by Laura Leone
Macy followed her into the kitchen, obviously hoping that she'd be as weak-willed as Ryan and give him a dog biscuit. She was avoiding his eyes and pretending to be unaware of his mournful stare when the phone rang.
Sara turned her head towards the sound—then froze when she realized it was Ryan's cell phone.
He had told her that the only person who had that number was...
Why was she calling him?
The ringing continued.
She's calling to lure him back into her web, of course.
Maybe she intended to inflict guilt. Or maybe she'd threaten him with something he found as terrifying as prison. Maybe...
Sara snatched up the phone and answered the call. "Hello?"
There was a long pause. "Er, hello. I'm calling for Kevin."
That startled Sara. It was the first time she'd actually heard anyone call him that. "He's not here."
Another pause. "This is his phone?"
"Yes."
"Oh." There was a world of comprehension in that single syllable. "So you're what's going on."
"He told me this phone belongs to you."
"Yes."
"So I guess you want it back."
"No. He'll be needing it."
"No, he won't. He quit today."
"Ah. He's told you a few things, I gather?" Catherine's voice was smooth and cultured. She sounded like an educated woman, a professional.
"Yes."
"That's not like him." When Sara didn't reply, Catherine prodded, "Do you know what he does for a living?"
"Yes."
"Everything he does?"
That was obviously a leading question. Sara didn't want to hear Ryan's secrets from this woman, so she said, "He doesn't do it anymore."
"You sound like you believe that."
"Why don't you? He told you. Weren't you listening?"
"But I know him. Far better than you do."
"I don't think so."
"This isn't the first time he's quit, my dear."
"I think you mean, this isn't the first time he's tried to quit, my dear."
"It's not easy to give up... a certain way of life."
"He's given it up. Why can't you accept that?"
"I can tell you're very concerned about him."
"I'm very concerned about you bothering him."
"I think it would be better if I just call back when he's there. When will that be?" When Sara didn't reply, Catherine said, "Of course, if you're afraid to tell me..."
"I'm not sure when he'll be back."
"He didn't tell you?"
"He's got things to do."
"Where is he?"
"He didn't tell you?" Sara said a little nastily.
"That place he mentioned? Safe House?"
Surprised, Sara said, "Yes."
"Perhaps I'll call him there."
"Oh, that'll be good. His pimp calling Safe House. I wish I could be there to see hear his language when he finds you on the other end of the line."
The silence was thick with tension. Then Catherine said, "I don't think you and I have anything to discuss. Good—"
"Catherine, wait!" There was no reply. "Hello?"
"I'm still here," was the chilly reply. "He told you my name?"
Sara said, even as she realized it, "Only your first name."
"What else has he told you?"
"A lot. Probably not everything yet."
"Yet?" That single word positively dripped with skepticism.
"I want to know why you won't let him go."
"Perhaps for the same reasons you hope to keep him."
That surprised Sara. "I doubt that."
"Do you really?"
"Yes. I don't think you have any idea what I see in him."
"Oh, I know exactly what you see in him. I know, because I put it there."
Sara said, "What, his sexual skills?"
Catherine made a dismissive sound. "No, I don't mean his sexual skills. My God, if that's what's got you clinging to him, I'll be happy to send over someone to take his place. Do you honestly imagine that sexual skills are so rare that that's why I've put up with the trouble Kevin has caused me over the years?"
Increasingly interested in Catherine's comments, Sara said, "Well, he seems pretty skillful to me."
"If that's why you want him, then you don't deserve him."
"If that's what you think, then maybe you really do see the same things in him that I do," Sara said. "His intelligence."
"Yes."
"His charm. His sensitivity."
"Yes."
Sara tried to think of which other attributes Catherine was likely to admire. She doubted that Ryan's courage and honesty were high on the list, so she tried, "His style."
"Yes."
"He's a class act."
"Of course he is." Catherine added gently, "I can understand your attraction to him."
Gosh, we're really bonding here. "And I can understand yours."
"Can you also understand that Kevin and I have shared things that he will never share with anyone else? That I know him in a way that neither you nor any other woman ever can?"
"I think you overestimate your influence on him."
"Or perhaps you overestimate yours."
Sara deliberately injected defiance into her voice as she said, "He loves me!"
"He's enjoying a temporary change of scenery, that's all."
"You really think he'll come back to you?"
"What I think," Catherine said calmly, "is that you have no idea who he is or what he needs."
"And you do?"
"I understand him very well."
Sara listened with dawning comprehension to the possessive tone and the obvious attempts to assert a superior relationship with Ryan.
So that's what this is all about—what it's probably always been about.
All this time, Ryan had thought it was business. And all this time, it had been exactly the opposite.
"And I understand," Sara said, having learned all she needed to know, "that you took a homeless kid and seduced him, used him, and then exploited him for money."
"I have never ex—"
"I understand that you are an amoral, opportunistic bitch who has manipulated him for years, and who has never hesitated to use emotional blackmail, threats, and extortion to get her way."
