* * * * * *
An entire room, an offshoot of the house on the first floor, was dedicated to the heated pool. The seamless glass walls gave off the illusion of being outdoors.
Exhaling, I tried to do the impossible and relax while lounging in the upholstered lounge chair. I couldn’t relax; all I could think about was Deana. I clamored for Catch to show me one more shred of kindness and provide me with proof of life.
The padding of bare feet across the tile forced my eyes to dart to my left. In a white bikini and large sunglasses, Jory took up a seat on the lounge beside me. Applying sunscreen onto her olive-toned arms and legs, she studied me through her gradated sunglasses.
I was overly grateful to see another face there, even if she was a raging and unstable bitch. “We weren’t introduced. I’m…”
“Sugar. I know.” She cut off my need to introduce my overzealous introduction of myself. She plucked up her phone and began to play a game.
“I’m not giving you my phone.” She continued to work manically on her game. “Do you really need a tan? I feel like you’re mocking me.”
I closed my eyes and turned my face up to the track lighting in the ceiling; the only source of light in the entire room. It was currently pitch black night outside. Okay, this woman really isn’t all there. “Are you…seeing Catch?”
She plopped her sunglasses on her head and jerked her head toward me. “What the fuck makes you think that?”
“So that’s a no, then?”
She shrugged at me. “Would it make you jealous if we were seeing each other?”
“Not at all.” As I stared at her face and had a better view of her features, I kept thinking she looked very familiar.
“You have eyes don’t you? What straight woman wouldn’t want to fuck him?”
Someone sane, maybe? I had no idea what it made me. I hated and wanted the man. He had my sister for a reason I couldn’t discern, and he treated me with a respect no man had ever shown me. Jasper was hardly around, and Michael was the monster of everyone’s nightmares. It was a sad state all around.
“Have we met before?” I examined her face, unable to shake the familiarity in her features.
“Nope. I have a familiar face.”
“Hey.” I gave her a smile to try to appear inviting. “Things don’t have to be like this. We can be friends, you and I. We’re both alone and—”
“I’m not alone. You are.” She kicked up her legs and leaned back with a relaxed sigh.
I could pretend to be her most awesome friend if it meant answers and saving Deana. For now, I had to approach the situation with caution. “How do you know Catch?”
“Catch is married,” she offered up easily.
“Catch…is married?”
“Was,” she corrected me and her earlier statement. “But that’s not how we’re connected, not really.”
“Does he do this often? Take women and…”
“He doesn’t want me to talk about it. All I’ll say is he doesn’t make a habit of taking women in.” She covered her mouth and shook her head. “I’m busy, stop asking questions.” She slid her sunglasses back on her face and continued to play her game.
From the space in her sunglasses, I could see that her eyes were closed despite working feverishly on solving the puzzle. “What was up with the men at the house back in the States?”
“I don’t know. He told me to come here and get the place ready after we had a little hiccup with me leaving bread crumbs for you. Catch has too many enemies. I mean what’s the point of security if you’re not going to use it? He opens up the door and invites them in because he likes to kill. I think the kid lost his mind some time ago.”
“Kid?”
“Just a name I call him. Sometimes he looks like a nineteen-year-old boy even though he’s almost a decade older. A really buff one with a better vocabulary, but do you see it? I see it. It’s weird, right?”
“Breadcrumbs?” I attempted to guide her nonsensicalness back on track when it was definitely heading off the rails. “The suit jacket?”
“You saw it?” She turned to me and beamed. “Did you see what I did to her? It was beautiful wasn’t it?”
My posture began to sink and I recoiled from her. “You…killed her?”
“Sure did. Ding dong the wicked bitch is dead.” She burst out in laughter. “Catch was right, you’re gullible. Catch is my brother, if you need to know.”
I couldn’t really see the family resemblance. “So…you killed that woman?”
“I said I did, didn’t I?”
Had Catch lied to me about his mercy shot? Or was Jory the one deceiving me? “Excuse me…” I jolted off the lounge.
She stood, blocking my path to the exit. “You really should stay here if Catch told you to. If you’re scared of me, I can help. We’re all people working for the same goal in a different way.”
“If that’s true, you know some of Catch’s enemies?”
“Yes, and they are yours. I thought we were going to be friends. Real buddies. I’m not going to be someone you can use to get information on Catch.”
“I’m not trying to use you. Put yourself in my position.”
She looked behind her for a moment. Inclining forward quickly, she partially cupped her mouth and whispered, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. I don’t think you should go on like you have without knowing. I watch the video feeds of you and him when he doesn’t know. I know Deana is really important to you. She’s not the person you think she is.” She stood in my personal space, bowing her back to meet my shorter height. “She’s more.”
* * * * * *
My time alone wasn’t the best company. All that filled my mind were questions without answers: Catch’s real identity and connection to Michael. Why he had my sister. Who Jory was and what she meant by shared goals. Why, of all the people he could’ve taken, did Catch take me, allowing me to live in a prison of luxury when Deana mattered more to Michael?
