by Roxie Noir
I get dressed, still waiting, and open the curtains. There’s nothing on my phone, and my stomach is in knots, a heavy, horrible feeling in the pit.
No one believed her, I think, disbelief and astonishment heavy on my heart. Everything she’s been through, this fucking genius plan she figured out, and no one believed her.
On the table, my car keys catch my eye. It’s a ten-year-old Hyundai. The airbags are pretty good. I don’t think I’d even break anything if I drove it through the gates.
I wouldn’t get all the way to Ruby, obviously, but it would bring the news cameras out, and maybe I could convince some of them to look into the Senator a little more deeply...
Just as I’m about to grab my keys and go, my phone buzzes, and I snatch it off the table, pulse racing. There’s an alert, thank God, there’s an alert. It’s from some trashy political gossip blog, but it’s something.
Is Lunatic Senator Burgess Keeping His Own Daughter Captive?
“Yes!” I shout at my phone, and click to open it. It quotes her email almost in its entirety, picking out salacious key phrases to highlight in bold.
Then, before I can finish, there’s another alert. And another, and another.
He Can’t Control the Budget, Can He Control His Daughter?
His Re-Election is Nearly Locked Down — But Is His Daughter, As Well?
Now they’re rolling in, so fast I can barely skim one article before I get another one. First is just blogs, but after a few minutes, the more serious news outlets get in on the game, too: Time, CNN, the BBC, the New York Times.
They’re all skeptical — it does sound insane, after all — but he’s going to have to respond, and he’s going to have to prove that Ruby’s there of her own free will. Which he can’t, because she’s not.
I can’t stay here, doing nothing, even though I don’t know what to do just yet, so I get into the car and drive into town, phone buzzing away. I don’t go to the mansion, because I’m afraid that the temptation to drive through the gates will just be too strong, so I drive aimlessly.
I get gas station coffee and don’t drink it. I drive by the Starbucks where I met Zeke, just for something to do.
And then, finally, the alert I’m waiting for comes through.
Senator Burgess to Address Allegations
He’s giving a press conference at nine. From the front steps of his house, behind the gates, presumably surrounded by security. There’s no mention of whether Ruby will be there or not, just him.
I’ve already got a bad feeling about this.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ruby
There are seven grown men in this room on the second floor of my house. I recognize them all: my new guards, my father’s lackeys, various church members. The Reverend himself isn’t here, probably because he doesn’t want to risk besmirching his reputation any more than has already been done.
I sit quietly in a straight-backed chair, watching the TV mounted on the wall. On it, my father’s doing his full-on political act, somber-faced, looking as concerned as he can as he steps up to the microphone, sorrow etched into every line and pore of his face.
I’ve never hated him more.
Cameras snap away, and reporters start asking questions, but he puts one hand out, face still stony, and they all stop. He takes a deep breath, like what he’s about to say pains him.
“First, I’d like to say that the email did, indeed, come from my daughter Ruby,” he begins.
My eyebrows shoot up. I expected him to say that I’d been hacked or something, but this is a different approach. The men guarding me in the room murmur to each other, not a single one of them looking directly at me. It’s like somehow, I’m both the cause for all this fuss and completely invisible.
“I’m afraid that Ruby isn’t well,” my father continues, looking as sad and serious as he possibly can. “Her divorce and the ensuing spotlight have caused her mental health to deteriorate significantly, and in the past few weeks, she’s begun having certain delusions.”
Delusions.
My mouth drops open.
He’s calling me crazy. My own father. He’s telling everyone that I alleged all this because I’m a crazy person, that I’m imagining everything that’s happened to me.
Instead of just letting me go — his adult daughter — he’s telling the press that I’m literally insane.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse, or more helpless. I thought that this was a slam-dunk, a surefire way to make him let me out of the house, out from under his thumb, but it’s not.
Freedom is so close I can taste it — he’s having to answer for his crimes, at least; people are suspicious, at least — but he’s going to get away with it.
My chest tightens, and I feel like I can’t breathe, like the room is closing in on me, because I don’t know what else to do. I thought this was it, the thing that would burn every bridge I had with my family but that would at least get me out.
On the TV, he’s still going on about what a sad tragedy it is, and I’m fucking sure he’s tying it back to politics somehow. Reporters start shouting, asking questions, but he’s an absolute professional.
Think, Ruby, I tell myself, but I can’t think. I’m trapped, surrounded by the enemy, and right now I feel desperately alone and out of options.
I think of Gabriel, somewhere, waiting, trusting me that I’d get out and come to him. More than anything I wish I could, but there are two men in front of the door and five others just standing around, ready to tackle me if I so much as move.
So I sit there in stunned silence. I feel like all the blood has drained out of me, and I’m a dried, motionless, withered husk.
Then something happens. On the television. The camera swings around, the last shot of my father looking baffled. A female reporter says something hurriedly, and the picture is wobbling a little, like the cameraman is still adjusting.
And then, Gabriel’s face.
