I wanted nothing more than to run.
“What do you want to do, Mr. Morgan?” a big man in a dark suit asked. I’d never seen him before since I’d moved here, but I figured he had to be someone important — someone high up in the security team.
“If we can’t figure out who left the note there, we’re going to have to be that much more vigilant in the future,” Levi said, his fingers still moving, their tapping conveying the turmoil in his thoughts. Maybe he was thinking that he’d rather be rid of me than to deal with this problem, and I agreed with him. He didn’t have to do any of this. All he had to do to get past this threat would be to turn me loose on the streets. I’d support that decision, even if it meant leaving my survival up to luck.
And I’d never been lucky.
“We can increase the police outside,” the man said. “Station more of your security team inside.”
“I don’t know that engaging even more people is going to solve this,” Levi said. “Let’s talk security cameras. If I’d had surveillance in the bedroom, we could at least review the tape to see who was in there.”
A deep shudder welled inside of me. The thought of cameras watching my every move inside the townhouse — that was too close. It was just too close. Inside of my head, Carl would be behind every camera, recording my every move, watching me.
Perhaps watching me even now.
“Meagan?”
I opened my eyes — I hadn’t realized I’d closed them — to see Levi and the security man staring at me.
“What?” I asked, my eyes darting between them both.
“Are you okay?” Levi asked.
“If we can do it without the cameras, I think that would be better,” I said. “Only if we can. Please. I don’t think I could stay here.”
Levi’s face brightened with understanding and then darkened all the same. “No cameras,” he said shortly. “You’re all capable people. All I’m asking for is that you figure out how to keep a man who wants to hurt this woman out of my house. Is that difficult?”
Levi was upset that this had happened, upset at his security team, at the idea that, given all of the resources at his disposal, he couldn’t throw enough money at this problem to get it to go away. I knew that was what he was thinking, and that my safety was a source of stress and frustration made me hate myself.
“Maybe I’ll just go away,” I said. “I’ll just go somewhere, anywhere. Get out of town. You won’t have to worry about me.”
“Meagan, I would worry about you even if there wasn’t a lunatic out to get you,” Levi said. “You’re not going anywhere. If you’re alone and away from here, you’re even more vulnerable. We’ll get this figured out. Increase the patrols around the neighborhood. Add three more men to the detail inside the townhouse.”
The last two orders were directed at the man in the suit, who nodded and stepped briefly away, talking on a cellphone and grabbing people as he passed by. The house was crawling with people in dark suits. It was a wonder they could tell themselves apart. There had to be dozens of them.
“We’ll just have to get used to having more people around than usual until we get all of this figured out,” Levi said, smiling grimly at me.
“And what is it going to take to figure this out?” I asked dully. “Carl behind bars?”
“He’ll never make it behind bars,” Levi said with a strange tone of voice.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my heart sinking. “You don’t think the notes would do it? The police think he was behind my brother’s killing. They don’t have the evidence that would put him away?”
“He won’t make it behind bars because I’ll kill him myself if I see him,” Levi vowed.
I shuddered in spite of myself. I knew that Levi knew his way around a weapon, but to hear him profess that he was ready to commit an act of violence … it was frightening.
“I think I want to go to bed now,” I said in a small voice. “Can we send everyone home, just for tonight? I just want to be alone with you. Not in a crowd of people.”
Levi’s face softened, and he kissed my forehead. “Of course. Everyone out!”
The security man he’d been talking to earlier looked at Levi with surprise, but didn’t question him, helping to usher all of the other personnel out, including the police officers who’d drifted inside during the tumult. Levi even dismissed the staff he had on hand, giving them the night off for my own comfort.
“Is that better?” he asked as he turned the bed down for me, helping me into it. It was hard to believe that the note had been there, right where my head was resting. I wondered what had happened to it, but didn’t really want to ask.
“Much better,” I said, smiling at him. “Thank you for being so understanding.”
“Meagan, I love you. I love you and I would do anything for you. This is nothing. We’re going to get through this.”
“I know,” I said, even if I wasn’t so sure of it myself. It was comforting to be caught up in Levi’s conviction.
The floorboards creaked behind him and I gasped as I suddenly made out a form darkening the doorway.
Levi half turned before there was sickening thud, and his face registered a moment of confusion and pain before nothingness.
Chapter 19
I didn’t understand what was happening until I saw Levi tumbling heavily to the bed beside me, his lips parted in surprised and pain, his hand attempting to explore whatever pained him but falling uselessly on the mattress. There wasn’t any blood, but then again, I knew that you could die without it. My mother had seemed for all the world to be asleep in her bed when I knew otherwise. My eyes bore holes into Levi until I saw the rise of his back, a tangible sign he was breathing.
“Meagan, look at me.”
The voice alone was enough to make me scramble off the bed, away from Levi, running mindlessly into whatever room I could find — the next bedroom adjacent to Levi’s that I used to keep my growing collection of belongings. He’d bought me so many clothes and shoes and purses and accessories that I’d have overtaken his closet long ago before he assigned me a room-sized closet.
