by Leslie Wolfe
“Yeah, whatever.”
He slid the door open and rushed to the bed. “Ah, goddammit,” he growled, then immediately untied Tess’s hands. He pulled a chair next to the bed and took her hand in his, gently.
“I’m here, kiddo, right here,” he whispered.
Tess groaned and fluttered her eyelids, trying to open her eyes.
“Cat…” she said softly, then licked her lips. “Don’t let him… don’t let him touch me,” she mumbled.
“He’s gone, kiddo, he can’t touch you again. You put him in the ground, where he belongs.”
“Don’t leave me, Cat… I can’t sleep. Not while they touch me.”
“I’ll be right here, I promise. No one will touch you. Now sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
“Just like… old times,” she managed to say, before falling asleep.
Cat pulled his chair closer without letting go of her hand, then lifted his gaze and saw Fradella, frozen in the doorway, with a thousand questions written in his eyes. He glared in his direction and Fradella took the hint, pulling the glass door shut and walking away.
Room with a View
The room was completely dark, but he had no trouble getting around. He moved silently while he pulled a recliner in front of the window, far enough to keep the light coming through the tinted glass from touching him. That’s when he got the best view; when they didn’t know he was watching.
They couldn’t see him; not with the lights off in his room. He’d applied a one-way privacy film to the glass, on his side, making sure he could see in the adjacent room unobstructed and undetected. The only time they could see his side of the world was when he turned the lights on. That rarely happened, but when it did, it happened for a reason, and one of them was always invited.
He’d installed microphones in the adjacent room, to catch every nuance of their dialogue, every sigh, every sob. He’d furnished their room more generously than his. It had a nice, comfortable bed with clean sheets, a nightstand, one armchair, a massage chair, even a shower cabinet with hot water. The only thing obstructed from his view was the toilet, protected with a matte, plastic curtain to convey an illusion of privacy, and to keep their image untainted in his mind.
He called that room “the guest room”; it made it easier to think and talk about these things if they had names. His room, he called “the room with a view.” How appropriate. He sunk back into his comfortable recliner and waited for the show to begin. Katherine Nelson was about to wake up.
She stirred in her sleep, then stretched her arms while squeezing her eyes shut. Sarah hustled when she saw Katherine move and sat on the side of the bed next to her. Finally, Katherine opened her eyes.
“Who the hell are you? And why the hell are you naked?” she asked, while taking in her unfamiliar surroundings and beginning to panic. “Where am I?”
“Shh,” Sarah whispered, touching her arm. “Calm down, it’s important. Trust me.”
“Why would I do that, huh?” Katherine asked, raising her voice and getting out of bed quickly.
“Because I’ve been here longer than you have, and I know,” Sarah replied quietly, lowering her eyes.
As if her knees no longer supported her, Katherine sat on the side of the bed. “Where is here? What is this place?”
“I—I don’t know. I’ve been here almost a week, I think. I lost track. He… takes me sometimes.”
“This can’t be happening,” Katherine snapped, then sprung to her feet and rushed to the door. She banged loudly against the solid-wood panel, yelling from the bottom of her lungs. “Hey! Let me out of here! Hey!”
After a while, Katherine lost her breath, and turned away from the door. She trotted to the dark window and stuck her face against it, trying to see.
Behind the dark window, he steepled his hands under his chin and leaned forward. She was beautiful, this one. She was better than all the rest. He thought she looked just like her, just like he recalled his mother’s elegant physique—her long, dark hair, her thin, delicate fingers, her slender figure. A distant memory of her was all he had left, a memory dating all the way back to when he was a third grader, and school let out early because of a storm. That storm had destroyed their lives. Or… was it him?
That day, the school bus had dropped him in front of his house mid-morning. He remembered how happy he was to be home early. The wind was blowing hard, throwing leaves and small debris everywhere, but he didn’t care. He trotted to the front door, excited to make use of the house key he was so proud of carrying. Most days, his mother dropped him off at school, and picked him up mid-afternoon, when classes were done for the day.
He unlocked the door and took off his shoes, just like she’d taught him to do, to keep the carpets clean. He dropped his backpack near the entrance, and started toward the kitchen, when he spotted his mother’s high-heeled shoes and blouse scattered on the living room carpet.
“Mom?” he called quietly, afraid something was wrong, afraid he was all alone.
No one replied. He quietly climbed the stairs, barefoot against the thick carpet, and headed toward his parents’ bedroom. The door was ajar, and he pushed it open a little more, enough to see if she was in there.
She was… and what he saw scared him to death. He scurried to his bedroom and sought refuge in the familiar darkness of his closet, hidden between scattered clothing items and stuffed toys he’d grown too old for.
He didn’t recall how long he’d stayed hidden in there. He only remembered that soon thereafter the storm came.
Captive
Katherine stared at the young, naked woman sobbing quietly on the bed. Her eyes shot daggers of anger, but the woman didn’t see them; she had averted her eyes and stopped talking.
“Are you part of this circus? Huh?” Katherine asked, still fuming.
The woman’s sobs intensified, but she didn’t reply.
“How do I know for sure? How could I know?”
