The thunder of footsteps coming down the stairs told Flick that they had a troupe with them. But she watched the dust settle on the drive and craned in hope of hearing the engine return, but it didn’t.
People got in her eye line and crowded around her. Hands touched, explored her, and her injuries, but all Flick could see was him. He’d lied to her. Bringing her here was a swindle, he’d blindsided her, and known her well enough that if he’d given her the truth she’d have run out on him, and done everything in her power to delay and avoid this.
‘Felicity,’ her father demanded, but she swayed, drugged by emotion, by disappointment, by grief.
‘He didn’t look back,’ she whispered, and was swallowed into the belly of the Hughes beast.
Her family insisted on talking constantly, they questioned her, and spoke without waiting for answers. The noise rattled through Flick, grating on every nerve.
She’d been taken into the house. Her father had tried to phone the police, but Flick wasn’t interested in the police, and nothing had happened. Other than them keeping her in captivity, Flick had not been party to, or witnessed, any other criminal acts; no one had hit her, beat her, or subjected her to anything. Yes, she knew that there were criminal acts taking place but she had no evidence of it, she didn’t even know where Victor’s place was – not even what city or town it was close to.
So after a frustrating conversation, she’d been forced to allow her mother and sisters to take her up to her old bedroom. They all twittered on while Flick bathed. But she didn’t want to bathe. Flick didn’t want to wash the remnants of her last union with Rushe off her body, but she had to. Under the spray of the luxury power shower, she let her tears fall with a craving to be back in the shitty motel with its terrible water-pressure and inability to maintain a constant temperature.
When her energy waned, Flick leaned back against the shower wall and sobbed. On the other side of the fogged glass, she knew her mother and sisters were fussing with clothes and conversation, but Flick was consumed by the loss. Even against the wet shower tile she was reminded of him, of what he would do to her if he’d been in here, or on the other side of that glass. The hard wall reminded her of his hard body, and the strength of him that would haul her from the floor and plunge himself into her.
Sex wasn’t a thing she’d understood before Rushe, and she’d never understand it again; he was her guidebook, her mentor.
But the sobbing wasn’t for the sex. It wasn’t for the harsh way he’d spoken to her, or even for the things he had said. She sobbed because her heart was broken. The only man she’d ever loved was driving back into danger – alone. Rushe drove back there to face the music. To confess his involvement in her escape, and she could only imagine what horror would face him then. He drove back into the fire because he didn’t want those evil men to sell those innocent women, because somehow his purpose hadn’t yet been fulfilled. And for her. Rushe was going back into that building to put his body between her and danger.
He’d said it himself. “I’ll deal with Victor. You have nothing to fear anymore.”
Flick had asked him if she’d be running for the rest of her life and he’d told her no because he had a plan and this was it. Rushe told her he wasn’t involved in the trafficking, and that it wasn’t about the money, and she could think of no reason he would want to go back to that place voluntarily, unless it was to protect her and the other women.
Steeling herself from her anguish, she gathered herself together enough to leave the shower.
‘Good God.’
Flick looked up to see her mother gaping, with an equally shocked Lucia her side.
‘What?’ Flick asked, trying to see what they were, but she didn’t have to look far. Vivian stumbled into the room to gawp too, but Flick’s lips curled up slowly as she examined her body in the mirror, which filled a wall.
He was everywhere, all over her. The rash of his stubble burn covered her body, her face, her neck, her breasts; it went down her abdomen and her thighs. But that wasn’t all. The imprint of his hands on her thighs, and on her buttocks, made Flick catch her lip in her teeth. He’d wanted her so badly, and so often. Rushe was a man starved for her, and she hadn’t realised it. Not until she saw the bruises marring her flesh. His urgency, his desire, swathed her in his embrace again, because he’d left his mark.
‘What did those men do to you?’ her mother squawked.
‘Men?’ Flick asked, lifting her eyes to the three gaping women in the doorway. ‘He did this all by himself.’
‘He?’ Vivian asked.
Her sisters were like twins, only a year apart, and both wore the same style of twinset that their mother did, all in varying pastel shades. These were sophisticated women who toed the family line and did exactly what was expected of them. Flick would bet these women would claim to always follow their partners’ instructions. But she doubted any of them had been told to strip naked in a moving car and masturbate.
‘Was it just awful?’ Lucia asked, pressing a hand to her chest, but the three women still inspected Flick’s naked body from their place in the doorway.
In her recent experience, Flick had learned to shirk any modesty she may have had. Though before Rushe she hadn’t had much experience of being naked in front of anyone. Then again, before Rushe she hadn’t had much experience of anything.
‘The sex?’ Flick asked, strangely enjoying the blush in her sister’s cheeks.
‘Oh my,’ her mother said, and pressed her fingers to her mouth. ‘We can phone the police. They may be able to get samples of...’
‘This was consensual,’ Flick said, gesturing to her body and she wondered what non-consensual sex would look like, because she had bruises to the tips of her toes, and hickeys on all of her soft spots.
‘You had consensual sex with...’ Vivian trailed off.
