by Ashlee Price
Chapter 15 – Greg
“I told you I wasn’t going to give up on her. Tell me what you’ve got.”
Captain Monroe didn’t look very happy about it. I’d been looking for Mariah for well over a month, though, and if the man had some information on her, he’d better give it to me.
“I’m just asking if you’ve really thought this through, Greg.”
“Yes. Now give me the information. I haven’t been wasting all this time and money on her for nothing. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for Mariah to come around? I’m not going to let her just walk away now. We were meant to be together. I was going to marry this girl.”
“If she doesn’t want you, there’s nothing that you can do about it. She left for a reason, and I don’t want to see you get hurt any more than you already have. I told you that the girl was a mess and that you shouldn’t get involved. Never get involved with the victims of a case, it just gets too complicated.”
I didn’t need the lecture. I’d heard it before, years ago when we’d first gotten together. Nothing had changed. I still didn’t care about rules and protocol, not when it came to Mariah. That was why I had no problem asking my friends to use all of their power to help me find her. I had the police database at my disposal, and after some detective work, we finally had something.
“So what is it?”
He sighed and sat down across from me. We were in his office since mine didn’t have a door. “I really like her too, Greg. I always told you that she was a sweet girl, but things change.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Mariah. She has changed, and I don’t think you’re going to like what she’s doing now. It’s been a couple of months since she left, and it looks like she has changed.”
“Has it been that long?” It didn’t feel like it. It felt like it was just yesterday I came home to an empty house and a short letter apologizing and thanking me for everything that I’d done for her. She was just gone, and I was lost without her. I didn’t care what she was doing now. Mariah was mine, and I was ready to claim her and bring her back home.
“Yes, it has been over two months, and now Mariah is into things that you’re not going to like.”
He kept saying that, so I knew that it had to be pretty bad. Did I really want to know? The question was answered when I grabbed the paperwork from him. I had to know. I had to know that she was okay, and I wanted to know where she was so I could go get her. I wasn’t going to live my life without Mariah a day longer than I had to.
“Just tell me.” I was looking at a bunch of reports and I just wanted to know what they said. It was like a bandage: I wanted him to rip it off instead of me slowly tugging on it.
“She’s working at a fetish shop.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Well, you know what a fetish is, a sexual fetish?”
I nodded that I knew. I knew that Mariah had fetishes, but I didn’t see how that translated into a shop or a job. “Yes, I know what it is. What does that have to do with Mariah?”
I was still reading the papers while the captain went to his phone. “Do you have an important call that can’t wait?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, old friend. I’m going to show you something that I don’t want to, but I have to, so just know that I don’t take pleasure in this at all.”
My partner and friend might as well have been speaking in Greek. He had something to tell me, and he was holding out.
“Why don’t you just go back to Marla and be done with Mariah? That would be the best thing that you could do. Marla is sweet and she’s pretty. What more could you want? I don’t see why you’re digging up bones if you don’t have to.”
“Because I love her.”
He just shook his head and made a comment that nothing he said was going to help. “I know that you’re not going to listen to me, but you’re going to have to do something. I wish I didn’t have to show you this, but maybe then you’ll finally understand what I’m trying to tell you.”
Captain Monroe handed me his phone and the first thing that I saw was a compromising picture of Mariah. I was about to get mad, curse him out for having a picture of her like that, but then I realized that it was on the internet.
“What’s this?”
“Scroll down and see for yourself, old friend. Greg, I warned you that you didn’t want to go down this route. Maybe now you’ll see that she’s a lost cause. There’s no coming back from that lifestyle.”
I read the description of the woman I loved. It wasn’t flattering at all, but it was made to entice. It described her as a beautiful virgin who liked a little bit of pain. Make her beg for it, the ad suggested.
As I scrolled down further, I got to the phone number of the place where she was working. I wrote it down, as well as the address. I was going to go find Mariah. The distance didn’t deter me, but it did make me realize that I was going to have to go right now. At least now I knew where she was. To me, that was a whole lot closer to her than I’d been in a very long time.
“I’m sorry that you had to see this, Greg. I know what she means to you. Now you can see why I said that there’s really no point in going to find her. She’s lost.”
Mariah was definitely lost in a way that she hadn’t been before, but this was not going to stop me from loving her. I was always going to love her, and none of this mattered. She must have felt that she had to. Something had made her do such a thing. Her friend was gone too, so I was sure that it was Kimmie who’d talked her into it. If she’d stayed here with me, this never would have happened.
“She isn’t lost. I still love her, and I’m just going to have to save her again.”
“Did you ever think that maybe she doesn’t want to be saved? She goes from one bad situation to another. That’s not coincidence.”
“You just don’t understand what she’s been through. She’s been through more than you could ever imagine. She doesn’t think that she deserves to be loved, even though she does. It’s all in her head, and she just needs someone to remind her of that. That’s all it is.”
