by Sylvia Ryan
“Van?”
He popped back into reality at the sound of his name. “What?”
“Suggestions?”
“Well, if she was caught off guard in the backyard, it was probably by someone who was waiting for her back there. Maybe someone saw her coming or going and decided to wait it out instead of entering the house and a possible ambush. If I were going to steal a woman, that’s what I would do. I’d never go into a house blind.”
“I agree,” Luke said. “I also think that if your guess as to what happened is right, the person who took her doesn’t live that far from the house.”
“House to house starting on our street?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
* * * *
When Grace arrived at her house, she was numb. Her face, fingers, and toes were the worst, but it was nothing that an hour or two under a blanket couldn’t cure. She parked her bike at the back of the house, pulled a key from the inside of a hollowed-out brick in the foundation of the house, and entered through the back door. As soon as Grace walked into the kitchen, she froze. Somebody had been there recently. She was sure that it wasn’t her dad. He wouldn’t have left such obvious clues that someone was living there.
A wave of “oh fuck” washed over her. She knew she’d been taking a big risk when she left Sarge’s without her weapon. Now, it seemed like that decision was a potentially fatal mistake. Grace turned to leave but didn’t make it out in time. She had seen him, and he had seen her.
Grace’s blood pressure leaped, her teeth ground together, and her jaw tightened at the sight of her ex-boyfriend, Steve. He held her father’s gun in his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You’re not happy to see me?” Steve jeered. “I suggest you be nicer to me than that, or I may not let you in my shelter.”
“Who else is here?” she asked, ignoring his smart-ass comment.
“Just me, sweetheart.”
“Quit it.” Grace pushed past him to the entrance of the shelter. She wanted to tell him to pack his shit and get out, but she was smarter than that. Not while he held a pistol and she didn’t. She moved quickly to stay out of Steve’s reach and walked through the rows of shelves until she found another gun for herself. Then she pulled a pair of jeans and a heavy shirt out from where she had clothing stored. Steve stalked down the stairs and stood watching her slip her jeans on and didn’t bother to give her privacy as she pulled off the huge shirt she was wearing and pulled on the clean one.
“You got your jollies watching me change, now get out of my way.” She pushed past him again and walked farther into the shelter toward the living area. “Did you put the cubby door back when you came down?” she asked coolly.
“No.”
“Do it. We’re not safe when the shelter can be found so easily.” Dumbass.
“Whoa, Grace, what crawled up your ass?” he asked, laughing at his comment or laughing at her, she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t fucking want you here,” she said with steely, sharp words.
Steve’s expression changed. He went from shallowly mocking to stone-cold serious. The warning signals his deep voice held when he spoke next were unmistakable. “This is my shelter now, bitch. I’m not going anywhere, so you’re going to have to deal.”
Grace narrowed her eyes at him and said nothing. He was so fucked, and he didn’t even know it. She smiled at him. “Sorry, long night.”
She didn’t have to prove anything to him. She would let him get the last word, but he was on thin ice.
A foreboding thought sailed through her head. She was going to end up having to kill this man. This man whom she had loved so much, who had hurt her so much that it forever changed the way she viewed relationships, the way she lived her life. She hoped she wouldn’t have to, but it didn’t look good.
Grace walked over to the twin bed that didn’t have any sheets on it and sat. She leaned over, putting her elbows on her thighs and her hands on her forehead. She needed to take a moment, recoup and think. Logical reasoning told her he wasn’t going to leave willingly.
“I’ve been up all night. I need to sleep,” she murmured.
“All right, we’ll talk when you get up.” His eyes flickered away from her face, down her body, and back to her face. She knew the look. He was horny and anticipating getting some, but he wasn’t such a letch that he’d try to do anything while she was sleeping. With the pistol gripped in her hand, she lay back on the mattress, closed her eyes, and slept.
When Grace’s mind snapped awake, her body was in the exact same position as when she’d lain down. Feeling like a vampire in an antiquated black-and-white movie, she just opened her eyes and stiffly sat up.
Steve stared at her from across the depressingly gray room. Daytime was so much darker in this shelter than in Sarge’s. The extra skylights made a huge difference. This place was a tomb. A shudder ran over her body.
How many hours had Steve been sitting there staring at her with that slightly demented look on his face? The solitary time he’d spent here had not treated him well. He’d lost the hot, bad boy demeanor and was definitely firmly entrenched in creepy territory. He was hungry for her. His hollow gaze moved over her body slowly. Grace forced herself to beam a carefully crafted smile in his direction when his gaze finally made it back up to her face.
“Mornin’, or should I say afternoon?” He shot her his best cheesy grin. She used to love that grin, and he knew it had been almost irresistible to her when he pasted it on his gorgeously rugged face. Operative words there were “had been.”
She was more damaged and cynical than the last time he saw her. It was only fair that he got to see the guarded, restrained woman he had helped to create. It was ironic, really, because ultimately, she knew his creation would be his demise.
“Afternoon,” she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.
Silence hung heavy between them as Grace got up, opened a can of peaches, and grabbed a fork.
