Dear Adam

by Ava Zavora

  Memories of the self-defense classes ran in a confused jumble in her mind. Eden tried to sort them out. Images of her instructor demonstrating how to react when being attacked from behind, when being choked, but she remembered them too late. There had never been a class on what to do when you were tied to a chair.

  This was it. Her worst nightmare come true. She was trapped and helpless with no way out. She could feel herself shutting down, an old mechanism from her failed marriage being triggered into life. Becoming numb. Starting to pretend this isn’t happening. Telling herself that he’ll only hurt her worse if she fought back. Be as quiet and as still as possible and she’ll be fine afterwards.

  But she won’t be fine afterwards. This stark, cold knowledge cut through the cottony numbness that was spreading through her mind. He wasn’t going to let her go unharmed if she cooperated. Once he gets what he wants, which is Adam, she’ll be of no use to him. He’ll kill her. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll still kill her. She will die no matter what.

  Eden remembered the same thing her instructor always said just before class ended: “Do whatever it takes to come out alive.”

  She began to sob and slumped down on the chair. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want.” She didn’t need to fake sounding scared.

  She bowed her head in submission but watched him move around the room. He had a British accent that was rougher than either Adam’s or Jack’s. About 5’9 - 5’10”, with a stocky build. Very strong and muscular. In a struggle between them, he would overpower her easily every time. But she can’t think about that now or else she’ll remain paralyzed with fear. She forced herself to remember the ultimate outcome if she did nothing.

  The rope around her wrists was very securely fastened, no wiggle space whatsoever. She surveyed her room without moving her head, continuing to sob quietly and cower. If she could somehow free herself, it would take at most 10 seconds to run to the door, undo the locks, open it, and run out. Out the door, she had to run down the long hallway, and the stairwell was somewhere to her right. She couldn’t remember exactly where. All she had to do was free herself and get to the door, but she had to go through him first.

  He dumped the contents of her purse on the bed and picked up her iPhone. He pressed the home key and up came the lock screen. It illuminated him. His face was nondescript, bland. Forgettable. He didn’t look like he could hurt anyone.

  “What’s the password?”

  “There isn’t one. I have to be holding it for it to open. It scans my thumbprint.”

  He went behind her chair and put the iPhone in her right hand. She gripped the phone and pressed on the screen with her thumb.

  “It’s not working.”

  She tried again. The iPhone slipped and fell to the floor. He shoved it back in her hand. She pressed on the screen once more but the frustrated sound he made indicated that her phone was still unlocked.

  “It was working just now. I used it all day today. But not like this.”

  He grunted. He took the phone away from her hand.

  “Don’t fucking try anything.” He started undoing the rope. Once it was loosened, her right hand was free. But he was still holding onto her left hand.

  “Try it again. The way you normally do it.” He placed the phone in her right palm.

  She brought the phone in front of her and pressed her thumb on the screen while her fingers gripped the back. It instantly unlocked. He took the phone from her and immediately tied her hands together again. Once he was done, he came around to her, holding the phone and looking at it with marked interest.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “From my phone company.”

  “No, this app.”

  “It’s not an app. I don’t know what it is. He – Adam – sent it to me and had me install it. I don’t know how it works.”

  This interested him even more. She could see the excitement on his face.

  “Did Adam call you on this phone?”

  She hesitated. But all he had to do was scroll through her old calls and Adam’s name would pop up. “Yes. But the number doesn’t work anymore. You can try it and see for yourself.”

  He pressed on her screen a few times and then held the phone up to his ear. He must have found Adam’s old number. She could hear it ring from where she sat. She looked at him, shocked.

  He ended the call.

  “It wasn’t working before, I swear!”

  He slammed his fist against her cheek hard. Eden blinked as the sudden shock of pain made her vision go temporarily black. Her vision returned after a few seconds, but her cheek throbbed. This was nothing like getting punched in the head during boxing. At least she had protective head gear then. She opened and closed her mouth. Her jaw ached, but was fine.

  He went back to the bed and plugged in her phone to an open laptop.

  “I’m going to call Adam in a few minutes. You’re going to ask him to meet you here. And you had better be convincing.”

  “I don’t even know if he’ll come,” Eden sobbed. “We haven’t talked in six months. We’ve never even met!”

  He swiftly got up from the bed and approached her with his hand in a fist.

  Eden turned her head to avoid being hit and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s the truth! I’ve never met him. I don’t even know what he looks like!”

  Her phone started ringing. It was Adam calling back.

  He let it ring but went back to typing on the laptop, even more quickly now. He was composed but Eden could tell he was very excited.

  The call went to voice mail. They both stared at it, waiting for a message to pop up indicating that he left a message. It remained silent.

  He went back to working on the laptop. Eden looked around desperately for anything that could function as a weapon.

  “It’s locked again,” he said with impatience as he lifted her phone from the bed.

  “It’s programmed that way, automatically locks after 5 minutes if I’m not holding it.”

