Dangerous Obsessions

by Capri Montgomery

  Now, she was the proverbial good girl. She ate right, took care of herself, didn’t do anything stupid…at least not that she considered stupid, and she tried to be good to people. She had a bad habit of giving her last away to anybody on the street needing money. She often wondered where that money went, but since they were pushing shopping carts around or toting a backpack with all of their belongings around with them, she assumed the money went toward food. At least she hoped it went toward food. Her heart was in the right place; at least she hoped it was. Somehow, she thought maybe doing something good for somebody else might ease her burden of guilt for what she’d done, or hadn’t done, for her sister.

  She hadn’t protected Amy, and she should have. She should have never left her on the swing no matter how much she begged her for just a few more minutes. No matter how much she assured her she’d be there when she got back with her ice cream, she shouldn’t have left her there. She was the big sister and big sisters had a responsibility to protect their little sisters.

  She didn’t want to think about this now, about any of it. She had finally managed not to spend everyday thinking of her guilt and now it was all coming back to her. She thought of what she should have done, could have done. She should have begged him to let her sister go. She could have promised to give him whatever he wanted if he’d just let Amy go. But she hadn’t made that offer. She had asked him to let them both go. She had asked him not to hurt her sister. Maybe if she had told him she would stay there for him to use as he pleased if he’d just let Amy go…maybe he would have let Amy go and she would be alive today.

  “Clair?” Greg’s voice once again broke her wandering thoughts. “You’ve gone off into left field. Talk to me.”

  “I’m fine. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”

  “You should get some sleep.” There he went again, playing protector as usual. This time she wasn’t going to complain or protest. Sleep would do her good.

  “Yeah, I should. If you two need anything please let me know. Otherwise, just help yourself…keep my place clean, but help yourself.” She took the set of spare keys out of her dresser drawer and handed them to him. “The big one goes to the main doors and the little one goes to the screen door.”

  “Got it,” he bounced the keys in his hand as if silently weighing them. “We’ll see you in the morning.” He turned to leave and stopped. “And Clair,” he looked at her. “Don’t do anything stupid like try to leave me behind because I will catch up with you, and I won’t be happy by the time I do.”

  She stood there with her mouth open as he left her bedroom. Had he just…he had, she decided. Normally she’d think of something to defy him, but the realization hit her. Levins was out of prison which meant no matter how perturbed she was with Greg’s incessant big brother routine, she needed him. Despite his ambiguous threat, she would make sure he was up in time to get ready to leave and go to work with her tomorrow. He could wake his partner up for himself. Her morning routine required a certain amount of coordination and going around the house waking people up was not exactly going to work.

  She would be up by two o’clock, three at the latest. She’d make an orange smoothie-milkshake…that was her own concoction and she loved it. She’d be sure to have some fresh fruit and a croissant with it, pack her lunch, and then she’d be ready to head to the gym.

  Her class, the first class, started at six so she usually got in no later than five-thirty. She would need time to prep her room for the yoga class. After yoga came the hip hop dance class at eight, followed by a forty-five minute break at nine-fifteen. Pilates would start at ten, and her last class, country line dance would start at eleven-fifteen. After that she had to clean up her space, it never failed that students would leave bottles of water on the floor, or gym towels lying around. Then she would have lunch and the usual Friday meeting with the gym owner, Kevin Pollack, before wrapping up her day at the gym. Most of the time she made it out by two, but sometimes she was stuck there until three. Whether it was a meeting that ran overtime, or the fact that having the certifications she had meant they liked to use her nutritionist skills whenever the trainers were first starting to work with somebody, there were just days when her day ran longer than expected. Those days always seemed to come on Fridays. She would sometimes give a brief free consult, but nothing more. If they wanted a full-on session they’d have to pay her, and she had already told Kevin that.

  Maybe, someday, she might open her own business. She could do her classes in her own studio and have an office onsite to do the nutritionist thing. Maybe she would do it…if Levins didn’t kill her first.

  Chapter Two

  Shocked didn’t begin to describe his initial reaction when he saw Clair. The last time he had seen her she was at least twenty pounds heavier. Her hips were rounder, face fuller, abs, not perfectly flat, but slender. Now, her face had thinned out. Her high cheekbones stood out more. Her entire body was trim and tone. He had marginally kept up with her over the years. He knew she had gone to school, knew her major and her profession, but knowing hadn’t prepared him for the woman he saw…and she was definitely a woman now, not the girl he’d left in Manitou ten years ago.

  He couldn’t get over how she changed. She still had the same rich caramel skin and deep brown, almost black, eyes. Her hair was still sandy brown, but she wasn’t wearing it curly anymore, she was wearing it straight. Her hair was almost down to her behind; he noticed it in the picture on her nightstand—Hawaii, March 2010, was sprawled across the bottom of the picture. That was only a few months ago. She had obviously been at some convention, but he couldn’t make out what kind.