“Grace,” he said when she sat back down on her bed. “I made a mistake with us.”
“Yep.” Disinterest was blatant in her tone no matter how carefully she tried to disguise it.
“I think we should give us another try.” The sincerity he tried to exude made her skin crawl.
This was the moment she knew was coming. It sure hadn’t taken him long to get there. She put another wedge of peach in her mouth and chewed slowly.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…
Grace smiled at the line to the poem she loved so much. Seldom in life did a person find themselves in a situation where they knew everything in their future hinged on their next words. She focused. Her mind worked efficiently, reviewing scenarios to their end. She was at a fork in the road, and she needed to decide quickly which direction she was going to go with this.
“I have to let this sink in, Steve. I mean, you’ve been sitting here thinking the whole time I was asleep. I need a little time.”
“Time for what? There’s either you and me, or not. It shouldn’t have to be that hard of a decision for you. I mean we were together for a long time. You know me. You loved me once.”
Grace drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She knew from experience that subtlety was lost on Steve, and it wasn’t her style anyway. “I’ve been done with you since I found out you were sticking your dick into someone else,” she said in a subdued voice. “There is no you and me anymore, and there’s never going to be again.”
Grace could feel the hate in the glower Steve directed at her, but she’d done the right thing. She knew if she led him on, it would be less than a day before he tried to fuck her. If that happened, the gig would be up. She would have to pull her gun on him because he had way too many pounds on her for her to defend herself against him without a weapon.
She met his stare. Unfortunately, she might have to do that anyway, because she could see that his hate was rapidly transformin
g to rage. Steve’s face reddened, and taut muscles in his jaw twitched as he ground his teeth together.
He stood. “You realize that I don’t really have to give you a choice.” The tone of his voice dripped with the confidence of a man who knew he’d already won the conflict at hand. “You’re holding on to that gun like you’re going to use it, and we both know that you won’t shoot me.” He leered at her as he slowly moved toward her.
“That just goes to show that after all the time we spent together, you still don’t know shit about me.” Grace’s voice was clear and strong. She stood and squared herself toward him, gun gripped in her hand at her side.
“You don’t fucking have what it takes.”
“Try me.” Grace forced her voice to steady as her insides raged against the thought of having to shoot Steve in order to defend herself.
He hunted her with his slow approach while every fiber of her being screamed “back away.” Grace raised her gun and pointed it at him when he came within ten feet of her. Her finger rested lightly on the trigger. Her world narrowed until she had tunnel vision. Nothing else existed except for herself and the object of her attention. Time slowed, and her heightened state of concentration made her aware of the inner workings of her body. Her heart clubbed the inside of her chest while the din of rushing blood bombarded her eardrums. Her pistol was a too-heavy, steel extension of her own body.
She had all the time in the world in the moments it took for him to take his last few steps, but it didn’t help her. She couldn’t shoot the man whom she’d loved, no matter how much she despised him now.
Steve placed a heavy hand on the outstretched gun and collected it from her. She was going to lose this battle, just as she had lost every prior battle she’d ever had with this man.
“Are you sure you don’t want to rethink this?” he asked as he tucked the gun into his waistband. “You’re of no use to me right now. There’s no reason to keep you around.” He smiled at her in an overt attempt to sway her previous decision. It was amazing how that smile could look both sweet and sinister at the same time.
“I doubt that you have what it takes to shoot me either, so cut the crap,” she spat at him.
Without warning, Steve grabbed her around the waist and restrained her as best he could against his body. “Oh, I’m not going to shoot you, darling. I’m going to fuck you until you bore me, and then I’m going to kick your ass out of my shelter. You can fend for yourself out there. We’ll see how long it takes you to come crawling back, willing to give your body, your heart, your soul for just a scrap of food. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again within a week, maybe two.”
Grace quickly tried to free herself from Steve’s control without success. He had her flat on her back on the bed behind her with, what seemed to Grace, like a subtle shift of his weight. He gripped her neck with one hand, strangling her, using his weight to push her into the mattress.
“You are such a stupid bitch,” he spat as he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans with his free hand.
Grace grabbed his forearm and dug her nails into his flesh, trying to relieve the choking pressure on her neck with no success. She struggled against him, throwing punches at his arm and flailing around until she just couldn’t anymore.
This is it. Grace closed her eyes. Just another thirty seconds and it will be all over.
She was barely conscious when he released her neck. He’d only released her because he needed both hands to get her jeans off. Her instincts took over, and she kicked Steve in the balls. He went down to his knees, hunching over himself on the cement floor, but he never released his grip on her pants.
During the few seconds he was incapacitated, Grace frantically tried to rid herself of the jeans that were tripping her up. But trying to get the pants off slowed her enough for him to grab a hold of her hair. He yanked on it hard to gain control of her again. Grace screamed out her pain as she felt the copious amounts of hair being pulled out of her scalp. Steve tilted her head up toward his.
“That was a big mistake,” he hissed.
His face was a study of rage. His eyes were wide, his jaw tight. A vein popped out on his forehead, and all of him was tinted a violent shade of red.