"You have no idea what you're talking ab—"
"And what you don't understand is that Ryan is through with you. Forever. So get used to it, and get over it." She paused. "Hello? Hello?"
Sara put down the phone and looked at Macy. "She hung up. Gosh, do you think it was something I said?"
Well, isn't that interesting?
Whatever had initially drawn Catherine to the grubby, foul-mouthed street boy Ryan had once been, she had ultimately, like the sculptor Pygmalion, fallen in love with her own creation.
If you could possibly call what she did to Ryan "love." Sara certainly couldn't.
But sex didn't mean anything Catherine, so the relationship had followed a strange and sordid course. Catherine didn't care who Ryan slept with—on the contrary, she sold him to women. No, Catherine cared who influenced him, who had emotional power over him. Who controlled him, as she saw it. She couldn't bear for that person not to be her. So she had furiously stomped on his attempt to seek his own life, free of her influence, two years ago. She had succeeded then, but she wouldn't succeed this time.
And that, Sara could tell, would really gall her.
Macy whined at Sara, his soft brown eyes conveying a life of unspeakable deprivation.
Feeling rather glad that she'd had the opportunity to give that appalling woman the earful she deserved, and only sorry that she hadn't worked the words "demented control freak" into her tirade, Sara relented and gave Macy a biscuit.
#
Having given blood, urine, and several hours of his time, Ryan shrugged into his jacket, said goodnight to a few of the Safe House staff members whom he had met today, and left the bu
ilding. The exhilaration of so many major events in a short span of time was being replaced by bone-melting, mind-numbing exhaustion. He would give anything to go home right now, snuggle up to Sara, and sleep for a week.
But he was worried about Adam; and Isabel had agreed that it would be a good idea to make sure that the boy was safe and still in the vicinity. She didn't seem at all disappointed by Ryan's initial failure to convince Adam to come here, and her calm perspective renewed his confidence that he would eventually succeed with the kid.
As long as he could find him, that was.
Ryan rounded the corner, thinking he might as well go back to the warehouse and start his search from there.
With fatigue dimming his senses and slowing his reflexes, he noticed the rapid footsteps directly behind him a second too late. He was only just starting to turn around when the blow hit his skull.
He grunted and stumbled forward, his head whirling with pain and crazily flashing images. Someone grabbed his hair. He moved to defend himself, but he was disoriented and clumsy. The next blow hit his face, and then everything went black and silent.
#
Lights flashed in his eyes with dizzying speed. He heard a continuous, deafening roar. It seemed to be both far away and very near, screaming through his brain.
Someone grabbed his hair and yanked his head up, hurting his scalp, jerking his neck. He grunted, and immediately gagged. It felt like he was smothering.
There was something stuffed in his mouth. To keep him from screaming.
Fear flashed through him with a dark, bitter chill.
He panicked, trying to spit out the thing which was in his mouth.
Someone slapped him. Hard.
Tears stung his eyes, and his nostrils moved with rapid, panicky breaths.
Whoever had him by the hair let go suddenly. His head hit the pavement with a thud, nearly sending him back into the dark well of unconsciousness. He fought it, confused and afraid.
Pavement?
He was outside... He'd been coming out of Safe House... and someone had jumped him...
Pain exploded in his body as someone kicked him. When he rolled away, he felt the rough pavement scraping the bare skin of his stomach and thighs.
He was naked?
Holy shit.
A horrible sense of familiarity flooded him. Naked, on the pavement, surrounded by the stench of urine and garbage, with a gag in his mouth... He had been here once before.
Oh, God, no...
He heard heavy breathing. With his heart thundering madly, he held his own breath and listened. He still heard the breathing. Very near. Someone breathing hard. Directly over his naked body.
Panic swept through him. He tried to get up. But he couldn't move. Why couldn't he move?
That's when he realized his arms were tied behind his back.
It was the only thing that was different from his memories. Maybe he'd been tied this time because he was bigger and stronger now, not as easy to subdue as he had been all those years ago.
No, no, no...
The lights in his eyes flashed even faster. What was that?
A pair of strong hands grabbed him and forced him onto his back. One hand roughly toyed with his cock.
No!
Grunting and strangling on the cloth in his mouth, he kicked out at his attacker and tried to squirm away.
Another blow sent him sprawling, and then he was on his stomach. He tried to get up, using his head for leverage in place of his arms. A knee in his back forced him down again. He collapsed and nearly blacked out from lack of air.
He felt a hand fumble between the cheeks of his butt to explore his anus.
No! No! Oh, Jesus, God, dear God, please, no!
He heard himself screaming, the noise trapped in his throat, in his chest. He was strangling and screaming and so scared, so fucking scared.
He felt fingers there, intruding, testing him.
No!
He was going to vomit. Vomit into his gag and drown.
And he wanted to. If it meant he could die before he was raped again, then, yes, he wanted to die drowning in his own vomit.
Tears were streaming down his face, and his nose was running. He'd suffocate any minute, he knew he would.
