Devil In Her Bed

by Amarie Avant

  “The Duke of Arlington, Mr. D’Ross?” My jaw drops.

  He pauses, my feet falter.

  “Bloody hell, not many Americans know of the duke personally, just mentioning the duke —any duke really—usually does the trick.”

  I nod, following along, much like the women I mocked on my way to see Beck. They looked like sick puppies trying to keep up while running after Lincoln Zager in the mornings.

  “Part of the perks of owning a public relations company. A nostalgic English toy business decided to expand to the West Coast. ‘On Demand’ swooped down in the nick of time to help facilitate the marketing strategy. I run advertising campaigns for everything from high-end Russian vodka, to Minor League Baseball. Let’s just say, I make myself aware of a small bit about everything.”

  The air escapes my lips as we step into the kitchen. Of course, I had anticipated state-of-the-art appliances and marble waterfall countertops. There are three ranges on the island to cook feast after feast. Copper pots and pans hang from the ceiling and as shiny as they are, I doubt they’ve ever been used. But what takes my breath away is the glass wall to the west. The entire portion of this room is perched off the edge of a cliff, and a gray ocean chops out before us. It takes a piece of me to step forward.

  “Kinda strikes a bit of fear in the ticker, doesn’t it?” Lincoln asks.

  I glance up at him.

  He gestures toward the glass wall toward the edge. The flooring caves away to glass and extends about two feet from the wall.

  “I had the home built to watch the sun setting over the beach. Stay a while and I’m sure your previous cautions about it will change. Dolphins swim up close enough for you to see the salt-water gleam off of them. On occasions, while entertaining, a choice few of my guests have been persuaded to look down. But the torment is all in the mind,” he adds before busying himself finding a steel pot, and placing it on the range stove.

  The torment is all in the mind…

  It’s a wise morsel of which I am living proof.

  “Talk to me, Siobhan. Tell me why you followed me.”

  I pull out one of the stools across from him and take a seat. Why tell the truth? This is the only intimate conversation I have had, without paying $500 per hour.

  So I dawdle. “I’ve seen you many times.”

  “You’ve been stalking me for a while now?” he says cockily. Fuck, he has this royal air about him.

  The left side of my mouth curves at the edge. This is the first attempt at a smile, although only a half-smile. Yet, it’s pleasant and pacifying. “I’m going to ask a dumb question, if you don’t mind—and yes I am aware that requesting to ask a question constitutes as said question and thus cancels out the question.” Shit, I’ve never been so meek in my life.

  “Shoot.”

  “I have the feeling you're a man who knows women, aside from the minor frustration when first asking me if I was following you.”

  Lincoln’s sly chortle is luscious against my skin. He nods in agreement. “My apologies, but I’ll have you know, Willow Bluff is flooded with girls posing as women. Their mannerisms aren’t fit for the sixth-form education. I do believe Americans call it ‘high school.’ And real women, I have learned exactly how to treat for that matter,” he says, eyes locked on to mine. If I had a heart, I swear it would skip a few beats. “I appreciate the acknowledgement. Continue.”

  “Well, women, real women, we,” I pause and straighten my shoulders. “We as women only ever want one thing from a man. The men we love—ahem—we want them to put us first. We want them to see us.”

  He nods, attentive to each word I say.

  “We want them to see us…not in the manner that you and I are watching each other while engaged in conversation.” I almost squirm at the word “watching.” “What I’m saying is, when we fall in love, we want the men we love to perceive us differently, to view us not with the same eyes as you would another female or your own mother or what have you. We crave the fairytale style of daydream. We desire to be your first thought in the morning, and damn, we want to consume your daytime, every waking moment until you fall asleep. No wait, maybe I’m not even making sense. We’re all intelligent people, and we all have lives to run, businesses.” I glance around at the trappings of success.

  Crap, I probably had better luck singing the lyrics to The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes For You.”

  “That’s what female’s desire, or at least, my perception.”

  He rubs the back of his knuckles against his angular jaw. Something in me is happy that he doesn’t readily agree or state he understands, but I believe Lincoln is working each angle into his mind frame.