He slowly got to his feet and dragged Grace by the hair, through the rows of shelves, to the bottom of the shelter stairs. She fought him the whole way, swinging her arm and kicking her feet in an effort to get in one good shot that would loosen his grip on her hair. She almost ripped free from him once, and he released the fistful of hair. He wrapped both arms around her, holding her tight in front of him, and tried to lift her up the steep flight of stairs. Grace flailed desperately, trying to free herself from his grip.
“Bitch, hold still or I am going to shoot you!” he threatened as he lifted her higher off the ground to carry her up.
Grace’s mind raced for a strategy that would enable her to get free from him, to get rid of him. He was carrying her full weight, using both hands, and he was winded. His hot breath hit the back of her head as they neared the top of the stairs. She tried to head butt the back of her head to his face, but he must have seen it coming, because her head just met air.
Grace reached out an arm and grabbed on to the railing while trying to loosen Steve’s grip around her waist with the other hand. When she felt his grip slip slightly, she lifted both feet and pushed off the shelter door with all her strength.
Steve’s hold on her gave way with the sudden, forceful shove backward. Her hand tightened around the old, smooth wood of the railing as she began to fly backward with him. She didn’t let it go. She held onto the handrail with everything she had. Her body stopped, wrenching her shoulder and hand hard as she landed face-first at the top of the stairs while Steve continued his flight down.
The jarring crack, crack, thud sounds of his body hitting the wooden stairs and cement floor, unhindered by even a rudimentary attempt to break the fall, was sickening.
Grace scrambled to get to her feet despite the jarring pain of her cheek from landing hard on the steps. She whipped around to appraise the landscape below her and found the crumple of Steve’s motionless body at the bottom of the stairs.
Grace sat down on the step nearest the shelter door, trying to regulate the ragged gulps of air she sucked into her mouth. Her stomach churned as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. She stared at the soles of Steve’s feet resting a few steps up from the floor. He lay on the cement, splayed in an unnatural position. Grace steadied herself before she stood and walked cautiously down the stairs toward Steve. As she got a better look at him, she recognized the vacant stare in his open eyes. He was dead.
She wanted to cry. How did she get to this moment, this surreal, bad TV drama moment?
She had almost lost her life because she’d hesitated, couldn’t do what needed to be done until it was almost too late. Her survival hinged on her acceptance of a new reality. It was a reality she hadn’t really internalized yet, until now. Now she was crystal clear on the fact that she was completely alone in the world and fatally vulnerable to anyone she might run across.
Chapter 21
The shelter was so dark with only one halo of daylight streaming in as opposed to the four at Sarge’s shelter. On days it was overcast outside, Grace lived in a dark, murky abyss, and all she could think about was the endless days ahead of her there, alone. How long had it been? A month, maybe a little more since she had come back home.
After Grace had gotten rid of Steve’s body and inventoried the shelter, she’d discovered that a day didn’t consist of twenty-four hours anymore. Each and every day was nearly never ending. She tried, at first, to keep busy. She did a couple of puzzles on the floor directly under the circle of light coming in. She read a book. But soon after, she was antsy and a little bit stir-crazy.
It was snowing now, and the shelter was continually dreary and cold. Eventually, the restless feelings waned, and the only thing Grace felt was lonely. Her thought
s teemed with snippets, small moments in time that she shared with Sarge, Van, or Luke. She lived them over and over again in her mind. Occasionally, she would order up a side of morbid thoughts about her own death just to switch things up. The weight of it all crushed her. She couldn’t have a thought or memory that didn’t prompt another little piece of her to give up. Nobody knew she was alive, that she even existed anymore. She was so desperately isolated that she felt like she was disappearing, growing thinner, more translucent. Eventually she’d just fade away.
As time passed, the reason why she left the men seemed inconsequential. Her common sense still tried to argue that leaving was the right thing to do. She knew their lives together were easier with her gone. But with their absence, the ache inside her grew to be an ever-expanding black hole that was now swallowing her up.
After a month of the constant cold, combined with the negligible amounts of food she chose to eat, it wasn’t much of a surprise to Grace when she woke up feeling sick.
She scrambled to get her head over the side of the bed so she wouldn’t vomit on herself. Her stomach heaved, and her gag reflex jumped to life, but there was nothing in her stomach to throw up. Grace groaned as the nausea threatened to have her heaving again.
She lay on her back taking in air through her nose while she swallowed over and over again, trying to prevent a repeat performance. From there, she embarked upon the itinerary of sleep, barf, and repeat that took over her life for the few weeks it took to shake the bug. During that time, she ate little and got out of bed even less. Her body and mind were weakened, and as time progressed, even though she was over the flu, her motivation to eat, and later to get out of bed, disappeared.
She wallowed in her own self-pity. Her future seemed to be an unending stretch of loneliness. At this point, it was a struggle for her to even want to survive.
Like every other day in her recent past, Grace lay in bed, buried under layers of blankets, trying to buffer herself from the frigid cold of the shelter. Her mind wandered lazily when it touched on that last afternoon of sex with Sarge, Van, and Luke, and then it locked onto a fact that jolted her into focus.