Everyone in the room takes a step forward except for me. I don’t move, but I lean in as the men I’m with murmur to each other in bafflement and confusion, because it’s not like any of them is particularly bright.
“Ruby is in there,” he says, looking dead into the camera. “Everything the Senator’s saying is an outright lie.”
“Now, you—” the camera wobbles and pans back a little, so we can see a female reporter, looking slightly out of breath like she’s been running, sticking her microphone out. “—Until recently, you were part of the Senator’s security team.”
Gabriel looks pissed, and he crosses his arms in front of himself, glancing over his shoulder. As he does, I realize: he’s right outside. The gate behind him is our gate, maybe a few hundred feet from where I’m sitting.
“That’s right,” he says, eyes flashing. “I was actually Ruby’s personal bodyguard, and I can state unequivocally that she’s not crazy, she’s not delusional, and the Senator is holding her against her will.”
The men in the room all move a little closer to the TV, enraptured, and I don’t move a muscle. I’m thinking about what Gabriel said, the first time we went to an event together, before he found me drinking vodka backstage.
About distractions, and how dangerous they are.
“Now—” the woman says, looking around, like someone’s talking to her. “Can you elaborate on the circumstances under which you left the Senator’s employ? I’m getting conflicting reports—”
“I had an affair with Ruby,” Gabriel cuts in. “Actually, that’s inaccurate. I’m having an affair with Ruby.”
The men in the room start talking louder to each other, still ignoring me, the person they’re talking about. They bunch closer to the TV as they do, because they’re a pack of stupid gossipmongers.
“So you have reason to be angry at the Senator,” the woman says.
I stand, quietly, and look from man’s back to man’s back. I look at their doughy arms and their soft hands.
“Damn right I do,” Gabriel says.
“He’s holding his adult daughter prisoner —”
I run.
In two steps, I’m at the door and I fling it open, burst into the hall, charge down the stairs. There’s someone posted at the bottom, and he moves to intercept me, but I fake right and dart left.
All he gets is my hand, and I swing my arm in a circle, getting him off me.
Gabriel taught me that one.
I don’t stop. I don’t slow down, even though the ruckus brings people out of every room as I bolt for the front door. It sounds like a herd of elephants is right behind me, galloping along, and then I’m there, at the huge, ten-foot wooden doors, and I turn the knob, slamming my body against one.
It opens slowly, like a tomb, the sunlight and cool fall air rushing in.
At the front of the steps is my father, staring back at me, face astonished. Beyond him is a nest of cameras, black holes all staring my way. Beyond that, a driveway.
Beyond that a gate, a news truck, three people gathered around.
Gabriel turns toward me, right as someone grabs my shirt and yanks me backward so hard it pulls me off my feet and I fall hard onto the floor.
For a moment, nothing happens. Everyone is staring at me, arms and legs akimbo on the floor, mouths open. My father is staring through the half-open front door, and I stare back, stunned.
Slowly, I realize there’s a sound. A dry, whispering sound, like leaves rustling, and I shake my head and take a deep breath and realize what it is: the sound of a dozen people clicking news cameras.
They just saw everything, and it takes me a moment to process what that means.
I get my feet under me, shakily. No one moves to stop me as I stand, brush myself off, push my hair off my face, cameras going constantly.
I step through the door, onto the front porch. I descend the steps, five feet from my father.
We lock eyes as I walk, but neither of us says a word.
I walk past him, onto the driveway even though I’m barefoot. The cameras turn en masse. Reporters start shouting questions, but I ignore them and keep going.
At the gate, iron bars in both hands, is Gabriel.
I force myself not to run, even though I want to run, skip, leap into his arms and cover his face with kisses. But that might look crazy, so I don’t.
At the guard gate, I just look at the guy in the shack. The cameras have followed me, and even though he looks nervous and frightened, he doesn’t fight me. He just hits the button and opens the gate without a word. On the other side, Gabriel’s grinning like an idiot.
I’m about to cry, the tears threatening to spill over, but as the gate hums and whirs, I smile back at him.
Then it’s open and I’m through and I’m in his arms, my head against his chest, and he’s squeezing me so tightly I can barely breathe but we’re rocking back and forth, together, cameras going off like crazy and people shouting questions at us.
I barely hear them, because I’m here, I’m safe, I’m barefoot on the sidewalk, and I just left behind everything I’ve ever known. We stand there for a long time, and I just breathe and cry and he holds me as tight as he can. Slowly, I start to relax, even though my pulse is still jumping.
We’re totally surrounded by people, but Gabriel ignores them as he pulls back, just slightly, and looks down at me.
“Was that the plan?” he asks, a smile tugging at his lips.
I smile back, even though there are tears falling down my face and I’m half-sobbing.
“Kind of?” I say, and he leans down and kisses me gently on the lips, his hand on my chin, and then on my forehead. After a moment, he takes my hand in his, totally ignoring the press standing around, screaming questions, and laces his fingers through mine.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ve got a white horse parked a few blocks away, only it looks a lot like a shitty old Hyundai.”
