by David Beers
Christian opened the door and said, “Lying to federal officers is a crime.”
“He’s a security guard, not a federal officer.” Veronica walked forward, not waiting for him to move and give her entrance. Christian lithely stepped aside.
Veronica walked to the conference table and then turned around.
Christian shut the door. “Why are you here?”
“When was the last time you talked to your mom?” she asked.
Christian went over to his desk and sat down, though Veronica remained standing.
“If you’re going to be here, at least keep up appearances and have a seat. You have an appointment with me, after all.”
Veronica knew he was right; she didn’t want to cause him problems or make things any more uncomfortable with his job. She took a seat in front of his desk. “Answer my question. When was the last time you talked to your mom?”
“I don’t know. Four days maybe.”
“It’s been a week, Christian. I called her last night. She said you’re only calling once a week now.”
Christian turned his chair around and looked out the window. Veronica knew why—he hated eye contact during important conversations. He had done this when he first told her he liked her, sitting at that restaurant over a year ago. The conversation had been different back then, though. Very, very different.
“Why aren’t you calling her?”
“You know the answer.”
“I know you’re not well, Christian.”
He was silent and she looked at the back of his head. Veronica didn’t know what was going on inside it, could never grasp the inner workings of this man she loved—and before, she had been fine with that. Now, though, she needed to understand. “Talk to me. If just this once. You think this has been easy on me? The only thing I wanted when I got out of that fucking storage unit was to be with you. I wanted to help you heal and thought you’d do the same for me. Now, neither of us are healing.”
“I don’t know how much more succinctly I can say it, Veronica. The people I’m close to get hurt.”
“Then quit this fucking job. You told me you joined the FBI to help people, but if helping strangers means you have to hurt those you love, then it’s not the right place to be.”
“I can’t quit,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because more people will die if I leave. A lot more.”
“What do you owe them, Christian? Do you owe them your own life? Your own happiness?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t owe them yours.”
“Goddamnit, turn around and look at me,” Veronica said.
The chair spun slowly and he sank deeper into it, like a teenager sitting in the back of class.
“I didn’t come here to ask you to date me,” she said. “I came because I’m worried. Your mother is nearly out of her mind, but she won’t say anything to you about it. She’ll keep acting like everything’s fine because she doesn’t want to put more stress on you.”
Christian was quiet for a second, and then as if she hadn’t spoken, he said, “How are you?”
Veronica laughed. “Me?” She didn’t know how to answer; she hadn’t thought about herself at all when deciding to come here. It had all been about him. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m better than I was. I still have nightmares about Speckle. I have nightmares about you, too. I’m better but I’m not good, Christian.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, tears in his eyes.
“You didn’t do any of this. At least not the parts involving Speckle and Brown. You only own how you treat people, but I don’t think that’s what you’re apologizing for.”
He just looked at her.
“I can live with the things that have happened to me.” Her words were flowing now, things she had wanted to say for so long, but hadn’t been able to. Months of pain and thought all erupting from the place where she had buried them. “If they happened to me as a child, I’d probably be a lot more messed up, but I’m not a child. I’m an adult and the dreams won’t go away, but I’ll keep living. I’ll keep trying to be happy. I don’t even know why I love you like this. Any other man, I would have let them go with hardly a thought. But you … I can’t just quit, Christian. And looking at you now ….” Tears came to her eyes. “You’re not well. You need help.”
She saw him fighting to keep from crying, but Veronica couldn’t. She reached up and wiped at her right eye just as a tear spilled from it.
“I can’t do this right now,” he said.
“Then when can you? I was letting you go, as much as it hurt me. But seeing you now, I can’t. Not until I know you’re okay, even if that’s not with me. So if I have to camp in your yard, I will. I’ll do it until you get a restraining order, Christian.”
He went quiet again and looked over the top of her head, avoiding her gaze. Ten seconds passed with her just staring at him, watching him try to control his emotions.
“Come by tonight,” Christian finally said.
“When?”
“Eleven.”
Veronica looked on for a bit longer, though his eyes still didn’t venture down. “Okay.” She wanted to say, I love you, but didn’t. Instead, she stood and left the office.
Luke waited ten minutes after Veronica left before picking up his phone. He dialed her number and waited as it rang.
“Hello?”
“It’s Luke. I’m calling from my office line. I saw you talk to Christian. How are you feeling?”
“Not good,” she said, sniffling. “I’m just sitting in my car crying.”
“I’m sorry. What did he say?”
“Well, that’s the only bright spot. He said I could come over tonight.”
“Are you going to?” Luke asked.
“Yeah.” She sniffed again.
“That’s good. If you need to talk, call me, Veronica. You don’t have to wait for our next appointment.”
“Thanks, Luke.”
“Okay. Talk soon. Bye.”