Flick didn’t know if any of them had seen Rushe, or if they were just imagining what a big bad ogre who could do this looked like.
‘I’ve heard of captives who come to care for their captors,’ Lucia said. ‘It has a name.’
‘This isn’t that,’ Flick said, and began to dry herself off with a thick white towel that had hung on the heated rail next to her. A lot had happened since that rough towel she and Rushe had shared in the shack.
‘How can you be sure?’ Vivian asked. ‘I can’t see why any woman would want—‘
‘It’s been a couple of days since I’ve been a captive,’ Flick said, to the renewed alarm of her audience. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but it was true. She could actually have walked away from Rushe any of dozens of times, it had just never occurred to her, not even as he was throwing her out of their vehicular sanctuary.
‘We have to tell daddy,’ Vivian said to their mother as though Flick wasn’t there at all.
‘If you tell your father he’ll have a heart attack,’ her mother mumbled to her other daughters.
‘What if whoever he is comes back and—‘
‘He’s not coming back,’ Flick said, and her enjoyment of the previous moment was gone. Now wrapped in the towel she had only her face to look at in the heated mirror.
‘How can you be so sure that—‘
‘Because it was just sex,’ Flick declared, not believing her own statement.
‘My goodness Felicity,’ her mother scolded. ‘What a way to speak.’
And Flick found her smile again, because she knew something that they didn’t... she’d been his whore, and if he showed up right now and snapped his fingers she’d fall to her knees and thank him for the gift of his presence.
Flick had stayed in her parents’ house because there was no urgency for her to be anywhere else. Most of her time was spent sitting at the front window staring into the empty driveway hoping to hear that engine, but she didn’t. The sun rose and set, and as the world turned on its axis her pain didn’t subside. Could he be out there? Was he thinking about her? She hoped so, because the alternative was... He could’ve walked
back into that building and been killed immediately, even he wouldn’t stand up to a hail of bullets... or a knife in the back.
He couldn’t have gone back there just to be felled, he was smarter than that, stronger than that, and he wouldn’t have left her here and walked away without knowing that she’d be protected. So she watched the sun rise and then she watched it set.
On the third evening, her father came through from his study, which was unusual. While Flick remained intent on the driveway, her mother, sisters, and their husbands paused, which Flick only noticed because the susurration of conversation dulled.
‘What’s the matter?’ her mother Beverley asked. ‘Charles?’
‘I received a warning,’ he said.
‘A warning? Who would have the gall to warn you about anything?’ Roger – Lucia’s husband – asked. ‘Did you remind them of whom they were dealing with?’
‘From Felicity’s captors,’ he said, as though Roger hadn’t spoken.
Flick whipped around like a meerkat on high alert. ‘From whom?’ she asked, getting to her feet. ‘Was it a message? A letter? An email?’
‘No,’ her father said. ‘It was a telephone call from a blocked number.’
This house was her mother’s pride and joy. She’d had the thing built, insisting that she wouldn’t stay in the mansion with her in-laws. So Felicity’s grandparents remained on the Hughes estate, but this corner was for Beverley Hughes to be proud of. In a building this size with its twelve bedrooms you’d be lucky to hear a phone ring from an adjoining room. But, Flick wished that through some kind of serendipity she could’ve been the one to answer it.
‘What did he say?’ Flick asked, rushing to her father. ‘Did he tell you his name? What was the message?’
‘There was no message,’ her father said, still put out by this whole affair. ‘They stated that the money had been paid, and that your safety was assured, and warned me that if I thought about going to the police they could target others in my acquaintance.’
Only her father could consider his own daughter an acquaintance. Flick’s disappointment at the lack of communication from Rushe was quelled when she mentally recited her father’s words.
‘The money’s been paid,’ she said, frowning up at him. Her sisters were five foot seven, just like her mother – Flick again, was the freak of the family. ‘Even though I was here and safe you paid the five million?’ Flick would be astounded if her father had done that in deference to her safety.
‘I did no such thing,’ he stated.
‘But you said the money had been paid.’
‘Perhaps so, but not by me.’
Charles Hughes had always been proud of his acumen, and doing something like paying a ransom after the captive had been set loose had no reason. Flick was safe, so there would be no need to do that, no need to pay money to the people who may come after her just because they’d been cheated out of their cash by her escape. It took some stretch of forethought to...
‘Oh my god,’ Flick said aloud to the thought in her head. ‘Forethought...’ Her family must have thought her cuckoo but with one step backwards her hands went to her forehead. ‘He considered the possibility... he considered what they would do if they... if they thought I’d one-upped them, tricked them somehow.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Beverley asked.
‘Don’t you get it,’ Flick said, though there would be no way anyone in the room could. But she had to give her thoughts voice because there just wasn’t enough room in her brain for them. ‘He... the money isn’t a problem, that’s what he said. He said I should... that I had to make sure I was free before... getting the money to Victor is easy. He paid it... the idiot.’
On an exhale Flick’s legs gave out, and she sat there on the floor in the middle of her mother’s favourite rug, and let her tears start all over again.
‘What are you talking about?’ Vivian asked.