Her anger slowly subsided, watching the frail woman heave with sobs, hiding her face. Her dissipating rage left room for some clinical judgment, and she started noticing things. The woman wasn’t hiding her face from Katherine, but from the dark window. She had bruises on her thighs, buttocks, and arms, some old and almost healed, some new. There were abrasions on her wrists and ankles that had just started to heal. More bruising, old and new, was visible on her throat, and the skin was friction burned, most likely by a rope.
“Damn it, woman, what’s your name?” Katherine asked in a more resigned tone, and crouched in front of her, to seek her eyes.
“Sarah,” she eventually replied, sniffling. “Sarah Thomas.”
“All right, Sarah, I’m Katherine.”
Sarah smiled shyly between tears. She still hugged herself, and rocked forward and backward gently, trying to soothe herself, just as a child would.
Katherine sat on the bed next to her. “Let’s take this one step at a time, all right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I—I don’t really now. A week, I guess? You lose track, you’ll see…”
Katherine rolled her eyes and some of the anger returned. “Oh, God, I hope not!”
“What day were you taken?” Sarah ventured to ask. “What date was it?”
“February 18,” Katherine replied, frowning. “It was early afternoon.”
“Oh,” Sarah said, and a few more tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s been eight days already.”
Katherine’s jaw dropped. Was it possible? Every now and then she saw it on the news, or read about it online, some poor woman found chained in a dungeon, as if people were living through the Dark Ages all over again. Or kidnapped women held as sex slaves in a freak’s basement. Some serial killer caught, after murdering multiple women, all looking alike.
She’d never paid much attention to the news pieces she heard or read; she’d always dismissed them, thinking it only happened to people living high-risk lives, to prostitu
tes, to those isolated people who live at the edge of civilization, in the middle of rural America’s darkest nowhere. But that never happened to people like her, to third-year medical residents with a husband, a child, and a good, clean life. Or did it?
Now she wished she’d paid more attention; maybe somewhere in those stories she could have found a clue, an idea, something she could use to break herself free.
She saw her reflection in the mirror and, next to hers, she saw Sarah’s, and repressed a shudder. They could have been sisters. Same body shape, skin color, hair… what they call a type. A physiognomy type. Not good.
She took a deep breath of air and focused on feeling the air as it filled her lungs. It was time to get a hold of things.
“Sarah, how did I get here?”
“He brought you, a few hours ago. You slept like a log, just like I did when I got here.”
“Who’s he?”
“The—ugh, the man who took me. Who sometimes comes and—”
“Describe him for me, please.”
Sarah clasped her hands together nervously. “He’s tall and thin,” she whispered, turning her face away from the dark window. “Blond, balding.”
“How did he kidnap you?”
“He said he was a cop, and something had happened to my husband. I… fell for it.”
The description sounded familiar. They’d been kidnapped by the same man, using the same ruse. Katherine almost touched Sarah’s shoulder, but refrained from putting her ice-cold hand on the woman’s bare skin. “Then what happened?”
“I woke up here, on this bed… Lisa was still here; she talked to me until I stopped crying.”
“Who’s Lisa?”
Sarah bit her lip and stared at the floor. Her shoulders hunched forward, and a tear rolled on her cheek. “The one they took before me.”
Katherine frowned. “And where is she now?”
Silence engulfed the room thick, palpable.
“They killed her.”
Katherine felt a wave of panic rush through her veins, bringing her boiling blood to her head. She jumped to her feet and ran to the door. She banged on it with both fists, kicked and screamed until she fell into an exhausted heap on the ground, hugging her knees and sobbing hard.
After a while, she felt a timid touch on her arm, and lifted her swollen eyes to see Sarah, crouched next to her.
“Come on, you have to stop crying,” she whispered. “It’s not going to do any good. Come on, let’s sit you on that chair,” she continued, helping her up.
Katherine let Sarah lead her to the chair and sat, unable to say anything or fight anymore. Her sobs eventually subsided, while Sarah spoke gentle words of encouragement. She didn’t hear much of what Sarah said; instead, she tried to recall how her son looked when he laughed, or what her husband had told her the last time they held hands. She invited her mind to wander away, into a place of safety and happiness. Then slowly, for the second time since she’d been taken, clear judgment regained control of her brain.
“You’ll pull through this,” Sarah was whispering, “just like I did. You just have to submit… do what he wants. Be strong.”
“The hell I do,” she snapped. “I won’t give in, not until they make me.”
“There’s no other way,” Sarah insisted, suddenly worried. “He’ll hurt you.”
“By the looks of it, sweetie, he’ll hurt me anyway,” Katherine replied dryly. “He didn’t exactly bring me here for a day at the spa.”
“Let me show you something,” Sarah whispered in her ear, then grabbed her wrist with trembling, frozen fingers and led her to the bed. She stood facing the wall, next to the bedpost, turned away from the window, and pulled Katherine right next to her. Then she pointed at some scribbles on the wall, hidden behind the bedpost.
“See here? All these names? These women have been here before us. This is Lisa,” she added, running a finger over the name in a silent gesture of remembrance. “I’ll have to add mine now.”