He shook his head. I knew that he wasn’t going to see it the way I did. It was hard to explain, admittedly. It was always hard to explain Mariah, and this time I wasn’t even going to try. He’d found her, and for that I owed him, but for now, all I was worried about was finding her and getting her back in my arms where she belonged.
“So what are you going to do?”
“You know what I’m going to do.”
“You’re going down to see her?”
I nodded. “I guess I’m going to have to take a week or so off. I need some time down there to see what’s going on before I bust in and get her to leave with me.”
“What if she doesn’t want to go?”
That wasn’t even a thought until he put it into my head. Before I wasn’t even thinking of that, but now I had to wonder what I was going to do if she didn’t want to see me. She’d left, after all, and that didn’t seem to be a sign of someone who was in love. It was the sign of a woman who wanted to get away from me. I wanted to think that she was just scared, overwhelmed, something. I didn’t like to think that she’d left because of me. I’d pushed a little on sex, but I didn’t think she would leave just because of that. How could she just walk away? I couldn’t.
***
Ever since I’d found out about Mariah, I’d become obsessed with the website, the one Captain Monroe had shown me. I couldn’t stop looking at it, reading everything that I could to figure out what Mariah was doing there. What had gotten into the sweet girl who’d left just a couple of months before? Where and how had everything gone so wrong? I knew that she liked pain. That had been a surprise to me at first, but I thought that it was something special between the two of us. Now it was something else altogether.
I was on the first flight out of Kalamazoo. The connection had me on the red-eye to Louisiana, nervous as hell about what was going to ha
ppen when I got there. I tried to play it out in my head, what I was going to do and what I was going to say to get her to come home with me. She had to. She just had to, and once again I had to think about the other options as not even there. Mariah loved me and she was going to come home with me. That was the end of it.
Getting off the plane, it took me a little while to get a hotel booked for the week and then hire a rental car to get me around the city. I wasn’t going to just jump into all of this right away. I had some investigating to do first. I wanted to know what was really going on and what Mariah was up to now.
By the time I got settled in for the night, the sun was coming up and I was exhausted. I was going on too many coffees and too many highs and lows. One minute I was missing her and had no idea where she was; now I knew and I was in the same town as her and I had addresses for her house and her work. It was going to happen, something was, and although I thought I knew what, I realized that it was still up in the air. My friend was right, things had changed. I just needed to find out what kind of things had changed, and how much.
It didn’t take long for me to find the house she was supposed to be living in. It was registered to somebody by the name of Sasha Marks. Since I’d heard Mariah talk about a Sasha from time to time, I had to think that it was one of her and Kimmie’s friends. Kimmie had left town about the same time as Mariah, and I still assumed that they’d left together. I couldn’t prove it, but I had a feeling I was about to. I was about to find out the truth, but I wasn’t finding the courage to walk up to the door and knock.
What was wrong with me? I was there and she was just on the other side of the wall. Had I let the captain get into my head? Was that why it was so hard to move? Maybe I needed to observe things for a little while and see what was going on before I charged ahead.
Chapter 16 – Mariah
“Do you know who keeps calling, Kimmie? Did you break up with your boyfriend or what?”
“No, I haven’t. Why do you think that it’s for me? It could be for you or Sasha. You’re the ones who see more than one guy at a time.”
“Damn, that’s a low blow.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know who keeps calling. I’ve answered it twice and there was no one there. It’s starting to get to me too.”
After three days of random hang-up calls, it was becoming clear that one of us had a stalker on our hands. Kimmie was right, of course. She always was. It was more than likely someone for me or Sasha. I didn’t think that it was anyone that I knew. No one would want to get ahold of me that much. But you never know. I hadn’t heard from Scott since the last time I’d seen him at the club. Anyone else, I really didn’t care.
“Well, I don’t know what to do. They’re coming through as private.”
“Since you changed your cell number, I thought that you knew who was calling all of the time.”
“What do you mean I changed my cell number?”
She pulled out her phone and dialed my number in front of me. I thought that the phone in my pocket was going to ring, but it never did. Taking it out of there, I looked on the screen and there was nothing. Kimmie was putting it up to my ear and letting me hear the recording saying that the phone number – my phone number – had been disconnected.
“Did you not pay your bill or something?”
I looked at her like she was talking nonsense. Of course I’d paid my bill. What was she thinking?
“I don’t know why they would cancel my number. That’s so weird, right?”
Kimmie nodded that it was. “I tried a couple of times. I was a little tipsy when it first came back like this, you know how I am. I thought I’d messed up the dialing, but now I know it wasn’t just me.”
“No, I didn’t know it had changed. I need to call them and see what happened. The phone is still on, though. It just doesn’t make any sense. I was trying to figure out why it was so quiet and no one had been texting or calling. At least now I know.”
