Mad, Mad World

by J. D. Sloane

  “Three’s a crowd, Jason. Or haven’t you been listening? Plus, I think I hear your master’s voice calling. There’s a good little lapdog. Chop, chop.”

  Jason made a move towards the table as Ronan snapped his fingers in his direction and Alicia held up her arm, giving him a version of her unruffled, reporter girl’s stare.

  “No, I’m sure the restraints will be fine, Jason,” she said, clearing her throat. “We don’t have a lot of time as it is. Thank you for the escort. That’ll be all for now.”

  Jason opened his mouth to say something and then turned it into a frosty smile at the last moment, his eyes rolling over her with a flash of open disdain.

  “Oh course, Miss Gale,” he said, nodding to the guard behind them. “Whatever you prefer. You know how to reach us.”

  Jason tapped the inside of his wrist significantly as he waited for the guard to swipe his card through the electronic reader and then stepped out into the dark hallway, glancing back at her over his shoulder as the door slammed shut.

  Alicia held her breath as she walked over to the table and then took the seat across from Ronan, digging her nails into her palm as he leaned towards her instantly, tilting his head down until she was forced to meet his eyes.

  “I take it he told you about the panic button,” he said his low, gravelly voice almost amused.

  Alicia looked up at him and blushed as she realized that she was holding her left wrist against her body, her fingers curled around the device as if she expected to hit it any moment and then go bolting for the door. She bit the inside of her lower lip, trying to get herself back under control, trying to remember that this was the first important interview of her career, maybe the most important, the kind her life could pivot on.

  If I get this story right, it’ll change everything, she thought, sliding a yellow notepad out of her purse while she felt around for a pen. And not just with Matt, with everyone. But if I blow it, if I let up for even an instant then that’ll be it. I’ll just be another news anchor wannabe who fucked my way into the biggest news story this year and then blew it all because some lowlife sociopath grinned in my direction.

  “He did,” Alicia said, trying to hide her annoyance as Ronan drummed his fingers casually, his collar-length dark blond hair shifting across the famous river of scars that curled up the left side of his face. “Is that something they dreamed up just for you?”

  Ronan raised his brows, his dark eyes following her hands as she rubbed her elbows.

  “Now that really would be flattering, wouldn’t it? To think that our industrious Mr. Dula dreamed all of this up. Just for me.”

  Alicia felt her stomach do a slow flip as Ronan tilted his head in her direction, his wide dark eyes running over her face with a kind of curious, well-controlled hunger. He stretched his back lightly, glancing around the therapy room without much interest and Alicia stole a quick glance as she pulled a file out of her bag, suddenly craving a cigarette so badly she almost felt dizzy.

  In all the photos Alicia had ever seen of Ronan, all the footage of his bloody, citywide rampage that the news stations had run on a grisly season-long reel, he had seemed attractive but ruthless, the kind of face you wouldn’t pause for on a well-lighted street. In person she found that he was infinitely better looking, his striking, movie star good looks marred only by the deep, twisted maze of scars that ran up the side of his face, almost to the temple.

  “Is Alicia Gale your professional name?” Ronan asked, his voice low and polite.

  Alicia brushed her bangs away from her eyes as she glanced up at him, tucking them behind her ear.

  “No. Not really. I just dropped my first name. That’s all.”

  “And why’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Someone at the station suggested it. Said Alicia sounded better. I wasn’t too broken up about it to be honest. My first was a family name. I never really liked it.”

  “Hmm. What did it use to be?”

  “Holly,” she said curtly, as she pulled out one of her notebooks. “It was Holly.”

  Ronan tapped his lips for a moment, something unnervingly sensuous in the way his eyes shifted over her features as if trying to find a use for her bright, corn fed good looks.

  “Holly,” he said, drawing the name out as he glanced at the ceiling. “I actually don’t mind that either. But Alicia is nice. It suits you. I’ve always found that there was nothing quite so liberating as shedding a name that no longer fit.”