  Lincoln speaks, “No matter how knackered one becomes after a hard day’s work, you’d hope your significant other always looks to you. Considers you. Sees you instead of busily brushing you aside. That’s the madness of love.”

  “The madness of love.” I slap a hand against the marble counter. “Do you mind if I steal that for one of my clients? He loves to reinvent sex every season, and runs one of the hottest virtual sex stores.”

  “By all means.”

  I take on a more serious stance. “A few months ago, I decided that I don’t want that type of love anymore. That madness, as you inferred, sounds great on the outside looking in. It’s what we as women yearn for when paying damn near fifteen dollars for a movie ticket while out with our girlfriends. But it’s a new day. And I no longer think so frivolously.”

  I don’t want to be noticed at all. Hell, I honestly anticipated running in your wake, and then returning to my very own hell.

  Much in the manner that I have been captivated every instance Lincoln Zager says my name, he has taken the same dose of interest in my crazy theory. Thoughtfully he inquires, “And why is that?”

  The tea kettle begins to screech.

  Chapter Three

  Siobhan

  Lincoln sits across from me on the second level of his backyard patio. Hot beaming rays shine down, yet the heat doesn't permeate my skin. It isn’t every day that the sun graces us with its presence in Willow Bluff. But instead of the sun’s rays, Lincoln Zager’s intense existence warms my cold veins as he listens intently to more of my story.

  It’s Thursday and we’ve just completed our third run. Every day, since Tuesday morning, I’ve divulged a little bit more about my murky world. While we get into the new regimen of brunch, I start to tell him more of my terrible life….

  After pushing him away due to Sammy’s fatal car crash, Hosea was still the first notion to cross my mind upon awakening. Even in my stubbornness there was no doubt in my mind that one day we’d rekindle a love which had never fully burned out. I had lost one part of a dynamic trio in my brother that I slowly disengaged from the other man in my life who meant the world to me.

  After his disappearance, I argued with the detective on the case until I became broken. Their leers and the pointed accusations based on a motive of “He broke up with you and you couldn't take it!” started to dig its claws into my psyche. But I couldn't stop.

  I remember one day in particular, I pulled myself up from an all-time low to enter the Los Angeles Police Department located off of South Central Avenue. I don’t even know how I got dressed, but I wore a pair of navy blue slacks with a matching blazer. I was the confident woman with a power suit and tensed lips. I didn’t stop until I was standing at the entranceway to Detective Ortiz’s office, the lead detective on a case that had begun to dim and chill.

  “Hosea is not dead,” were the first words out of my mouth.

  Ortiz had his cell phone cradled to his ear, and was steadily typing away on his laptop. He looked up at me, eyes twirling away with derision as if to say, “not you again.”

  I replied to his soundless irritation, “Yeah, it’s been a while, but you need to listen to me. The black rose on my pillow was from the stalker. Find the runner rug from the left side of my bed—”

  “Miss Lowe,” Ortiz’s heavy voice cut i
n. “We’re harping over a conspiracy again? If there were another rug, we would’ve found it. There simply was no evidence of a forced entry or a struggle or a stolen rug with a three-hundred-dollar price tag…”

  “Oh yeah? Only evidence of a delusional ex-girlfriend, right? Since Hosea and I broke up prior to his disappearance all of the bricks stack up against me! Nobody but myself is motivated to have done such an… an atrocious act?” I placed my hand on my hip and scoffed. The attorney I’d hired to break Detective Ortiz’s ever-pointing finger had gone so far as to lodge a titanium wedge between us. There was no middle ground.

  Letting a deep breath sift through my nostrils, I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with Ortiz. “Why do I have a feeling that my previous attempts were my saving grace? If I hadn’t wasted my time then—mind you, receiving not a single bit of help— I’d probably already be in handcuffs,” I snapped at the detective. “Or did my previous delusions already put a price on my fucking head?”