  He untied her right hand again so she could open the phone, then immediately tied her once she was done. She tested the rope. It was as secure as before.

  He plugged her phone in again to his laptop. He appeared to be downloading information from it and was scanning through the data. Although he was excited before, the more he scanned, the angrier he became. He started swearing at the screen. He wasn’t finding what he was looking for.

  “He fucked up your phone didn’t he?”

  Eden didn’t say anything. Adam had called it “encrypting” her phone so it would be safe from being hacked. She had thought it was paranoia at the time but now she realized what he was afraid of. The man in her room and others like him.

  He had at least 80-90 pounds on her. And it was all muscle. He was bigger, stronger, and had done this before. Probably killed before, judging from his ruthless detachment. She felt herself shaking and started sweating even more. Just the thought of attempting anything and imagining his punishment made her even more afraid.

  “Fuck.” Her phone had locked again.

  This was her only chance, Eden realized. When he untied her, she had to be fast and she had to be sure. All she had going for her was the element of surprise and that was a one-time deal. Could she do it?

  He untied her and for one agonizing moment she weighed her chances and tried to summon some courage. But her fear was too great. She unlocked the phone and he tied her up once again. And once again, the rope that bound her was unbreakable. She started crying quietly, not for show this time, but because she felt the crushing weight of hopelessness.

  He didn’t pay attention to her, too intent on trying to figure out how to get into her phone’s inner workings. There was no doubt that once he did, it would be straight path to Adam and then she would be needed no longer.

  Her phone vibrated and made a bell sound. It was a text message.

  He glanced at the screen. “Who is Dante?”

  Eden’s throat tig
htened. She couldn’t breathe. She would have fallen to the ground and begged if she could.

  “Hey, mom, hope you're having a good time. Got an A in Stats,” he read out loud. He looked at her and smiled, a chilling picture. She could see it written clearly on the triumphant expression on his face. There was no doubt now that she would do anything he told her to do, that she would be obedient and cooperative and would persuade Adam to meet her not for her own sake, but for her son’s.

  She had been wrong. This was her worst nightmare.

  He continued working on her phone and meeting with little success for his frustration only grew.

  “Fuck!” Her phone had locked again.

  He got up.

  “Who are you?” she asked although she knew it was futile.

  “Who I am is none of your concern. All you need to know is that I will kill you and I will kill your boy if you don’t get Adam to come here so I can meet him. It doesn’t matter if your boy is in America,” he sneered. “There’s no place safe from me,” he said as he untied her right hand.

  That was all she needed. No thought, no wavering, no hesitation as she simultaneously rose and swung a fisted hand as hard as she could into his face. Her right hook surprised him but didn’t knock him down. What knocked him down was the ferocious kick to his groin with her platform wedge heels that followed just a second after. She stomped on it once more to keep him down a bit longer.

  “You fucking bitch!” he moaned.

  As he writhed on the floor, Eden freed her left hand and reached for the nightstand nearby. She grabbed the large lamp made of blown glass and hit him on the head with it. It took five more hits and the lamp breaking in two before he stopped moving. Eden kicked him several more times in the groin to make sure he was really out.

  Someone began ramming against the door. Eden clutched her lamp, at the ready. The door burst open. Jack entered the room, saw the man on the floor and then rushed at her.

  Chapter 20

  “Don’t come any closer!” Eden screamed as she held the broken lamp in her hands, the jagged pieces pointed at Jack, who stopped where he was.

  “Eden, I’m Adam’s friend.” Jack held his hands up in the air. He started walking towards her again.

  “I swear I’ll cut that pretty face of yours.” She jabbed the lamp at his direction.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the man on the floor start to get up and swiftly swung the butt end of the lamp on the back of his head as hard as she could, yelling a cry of outrage as she did so. The man slumped and stopped moving.

  Jack instantly backed up and hit the doorframe, his hands still up in the air.

  “Help!” she screamed at the top her lungs. “Help! Aiuto! Aiuto!”

  “Eden –“

  “Just let me through the door. That’s all I want.” She started to inch toward him, gripping the lamp in front of her. Jack slid with his back against the wall, away from her, his blue eyes wide.

  “Adam sent me. I swear.”

  “I don’t know where Adam is. So if you think you’re going to get to him through me, you’re fucking wrong.”

  “He’s at sea. He asked me to find you and stop you from coming here. You just called his number awhile go. It forwarded to my phone. He had it activated it again in case you called. Watch.”

  Eden stopped short.

  Jack fumbled for his phone and pressed on it. Her phone, which was on the floor, started ringing. The screen said “Adam.”

  Jack stayed with her throughout the police interview, a laborious three hours wherein Eden, the police and Jack struggled under language barriers. She could truthfully say that she didn’t know who was the man who assaulted her and held her against her will. At one point, Jack set aside one of the senior officers and stood in a corner talking to him in low whispers. After that, they were released. Jack didn’t need to ask her for discretion. Adam’s name was never mentioned.