But none of that was important right now. There wasn’t an exit in this room. There wasn’t an escape. My panic had run me right into a dead end. I didn’t have time to dwell on the discomfiting fact that I’d run away from Levi after he’d been hurt, leaving him to whatever fate might befall him. His attacker was in the room with me.
“Look at me.”
I whirled around, standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by everything Levi had given me, to face the problem.
The problem didn’t look very threatening. He was just a man — not very tall, not remarkable in any way other than the fact that he’d come into the townhouse, hit Levi, and chased me into this room. He smiled like he recognized me, like he expected me to know who he was, but I couldn’t place him. Where was the security team? Where were the police? This place was supposed to be tighter than Fort Knox. That was what Levi had put into place after I’d found the note on the bed, on the pillow where I’d laid my head to sleep. He’d had the place turned upside down, considered installing security cameras, but stopped at my behest. Was this my fault? Could we have been safer if I’d just been able to suck it up and deal with the cameras?
Everything was my fault.
“You got my note, didn’t you?”
I still didn’t understand how that voice — so dead, so relentless, so familiar — was issuing forth from that body. The body didn’t look like anyone I recognized, but the voice was there.
“And you had to have heard that I killed your brother by now, right?”
I flinched and breathed harder. Levi had said there was a good chance Carl was the one behind Matt’s shooting, but it hadn’t seemed plausible until now.
Now, when Carl was standing before me.
I set my shoulders and lifted my chin. “Why did you kill my brother?” If I was going to face this thing instead of running away, I wanted ans
wers.
“Because I could.” That voice was so maddening. It made me feel like I was going crazy to hear it again. “Because I knew it would flush you out. Because he would’ve been a threat. Because I wanted to.”
None of them was the answer I sought, the answer I wanted to hear. My brother had died for nothing. He’d died because Carl had some abstract thought that Matt would try to protect me here in New York City, but now I had Levi, all of his security team, and a good portion of the police force — for what little good they’d done me. After all of the measures, Carl had still been able to weasel his way inside.
“Why are you here?” I asked, my voice quavering even thought I didn’t want to. I still hadn’t been able to look fully at the body filling the doorway, trapping me inside this room. Part of me still didn’t want it to be real. I expected at any moment to wake up from this latest nightmare from my past, but I knew I was living it. There wasn’t an escape from this reality.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d come back for you, Meagan?” he asked, his lips curling upward into a grin. He was very pleased with himself.
The reality was so ludicrous that I studied the man in front of me, my stomach tense but not churning, for a long time. He didn’t look like the Carl that plagued my mind, both awake and asleep. The Carl who’d invaded my innocence had an innocuous bald spot, a soft, pudgy belly, and a pervasive overall feeling of being non-threatening. It was the reason my mother never suspected anything, the reason my brother didn’t try take me out of the house sooner.
It was the reason I didn’t understand just what was at stake until it was far too late.
But this man standing in front of me, claiming to be the man who’d ruined my life, didn’t look like Carl at all.
This man was slim, wearing a nice, dark suit like everyone else on Levi’s security team, fitting in perfectly — right down to the closely cropped hair, which didn’t add up. He wasn’t bald at all. I couldn’t see that shiny spot I’d so often stared at.
But there were things that added up all too well. The height factor was something you couldn’t really fake. Carl hadn’t been that tall — about as tall as I was — and he was easily the shortest person on Levi’s security staff.
And then there were the eyes.
I knew those eyes so well that it was almost as if they were my own, staring back out of the mirror at me.
Those eyes had watched me asleep and awake, watched me even when I wasn’t aware they were watching me — in the shower, getting dressed, interacting with other people, playing outside in the yard. They’d watched after Carl had asked me to do horrible things, watched the aftermath of those events, watched me struggle to have semi-normal relationships and conversations with people, watched me fight with myself. Those eyes had continued to watch me long after Carl had left, on the myriad videotapes he’d taken of me to use for his own foul purpose. To continue to control and terrorize me with their presence, knowing they were out there, squirming at the fear of what would happen if he’d show them to someone. To anyone. To Levi, to show the man I loved just how obedient I’d been, just how complicit I’d been in my own abuse.
I’d done everything he asked on those tapes. There was no proof of the time that I’d stood up to him — except for my mother’s grave.
“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, and I finally did. He was different, but it was Carl. Those piggish, garbage eyes had given away his ruse. If only I’d been able to accurately describe them to the police sketch artist, if only I’d been able to get anything right, then maybe Carl wouldn’t have been able to so successfully infiltrate the safety netting Levi had so carefully put into place around us.
“What do you want?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice casual, detached, forcing my tone to be even while the rest of me trembled.
He laughed. “I see right through you,” he told me, and I believed him. He knew me better than anyone, knew me in ways no one else ever would. He could see I was trying to be brave, and that false emotion made me look even more vulnerable.