  Detective Ortiz had been relentless in the beginning. I was his target. He had to cross me off the list, and perhaps I had been lying about a stalker. Just maybe, I had created a stalker a few months prior in order to skew the cards. In the detective’s eyes, this wasn’t a simple missing case. Ortiz had been on the force so long and seen so many things that he believed none other than myself had murdered and did away with Hosea Murrell’s body.

  “That bastard told me that ‘the no body, no crime’ theory is all a lie. He just didn’t have enough evidence for the prosecution to take interest in me. Ortiz told me I won,” I murmur.

  A stemless bubble glass twirls in my hand. Lush red wine catches the sunlight at various instances. And in my attempts to decrease the intensity of the moment, speaking hatred for Detective Ortiz, I wind up baring my heart. “For the past year, I’ve lived life on the outside looking in. Too damn anxious, yet it’s like an invisible bit of duct tape or super glue is masking my ability to communicate.”

  The onyx flecks in Lincoln’s eyes sparkle as he inquires, “Have you considered employing a private investigator?”

  “At the beginning.” My voice trails off as I recall the last conversation I had with Hosea. I once had a Type A personality, all confidence, no dependency whatsoever. I bite my lip and choose words that won’t paint me in such a weak light. “After a while, the thought of adding another person to the list of people who perceive me as guilty just didn’t sit right with me,” I say, picking up the vegan sandwiches that were delivered during my wretched life story. A big bite of sprouts and tomatoes burst with flavor in my mouth. “This sandwich is better than I anticipated, and being from San Antonio, it’s considered blasphemy not to have a single hunk of meat with a meal.”

  Lincoln nods. “Glad you enjoy it.”

  He places his sandwich on his plate and leans back in his uber-cushioned Apollo chair. Lincoln adds, “After all you've divulged, do you feel I’ve looked at you through the eyes of condemnation?”

  I contemplate for a moment. In the past few days, I’ve mentioned some sort of high-impact emotion moment where I want to crawl into a tiny concave and waste away, only to change the subject to the weather, or the sound of the ocean crashing against the bluff or our sandwiches as I’ve just attempted. He has this way of reading me, and steering me back toward the point of leaving me bare.

  Damn, I really ought to stop seeing Dr. Beck and give Mr. Zager all of my dough. Lincoln has this way about him, where he looks at you through nonjudgmental eyes. Since I haven’t told my family or friends about my stalker, I’m not sure if he has this magic aura about him, or I just crave a connection, and not from a shrink.

  I reply, “No, I don't think so. However, the both of us are always high on endorphins when together.”

  This time, Lincoln smiles and a small bit of me desires to mirror said smile.

  “Bollocks, we are still high, aren’t we, Siobhan? Which segues into my next question, shall I take you out of your element? Dinner perhaps to determine if exercise has left us high or is the connection just that hot?”

  Though Lincoln presents a possible date in the form of a question, there is no room to decline. Yet a bit of sarcasm perches at the tip of my lips, compelling me to declare that every moment of my current waking life is out of my element.

  Lincoln’s dark gaze is captivating, and a warmth is working its way over my slender neck and high cheekbones. Ages have passed since I last cared to date, but there’s no time for me to even attempt a soft “no.”

  Lincoln’s cell phone rings. He’s told me that aside from running, he is unable to turn the darn thing off. Yet, the phone hasn’t chimed in my presence until now. He picks it up on the second ring, gestures that he will take a moment, and steps away from the table.

  I wrap myself tighter in my wind breaker. Yesterday was the first time we sat on the patio, overlooking the sea. I can still recall Lincoln’s scent enveloping me as he offered a cashmere blanket to accompany my tea. It was a heady scent, heavy with musk and spices and made me feel safe for the first time in over 365 days.

  His steely voice is carried my direction by a seaweed, salted breeze. “Who’s the fucking boss here…?” He almost seems to growl the words. Damn, with me his question about a dinner date was cushioned by such charm, this phone inquiry isn’t even abstract. There’s no denying he’s the boss. Even with his forearms leaning against the railing, Lincoln stands taller than I had ever imagined. He reminds me of the sea below, unpredictable. At times, mellow enough to beckon you to him in order to be molded by his steady waves. And if I’m reading him half as well as I would a potential client, there is a storm about him which is capable of completely transforming or even worse, devastating a life.