  Alicia felt her annoyance rise as she realized that he was aware of her discomfort, her inability to process his beauty into the bloody public massacre they’d locked him up for almost a year ago. She took a deep breath, glancing up as the vents above them wheezed to life and tried to ignore the way his eyes danced as she shivered, looking over the front of her thin jersey dress pointedly before letting his eyes drift up to her face.

  “So,” Ronan said, something strange and unchained shifting behind his mask of polite disinterest. “Tell me, Alicia. Has anyone ever called you Alice?”

  “Alice?” she asked meeting his gaze across the table as he drummed his fingers restlessly. “No. Never Alice. So what’s the deal with the heat in here? Is that some kind of therapy technique? Keep you guys on ice until you start confessing to everything?”

  Ronan’s eyes widened and then his expression softened slightly as he inched his chair forward, cocking his head in her direction.

  “Well, therapists and psychologists don’t have a lot of tricks. Not that it’s really their fault. Their whole profession is just based on- playing the percentages.”

  Alicia shrugged, giving him a tight smile.

  “In what way?”

  Ronan bit back a grin and rolled his shoulders as if warming up for a fight.

  “Well no one really knows how the human mind works, Miss Gale. They’re just reading the conditions and giving a diagnosis. Sort of like weather forecasting. The funny thing is that half the time they’re wrong about absolutely everything. But that doesn’t keep them from calling it a science, now does it?”

  “Well there is a science to it,” Alicia said, annoyed in spite of herself. “At least to weather forecasting. You can read the conditions. It’s proven. It works.”

  Ronan made a low noise in the back of his throat, shifting his hands in his lap as his chains rattled beneath them. Click, click, click.

  “No, you just read in a book what conditions are supposed to mean and then tell everyone to plan for rain. And sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes, every once in a while, it’s something a whole. Lot. Worse.”

  “Well we can predict for that too,” Alicia said, flipping open his file as his eyes bored into her, following every movement she made with a flat predator’s calm. “Sometimes when conditions are exactly right, a system gets too large and starts feeding on itself. That’s why you have to watch certain patterns closely, to make sure they don’t become too destructive…”

  Alicia broke off awkwardly as Ronan glanced around the quiet, empty room with a pointed sort of amusement.

  “I guess that depends whose side you’re on, now doesn’t it?”

  Alicia cleared her throat as Ronan picked up her recorder and examined it leisurely for a moment before placing it back on the table and brushing it out of his way with a sweep of his hand.

  “Of course, if you’re really cold, the therapist who work in this office keeps a red sweater in her top righthand drawer. Right above her filing cabinet.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  Ronan flashed her an unpleasant smile that she felt right into her fingertips.

  “Do you really want to know?” He asked, drawing out the words until they were practically a caress.

  Alicia pressed her lips together as the blood rose to her cheeks and then threw open his file with a terse snap as Ronan eased back in his chair, something hard and violent sliding behind his expression of amused gr
atification. She reached for her recorder, setting it between them as she met his gaze across the table.

  “Mind if I record this?”

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “Ronan White,” she said, leaning towards the recorder slightly as she flipped to a fresh piece of paper. “First interview. What I would like to talk about are the murders that happened almost a year ago around this island. Are you willing to talk about that, Mr. White?”

  “Ask me whatever you like, Alicia. I’ve been watching your reports on the news for some time now. I find them highly informative.”

  Alicia glanced up as he tipped his head towards the recorder and used her first name, her jaw stiffening as she tried not to take the bait.

  “Oh really? Which ones in particular?”

  He bit back a smirk as his long, dark blond hair shifted across the tangle of scars on his face.

  “Well, mostly your weather reports to be honest. You haven’t exactly been a hard-hitting reporter up until now, have you? But you did seem to get the forecast right almost half the time. Which is more than I can say for your chums on the anchor desk.”