A pending fit of dread wouldn’t leave me alone. It was there for a reason. Things were going to change for me.
-11-
CREATURE COMFORTS
Catch hadn’t returned to the house in two days. I scoured the house for Jory and couldn’t find her. I assumed she lived in the guest house; the door remained permanently locked. I searched the rooms open to me until my soles were sore, looking for what I might’ve missed on my previous trips.
The weather was as fickle as my mood. It had snowed and rained in the span of forty-eight hours. The sun rose at nine and set at three.
On the brink of the sun setting on what would be day three without Catch, I paced around the pool. With every lap, I closed in on the window providing a view of the scenery directly in front of the house. My twelfth lap around, a new sight stopped me in my tracks.
A sizable truck pulled into the circular drive. A couple of men in gray uniforms carted off metal boxes, one by one, and disappeared down the walk leading to the exterior cellar door. The boxes appeared to be heavy, taking the men time and care to remove each one together. I counted at least four boxes, several inches tall.
“Sugar.”
I startled at Catch’s voice and turned to him. “Catch,” I said, my tone as equally monotone as his. “Where did you go?”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward. Once impossible, it seemed easier to evoke the man’s smile. It would probably be more of a problem for him than for me. It was easy to forget his nature—for all of a second—when he smiled.
“Out.” His presence was an odd comfort after being left alone in a strange land.
“What’s with the boxes? What’s in them?”
“Animals,” he said simply. “How are you feeling? Have you been eating well while I’ve been absent?”
“Okay, I guess.” I said with a shrug. “I ate decently.”
“I need a better answer.”
“I’m swell and ate like a pot-bellied pig on its last night on Earth,” I told him and ga
ve him a customer service smile.
“Change into an outfit that doesn’t impede your agility, then meet me in the room downstairs. You’ll know where.”
I had no idea what Catch had planned. I assumed it would be another horror scene he’d want me to clean up.
After changing into a pair of white leggings and T-shirt I couldn’t find in the closet until today in the bedroom upstairs, I met him in the room downstairs that wasn’t open to me previously; it took up the entire west side of the home.
A hundred and eighty-degree view of the mountains and the river were seen from the windowed walls. The shared wall with the interior of the house was covered in black foam. The floors were lined in soft mats. The room was completely bare, with the exception of a television affixed high on the wall, broadcasting a news program. The reporter spoke to a man about donations for a reward bounty and finding his daughter. His voice broke off as he recalled losing his wife to mental illness. To have lost his daughter left him beside himself.
I put on an act as though the man didn’t affect me. As Catch stared at me from over his shoulder, taking a chisel to the block of ice I was encased in, it was impossible to play dumb about the identity of the man on the screen.
“Why are we here?” My voice was quiet, shattering at the sound of the man’s tearful pleas.
Catch looked back at the television and flexed his shoulders. The muscles in his back rolled and expanded underneath his T-shirt. “We’re going to spar. If you feel I have an unfair advantage, or if you’re concerned I’ll severely hurt you, remember what you need to say. Whatever your trepidations, yield to me, and we’ll call this off.”
“Bring it.” I scowled at him, offended that he’d think his cock made him better than me. “And don’t take it easy on me.”
He walked to a seam in the wall and pressed a code. With a keycard and a wave of his hand over a sensor, it opened. The closet was deep and indicated why the room was empty. Exercise equipment and weapons clouded the closet, leaving very little room to move. He retrieved two ornate scythes and extended them to me.
I nearly drooled, wishing I had this room open to me previously.
“Unless you’d like a different weapon?”
“Those are fine.” I stepped forward and grabbed the handles to remove them from his hand. He wouldn’t budge. I captured his attention and searched beyond the coldness in his dimming blue eyes to figure out a way to put the puzzle named Catch together. He gave me nothing in return.
He released the scythes, allowing me to hold them. I spun them in my hands and circled his position.
The television broadcast disturbed me. It continuously played on a loop; the man pleaded for the return of his daughter, unable to speak through his grief. “She’s all I have left,” he sobbed.
A chasm inside my chest began to spread, slowing my pace. “Can you turn it off before we do this?” My voice cracked and my eyes watered.
He followed me with his body. His fists clenched, ready to engage. Without warning, he lurched forward. I stepped backward in a wide stance extending the scythe, leaving the second behind my back in my left hand.
A hand reached for my wrist, and I spun, lowering my body and bending my back to reach his legs and debilitate him. He sprung backward but not fast enough. I cut partially through his fleece lounge pants. On his tan skin, a slow forming shallow red slash began to appear.
I reveled in the moment.
A soft blow to my forehead forced me to stumble back. I combat rolled, extending the scythes out in front of me, keeping my stance low. He stood ready, his arms out in a controlled fashion, primed to deflect.
The man on the screen began to tearfully plead, “I don’t care who you are. If you have my daughter, Simone, please, I beg you, return her home. I need her.”
A blow to the area between my shoulder blades forced me to straighten and immediately cower as the pain vibrated through me. My right hand flew out and was caught in Catch’s hand. I swung the other around expecting him to grab it as well. He dodged and spun with me in his grip sending me flying to the floor, back first. I lost the grip on one of my scythes.
