Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Cassie seemed to consider it for a moment and then she turned her attention to the menu selection on the boards behind the teenager at the register. They ordered, took a number, and found a booth by a sunny window.

  Annabelle checked the message. Her brow furrowed. “What?”

  Cassie blinked. “What did he say?”

  “Well… Actually…” Annabelle stared down at the words in the text box on her phone. They read: “Forest pink pastel.”

  “I have no idea what the hell he means by this.” Annabelle showed Cassie the message and Cassie frowned.

  “Forest pink pastel? W.T.F.? That’s got to be the strangest message I have ever seen, girl. Call the man. Maybe he’s lost his marbles.”

  Annabelle nodded and dialed Max’s office number. The phone rang three times and then went into voice mail. “He isn’t picking up. I’ll try his cell.” She dialed his cell phone number, but it, too, went into voice mail. “He isn’t answering his cell either.” She lowered the phone and stared at it again. Warning bells began to go off in her head.

  “This is too weird. I think we should head back soon.”

  “Fine,” Cassie said and rose from the seat. “We’ll get the food to go.”

  When they got back to the two-story office building in which Max’s small design “studio” was located, Annabelle let Cassie off of the bike and then pulled it around to park it up on the sidewalk by a window that she knew looked out from Max’s office. He didn’t mind her doing so, since it wasn’t against building regulations and he didn’t want her to do anything that would cause her to be “indebted to Jack”. In that, at least, she and Max were of the same mind.

  Cassie waited by the side door for her as she shut it off, kicked the stand down and turned the handlebars. But as she did, she chanced a glance into Max’s window. The blinds were shut. Normally, Max kept them open during the day, as he suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and in Minnesota, a body needed to soak up as much sun as it could possibly get.

  Annabelle dismounted and walked around the bike, her gaze still locked on the windows. She knew that Max’s office was designed specifically to allow in natural sunlight without it affecting any of the screens in the room. So, even if he was hard at work and in a deadline crunch, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t close the blinds.

  Maybe he really had gone nuts. Too many jobs. Too much pressure.

  She moved toward Cassie. And then she stopped.

  Or maybe it was the dog. Sam. Maybe he’d finally died and Max wasn’t in the mood to let the rest of the world into his business at the moment. It would sort of explain the strange text message. People did inexplicable things when they were suffering from trauma. Losing Sam would be like losing a family member. And the stress of what it would do to Dylan would probably push Max over some kind of edge.

  In which case, Annabelle made a mental note to be careful how she approached his office when they went back inside.

  “Max’s blinds are closed. Have you ever seen them closed before?”

  Cassie frowned. “You know, I can’t say that I have. Maybe he has a headache.”

  “Maybe it’s Sam. Or maybe going through Teresa’s laptop was too much for him.”

  Cassie nodded sagely and they went inside. The main entryway past the side door was communal. It served as a small access lobby and mail drop for four different businesses, all of them also small. Max’s business, Design Max, was on the lower floor, to the right. Door number 102.

  Annabelle reached for the doorknob, but when she tried to turn it, it wouldn’t move.

  “It’s locked?” She stared at the doorknob, disbelieving.

  “Why the hell would Max lock us out?”

  The warning bells that had sounded earlier in Annabelle’s head now began chiming much more loudly. Her gaze slid from the doorknob to the small stained-glass window beside it. It was impossible to make out anything beyond it but the warped and discolored shapes of a front desk and a hallway. Not much else.

  “Something’s wrong, Cass,” she said softly, still trying to catch a glimpse of something – anything- through the window. “I left my key inside.”

  “Wait. Maybe I’ve got mine.” Cassie began to rifle through the small back-pack styled purse she carried over her shoulders. “Yeah, here.” She pulled out a silver general key and Annabelle moved aside so that she could slip it into the lock on the doorknob. The lock clicked and Cassie turned the knob. The door swung outward toward them and they moved around to enter the office.

  The office’s interior was unnaturally quiet. A stillness like that of a pre-dawn Sunday morning had stolen over the room, almost hallowed in its utter silence. The lights had been shut off. Annabelle looked to the left, felt along the wall, and found the switches that controlled the fluorescent lights above, which Max almost never used. Normally, the office relied on various standing and table lamps set throughout the room. Fluorescent lighting interfered with color correctness on the large flat screens, so Max had gotten used to leaving them off long ago.

  However, at the moment, every single one of the lamps around the room had been switched off, plunging the room into total darkness. It would be a game of hide and seek, with Annabelle’s shins finding every table and desk corner before she would be able to locate the nearest lamp and shed enough light into the room to look around.

  Once the garish lights flickered on, Cassie and Annabelle stood in the doorway, taking in the stillness, their eyes searching the large room as if they’d never seen it before. Although everything seemed to be in place, at the same time, it at once appeared to be entirely different. Alien. Wrong.

  Annabelle was the first to move into the room, tentatively taking step after step as if she were about to set off a mine with the toe of one of her boots.

  “Max?”

  There was no answer. Then again, she’d merely whispered the call. She tried again, swallowing first and clearing her throat, which had become inexplicably clogged with some something acidically similar to fear.