  Alicia bit the inside of her lip, her annoyance crawling higher and pulled the recorder over to her side of the desk as Ronan folded his hands politely in front of him.

  “That was really just a summer internship thing, while I was in school. I needed some airtime to round out my degree.”

  “Hmm. But it was enough to catch your boss’s attention. Isn’t that right?”

  Alicia pressed her lips together as Ronan’s eyes dropped to the photo in front of him, his lips curling up slightly as he ran a finger around the edge.

  “I’m not sure that’s relevant, Mr. White. Patrick Connor. Would you like to tell me what precipitated this?”

  “Yes, I heard about that,” he said, flicking it back to her with a casual wave of his hand. “On a boat around this island, wasn’t it? Tsk, tsk. So tragic, really. And with all the wonderful things he was doing for our city.”

  “That depends on who you ask,” Alicia said crisply. “Is that why you killed him? Because the Emergency Manager was interfering with your drug operation?”

  “Well, that’s what the papers say anyway. And who am I to contradict the unimpeachable justice of public opinion?”

  “But you were on the boat. You admit that.”

  “I was in a lot of different places that night.”

  “So you’re saying you had nothing to do with this? Nothing to do with him being strapped to one of the support poles and left to die with the word ‘Liar’ carved into his back?”

  Ronan tapped the desk with his fingertip, his dark eyes twirling wildly as cocked his head in her direction.

  “I hear he hung on for almost an hour afterwards. They could tell because when they dragged him out of the wreckage he had water in his lungs, as if he’d tried to take one last. Brave. Breath. Quite the little trooper our boy Connor.”

  “Did you want him to drown, Ronan? Is that why you left him like that? So he could see his own death coming but not be able to do anything about it?”

  “When I left, Connor was still very much alive. Well, maybe not very much alive. But alive. And I don’t think the courts have been able to prove anything else. Have they, Alicia?”

  Alicia pulled out a short stack of photos and began laying them out side by side as he watched his face.

  “Ronan. These people. These businessmen. You’ve already been convicted for their murders. You don’t have to sidestep it. It’s public record now. I just want to know what happened that night. I need some context.”

  “Hmm,” Ronan said, whistling under his breath quietly as his dark eyes shifted from picture to picture. “Context. I wish I could help you, Alicia. I honestly do. But you’re chasing all the wrong problems. I’d be a lot more concerned about what Mr. Dula is dreaming up out here in Wonderland. He has quite a little shop of horrors in the works. And believe me when I say that he’s just getting warmed up.”

  Alicia blinked up at him as Ronan dropped his chin, his wide eyes sweeping over her face like a restless current. She glanced back at the door as he cleared his throat against his fist and felt a strange thrill of excitement run up the corridor of her spine.

  “The program he mentioned,” she said, her voice lowering. “This entire block is part of it?”

  Ronan grinned, his eyes lighting up with the first honest flash of interest she’d seen since she entered.

  “Ah,” Ronan said, shifting forward in his seat as his chains snapped noisily below them. “Now there’s a real question. What is our ambitious warden planning for our fair, shining city out there? I wonder, I really do.”

  Alicia picked up her notebook and flipped through it quickly.

  “The drugs he’s using,” Alicia blurted out. “He wouldn’t tell me what they were, but he said that the entire program was voluntary. That the prisoners have to consent to treatment.”

  Ronan raised his brows as if waiting for her to finish and then shrugged, his expression changing slightly as his eyes swept around the room.

  “Well. There’s consent and then there’s consent. Personally, I don’t really mind all the party favors. Prison life can get a little monotonous. Present company excluded, of course.”

  Alicia drew back slightly as Ronan’s expression changed again and he leaned back in his chair, dragging his hands into his lap as he eased his legs apart. She felt her stomach flip as he dragged his eyes over the front of her dress with a crude, focused interest and then tilted her chin as his eyes drifted over her hair.