  He tried to explain as best he could on their way to the hospital. Her face was swollen from where she had been struck and her right hand felt funny.

  Three days ago, Jack had been in London when he received an urgent phone call from Adam. He had discovered that Eden was flying to Sicily, figured out why, and asked Jack for help because he wouldn’t be able to get to Eden in time.

  “Adam never asks for help, you understand.” Jack said. “It’s usually the other way around. People come to him for favors, for the impossible. So I knew this was very serious. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. He wouldn’t have asked me if it hadn’t been important to him. Told me to do whatever I had to do to keep you from coming to Sicily. And then told me I would probably fail because,” Jack chuckled, and shook his head, “He said in so many words how determined you were.”

  Eden looked at him in suspicion. “What did he say about me exactly?”

  “Er,” Jack said, avoiding her eyes. “Can’t remember now, but he was right.”

  Belatedly, Eden just realized what Jack had just told her. “You hacked into the airline’s computer network?”

  Jack gave her one his brilliant smiles. “I was too late to stop you from leaving the States. Rome seemed my best chance.”

  “How?” Eden shook her head. Her confusion was growing by the minute. “How did Adam even find out I was flying to Sicily?”

  Jack stared at her, as though seeing her for the first time. “You really don’t know about Adam, do you?”

  Her face must have crumpled. “I mean,” he said helplessly, at a loss, “I don’t want to get in the middle of a bloke and his woman. Adam should be telling you all this, not me.”

  “Yes, he should be. He should have told me all this and I would’ve …” she trailed off, her sudden anger dissolving as she considered the thought. What would she have done had she known what she knew now? Adam had friends who could easily hack into secured networks. He had at least one dangerous enemy from his past who was willing to hurt her to find him. Had he been afraid that if she knew the full extent of his background she would have broken it off?

  “So he knew that man was here?”

  “You realize, I don’t know that much about it myself,” Jack said apologetically. “I only know what Adam told me. That someone from his time with … certain associates was hunting for him and had somehow found out that he was in Agrigento.”

  Eden raised her eyebrows. Jack sounded as irritatingly evasive as Adam.

  “Certain associates, you mean from the time when he was doing business with the mob?”

  Jack looked like he wanted to shush her. “Adam wouldn’t like that. Especially considering where you are.”

  “Who was he then?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Adam knows for sure either. He just heard rumors over the past nine months. Underground whispers. These things aren’t ever out in the open or confirmed, you know. Especially when dealing with people of that element.”

  “Well I don’t think they’ve ever met. And he thought I was lying when I said we had never met either and that I didn’t know what he looked like.”

  Jack couldn’t hide his shock. “So you and Adam never … ?”

  Eden shook her head. “We wrote to each other. Phone calls.” It sounded so mundane when reduced to that. But it was – still is – so much more.

  “And yet you flew halfway around the world to look for him?” From mundane to ridiculous. She nodded, too embarrassed to defend herself. She thought she could fly to a foreign country, just start driving around, and magically run into Adam. There was no way she could spin it so that she looked anything other than crazy.

  They arrived at the hospital just then. Eden though it would be another bureaucratic and language maze, but she was seen right away. They took x-rays of her right hand and gave her an ice pack for her face. Jack winked at her when she remarked how fast everything was and how unusual that she was getting her own room while they waited.

  She nodded to the black iPhone he held. She now recalled he had been on it the
whole time she was in the airport in Rome. “That’s all you need to hack into an airlines or a hospital? A phone?”

  He put it in his pocket. He was sitting on the hospital bed next to her. He crossed his long legs and folded his arms against his chest. His charm was muted with solemnity. It was clear that he held Adam in great respect.

  “It’s not my place to tell you about Adam. But I can tell you this. He and I, for a time, were in the same line of business so to speak. That’s how we met. He taught me certain skills.” He gave her a meaningful glance.

  Eden felt like screaming. Why did everyone speak with such enigmatic ambiguity? “So you and he were hackers together? Is that how you met?”

  Jack threw up his hands in frustration. “Adam warned me about you.”

  “Let me guess – that I wield a double-edged sword of stubbornness and fight?”

  “No, but that sounds apt.”

  “You haven’t said anything so I guess I just have to ask. Is Adam coming here?” she asked bluntly. “I mean, I know I just showed up out of the blue, but I did try calling before stopping by.”

  Jack looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but in the room with her. “I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t know.”

  “Oh.” She turned and looked at the wall.

  Just then, the door started to open and for one glorious moment, Eden’s heart bloomed with hope. It was Adam, rushing in from wherever, just to be by her side. Until, a male orderly peeked in, saw the two of them, and went back out, shutting the door. The disappointment was crushing. If Jack hadn’t been there, she would have been curled up into a sobbing ball.

  “Amazing,” Jack said softly.

  She turned to him.

  “Every time that door starts to open, you look like you’re dying of thirst and whoever’s on the other side was bringing you water.”