Katherine froze, staring at the list of scribbles with dilated pupils. “How many are there?” she whispered in Sarah’s ear.
“Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen. I have to do that soon.”
“Why?”
“It won’t be long, now that you’re here. A day… maybe two. You can’t really tell.”
Katherine let herself drop onto the bed, feeling a sudden weakness in all her joints. She sat there, hunched forward, unable to speak or think. She breathed shallowly and felt her heart pounding against her chest. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. She was going to die there, in that godforsaken room.
Sarah took a strand of Katherine’s hair and ran a hairbrush through it.
“Don’t touch me,” Katherine yelped, jumping to her feet, startled. “Take your hands off me and never touch me again.”
Sarah stared at her in disbelief. “You don’t understand,” she replied apologetically. “I have to… I have to get you ready.”
“The hell you do,” Katherine replied and stepped forward, inches away from Sarah. She gave the young woman another scrutinizing look, then asked again, “Why on earth are you naked?”
“That’s what he wants,” she whispered, lowering her eyes and blushing a little.
“But you have clothes?” Katherine insisted, pointing at a heap of clothing piled on the floor.
“It’s not all mine,” she said, shooting the pile a furtive, scared look.
“Somehow, I don’t think the original owners will mind that much. So, why do it? Why stay naked?”
“We have to obey,” she whimpered, crying again. “He can see and hear everything.”
Katherine bit her lip. She wasn’t going anywhere with Sarah. Maybe she was too scared to make sense anymore. Maybe she’d seen firsthand what not subduing could bring, but Katherine didn’t care either way. She wasn’t going down without a fight, and for sure she wasn’t going to strut her stuff naked in front of that damned, dark window.
“What’s in there, anyway?” she asked, pointing at the window.
Sarah took a step back, as if she’d seen a monster. Her eyes rounded in fear and immediately looked away from the window.
“If you’re lucky,” she whispered, “you’ll never find out.”
Questions
Melissa prepared another IV drip and tiptoed around the man dozing in the chair next to the bed. She’d learned he was the Cat her patient had been calling for. How fitting. Moving quietly, she hung the new IV bag and removed the old one. She connected the lines and turned to leave, but as she did, she locked eyes with the man, now awake.
She managed a smile. “Good morning,” she whispered.
“Uh-huh,” he replied in a coarse, low voice.
She hastened by him and released a long breath of air when she made it back to the cabinet, after putting several feet between the two of them.
For some reason, the man intimidated her, although he’d done nothing to earn that. She had the feeling he’d wring anyone’s neck if they harmed Tess Winnett, the recovering federal agent in her care, including hers.
She shrugged away her concerns, and her mind wandered to the questions keeping her awake at night and troubled at day. Moving on autopilot, she marked the time on the patient’s chart, and proceeded to record her vital signs. She found it difficult to concentrate on what she was doing, and found herself needing to correct her erroneous entries more than once. She just needed to focus, survive the work day somehow, then go home and cry her eyes out.
She kept playing the events of the previous night over and over again in her head, hoping that at some point they’d start making sense. They still didn’t. She’d arrived home from the airport and Derek wasn’t there. She waited for him, dreading the argument that was bound to ensue. After all, she’d shipped their son across the country to Arizona without even telling him. He was going to be mad as hell.
Finally, at some time after ten in the evening, she heard him come in. She rose to meet him, and he looked briefl
y in her direction, took his jacket off, and sunk into the couch, looking exhausted. She offered him a beer; he accepted with a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Then she told him Charlie was going to stay with her mother for a while, and all he said was, “Okay.” He loosened his tie and kicked off his shoes, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
He lay like that for minutes in a row, beer in hand, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. She gave him some time, and then came near him, to remove the beer bottle before he spilled it, and cover him with a blanket. That’s where the details went blurry on her, and she kept replaying them in her mind to no avail.
Did she feel the smell of jasmine perfume first? Or did she reach for the beer bottle before sensing that foreign scent? She couldn’t recall… not that it made much of a difference. When she tried taking the bottle, she must have startled him from his sleep, because he tensed, snatched the bottle away from her timid grasp, and growled under his breath, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She froze, unable to find an answer, but he wasn’t expecting one. He just closed his eyes again and leaned back, just like he’d done earlier. She stood there, watching him, more and more aware of the troubling smell he’d brought home with him. That scent churned her gut with an unspeakable fear that wouldn’t go away.
Melissa was familiar with the scent of jasmine perfume, just as well as she was familiar with betrayal, with being cheated on. She hated that perfume with a vengeance, and the memories it brought. Memories of dating Beau, her high school crush, and thinking the gods of love were all smiling on her. Memories of the two of them making love in her parents’ home, whispering in each other’s ears, then walking in the park at dusk, holding hands, and swearing they’d be together forever.
Then came reality, the reality of jasmine perfume on Beau’s collar, and his lame attempts at denying he’d been fooling around. She claimed she was okay with it, just to get him relaxed enough to admit what drove her crazy not to know, and so he spilled it. He’d fallen in love with Jasmine, her best friend. He felt bad about it, but there was nothing he could do.