I extended my last scythe out toward Catch and met resistance from his body. His shirt tore open diagonally, revealing his chest. A line of blood trickled down the inky black tattoo.
If he was in pain, he didn’t show it. The flat of his palm impacted against my throat. I lost all sense of purpose and loosened my grip on the scythe. Wheezing, I held my neck, unable to breathe or swallow.
He turned my wrist inward, forcing the scythe wielding hand down toward my throat and pushed my wriggling body to lie flat against the floor. I tried to push my legs up while focusing on expanding my closed throat.
Catch sat on my thighs, making movement nearly impossible. I grabbed his wrist, shaking and trembling against the lowering of the scythe gripped tightly in my hand, pressed against my neck. The sound of the man pleading for the life of his daughter looped in the background, bringing me close to losing my mind.
“Say it,” I croaked, coughing and fighting to speak. My hand quaked against his strength. Tears streamed down either sides of my face. “Say it or do it and get it over with.”
“I don’t need to say anything.” Calm and showing no clues that our fight winded him, he continued to torture me. He pushed down with little effort until the cold metal pinched my neck. “I’ve proved my point.”
The annoying loop gave way for silence. He grabbed my hair in his fist, turning my head toward the screen. The act made my skin rub against the sword, superficially splitting the skin open.
On the television, a random security feed played inside a supermarket. The camera zoomed on a woman who couldn’t be mistaken: Deana. She opened the commercial fridge and retrieved a gallon of milk, placing it in her carry cart. I could scarcely believe the date and time on the recording. It was taken yesterday.
Catch released me, and plucked up the scythes from the floor, securing the weapons back inside the closet.
Stunned and sore, it took me a few moments before I could get off the floor.
Catch extended his hand down to me and helped me to stand. “Daughter,” he baited me. “Did you notice his use of the word daughter instead of stepdaughter?”
I held my hand to my neck drawing back only a minor droplet of blood when I expected more. I stared at his chest as beads of crimson ran down the crevice between his pecs. He glanced down at where my eyes landed, and gazed up at me through the thickness of his dark eyelashes. His lips contorted crookedly.
“What the fuck does it matter?” I swept my tears away with the back of my hand. “Why did you bring me here? To prove how badass you were? Does it fucking matter when I made you bleed more?”
“I’m fine with bleeding in order to get what I want in the end. Had I wanted to, I could’ve killed you. You’re a decent fighter—not the best, but you’d do well enough against an opponent with scarcely any skill. You never stood a chance of winning against me; you never will.” He grabbed my chin thrusting it upward. “It’s time you gave me what I’ve been waiting for.”
If my assumptions were true, my complete identity seemed to be the only thing Catch wanted and didn’t have—at least not in its entirety. If all my secrets were revealed, he would have no use for me. I preferred to never discover what the man did with people who bored him.
“You fucked me over.” The screen called my eye and didn’t want to let me go. Deana was safe and going on about her life and her day as though nothing was out of the ordinary. “Did you ever have her? Was the video faked?”
“Remember exactly what I said to you. Did I ever say I had her?”
“You made me think you had her.” I placed a palm over my aching back.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking she will remain safe. You should know…” His eyes flickered as they searched my face. The deviance in his smile was turned up by several notches. “…Her purpose depends on your behavior.”
“If you
know where she is, and she’s the one you want, why do you have me? Did you take her and let her go? What the fuck is the name of this game?”
His grip on my chin firmed. “Be patient, sweetheart. Everything you want to know will be revealed in time.” He released me. “Do you remember when we met? I asked what motivated you to step into the ring. It had a purpose, and it didn’t center around Darren’s future. Answer truthfully this time.”
I glanced at the man who appeared back on the screen who adopted me and took care of me while my mother was alive. My mother was heartbroken over Michael for the entirety of my life, a man who never really loved her and never cared to see the daughter they had together until she died.
Jasper loved my mother, and she never returned his love.
I was stolen from Jasper when Michael claimed I wasn’t safe with him the day of my mother’s funeral. A week later, Jasper died in a fire that consumed the entire apartment building, and I wasn’t allowed to go to his funeral. I was never given a chance to say goodbye to the only man who had ever loved me. I never stopped thinking it; Michael had something to do with his death, and I had nothing to prove it. The video Catch had ownership of proved my theories correct. If Jasper sent out a public plea for me, Michael had every reason to silence him.
“Simone, I’m impatiently waiting.” Catch caught my attention with his short, clipped pronouncement of my name.
“Thrill-seeking,” I squawked.
“Another lie.”
“What do you want from me?” My will to fight against giving in was quivering at the foundation.
“You know what I want.”
As I heard my father plead again. I couldn’t help the sob. “Because I’m angry.”
“At whom?”
“H-him.” I fumbled over the word through my need to release the tears I never cried. “Michael.” A cry escaped so loudly it changed Catch’s demeanor.
“You’re upset with Michael, not the woman who chose to lay with him?”
Lies & Lullabies Page 12