Always Watching

by LS Sygnet

  Wise man, Raul. He turned and fled from the room, securing his right to keep breathing. At least for the time being.

  “Fuck this,” Gillette hissed. He pulled his gun and aimed it between my eyes.

  “Go for it. If I’m dead, you don’t get paid, and I think we’ve already established that I’d rather die right now than become some pervert’s slave.”

  He pulled another implement from his back pocket. A moment later, a blue arc snapped between the metal clasps at its tip. “You’re not the first to fight me, Helen, and you damn sure won’t be the last.”

  Gillette moved in, rushed me from the side and pressed the stun gun against the tender border of my belly. Same as the first time, my body jerked, spasmed and the world faded to black.

  When I woke again, my first thought wasn’t for my clothing, or the passage of time. No, my immediate concern was for the tiny life nestled in my womb. Was he safe? Had the electrical charge harmed him?

  Angry tears welled in my eyes, not only because I worried for my baby, but because in all of my plotting, not one time had I stopped to consider that the consequences for him could be dire. I’d never felt so helpless in my entire life.

  Gillette crouched against the wall across the room. A large puddle bled out around his feet.

  “I’m still going to kill you, you know.”

  “I think not.”

  I pressed my feet against the wall and raised myself again. A new chain clanked.

  “It should slow down those lethal legs of yours,” he said drily. “Should’ve known better than to treat you like the average detainee. Lesson learned.”

  Not quite, asshole.

  Yes, there were shackles around my ankles now, but they were attached to nothing. I could still get a leg around his neck and snap it. In order to do it, Gillette would need to believe I was starting to break.

  Actually, it wasn’t much of a stretch. The desperation of my captivity, the worry for my baby, the fear that this son of a bitch just might succeed in fobbing me off to some unwitting buyer had me on the verge of a crying jag. No, it was probably 99 percent hormonal. That thing I couldn’t control any more than my homicidal urges rushed to the fore.

  Before I knew it, I was sobbing brokenly.

  Smirking, Gillette approached with his water hose. “That’s more like it. Now begins the first of many lessons.”

  The icy cold spray added another layer to my physical discomfort. There was nothing like the harsh stream of water pummeling me. Gillette spent an inordinate amount of time focusing the water on my breasts and between my legs. Emotional tears quickly evolved into ones evoked by the pain response.

  With a satisfied grunt, he tossed the hose aside and swaggered toward me. He unfastened his belt buckle as he walked. The zipper’s grind was eerily loud in the metal box that was my prison cell.

  “We can do this the easy way,” he paused in front of me and dragged his tongue in a slow circle around my navel. “Or as I suspect, you’ll want to do it the hard way. No matter. The end result will be the same, Helen. I’m going to fuck you, and there’s not a damn thing you can do or say to stop me.”

  “Please don’t,” I rasped. “I’m pregnant! Please, for the health of my child –”

  “Pregnant?” he gasped. “My, my! This is an added bonus. Thank you for telling me that, Helen. It increases your value – and my profit – considerably.” Vile fingers slipped between the folds of skin between my legs.

  The automatic response was to recoil from it. The chains securing my ankles clanged loudly against the wall. I had their mates in a death grip. They cut into my palms while I waited. Waited. Waited.

  Finally, Gillette looked down. He dropped his pants to his ankles. My legs flew up, the chain helping more than hindering when I got both limbs wrapped around his neck. I squeezed, all the while listening to Gillette wheeze and gasp for breath. His fingers clawed at the leg restraining his neck until warm blood oozed out the wounds.

  “Your buddy Preston was right about me, Gillette. This feels great. I guess I am nothing more than a cold blooded killer.”

  The nails digging into my flesh grew weaker.

  “See you in hell, Andy Gillette,” I rasped.

  A satisfying crunch reverberated from his neck through my leg. I released the body and panted heavily. Dead. Good. Son of a bitch.

  I spat on the body lying at my feet. He was close enough to use him as the missing floor. I pulled the chain in my hands and leveraged myself so I was standing tiptoe atop my latest victim.