  “Your hair seems lighter than it does on television. When you first start doing the weather, it looked almost- red.”

  Alicia leaned forward, tapping the recorder impatiently as she let out a quick sigh.

  “Is that why you wanted me here, Ronan? Is that why you agreed to be interviewed after all these months? Something to do with the methods here?”

  “Do I need a reason to want to talk to a beautiful woman once in a while?”

  Alicia’s brow furrowed, and she swiped at the ends of her hair in embarrassment, brushing it behind one ear as Ronan’s eyes flew towards the gesture with a sudden hungry expression.

  “Isn’t that what your therapist is for?” She asked, her voice low and clipped.

  “If you say so,” Ronan said slowly.

  Alicia felt the blood climb into her face as Ronan’s eyes crawled over her and tapped her pen against her pad as he ran his knuckle across his lips, tracing the crisp red line of her mouth with a deliberate sort of relish.

  “Not going to ask me if the carpet matches the drapes, now are you?” Alicia said, trying to keep her tone light as her gold eyes flashed with sudden irritation.

  Ronan’s smirk broadened, and he dropped his hands to the table, drumming his fingers across the top of her legal pad as delicately as a pianist.

  “Oh, I’d never ask you anything that crude, Alicia,” he said, pitching his body forward until his face was barely more than a hand’s width away. “If I was curious about that, I’d just take a look.”

  Alicia flinched as Ronan gave her an unpleasant grin and then tipped her a wink, making a casual motion with one hand as he relaxed back against his chair.

  “It is a very nice dress, though. I’m sure you’ll have a long, inspiring career on the Channel Six anchor desk. Certainly if your boyfriend has anything to say about it.”

  Alicia looked up quickly, her fingers tapping the edge of her panic button almost against her will and Ronan followed their path, his wide dark eyes twirling with delight as he pointed to her lightly.

  “I wouldn’t call it the most original idea in the world to sleep with your boss to get ahead, Alicia,” he said, his gravelly voice low and careless. “But it did explain your meteoric rise a little more eloquently. Once I put together who your station manager actually was. Not that I mind the blond. It definitely catches the eye.
Is that what your boyfriend likes about it? Does it make him feel important to have men staring at you all the time?”

  “I take it you prefer dark hair?”

  Alicia shuffled a handful of papers in his file without meeting his eyes. Ronan’s grin darkened, and he tilted his head at her, his expression suddenly watchful.

  “And what makes you think that?”

  Alicia pulled out a long list of names and snapped it to the top of the pile, rolling her bright gold eyes up to meet him.

  “Jackie Prince. Age 22. Visited twice. Sarah McMillan. Age 30. Visited once. Melissa Reynolds. Age 26. Visited four times.”

  Alicia held up the list to him and raised her brows.

  “And that was in a three-week period. You must’ve liked her.”

  Something unpleasant shifted behind Ronan’s polite expression and he shrugged, dragging his hands back into his lap with a slow, metallic clatter.

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting jealous already,” he said mildly, regarded her with lowered eyes as he glanced toward the recorder with a quick sneer.

  Alicia set the sheet down on the table and folded her hands in front of her.

  “This list is two pages long, Ronan. All of them women. And almost all of them with long, dark hair.”

  “Yes, well. We all need our distractions, Miss Gale. Some of them are more- harmless than others.”

  “And I checked those names against the mail you’ve received. Some of them still write you. Although, from what I can tell, you never write them back once you meet them. Why is that, I wonder?”

  Ronan’s eyes snapped to life as a stack of pictures rolled across the desk, his eyes darting over them swiftly before he dragged his gaze away.

  “I am a terrible pen pal, that’s true,” he said, considering her face so carefully that she held her breath. “Is that what you’re worried about, Alicia? That I won’t write you afterwards?”

  Alicia paused, her stomach twisting into a stiff knot of irritation and felt her nails dig into her palm as she set her papers aside.