I swallow hard, still crying, still shaking and shocked and wondering a little if maybe I am having a delusion right now.
“You know sunset isn’t for another nine hours, right?” I ask.
He just laughs, and we walk down the sidewalk together, hand-in-hand, away from my father’s house.
Chapter Forty
Gabriel
Once we’re in my car, we just drive. For hours, we just drive, and even though I try to stop at Wal-Mart or something so I can buy Ruby shoes, pants, maybe a toothbrush, she won’t let me.
So I take her hand and just keep going. I don’t have a destination in mind, just take the interstate to a highway to a four-lane road to a two-lane road. We pass through quaint little Southern towns, we pass through fields and fields of soybeans and woods so thick it’s like being in the jungle.
And I don’t let go of her hand. I’ve never been here before, not physically or emotionally, and I have no idea what she needs from me but I know I’m not letting go, not if she doesn’t want me to.
We drive into the mountains, where the trees are half-bare and half-covered in red and orange leaves. When the wind blows, they swirl around my shitty car, and it’s actually kind of beautiful.
At last, Ruby takes a deep breath, then exhales. For the first time in hours she takes her hand out of mine and shifts in her seat, stretching, rubbing her face.
“Do you mind if we stop so I can use the bathroom?” she asks.
“Do you mind if we get you shoes first?” I ask.
Ruby looks down at her feet.
“Oh, God,” she says, and starts half-laughing. “I don’t even have shoes on. Jesus, Gabriel, this wasn’t the plan.”
We’re coming up on a little town, and I turn off the main road and into the downtown area. At one end there’s a drug store, and I stop there, go in, and manage to find her plastic flip-flops. After she uses the bathroom, she wants to get back into the car but I talk her into lunch at a barbecue place where I order at the counter and we eat at picnic tables out back.
“Where are we?” she finally asks, picking up a hush puppy and examining it. She sounds far away somehow, but I don’t think I can blame her after the morning she’s had.
“North Carolina, somewhere,” I say. “We passed the state border but I haven’t really been paying attention, I’ve just been driving. Someone didn’t want me to stop.”
She looks at me, looks at the hush puppy, and looks at me again.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t start again,” she says, her green eyes practically boring into me. “I was afraid if we stopped anywhere near Huntsburg I’d start thinking that I’d made a mistake and I’d want to go back.”
I take her other hand in mine.
“And I don’t want that,” she says, her voice low and quiet and intense. “But it felt like I could, like when I walked out of there I might just go home again instead of moving on, and I was afraid that I’d have a moment of weakness or something and I’d go back because at least I know what to do when I’m there.”
My heart feels sticky in my chest as she’s speaking, like it’s hung up on something inside me. I think I get why she’d feel this way, like she might end up going back whether it’s what she really wants or not, because it’s what she knows.
But if she went back I’d be wrecked. Just fucking wrecked, the kind of broken I don’t know if I’d ever get over.
“You didn’t,” I say softly. “And now we’re in another state completely, and you’re here, and I’m here, and it’s gonna be fine.”
I’ve got no way of knowing that. There’s a few thousand dollars in my savings account, but that’s it, and I very much do not have a job at the moment. I believe it, though, because I can tell that she needs me to.
Ruby looks at our entwined hands on the table, and for a second I don’t know if she’s going to laugh or cry.
Then she laughs, biting her lip a little like she’s trying not to.
“I don’t even have a toothbrush,” she says. “I swear this wasn’t the plan, Gabriel. The plan included a toothbrush.”
“What about shoes?” I tease.
&
nbsp; “And shoes and a change of underwear,” she says, still smiling and looking down, laughing like she can’t believe this. “I had them shoved in my purse. I thought he’d want to parade me in front of the cameras, somewhere in public, and I could just leave.”
I raise our locked hands to my lips, my elbow propped on the table, and I kiss her hand. There are other people scattered around the barbecue shack’s outdoor area, and they’re probably staring, but I kiss her hand and couldn’t care less.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, and kiss her hand again. “The plan worked,” — hand kiss — “You’re gone,” — kiss— “We’re here,” — kiss— “And your barbecue is getting cold.”
She laughs again and it feels like sunrise, like nothing else could go wrong, at least today.
“Priorities,” she teases me.
“I’m just saying, we can talk about what we do next while we’re eating,” I say.
We eat. We don’t talk about what we’re going to do next, because instead she tells me about the past four days, about how one of the new guards sometimes farted so loud outside her door that it woke her up, how another one seemed terrified of making eye contact with her.
“I think he thought I could take his soul or something,” she says, reflectively. We’ve both finished eating, and now we’re just sitting here, elbows on the rough wooden table, the occasional cloud passing over the sun.
“Can’t you?” I ask.
“I didn’t try,” she admits. “Though I’m not sure why I’d want it. What do you do with souls, anyway?”
“Store them in translucent white rocks, and... give them to Satan?”
“You want to know something?”
“Yes.”