“Leave me alone,” I tried again, but it was an even feebler attempt.
“No, this has been too long in coming,” Carl said, shaking his head. “I’ve waited too long, left you alone too long, gotten distracted, sidetracked for too long. But now we’re here, together, and we’re going to make up for some lost time.”
I tried to still myself for what was coming, for the steps that Carl starting taking toward me, my heart hammering in my chest. I tried to take heart that Levi was only a room away, unconscious but still alive — for the time being. He said he would always be here for me, and he was, but it was different. I needed him. I really, really needed him, and he wasn’t there.
“Touch yourself, Meagan,” Carl purred, that suggestion chilling me to the bone, making me shiver. I gagged at my own body’s helpless reaction to those words. It had been conditioned to react to that command, and I was ashamed to realize that I was wet between my legs, unable to resist to what had been ingrained in me even as it made me want to vomit.
“Don’t disappoint me,” he said, making me jerk in sick reaction, stumbling backward, away from him. He’d gotten so close to me while I’d been stuck in place, paralyzed with self-loathing. “You do what I say. You know what happens when you don’t.”
“You can’t take anything else from me,” I told him, unable to conceal my voice’s shaking. “I can’t be hurt anymore by you. I refuse to be.”
He threw his head back and laughed mirthlessly. “You’re an idiot. Of course I can take things from you. Don’t you understand what you have? You’re in love.”
My breath caught in my throat. Carl was right. I was in love. I loved Levi, the man in the other room, injured only because he loved me.
“Don’t you see?” Carl prompted me. “Everything you get close to — everyone — turns to shit. You’re not allowed to be happy unless I say you are. You’ll never be normal again. You’re a broken-down girl, Meagan. You should be put out of your misery — but I love you too much for that. I love that misery. I crave it. You should watch some of the videos I took of you. Your eyes hate me the entire time you’re touching yourself. And then, right on the brink of your climax, they change. You don’t hate me anymore. You love me for letting you feel good. You love me, and you hate yourself. It’s the most exquisite thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
My knees were in danger of giving out. If I fell, it would all be over. I wouldn’t be able to resist Carl. As repulsive as he was to me, as badly as I wanted to push him away, I couldn’t. He was inside of me already, inside of my head, and I couldn’t get him out. He had always been there, and would always be there. He was the hole I always struggled to fill. The one that always cried out for relief.
But if I fell, everything would fall down around me. The progress I’d made, the steps forward I was continuing to take. Levi. Carl wouldn’t let him live, no matter what I did. He’d controlled me for so long with the threat of taking my mother from me, and I knew that even if I did what he asked of me to try and protect Levi, it would only be a matter of time before Carl ended him anyway.
I knew it was more than a possibility. Carl was capable of it, and all too willing to do it. He’d killed my mother because I didn’t do what he said. He killed my brother just to flush me out into the open again. And he’d kill Levi if I didn’t obey him — whether I obeyed him or not. Just to make me come undone.
Levi’s life hung in the balance, and I was the only person who could do anything about it.
That much was clear to me, now. Yes, Carl was the person who was responsible for all of this pain and turmoil. I wasn’t the responsible party. My doctor had been working on that point with me — that I wasn’t responsible for what had happened. I hadn’t asked for bad things to happen to me. I’d coped with the situation as best I could for as long as I could until I tried to do something about it. Carl had been the one behind all of it.
But I couldn’t turn away from the idea that I was
the one who would determine what happened next. If I didn’t make my stand now, there wouldn’t be a way to come back from it — no Levi to help me pick up the pieces, no doctors to help sew the parts back together, no police to put the bad guy in jail. There would only be Carl. Carl and me.
I was done backing away from him. I was done orbiting around his horror. If I was ever going to get as close to normal as was possible for me, I needed to dig my heels in and face this.
I had weapons in my arsenal this time that I didn’t have before — a better understanding of what Carl was capable of, a burgeoning strength inside of me from the sessions with the doctor, a literal weapon, the gun I’d used to pepper a target with holes, and the love of the man in the next room, above all else. I loved Levi with everything I had, everything I could give him. I would do anything for him, and I knew what I had to do.
“I’ll do what you want,” I said finally, forcing my eyes to meet his.
“Of course you will. I’ll kill Levi Morgan if you don’t.”
“But I want to do it in the other room. So I can see him. Make sure he’s all right.”
Carl paused for a moment to consider this while I inwardly cringed. Was it too obvious that I wanted to be in the other room? That was where my purse was that I carried today — and, by extension, the gun within it.
A laugh jolted me from my anxiety. “You sick little whore. You’re hoping he wakes up in the middle of it, don’t you? You want him to see you touching yourself for me.”
“I just want to make sure he’s okay,” I said again, lowering my eyes. He had to let me into that room. I wouldn’t be able to do this otherwise.
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