by BT Urruela
“Shut your fucking mouth. Do you hear me?” He glared up at her. “I have enough going on right now, trying to figure out how to handle this. Okay? I don’t have time for you to melt down like the fucking lush that you are.”
Victoria sucked in a half-sob, half-squeal. Her blonde hair went all directions in a feral mass. The last twenty-four hours had ripped her to shreds—the news of Annalise’s abduction as much as the pills and vodka she had used to forget about her ugly life, her uncaring husband, and her poor daughter caught in between. First, she was told her daughter didn’t make it through the fire, then the next morning, they received the ransom note, and she was forced to wonder about who her husband was, what he was mixed-up in, and how it could’ve possibly gone so far. The words were burned into her subconscious, and the more it ached, the more she drank, and she tried to forget about her daughter, and what could be happening to her in that moment.
We have your daughter. No police. No feds, or she is dead. You know who we are and you know what you owe.
The words consumed her, fed on her delicate will. Victoria had been the one to find the note to begin with. She first thought it was some kind of sick fucking joke and immediately went to call the police but Ronald had stopped her, ripped the phone from her hands, and slammed it back down on the cradle. She screamed and cursed, beating his chest with futile blows, and he had slapped her then. Not hard in his mind, but the sound rang out between them like a siren, and she was frozen in horror. He held her hands and told her everything was going to be all right, that he had already worked everything out. That their daughter would be home soon.
“You did this?” she wailed. “You made this happen? They took her. They set the theater on fire and took her, and you had something to do with it?”
Ronald tightened his grip on her arms as she tried to pull away. He stared through her. “Calm down, woman,” he growled. “Calm down!”
She began to tremble and sobbed out her name. “Annalise!”
He pulled her in, the tears really falling then, and gave her another good shake. “When the fire marshal gets here, you better keep your trap shut,” he snarled, and Victoria thought then how animalistic he looked, and hungry, how much angrier he had become.
“Let me handle everything. Don’t say a word do you hear me?” he said, guiding her to the sofa forcefully. He laid her down as she sucked back an onslaught of tears. “Let me fix some tea for you. I’ll handle everything. You just get nice and relaxed. We have to keep things under wraps until she is safely back home, and that means you need to stay the fuck out of the way and keep control of your damn emotions. Do you hear me?”
Victoria was sobbing again. Though she attempted to nod yes, he knew she was fucking hopeless and already a slave to the pills and the alcohol. He moved quickly to the kitchen and made her a cup of tea with a healthy dose of sedatives. If she was half-comatose or better yet, asleep, everything would go much easier. He didn’t need her fucking things up.
“Here you go.” He sat beside her on the sofa in the sitting room. “Have your tea, and here’s a Xanax to help take the edge off,” he offered, and he watched her gulp them down. She mumbled about Annalise and ransoms, intermixed with crying fits, but by the time the marshal arrived, she was snoring heavily, the tea left half-drank.
The doorbell rang and Ronald crossed the room to answer it. “Marshal, it’s good to see you. What have you got for me?” he asked with his best fraudulent smile as he welcomed the man into his home, guiding him toward the kitchen, away from his wife in the sitting room.
“We are working as fast as we can,” Marshal Taylor began. “I hate to tell you, so far, we haven’t been able to identify any remains.”
“Do you think she was able to get out? Maybe she is somewhere out there?” the senator asked hopefully. “Lost and confused.”
“The fire burned incredibly hot in that part of the theater due to the mass amount of compressed spray bottles in the dressing rooms and the paint in the storage area for the sets. It was like a bunch of small bombs. One thing we have discovered is that it looks as though an accelerant was used as well,” the marshal stated grimly, his eyes roaming the room as a hand cupped his mustached mouth.
“An accelerant?” the senator asked, his heart rate elevating, the lines thick in his forehead. He could feel his blood pressure rising rapidly. “Are you saying this fire was set deliberately?”
“I’m afraid so.” The marshal nodded, his lips pinched tightly together. “Do you know anyone that would want to hurt your daughter, sir? Maybe someone that would want to hurt you?” The marshal looked at him, deadpan. The grave tone of his voice told the senator he knew more than he was letting on.