She and Lucia were glued to this unfolding drama, while her mother was just as intent. The men hadn’t been following events thus far, and so they were merely bystanders.
‘He paid the ransom,’ Flick whispered.
‘He? Lucia took her turn to ask.
‘Someone paid five million dollars to ensure your safety, when you were already safe?’
‘Yes,’ Flick said, and in spite of the tears, she laughed a half blub that burst up from the swelling of her heart. ‘He’s in... I knew he felt... why didn’t I see this coming? He... he doesn’t know how to deal with feelings... they’re gonna kill him.’
‘P’s and Q’s Felicity,’ her mother scolded.
Only her mother could worry about enunciation at a time like this; her parents really were made for each other. Flick tried to make herself smile, but her love was out there alone, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. If Victor didn’t hang Rushe for screwing up her kidnapping, by actually returning her without further extortion, then Skeeve would get him for ruining the attempt he and Shiv made to get at her. Shiv... if none of the others managed it then Shiv would find a way to avenge his injuries caused by her as well as by Rushe.
Flick knew he could take care of himself. Rushe believed he didn’t need anyone, and if he got through it he’d deal with being apart from her better than she would being away from him. All his life he’d been ignoring his anger. The way he felt about himself was no surprise now that she knew about his parents, and more about how he was raised. Any abandonment issues he had were dealt with when he was young. Fighting and screwing were his outlets, from what she could establish. He hadn’t had a healthy channel for it, and he wouldn’t show weakness to anyone – not even her.
But five million dollars... how could a boy abandoned at birth and brought up in abusive homes get his hands on that amount of money? Could it be blood money? Was he really a hired gun?
What Flick didn’t understand was, if he could get his hands on money like that from whatever he was capable of, then why was he around the likes of Victor and Skeeve? Five million would be enough to knock down their dilapidated lair and build a new one. Could he have handed his life savings to Victor just to ensure her safety?
Flick didn’t have to think for long, because he knew everything she did, and more. Rushe had to know that the likelihood of him getting out of this plot alive was slim, and if he expected to be thrown off this mortal coil, he wanted to be sure no one would come looking for her tail. He’d said it himself; he wouldn’t be around to pull her out the next time... except that’s what she’d told herself the last time they were apart.
With another three days gone and no sign of Rushe, Flick consoled herself with the fact that he wasn’t coming back. She couldn’t take another day of her mother and her sisters, so she went home.
Once again Flick walked into her one roomed apartment and sighed out her anguish. Rushe was in her mind constantly, and after reading the bill for the new duplicate key Flick knew she had to find some source of income. Much as she wanted to crawl under her duvet for the next month or two her bank account couldn’t be very healthy. She doubted she’d have been paid, and her bills all appeared decidedly red.
Knowing that there was little chance she still had her job, she tried calling Geoffrey but got a distinctly frosty reception. Yeah, she’d been replaced, so she was out of work.
Flick had always enjoyed her work. She loved to learn new things, to investigate topics she would never otherwise come across. But the bureaucracy always weighed her down, and she struggled to play nicely with her colleagues. It wasn’t that she was rude, or that she got into arguments, she just found it difficult to show interest in the melodramatic details of their lives.
She supposed that after losing her connection to her family in the way that she had, put things in perspective. Now, after her time with Rushe, she realised that there were real tragedies, profound incidents going on in the world causing harm. With that new discovery Flick knew it would be harder to show interest in banality.
Ev
entually she would find her way back into research. Flick wanted to be immersed in books, searching the internet and obscure directories to find clues that led to salient details. Her love was knowledge and discovery, not who her co-worker had slept with last week.
But her priority now was money. She had to find work and pay her bills. Anything would have to do because she knew the jobs market was tough for everyone right now. Luckily, or not, she was employed the next day, at the local coffee shop.
‘A latte... excuse me?’
‘Hmm?’ Flick took her chin from her hand and saw the woman on the other side of the counter wearing a scowl. But she’d seen the champ of that expression. ‘Sorry?’
Rushe had dominated Flick’s thoughts all day and she couldn’t seem to concentrate, no matter how she tried to.
‘Would you like me to write it down for you?’ the woman asked. ‘It’s not difficult. I would imagine it’s one of the easier orders you’ve had to cope with. People order in these places like they have their own language.’
‘They do,’ Flick said. ‘Well not their own language as such, just words used to describe items that are dispensed here.’
On a snort the woman spun, and marched away, which Flick supposed took care of that problem, though she wasn’t being rude, just... stating a fact.
‘If it isn’t the disappearing woman herself.’
Flick’s head turned toward the next customer before her eyes followed, and she was surprised to see a smile and a friend.
‘Hayden,’ she sighed. What a rollercoaster she’d been on, and now it seemed Flick was back at the beginning paying her fare to ride again.
‘You didn’t return my call.’
‘No,’ Flick said, after a brief thought of making excuses. ‘I suppose I didn’t.’
‘I was concerned. You didn’t meet me, and you didn’t return my call. I tried you at work and they said you’d been ill and had returned briefly only to vanish again. And here you were all the time.’
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