God, no, please, not this, not THIS, I can't, I can't stand it again, no, no, no...
Then the knee in his back was gone. He was dragged up to his knees. Then to his feet. His legs wouldn't support him, and his weight seemed to hang from his head as his captor dragged him by the hair across the pavement... and then shoved him into a wall.
He tried to think, tried to use his head, to stop wallowing in blind animal panic. He tried to kick. But he was weak and sluggish, and his attacker punished him by banging his head into the wall.
Dazed, terrified, and reeling with pain, he sagged against the wall, limp and helpless, as a bigger man's body pressed up against him.
Stop, no, no...
He wanted to die. Right now. He couldn't endure what he knew was about to happen.
Please, just let me die.
"Does this seem familiar?"
His lungs burned. He could feel blood on his face.
"You've been here before, haven't you?"
What?
He tried to speak and choked on the gag.
What did you say?
"It was a lot like this, wasn't it?"
How do you... know that?
"Or did you forget?"
That voice...
Your voice...
He knew that voice.
"And did you forget who saved you? Who took you away from this shit?"
Is that you?
The man moved away from his body. A moment later, Ryan felt his legs kicked out from under him. He hit the ground so hard he nearly passed out again.
Derrick?
"She thinks maybe you forgot what you owe her. What can happen to you without her protection."
The lights were flashing madly, making him dizzy. He focused on that hideously familiar voice, feeling sick and weak.
He felt hands working behind him, and his panic returned until he realized he was being untied. Freed. Then the gag was yanked out of his mouth.
Some big, flapping things flew into his face. He flinched and whimpered like a child.
"Relax. They're your clothes, asshole."
He made a pathetic sound, then lifted his head and tried to see who it was. But by the time he realized that the rapid flashing he saw was caused by the fluttering of his eyelids and he willed them to stop doing it, it was too late to see his attacker. The man was gone. Ryan lay naked and alone in a garbage-strewn concrete lot. Corrupt odors stung his nostrils and pain flooded his battered body.
He clutched his clothes to his chest and curled up into a fetal position.
He'd been spared this time. But he still wished he was dead.
Chapter Eighteen
Sara ate dinner, walked Macy, changed into her pajamas, and was reading a book in her living room when she heard Ryan come up the stairs and enter his apartment. Glad he was finally home, she opened her front door and crossed the hall. She knocked on his door, then tried the knob. The door was locked. Habit, she supposed. She knocked louder.
"Ryan?" she called.
No response.
She knocked again. "Ryan?"
Sara went back to her apartment, through the living room, and out onto the balcony. She opened his French doors. "Ryan?"
She turned on a lamp in the living room. Moving towards the bedroom, she turned on the hall light and called his name again. She found Macy blocking the doorway of the darkened bedroom.
"Come on Macy, move. What are you... Oh! Ryan." She could see him faintly in the light coming from the hall.
He lay sprawled across the bed, fully dressed. He was even still wearing his jacket. "You really are tired," she said in amusement.
Nonetheless, she wanted to find out what had happened this evening. She switched on the overhead light. He
groaned and turned his head towards her.
"Sorry, but I want to know..." She gasped when she got a good look at him. "Ryan."
He groaned again and put a hand over his eyes. "Turn that off," he muttered.
Sara rushed forward. "Ryan! Oh, my God! Ryan, what happened?"
His face was bloody and battered. His clothes were dirty and only partially fastened. His hands were filthy, and there were abrasions on them.
He turned his head away from her.
Tears of horror and panic misted Sara's vision, but she forced herself to use her brain. She sat on the bed, turned his head back towards her, and examined his face. Despite the blood, abrasions, and initial swelling, she was relieved to see that the damage was superficial. Nothing was broken, gouged, or disfigured. Ryan looked even worse than he had after his fight with Derrick, but he wasn't seriously injured.
"Did you find Adam?" she asked, thinking about where he had intended to spend the evening.
"Adam?" He frowned a little. "No."
"How did this happen?" When he didn't answer, she prodded, "Ryan? What happened?"
"Go away," he said wearily.
"Is Adam all right? What happened to you?"
"Just go away, Sara."
She put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm going to get some first aid stuff. I'll be right back."
He made a weak attempt to shrug out of her grasp. "Leave me alone."
"Who did this to you?" When he just looked away from her, his eyes dull, she wondered if he was in shock. "I want to take you to a hospital."
That got his attention. "No."
"To a doctor, then."
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Then I'm calling the cops."
"No!" He suddenly sat up and shoved at her. "No cops! Goddamn it, Sara, if you call the cops—"
"Okay, I won't. I won't. But—"
"Go away! Just go away!"
"Shh. Ryan. Calm down. I won't—"
"I said go away!"
She blinked, shocked and confused.
"I don't want you here," he ground out.
She shook her head, dazed. "Ryan..."
"Go! Get out! Get away from me!"
She slid off the bed and stumbled past a whining Macy, ran through the living room, and was back in her apartment before she even remembered to breathe. By then, her head was spinning and her cheeks were streaked with tears.