  “Max? Are you here?”

  Again, there was no answer.

  “Maybe it really was Sam and he left the office to go home and take care of Dylan.” Cassie came up beside Annabelle, brushing close to her. Annabelle said nothing. Her gaze was fixed on the door to Max’s office down the hall and to the right. It was also shut, as Annabelle had left it. But obviously, Max had been out since then. He’d turned off all the lights.

  Annabelle’s heart beat hard against her rib cage. Her breathing quickened and her throat felt tight. It was an unwelcome feeling, but not unfamiliar. Annabelle suffered from an anxiety disorder that she’d managed to keep under control for the last several years, without medication. She simply never got on an airplane, ate undercooked meat – since she didn’t eat meat at all – and she never took her work home with her. The occasional binge drink didn’t hurt.

  However, right now, it rode the fringes of her consciousness like a warning. It was just there, within reach, threatening to take her breath completely away and send her vision into blackness.

  And, why?

  Annabelle swallowed against the tightness and realized that she was well and truly scared. The warning bells that had begun to sound earlier were all but deafening in her eardrums now. There was something in the air of that office that she at once recognized, even though she’d never felt it, personally, in her life.

  Later, she would look back on this moment and understand it. She would realize that she’d known all along what it was she would find behind that door.

  At the moment, however, she reached out for the knob unknowing, consciously ignorant. The knob turned and the door swung inward.

  Cassie was the first to make a sound. Something between a shriek and a moan. Annabelle stared in silence. Her throat had closed up. She was no longer really breathing.

  And neither was Max.

  Chapter Four

  Jack Thane turned away from the police officer he was speaking to. His gaze
once more fell on the woman who sat across the room, a blanket over her shoulders, her own gaze far away and unseeing. Her long, thick hair fell in shining waves of blonde, gold and strawberry red. Her lovely face, ever so slightly freckled across the nose, was more pale than usual. Her brown eyes seemed darker.

  Annabelle Drake was an exquisite portrait of shock, a painted mural testimony to beauty in pain. And she hadn’t said a word to him since he’d arrived an hour ago, on the wings of speed, responding to a phone call she’d managed to make before she’d slipped into that dangerous grasp of stunned nothingness.

  “You can take her home, Mr. Thane. I fully advise that she be taken to the hospital, as she’s obviously in shock and not coming out of it, however you’re the only one she’s responded to, so…”

  “I understand.” Jack cut him off, sparing the man any further awkwardness.

  Jack had been the one to phone the police. He’d arrived at Design Max to find Annabelle seated and unresponsive in one of Max’s office chairs, Cassie standing over her, ashen and shaken, but in control, and Max Anderson dead on the floor beside his desk, an open and spilled bottle of Klonapin in his right hand.

  It was not the first time that Cassie Reid had dealt with death. As a medical assistant, she’d experienced an unfortunate number of heart attacks and the like, so Jack wasn’t surprised to see that she had been more or less in control of her faculties. Because she seemed to be willing to talk and was handling the situation so much better than Annabelle, the police had already carted her off to the station for questioning.

  That had been twenty minutes ago. Jack’s gaze slid from Annabelle to the office once more. Nothing in the room seemed out of place or disturbed. At least, not at first glance, and not to the layman. The police were writing it off as a suicide.

  “We’ll still need to question her, once she comes around. But at the moment, it’s important that we secure the area.”

  Jack turned back to the uniformed officer and nodded. He’d given the man Annabelle’s contact information and he was sure they would be able to find anything further out, should they need it. He strode slowly across the room, making sure not to touch anything. Then he knelt before Annabelle, lowering his face to hers.

  “Bella.”

  Annabelle’s gaze slid from the floor to Jack’s ultra-blue eyes. She stared as if she didn’t recognize him, but at least she looked at him. He was the only one she would make eye contact with. Jack took a slow, deep breath, let it out through his nose, and then stood. “Come on, luv.” He gently lifted her by the arms and she followed without resistance. The medication she’d been given was most likely having an effect upon her already.

  He led her out of the office, nodding at the police officers who removed the yellow tape long enough for them to slip through. Then he walked her out to his car. On the way, several people who worked in the same building attempted to step forward from where they’d been huddled outside the partitioned section and intercept him, obviously curious about what had transpired.

  Jack shot them a warning look. That was all it took to stop them in their tracks.

  Once he’d lowered Annabelle into his car and buckled her into the seat, he moved around to the driver’s side, slid in, and shut the door behind him. For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the woman he loved more than anything on Earth.

  And then she shocked him by speaking.

  “He was murdered, Jack.”

  She hadn’t moved in her seat. She still gazed steadily at the dash board. But there was something in her tone that told him she was well and truly conscious and in the moment.

  “I know,” he said softly.

  “Why?” Now she did turn away from the dashboard, and the look of confusion she turned upon him flipped his world upside down. “Why kill Max? He was just…” Her words trailed off. She swallowed. Then she said, in little more than a whisper, “What about Dylan?”

  “We’ll figure it out, Bella.” Jack reached out slowly and gently pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Rest and we’ll figure it out.”