  I bite my lip. I’m off my game. It’s not possible for him to be as unyielding as a tsunami. There’s this underlying pleasantness about him. I smile, recalling the hard inquiry he gave when I followed him and how readily he was able to accept me without words since I didn’t back down.

  Though I can’t make out his entire conversation as he gazes across the sea, I determine that Lincoln will be my little slice of peace within the storm. Running alongside him has offered an outlet to the psychotic notion which brought me here, to Willow Bluff. To my self-proclaimed alienation—all to catch a stalker. The fortress of a house I live in has been rigged. I check the surveillance cameras in my home daily. One day, I’ll be able to determine how the stalker is getting in, why I’m unable to awaken when he’s there, and I will pounce.

  Chapter Four

  The Stalker

  Siobhan has a false sense of comfort within the lofty walls that surround her home. And I love that serving of confidence for her sake. In the months following Hosea Murrell’s disappearance, I detected her slowly slipping away from my grasp. The strong, courageous businesswoman I initially fell for is unwinding at the seams.

  With Hosea out of Siobhan’s life, she seems to cease to exist. It’s as if Siobhan plans to lay down her burdens and give up.

  Caving isn’t what drew me to her, and that shit hurts to my core. If she gives up, she'll no longer need me.

  Though she has started to fold, Miss Lowe is like no other woman I’ve ever taken interest in. She's rectified the obsession I once had on my old love. The other day, a blond with bright emerald eyes had crossed my path. The woman had done something which reminded me of my childhood love, but the urge was gone.

  Siobhan Lowe has fixed me.

  Since moving, I’ve granted her a moment’s reprieve, opting to allow her to settle into her new home, only visiting at certain instances when she is lost in dreams.

  Every so often I lay in her bed, hold her in my arms, warm body molding to warm body. As an emergency medic, I have easy access to twilight anesthesia by way of flirting with one of the anesthetists in order to learn medicinal protocol. After a patient receives a dose, he or she drifts into a relaxed, drowsy state, able to follow simple doctor’s orders during surgery. However, the anesthesia causes the patien
t to forget what occurred during the surgery and the time right after.

  Just last week, I opened and resealed the new case of water bottles in Siobhan’s bedroom. Based on her weight, she needs at least half the bottle for proper sedation. Any less and she will be drowsy and fully aware. If she drinks more or the entire bottle, she'll be out fast.

  There has only ever been one issue with my earlier obsessions. The beauty died in a car crash after consuming a resealed bottle of water while on her way to the gym.

  Fucking bummer.

  Luckily, Siobhan keeps a case of water near her bed, separate from her case in the kitchen. I always love nudging my freckled nose against her hair. She always wears floral fragrance.

  Tonight, I desire to visit her before she falls into a dreamless slumber. The countless videos of her meandering through her daily life in her new home no longer sustain me.

  At ten minutes until nine, my leather-gloved hand slides into the grooves of brick. The muscles in my thighs bulge as the steel-toe of my boots wedge against the grooves in the stone wall. Less than thirty seconds later, my muscular frame stands on lush green grass on Siobhan Lowe’s property.

  I am fully aware of the surveillance cameras tracking various pivotal points of her home. The night after installation, I dismantled almost every one of them and placed all but two on a looped sequence. The one near the gate and the recorder located to view the front door continues to play real time. It won’t do for the grocery delivery guy to come by and those two choice video cameras aren’t synced to reality.

  Then I rerouted the surveillance system in common travel areas such as her kitchen, office, master suite and bathroom.

  At the side door, I pull a spare key from my jean pocket. Soundlessly, I enter the sitting room. This is my ritual. Getting into her home had never been difficult. In the army, I'd learned the art of moving stealthily, dominating enemy lines. I can slit my enemy's throat and they are unaware until their carotid artery squirts with blood.