  There was no plan for escape at the moment. Raul’s fear all but guaranteed that nobody else would bother me for the duration of this little pleasure cruise.

  So I stood waiting, wondering how the hell I would manage to get out of this predicament without killing the rest of the crew.

  Even so. Dead and adrift at sea was better than the alternative.

  Chapter 40

  My cell plunged into indefinite darkness after Raul showed up and found me standing on Gillette’s corpse. He ran shrieking from the room, his cries of el diablo and something about a senior tree – surely a symptom of my full-blown insanity – echoing behind him down the corridor. Fabulous. I’m a devil now, and maybe he wants to crucify me on an ancient tree. Since when is vigorous self-defense a sign of demonic possession or necessitate exorcism?

  No matter on the lights. There was no porthole in my region of confinement, so the passage of time could not be marked by light or the absence of it. I couldn’t use morning sickness either. The Celeste’s undulations were non-stop. So was my queasiness. I started thinking about the inevitable decomposition of the body beneath my feet.

  Lovely thought.

  Between Gillette’s putrefaction, the roiling sea and my queasy belly, the bouquet in the cargo bay promised to become rancid in short order. The moment of supreme satisfaction flagged in light of how wretched my environment was about to become. Plus, I still had no way off the ship. What if Raul returned with a decision that no amount of money in the world was worth the trouble and shot me?

  Perhaps I should play the devil card to my advantage if he ever came back. I could prey on his innate superstitions and make him believe that even if he killed my physical body, that the spirits within me would haunt him for eternity. Or I could just remind him that murderers go straight to hell.

  I knew that hours had passed since I snapped Gillette’s neck. The once firm flesh beneath my feet grew boggy. I was certain that if Raul had left the lights on, I’d be able to lift my feet and see the outline of my foot print in the developing livor mortis as the body progressed through the early stages of decay.

  Had Johnny or David figured out what happened to me yet? Would I die in this metal box before anybody discovered what Gillette had done?

  His words replayed in my mind. Martha Henderson. My first abductor. I closed my eyes and let the image of the police report flash through my mind. I’d require scientific evidence to prove the veracity of what Gillette implied with his brief statement. My date of birth seemed to bear out the claim.

  I thought of all the conversations I’d had with people over the years on the phenomenon of coincidence, particularly as it related to crime. I didn’t believe there was much happenstance in our world. My date of birth, coincidentally eleven minutes after Crevan’s was another case in point for disproving a random fluke.

  Was it possible?

  A rapid slideshow of moments flashed on the backs of my eyelids in reverse chronology. David with his profiler-dissection stare at dinner last night – or whenever it was. Crevan’s calm, gentle approach in opposite contrast to my explosive action-first method. Earlier in time, when we apprehended Fulk Underwood in Crevan’s apartment and the odd stare that Johnny gave us when Crevan and I embraced.

  And what about that? Had he seen something that looked familiar in the physical sense? Crevan’s eyes were a bit different than mine, more the chameleon hazel variety that changed with his moods. Mine are simply vibrant
green all the time. I’d seen Crevan’s that color before, when he was upset or agitated.

  Did mine possess the same chameleon quality that had merely gone unnoticed by me? I thought of my temperament over the years, specifically the past three when life as I knew it unraveled in a hurry. To say that I was generally upset and agitated was an understatement of grand proportion.

  Did Dad know about this? Memory reached back to its earliest depths. I used to crawl into Dad’s lap and beg him to tell me the story about the day that I was born. His eyes always grew misty when he retold what he claimed was the happiest day of his life.

  “My little sprout, when that nurse brought you out of the nursery and put you in my arms, this tiny, beautiful baby girl, I knew that the best years of my life were ahead of me because of you.”

  Not red-faced and screaming. Then again, Dad was working a case the night I was born. He hadn’t arrived at the hospital until the next day.

  Was it really a case that kept him away, or were he and my mother out buying a child?