Luke hung up the phone and glanced across the floor to Christian’s office. The boy was gone and Luke imagined his emotions were very similar to Veronica’s right now.
The lovers would reunite tonight. Luke looked back to his computer screen, the smile covering his face again.
Part II
Courtship
Chapter 13
Sarah Yields sat in front of Ted. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like. Months spent in darkness, unshaven and unkempt. She wasn’t concerned with her looks because he could see her; she didn’t care what this madman thought of her at all. In fact, she didn’t know why she’d thought about her appearance—perhaps because this was the first time she’d been led upstairs.
Ted had brought home another woman, though Sarah didn’t know how long ago. A day? Two? Three? Days were a concept from a past life that no longer held meaning.
Sarah was frightened, despite the brief concern for her appearance—which she knew to be a damned stupid thing to worry about. She was frightened because she didn’t know if Ted was finally going to rape her.
“What do you think of Chanice?” Ted said.
Sarah almost laughed. Apparently all the suffering over the past few months hadn’t fully destroyed her personality. This man—who had kidnapped multiple women, killed one, and held the rest captive—was now asking her opinion on his newest conquest. Like she was a new coworker and he wanted to make sure she was fitting in.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can talk to me. You’re different than the others, though I do care about them deeply. Perhaps … I don’t know, perhaps my methods have made them a bit less honest with me. I think you’ll be honest, though. That’s why I brought you up here tonight.”
Well that’s just great, Ted, because at first I thought you were going to rape me like you do the others. I’m glad you think I’m an honest person, though. It means a lot.
She knew why he was asking. The woman downstairs had talked to Sarah while Ted was gone.
Somehow he had thought that kidnapping a prostitute was a good idea. Clearly Ted didn’t have a lot of experience with girls that turned to that kind of life—though Sarah knew ‘turn’ wasn’t the appropriate word. ‘Had been forced into that kind of life’ was more accurate.
Sarah had experience with them, and maybe that was another reason Ted brought her upstairs. She didn’t remember their first conversation fully—too many drinks had been involved, but she must have told him she was a social worker. Prostitutes were (and Sarah would never say this in front of colleagues, as it would have been a major faux pas) broken people. They had seen more—and hurt more—in twenty years than others would in multiple lifetimes.
Chanice was showing that.
She didn’t scream at Ted. She didn’t beg him to release her. She cursed him up and down and told him when she got out she was going to shove his balls down his motherfucking throat. And Sarah wasn’t paraphrasing.
“Sarah? I need you to answer me.”
“What do you mean, what do I think?”
“You’ve seen how she’s behaving. I hated what I had to do to Keely. I really did. That’s not what I want here, for any of you. I can’t wait until I can bring you all up here without having to keep you in chains.”
He glanced at the cuffs on Sarah’s wrists and ankles. She didn’t know where the bastard got them from, but he was lucky he had. If he ever let her upstairs without them—apparently like he planned to do—she would be out the first door or window she saw.
“I don’t want to hurt Chanice, but I might have made a mistake in bringing her here,” Ted finished.
So that was the question: should he kill the prostitute he had beat and kidnapped? And he wanted Sarah to make the decision for him.
“I don’t think you should hurt her,” Sarah said.
“I’m going to need your help, then. The other women, they aren’t in any position to talk sense into Chanice, but you are. I really think you’re going to be the leader in our household, Sarah. If you want, you can be the matriarch.”
Sarah tried to keep her eyes from widening. A matriarch? A household? Sarah had thought this was more or less a rape factory, but …
Quickly now. Don’t dawdle on what this psycho says.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Talk to her. Tell her it’ll be best for everyone if she starts behaving. I’m going to let Marie come up soon, to stay. I think she’s ready. I’d like to bring another up a little bit after that, though I don’t think you’re quite ready yet. You will be soon, I hope.”
Sarah stared at the man, disbelief filling her mind. He was serious. He wanted to use the women he kidnapped to create a fucking family. He thought it was actually possible, and that she would help him.
Sarah swallowed. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate that. You’ve been much better lately and I’m going to start treating you much better, too.”
Sarah was led back down into the basement. Ted shackled her to the wall, then removed the cuffs that he used to take her upstairs. He was close enough for Sarah to reach out and do some damage, but she knew it would come to nothing. If she tried hurting him now, whatever little bit of trust he had placed in her would vanish, and she couldn’t do enough to actually hurt him.
Instead, she let him go without saying anything, sitting down in her designated spot. He went back upstairs and shut the door, leaving them all in darkness.
Chanice, for her part, had kept quiet—and thank God for it.
“Did he fuck you?” she said once the door closed.
“No.”
“You couldn’t get out?”
“No. You saw what I was in.”
“Jesus, girl. You shoulda at least tried.”
Sarah sighed. “Trust me. There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“That motherfucker ever gets that close to me, he’s going to be missing both eyes.”