  She had her mother’s features, but not her color. Her mother could have passed for white; her father was white; Amy had taken her color from them while Clair almost looked like the adopted child. Her pug nose and high cheekbones looked too much like her mother’s not to be from the same family. She was beautiful; he guessed she always had been. She wasn’t beautiful in the Hollywood glamorous kind of way, but she was beautiful in the real world classically beautiful way.

  Her looks weren’t the only thing that had changed. She was different; her attitude toward him was different. Years ago she did what he asked without protest, now…now he could tell it would be like pulling teeth trying to get her to follow his direction.

  When she looked out the window he’d seen the glimmer of a welcoming smile in her eyes, but by the time she opened the door that glimmer was gone. He shouldn’t have expected the passing of ten years not to have changed her. He shouldn’t have expected her to welcome him with open arms, but he had expected all those things. Some small corner of his mind expected her to be happy he returned.

  Ten years. He hadn’t meant for so much time to pass, but it had. His intention was to give her enough space to get over her crush on him. Janet didn’t know all the details of the kidnapping, but she knew enough to recognize the signs of attachment, or so she had told him. “Stop it now or break her heart later,” she had said. He didn’t want to break her heart. She had already had enough heartbreak and he couldn’t do that to her. Maybe it was more coward than heroic because he knew, no matter how much he loved having her in his life, he couldn’t bear the sight of Clair hurting because of him.

  He thought a few months would be enough, but Janet had suggested at least a year. A year seemed like a long time to him, but Janet had the Masters in Psychology degree and she had spent some time working with victims of rape and domestic violence while doing her volunteer work so he assumed she knew what she was talking about.

  He decided to give it a year. A year turned into two, two into three and three into ten. He was ashamed of himself for abandoning her. More likely, he was ashamed of the way he’d done it. There was no long goodbye, no explanation, just abandonment. His shame ate at him; it’s why he stayed away. He should have never listened to Janet. He should have found another way to deal with Clair’s affections. Instead, he took the chicken shit’s way out and ditched he
r when she needed him. She had already been abandoned enough, and then he turned around and did the same thing to her. Some friend he had turned out to be. Hell, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d punched him square in the nose after what he’d done. Still, he had hoped she would be a little more receptive to his return, a little less—pleasantly hostile; if there were such a thing. He could audibly hear the anger in her voice, see the lack of trust in him through her body language, but she hadn’t faltered with that fake smile she plastered on her face.

  Ten years ago that wasn’t the Clair he knew. What she felt he could usually figure out because she pretty much wore her heart on her sleeve. When she was sad he knew it, happy he felt it. God, she was happy all the time before Levins. She would follow him around, sit by his side while he talked to her father. He couldn’t seem to get rid of her. And shutting her up, well, that was mission impossible. She talked a lot about things he really didn’t understand the importance of, but they seemed important to her, so he listened as intently as a man could about periods and gym classes.

  Now that he thought about it, he was the only one she seemed to talk so freely with. He hadn’t seen that chatty personality emerge when he had been invited to dinner with her family. The realization of that hit him harder, made him feel guiltier. She had been so free with him because she loved him, because she trusted him. Maybe she trusted him more than she trusted her own blood, and he had broken that trust. Somewhere along the way he had become the bad guy. He should have called her; he should have done things differently…something other than drop her in Manitou without a friend in sight. She had every right to be pissed.

  On a second thought he figured she hadn’t called him either. He checked his messages when he got home hoping to hear her voice, but not once did that happen. She was the type to call, he knew that. She damn near called him everyday, and everyday he looked forward to those calls. He missed her voice, missed her attention. God, maybe he had led her on in some way. Maybe his fondness for her affection had given her hope that they could be more.

  When she didn’t call he checked up on her to make sure she was still alive—covertly of course. He didn’t need to go by her house, seeing her would have broke his resolve to give her space. He didn’t need to call in favors. In his line of work he knew how to find the information he desired. He did his own fact checking and found out she was very much alive, still living in Manitou Springs and had gone back to school to finish the degree she started while in high school. She just hadn’t bothered to call him. He hadn’t called her either and that thought alone made him reclaim every ounce of guilt he was trying to push away. Truth be told, if it weren’t for Levins escape he wouldn’t have showed up at her door even now.

  She had every right to be angry with him. He had messed up, royally messed up, and he had to fix it. Ten years was a long time, too long, to walk out on a friendship.

  When he got that call about Levins breaking out of prison his thoughts immediately went to Clair. He hadn’t forgotten the promise Levins had made her when they took him out of the courtroom. “You’re mine,” he had said. “I’m going to claim you like I claimed your sister. You belong to me.” He had yelled as the bailiff, with some help, managed to drag him out the courtroom. There was no mistaking the meaning of his words. He and everybody else in that courtroom knew what Levins meant. He was going to kill her. Fortunately, his sentence had been a heavy one and nobody expected him to ever be able make good on that promise. Now that he escaped, Greg had no doubt the man was going to come back for her.