  Uncertainty grew unbearable. It clawed at my raw emotions, a ruthless beast digging its way out of my chest. Of course I understood the necessity for the lie, and if I ever believed that my father stole children to place them in better homes, I would be a heavy mark in the column that validated that action.

  My heart ached for Crevan, growing up with Aidan Conall as his father. Intolerant, stubborn bastard. How would he have ever coped with a child like me? I grew up questioning everything. Was that part of who I innately am, or something that Wendell had nurtured until it fully blossomed into abject skepticism of everything?

  Johnny and I talked about the timing for my first visit to Wendell since his arraignment hearing. Not that it had been a visit per se. I’d merely seen him in court when he communicated his very last message to me, the location of the family’s ill-gotten gains. The look in his eyes, telling me to let him go and have a good life alone.

  Why? Why, why, why? A billion new questions formed, vied for dominance. The predominant winner in my mental battle was that I could not share what Gillette revealed to anyone. Getting a DNA sample from Crevan might be tricky. Could I do it? Would I survive this nightmare and ever have the opportunity to try, or would I be shuffled off in chains to my “owner” and forced to live under some obscene rule that stripped me of all human rights?

  Fight or flight. My heart knew the answer and readily agreed with the head for once. I’d rather fight and die than go into slavery willingly. If it was a fight they wanted, then I would continue to kill every human obstacle that stood in my way until none remained.

  Muffled voices approached in the corridor. One was high pitched, Spanish still. I could make out the “si, si” and “el Diablo” indicating that it was Raul again, perhaps coming back with reinforcements. Maybe I wouldn’t have the opportunity for another fight. It could very well be my execution approaching.

  A sense of calm acceptance washed over me. It was a good life, even with those shining moments of brilliant justice that some would call crimes. I could die at peace, knowing that a small group of corrupt bastards died at my hand. Or leg, as the case was in the man beneath my feet.

  The lower voice, the one whose tone was audible but words indistinct sounded agitated. I held my breath. The door banged open. The light from the hallway pierced my skull like a hot dagger. How long had I been in complete darkness? Long enough to become seriously photosensitive.

  Large shoulders filled the doorframe.

  “Jesus,” rasped followed by a gagging cough and an arm that flew over the face I could not see.

  Decomposition aided by high humidity no doubt. My parched throat ached. I held my tongue instead of crying out, “I’m here! Help me!”

  “Get the light, you son of a bitch. And don’t you dare play dumb about English.”

  My heart jumped in my chest. Johnny.

  The glass bulb in the middle of the room illuminated. Shadows receded to the periphery of the room where they swayed with the rocking motion of the ship.

  Johnny’s eyes met mine. “Helen,” he rasped.

  The stubble on his face had grown to the point where it was indistinguishable from the goatee. He rushed forward and lifted my weight off Gillette’s body. Strong arms wrapped around me. He buried his face in my flesh.

  “You came for me.”

  Tears ran over my skin, trickled down my belly to the cleft between my legs. “Of course I came for you. Jesus Christ, I’ve been sick thinking about… ”

  “I’m okay. Gillette and Captain Umberto, not so much.”

  He sniffled. “Good girl.”

  “I don’t know what they did with my clothes. I need to get off this wall. I think my shoulders are dislocated. I don’t know who has the keys to the shackles.” I’m pretty sure that my rapid-fire thoughts were disorganized and nonsensical.

  Johnny nodded. “Okay, baby. We’ll get you down.”

  “We?”

  “I’ve got a whole team of people securing the ship. Crevan, David, Mackenzie, hell, half of Darkwater Bay PD signed up to help overtake this ship and get you back.”

  I groaned. “Johnny, I don’t want people to see me this way.” What the hell happened to my voice? I knew my tongue felt like leather.

  “Shh,” he soothed. “Don’t try to talk.”

  “What day is this?”

  “Friday.”

  Shit. Panic gripped me. My fingers curled around the chains numbly. I jerked at the them and fractured nails clawing at the restraint. “I’ve got to get free!”

  “It’s all right, honey. You’re safe now. I have to let you go for a minute to search Gillette’s body for a key.”

