I’m so wrapped up in pretending to settle back into my old life that I forget what it was like for her while I was gone. She would have seen the reports when they found Steven.”
“Yes. She would have suspected what you were subjected to, sweetheart. Would have wondered if they would find your body in a ravine…abused like Steven’s had been. To know she couldn’t find you and that your abuse and pain went on for two years while she searched…she’s hurting inside.”
“I wish I could hug you, Ryan.” His heart gave two hard thumps. “She’s more a sister than my friend. I understand now.” They talked a few more minutes and disconnected. Ryan rubbed his chest as he stared into the fire. He wanted nothing more than to have Daphne hug him.
The next day, Daphne called to tell him he’d been right about Janice. “She cried so hard, Ryan. It was like she was trying to empty her insides out through her tears. She begged me for forgiveness. It was horrible but I’m so glad she was able to purge it from her system and I was able to tell her there was nothing…nothing to forgive.” He heard her breathing, slow and easy. “It helped drain some of my anger. A little bit of it.”
He asked her about her daily run. “Janice bought me an MP3. I used it for the first time today. I loaded it up with a bunch of rap and hard rock. I ran really well to that, better than running with only my thoughts in the background. I never used to listen to anything but country, a little bit of pop. Now that crap turns my stomach.” Ryan could hear her breathing accelerate through the phone and knew she was fighting back emotion.
“Happy endings are a crock. There are no happy endings, just changes of scene. The fucking play goes on forever.” She was quiet as she worked to pull herself together, as she always did. “Sometimes, I wonder why I didn’t just have the courage to off myself while I was in that cage. Why I didn’t do it when I had the chance the day I escaped. I had the knife. I knew I would never be the same. I’d always be this damaged thing…” Her voice was too quiet, with a darkness he recognized often in himself.
Ryan sat up in his chair, the phone gripped to his ear with white knuckles, “Daphne. Listen to me, I know you’re tired. I know you’re hurting and don’t know where you fit. But I’m telling you right now, you didn’t survive hell to quit now. You are not a thing…you are a beautiful, strong woman who is going to beat this. You cannot quit now. Please don’t give up, Daphne. Please.”
He waited through her silence, a vice around his heart. “Ryan, would you understand if I ended my life? Be honest, as only you ever are…would you hate me?”
He let the strength, the pain, of her words sink in as he thought carefully, his hand over his eyes. He wanted to lie to her. He knew he couldn’t, “Oh, Daphne. I…I would understand. I know the agony you’ve been through, that the nightmares keep you up nights. I know the rage you feel inside. I don’t want you to give up, not ever, but I could never hate you, sweetheart.”
Clearing his throat, he swallowed around the lump. “If you took your life, Daphne, I’m not sure how I would handle it. I think it would break something inside me to know you weren’t out there in the world.”
“I just…I’m useless. I have no purpose. I hate people, I hate this town, and I hate myself. When I get startled or scared, it sickens me. I hate being so fucking weak. I used to know who I was and now I don’t even feel human.”
She was panting for breath, struggling – as she often did – to keep her composure. “I try to talk to the idiot therapist about it but she gives me cute little sayings and pep talks. I’d love to be hard core honest with her…lady, I want to kill myself or someone else so how does that make you feel? But I’d end up in a padded room for sure and I can never be confined again. I really would lose my mind. There are people everywhere, Ryan. When they brush up against me on the sidewalk I could crawl right out of my skin. Listening to them, watching them, having to breathe the same air…I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“Daphne, what can I do to help you? I’ll do anything.” Ryan was pacing the living room, frantic with worry and too far away from the only person he’d been able to connect to in decades.
“You’re doing it right now, Ryan. You’re listening to what I can’t tell anyone else. You aren’t judging me and you’re the only person since all this started who will tell me the truth. You never lie to me, even when I can tell you really want to. Everyone else is afraid the truth will send me spiraling into a full psychotic break…when it’s the bullshit that’s going to accomplish that.” She took a deep breath, “Will you tell me your story, Ryan?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He’d known it would come to this, that the time to tell her about his own past couldn’t be avoided forever. “Daphne, I…”
“Ryan, nothing you tell me will change the way I see you as a person, as a man. Nothing. And I need to know about you, you know so much about me. More
than either of us wishes you did, I think.”
“No, Daphne. I could never know too much about you. No matter your scars, inside and out, you fascinate me. You make me feel. That is exciting and frightening.” Pulling on a jacket, he stepped outside with a pack of cigarettes he kept for emergencies.
She heard him light the match and said, “You used to smoke. You gave it up but you still need one when you’re really stressed out, don’t you? I’m sorry I’m pushing, Ryan.”
“No, Daphne…you aren’t pushing. Of all people, you have a right to know.” He cleared his throat and took a long drag of the cigarette. He’d always loved smoking, no matter how bad he knew it was for him. “I joined the military right out of high school. My family was dirt poor and I wanted to be able to get a good education. Back then, that meant enlisting in the service.”
The Hermit Page 6