  Ten years was a long time to sit in a cell on death row and plot revenge. Hell, he’d actually had twelve if he factored in his first two years before the appeal trial. Maybe he’d spent those ten years thinking of ways to get to Clair. Maybe that’s why he was able to shout his threats, his promises, so confidently. Levins was a man who knew what he needed to do, what he wanted to do, and he wouldn’t settle for a breech in his plan.

  Levins, now that was a man of contradictions. He looked like a collage prep fraternity boy. He didn’t look a day over twenty at the time of his arrest, but Levins was actually two days shy of his twenty-seventh birthday at the time. He had boyish charm; charm that could have swayed the jury in his favor had Clair not taken the stand. Just hearing the accusations and the fact that they’d found the bastard running from the scene, found his DNA all over both girls, should have been enough, but the DA knew most of those upper class jury members would have taken one look in Levins’ face and seen their own sons staring back at them. Levins walked around with his polite charm in the court room, smiling at the mothers in the courtroom right on cue. It was if he were telling them the DA was lying. He hadn’t committed those crimes.

  Greg had been disgusted by the look of compassion on those women’s faces, by the almost understanding look they gave. There was almost an atmosphere that they didn’t believe this boy sitting in front of them had committed such a heinous crime. The DA must have seen the possibility that evidence wasn’t going to be enough in this case. His eye witnesses to the actual abduction hadn’t seen the man’s face. They had seen the truck, somebody managed to get a plate number, but nobody had a clear indication of his face, height, weight, hair color or anything else that could be helpful. They needed Clair to testify. Her testimony was the only sure thing that could ensure a guilty verdict. One look at Clair would have been enough, but she hadn’t been in the courtroom during most of the trial. She hadn’t had the strength to go and her father hadn’t exactly been the rock of support that she needed. None of the family was there for the trial. The DA had spun it. The mother was in a mental hospital, the father was trying to cope still with the loss of his daughter, and the victim was too traumatized to sit in that courtroom and see the evidence being presented.

  The spin had only worked so much and then, then they decided they needed her. Her testimony of event, in her words with her voice…no mother, no human, could ever deny that pain.

  Clair had gone through hell. He had seen the way she tensed on the stand, the way she tried to avoid looking at Levins. The DA had asked if she saw her attacker in the courtroom, if she could point to the person. With great fear in her eyes, she finally looked over to the defense table and pointed out Levins. She was so rattled by the time she got off the stand she could barely walk down the courthouse stairs. He had taken her home, helped her calm down and relax the best he could. Tomorrow was another day and she’d be back on the stand again. She would be on there for the rest of the week he had been told. A week of that type of debilitating fear could have broken her, but she hadn’t let it.

  He thanked God when the defense attorney hadn’t cross examined her. He got the feeling the defense attorney’s stomach was turning just like everybody else’s in the courtroom after the testimony Clair had given. Unfortunately that one act of mercy, of not putting her through another week of testimony, had been the root of Levins appeal. Two years later and Clair had to go through it all again.

  Two years later and she was stronger, marginally, but not so strong that the case hadn’t ripped her apart on the inside. This time the new defense attorney grilled her as if she had done something wrong. He hadn’t tried to dispute the evidence so much as he had tried to say Clair had enticed his client. The bastard! It took all Greg’s resolve not to jump the banister dividing the spectators from the players in the court circus and beat the snot out of that rat faced fool.

  The appeal trial was over almost as quickly as it began, and the verdict from the original trial was upheld. Clair was free. Levins was going to die in prison and she wouldn’t have to worry about him ever again.

  When Greg decided to take time from work to protect Clair he hadn’t asked if he could, he hadn’t even asked himself if he should; he just did it. His superior Jordan Andrews knew the case. He had been there while Greg tried to stand by Clair in court, had given him the time off for her hospital visits and for her therapy sessions. Her father wouldn’t take her and he knew she wo
uldn’t get there on her own if he didn’t go pick her up and take her.

  This time, when he told Jordan he was taking the time off, Jordan told him to take as long as he needed. “Paid leave,” he said. Greg didn’t care if his leave would be paid or not. He would take the time unpaid if he had to. He just needed to be there for her, to protect her, to save her this time.

  He hadn’t been able to save her from the hell she endured twelve years ago, or the hell of having to sit through an appeal hearing ten years ago, but he would save her from this; that was his silent promise to himself, and to her.

  He hadn’t expected Janet to come with him. He hadn’t even asked, but she had somehow talked Jordan into letting her go. “He’ll need help,” she had said. Jordan had agreed to let her go, although Greg was sure Jordan hadn’t agreed because he thought that he’d need help. Jordan had sent her along to make sure Greg didn’t carry out his own version of justice. What Jordan didn’t realize was if Levins came anywhere near Clair, nobody would be able to stop him from killing the bastard.

  Clair didn’t know the emotions that were at war within him. He was trained to uphold the law yet every part of him wanted to execute the bastard himself. He wasn’t worried about wanting to; maybe he wasn’t even worried about knowing that he would do it; what worried him most was that he’d never be able to forgive himself for what part he had played in Clair’s pain over the years.