  “No! No, Johnny! You don’t understand! They’re meeting the man who is buying me today. Friday, that’s the day. I’ve got to get out of here!”

  Another notion invaded my head, a corkscrew worm of a virus. What if this was a hallucination, some dehydration induced delusion that made me believe Johnny had arrived in the nick of time to save me? The border between sanity and psychosis evaporated in my mind. How would I ever know the difference between hell and the real world again? How could I trust anyone or anything?

  “Honey, you are safe.” Johnny eased my aching body lower without jolting my sockets from the increased pressure of supporting my body weight. “We found you off Cleveland Island in Alaska. There’s a Coast Guard ship right next to The Celeste. There was another ship in the area, but they left when they saw the Coast Guard –”

  “You’re lying,” I rasped. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Tell me something that will prove you’re real, that I’m not dying and only seeing what I want to see.”

  Johnny leaned into me. His lips grazed my dry skin. “We arrested Destiny Gerard at Datello’s penthouse. She was trying to abduct the baby again.”

  I snorted. “Nice try. I already knew they would try to do that, as well as spring Melissa Sherman from county jail.”

  Johnny’s laughter tickled my desensitized flesh in a vague sort of dissociative way. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me? You’re always ten steps ahead of the rest of us. Let me look through Gillette’s pockets for the keys, hmm? If I get you down, maybe that’ll convince you that this is real.”

  “There’s someone else involved in this Johnny, another conspirator. I think I know who it is.”

  The warmth pressed against my body vanished. Johnny knelt at my feet and gingerly picked through the mess. Occasional coughs floated upward.

  “Sorry about the smell.”

  Johnny chuckled. “You’re alive. I think I can deal with this.”

  “Please tell me this is real.”

  “Shh, stop talking, Doc. You’ve barely got a voice left.”

  More voices drifted from the corridor.

  “No. Don’t let them come in here, Johnny. I don’t want people to see me like this.”

  “It’s just David.”

  “No.”

  “Honey, I need him to
find some clothes for you and apparently the keys to your shackles.”

  I was too dry to shed tears, but they were there in spirit. Visions of dying and rotting on the wall danced through my head. Only when my remains were skeletal would I finally escape my prison.

  David’s gasp drew my weary gaze. “Don’t look at me.”

  “See if you can coerce Raul into giving you the location of the keys that’ll unlock her,” Johnny said. “I’m not having any luck finding them on Gillette.”

  “Then he’s really dead?”

  Johnny glanced up at me. “Uh, yeah, not sure how it happened yet. We need some clothing for Helen. See if the Coast Guard has a spare jumpsuit.”

  My eyes fluttered shut. It was too surreal to be believed. I was certain that my eyes would open to pitch blackness and more isolation. What were a few more minutes, hours, days? Everything bled into one never ending ball of torment.

  Fight or flight. Fight or flight. I had neither the energy or will for either one.

  “Shoot me,” I whispered. “If you’re real, shoot me and put me out of my misery. I can’t take it anymore, Gillette. You win. You’ve broken me.”

  Had it all been a bout of wishful thinking? Had I really killed Umberto and Andy Gillette? Or was I still drifting through the Pacific on a destination I neither wanted nor could escape?

  Blessedly, when consciousness slipped away this time, it would not soon return. I only hoped it didn’t, for fear that the answer to my soul-drained questions would shatter what was left of my spirit.

  Chapter 41

  I woke with scratchy linens under my skin. The shoulder joints throbbed with unrelenting pain. Along with the awareness of pain came the knowledge that my tongue was no longer parched, nor did my lips have the turgor of autumn leaves.

  A sliver of light gleamed across a tiled floor. It wasn’t much, but was enough for me to see that the room was not only absent the odor of death, it was replaced with the sickening scent of hospital disinfectant. Great effort hoisted my frame to the edge of the bed. A tube was attached to an IV catheter in my arm. My eyes followed it to the pump beside the bed. One-hundred milliliters per hour.