Kimmie couldn’t understand what I was smiling about. I’d been so worried that I hadn’t heard from Scott, but now I knew that it was all a mistake. He hadn’t been calling because there had been some kind of fluke with the phone company. I didn’t care about the phone or anything else now that I knew Scott wasn’t mad or avoiding me. I would see him next week, and I couldn’t wait. The only thing I wished was that I had asked him for his number instead of giving him mine. Not that it would take much to find him. He was a powerful man, after all.
“What are you grinning about?”
“Nothing, I just thought someone wasn’t calling me, but I guess it’s because my phone is messed up. I didn’t see that one coming. I thought for sure he was just ignoring me.”
“Is it one of your clients? You’re not going to be like Sasha and fall in love with one of them, are you?”
I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t going to fall for one of them. It was a bad idea, after all, but the fact was that I had already fallen for him in a way. It wasn’t going to get any better, and if I had my way, I would want more than what Sasha had. I wouldn’t want to be with Scott if he was going to be with other women.
“Yes, but he’s more than a client.”
Kimmie rolled her eyes and told me that she didn’t know how I did it. I was thinking about Scott and I got sidetracked again. She had to rein it back in, and before long I was on my way to a restaurant for lunch. I hadn’t been off in a while, and all I’d wanted to do was sleep.
“Come on, Mariah, you need to get out. You’re even paler than usual.”
***
“You’re just seeing things. What would Greg be doing here?”
“I don’t know, but I swear I saw him when we were leaving the restaurant.”
I could tell that she didn’t believe me. There were hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans, and more than likely there were one or two who looked like my ex. But something was nagging at me. It was all too coincidental. I didn’t put much stock in coincidence, so I had to go with the other possibilities, whether they made immediate sense or not.
“You’re just being paranoid. Are you sure you’re okay? You haven’t been acting like yourself lately. I just wonder what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing, I’m just a little spooked because I could have sworn that I saw him.”
“I know you think you did, but that doesn’t tell me what he would be doing here.”
“I don’t know. Greg has a side of him that you wouldn’t expect. That’s why I left when he was gone. There was no way that I wanted to face him right then to break up.”
“He didn’t hit you or anything, did he?”
“No, it was never anything like that, although I know there were times when he wanted to. I could just see it in his eyes, but he never really touched me out of anger. I just… I don’t know if he’s the type to not let things go. Sometimes I wondered if he would try to chase me down. You know, the whole ‘if I can’t have you no one can’ scenario.”
“I never got that vibe from him. He has a job. I mean, he can’t just take off whenever he wants to chase you around. I’m sure that it was just someone that looked like him.”
“You’re probably right.” I said it at the same time my stomach knotted thinking about it. I just had a feeling that Greg was around and sooner or later I was going to have to have it out with him. I don’t know why I was so nervous. I didn’t think he would hurt me, but Greg was known for his threats and he got particularly vicious when things didn’t go his way. He also knew far too much about my past for me to be at all comfortable.
***
The hang-up calls kept coming. I still wasn’t sure who it was, but each time I got one I imagined that it was Greg. I still couldn’t quite figure out what he was doing, but knowing him he was investigating me. That was what he did as a cop, and I didn’t like the idea that I was his target now. He was really good at his job.
Then I thought about what he would think when he found out what I did now. I
t wouldn’t take much to figure it out. In fact, chances were that if he was already down south, he already knew anyway. What did he want, then? If he knew what I was doing, and that I was no longer the delicate girl he’d fallen in love with, what could he possibly want from me now?
I called into work and told Elie that I wasn’t feeling well. The two days off had given me a lot of time to think, and I’d come to the conclusion that I needed to try to figure out what was going on in my life. But there was more to it than that. I couldn’t think when Elie was trying to sell me off to the highest bidder.
He wasn’t happy that I canceled, but he didn’t give me too much lip about it. All he said was that the next time I came in we’d have a lot to talk about. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like the conversation, but it was about time that we did have a talk. If I was going to keep working at the club, things were going to have to change.
The knock at the door pulled me from my thoughts. I didn’t even check the peephole. The girls were out dancing, and I half figured that it was them and they had misplaced their keys again. Considering that we’d had to get a few extra ones already, it wasn’t that far out of the realm of possibility.
The words on my lips stopped when I saw who was at the door. What was he doing here?
“Greg?”
“Mariah! God, it’s good to see you! You don’t know how much I’ve missed you and how worried I was when you took off. I was afraid I was never going to see you again!”
He pulled me in for a kiss, and I was too shocked that he was there to stop him. I could feel the familiar pull that my body had to his. He’d given me many nights of pleasure, and even though I didn’t want to go back, my body was all ready for him in seconds. The kiss was broken when I realized what he was doing and what I was doing. We weren’t together anymore.
“Wait, Greg. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but this is not going to happen anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I left because it wasn’t working out. Did you really think that you were going to come chase me down and everything was going to be okay?”