  Then he pressed a switch in a control panel beside his own seat and hers began to recline. She turned away, looking forward once more. And then she closed her eyes.

  When Jack had received Annabelle’s call an hour before, he’d been in the middle of a meeting with a man who had hired him at one point in the past and was hoping to hire him again. The man was a “handler”, a middle man, a contact for a contact for a contact, each with aliases for names that changed every week, if not more often.

  Jack knew, when he felt the phone buzz in his jacket pocket, that it was Annabelle calling. She was the only one with the number to that particular phone. And, without even answering it, he knew it was going to be bad. She had never called him before. Not once. Jack insisted she have his number, just in case, but the fact of the matter was, she abhorred cell phones. If she was calling now, in the middle of a Tuesday, in sunny weather, there could only be a few reasons why.

  Death and dismemberment were two of them.

  He’d guessed right with the first one. When he felt the phone, he excused himself quickly, stepped into the restaurant hallway, and answered it. On the other end, Annabelle’s voice came in raspy, uneven breaths. She was having trouble taking in air. And her words chilled him to the bone. “He’s dead, Jack. Someone killed him. He’s dead.”

  He hung up with her and dialed 911 without even thinking. Without considering who he, himself, was. What he was, and what kinds of consequences could arise from sending the police speeding into his territory.

  The medical response team that arrived at Design Max with the first batch of police had given Annabelle some kind of injection right off the bat. Jack assumed it had been only a few moments before he, himself, had arrived upon the scene. They’d told him that whatever they’d given to her would make her sleep. Then they escorted Cassie to a blue and white and proceeded to get as much information as they could from her and any of the building’s employees who’d returned early enough from lunch.

  Now Jack watched Annabelle sleep. Her long lashes rested, like half moons, upon the apples of her cheeks. Her full, naturally pink lips were slightly open and her soft breath had slowed. He could tell the exact moment that she entered that deeper stage of rest. He’d come to learn about such things long ago.

  In sleep, her face took on such an innocent, defenseless cast that Jack found himself wanting a good, stiff drink. And he didn’t drink.

  He turned away from her and gazed out the front window, watching the crime scene investigators move about the area that had been sectioned off with bright yellow tape. To his left, a cop waved at him impatiently and then motioned to the street beyond the lot, anxious for him to be gone and out of the way. At the same time, other employees of the building were being sent away or escorted to marked police vehicles, where they would most likely be driven to the station house for questioning.

  It was obvious to Jack that even the cops weren’t entirely convinced it was suicide. He wondered what they’d found at the scene that made them suddenly suspect foul play. Was it what he, himself, had noticed? And what about Annabelle? What had made her so positive, at first sight, that Max had been murdered?

  He glanced once more at her sleeping form. She was a clever girl. Very clever.

  He was thankful, at once, for Annabelle’s uncooperative response to the questioning the authorities had already attempted to put her through. It allowed her to escape the responsibility temporarily, and placed her care in his hands. For now.

  It was enough. Jack put the black, shiny car in reverse, backed it out of the parking space, and then drove it from the lot.

  Annabelle rolled over and hugged the pillow closer. She blinked, yawned, and then blinked again. Her vision de-blurred and a black framed photograph on the wall came into focus. A single raven, caught in mid-flight filled the frame, its blue-black body in stark contrast with the white matting surrounding it. Annabelle blinked again. She peered i
nto the raven’s eye, taking in the yellow iris, the bottomless pool of inky mystery at its center.

  And then, as if coming fully awake from a dream, she realized that she had no such photographs in her home. At least, she didn’t think she did. Her thoughts were still somewhat fuzzy. Did she? No. No ravens.

  She blinked once more and rolled back over, taking in her surroundings as she did so. King size bed with black bed sheets, thick and soft. White walls, with black framed photographs or paintings; simple, minimalist and clean cut. Ten foot ceilings, but in here it was recessed so that they were even taller. Black curtains.

  At once, everything came back to her. She knew where she was. She recognized the style, even if she had never been in this room before. She knew whose room it was and why she was there. Painfully, her heart slammed hard, once, against her ribcage and she gasped.

  Instinctively, she clutched at her chest and curled into herself, closing her eyes.

  Max.

  Murdered.

  She was at Jack’s place. Not his home, because Sherry would be at his home. This must be one of his apartments… Annabelle drew in a tight breath, tensing against the trembling that began to take over her small frame. A flood of memories from that afternoon slammed into her.

  She’d had a panic attack and been drugged by the EMT’s. Jack had come. They’d taken Cassie away…

  Nausea roiled in her belly. There was something she needed to do. Something she needed to tell Jack. It was why she hadn’t spoken to the cops. She had been in shock, yes, but not as badly as she’d led them to believe. She just needed to see Jack.

  “Jack…” she got the word out, through clenched teeth, and then moaned into the blankets beneath her. The world spun. She clutched at the mattress.

  Somewhere in her periphery consciousness, a door opened and a man entered the room, quickly moving to the bed, sitting beside her.

  “Bella.” A soft but commanding tone. A British accent. She felt strong hands on her arms, pulling her to the edge of the mattress. “Bella, relax. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”