Sarah was quiet for a few minutes, thinking about what he had told her. Chanice’s life rested in Sarah’s hands now, and hadn’t that been the real point of the whole conversation? To remove the blame from himself if he killed her? Because he had, of course, asked Sarah very nicely to help him control Chanice.
So now you’re the matriarch and it’s your job to keep this family in order.
“Listen to me for a second, okay?”
Chanice was quiet and Sarah took that to mean she’d listen. She had known people who grew up like Chanice most likely had, and they rarely took advice well. Sarah had to try, though.
“He’s going to kill you if you don’t stop. He did it to the last woman, who sat right where you are now. He hit her in the head with a mallet. I don’t know what he did with the body after he dragged it up those stairs, but she’s gone.”
“I wish he would,” Chanice said. Sarah thought she heard some fear in her voice, though.
“He will. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but if you want a chance of making it out alive, you need to be quiet. Just let him talk when he comes down. That’s all he’s done with me so far. Just talks. He’s smart, and he’s not going to rape you until he thinks it’s safe. Until he thinks you’re broken. If you want a chance, that’s when you’ll get it. When he thinks you’re his.”
“And all these other bitches in here? They just let him rape them?”
Sarah didn’t know what to say about the other women. They all sat in the same darkness, but none said a word. They were broken. They were his. His will had outlasted their own, and Sarah wasn’t even sure they could be considered human anymore. They were closer to pets, and it broke her heart to think it, but she had to be honest with herself if she wanted a chance of escape.
“I don’t know, Chanice. I don’t know anything about them. You know as much as I do. The answers they give you are the same that they give me, absolutely nothing. All I’m sure of is that if you don’t keep quiet, you’re going to die.”
Chapter 14
Christian opened the front door and looked at Veronica. He had left work early for the first time in months—early meaning before midnight. He did it because he told her to show up at eleven, and here she was, right on time.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
They both stood there, her on the stoop and him just inside the house.
“You going to let me in?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Move,” Veronica said and walked forward just as she had in his office. She didn’t stop, but left him standing at the door, making her way to the kitchen.
Christian shut the door and followed. He knew what she wanted.
“I didn’t think you’d touch it,” she said as she opened the cabinet to the right of the sink. She pulled down one of the bottles of wine she had brought over when they first started dating. She used to drink while they watched television; Christian had never poured himself a glass.
Veronica didn’t speak as she moved to one of his drawers, pulling out a bottle opener. It only took a few seconds, and then she went to another cabinet, grabbed a glass, and finished by pouring the wine.
She drank half in one gulp and then turned around to look at him.
“I needed that.”
“Sometimes I feel like I do, too,” Christian said. He stood at the kitchen’s entrance, unable to stop the feelings rising in him. Watching the way she moved, how she took over his kitchen as if it was hers … He loved her.
But you always knew that. You did all this because you loved her.
“You want a glass?”
Christian shook his head. Neither of them moved. Christian didn’t know what to say. He didn’t really even know why he had told her to come over. It had come out of his mouth like so many other things, nearly unbidden. But she was here, and he didn’t have a clue as to what to say.
“What’s happening to you?” she asked.
It took a few seconds, but Christian answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“Why did you let me come over?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Can we sit down? Can we talk? Please?”
Christian swallowed. Everything he had worked for the past year was being undone right now. His entire focus on removing anyone from his life that he could hurt was about to crash around his head.
Christian nodded.
“Come on.”
She didn’t reach out for his hand but walked through the kitchen, into the living room. Christian went along, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from her. He stared forward at the black television. He hadn’t even bothered turning on a light.
“If you don’t want to talk, I have plenty to say.” The glass of wine sat on the table in front of them, and though Christian wasn’t looking at Veronica, he felt her eyes on him.
“Go ahead.”
“My mom told me a long time ago that you don’t get married until you can’t live without someone. It made a lot of sense at the time. It still does. I’m not sitting here proposing to you, but I’ve been through two … horrible experiences. Things I never thought possible, that only happened in movies.” She laughed, as if still unable to believe it. “I think I can live without you, Christian. Actually, I know I can. My mom didn’t think about the flip side of her saying, though. The inverse of it. That’s what I’m saying to you now. I can live without you, but after everything that’s happened, I know that I’m willing to die if it means I can be with you.”
All the tears that Christian held in earlier could no longer be kept at bay. They fell down his face, blurring the dark living room. He didn’t know how long he cried, or how long it took for Veronica to come to him—but she did. She wrapped him in her arms, and he let her.
Long ago, Luke had wired Christian’s house. He had thought about doing the same to Tommy’s, but didn’t think the risk was worth the reward. At least not yet. Tommy was in play, of course, but he was a bit player—not the star. Christian was the leading man, and so Luke needed to understand everything he could about the boy.