“Don’t you usually travel with officers to these types of interviews?” the senator asked, noting the marshal was all alone.
“I thought perhaps this was a conversation we should have, just the two of us,” the marshal replied, and Ronald understood him well enough.
“Step into my office.” Ronald Hale led the way, bypassing his half-conscious wife, and down the hall toward his office. The marshal followed. “I’m glad you came,” Hale said, putting his hand up for the marshal to enter, a devious smile perched on his face.
“I’m grateful for your generosity,” the marshal said over his shoulder as he entered the office, and Ronald closed the door.
Eighteen
“Everything go okay today?” Dimitri asked, standing in the doorway. He was dirty, and tired, but he had missed her, and wasn’t even sure what that meant. He felt compelled to see her, to talk to her again.
“Pretty well.” She smiled wide, though her eyes were still groggy. “Just, you know, relaxing, admiring my bling.” She held out the cuff and it jingled against the radiator. She dropped her hand and added, “Charlie and Trigger were great, by the way.”
“Charlie can be a little blunt, but he’s an awesome dude. One of a kind, that’s for sure,” Dimitri offered, crossing the room. His desire to get closer to her commanded his actions. He motioned to the empty space beside her. “Can I sit?”
“Please do,” she said, and he sat with his back against the wall as she continued. “Turns out, we like a lot of the same books.” She smiled. “He’s really smart. Why didn’t he go to college? It’s not too late, you know?”
He passed her a guilty look. “He is. I guess I’m not the best mentor in that regard. Charlie had a rough go as a kid though. I thought I was doing what was best for him.” He rubbed his hand through his beard. “I’m sure you gathered Charlie is a little different. His mom was always strung out on crack, who the hell knows where his dad was. From what I gather, Charlie took care of her. He is really smart but a little off, you know, like he can’t talk to people, so he just reads.” Dimitri blew out a breath. “When he was, like, twelve or so, he came home and a john was beating his mom real bad. Charlie fought back and the man died. He doesn’t talk about it much but he ended up getting sent away … I don’t think he ever fully recovered from it.”
“He has so much potential.” She examined her own pampered life. For all the hell she had endured, she was still given every opportunity. “It’s like he fell through the cracks. Till he met you, I guess.”
Dimitri shook his head. “We just found some common ground. Charlie is family. I guess he’s like the little brother I never had.” Dimitri forced a laugh. He turned toward her and smiled. “You know, I was thinking about our talk last night. About escapes …” He had just gotten done with hours of preparation for the exchange with the senator, his feet ached, but he was happy to be back with her. Happy to have her close.
“What about them?” Annalise asked, thankful he was back. She had been in the new “House” most of the day with Trigger and Charlie. While she was glad to get to know them, she had wanted to be with Dimitri, plain and simple. She watched his hesitation, excited that he was picking up the conversation as if he had been thinking about it all day.
“I just think you’re lucky
to have found dance. To have something so healthy, so powerful be your escape. Something that, the more you do, the better you get.” He patted the flask in his pocket with an exhausted scoff.
She eyed the line of the flask. You were always saving someone else, who was there to save you?
He continued, “I wish my escape had been something like that. Something not so toxic. I wish, maybe, that I had chased writing, or acting, or music. Something else.” He sighed, mindlessly rubbing the tattoos on his right forearm. He was unaware, at least consciously, that it was the pocket watch tattoo he was trying to rub away, the hands of which sat at four and nine, the time of his mother’s passing.
“What would you write about?” she asked, a little perplexed that someone so hardened by the kind of life he led would enjoy the arts. She didn’t think him unintelligent just callous, jaded into unfeeling.
There was a silence in the air between them for a moment. Shrugging, he said, “I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought. If I were to write now? Shit, I’d write about this.” He motioned between them. “I’d write about this whole ugly world we live in, and how you got caught up in it.”
“If I don’t make it through this, you can spin my story,” she said wistfully, and wondered if he would even remember her name in a few weeks.
“See, that’s a problem. I have no doubt you’ll make it through this, and I’m really feeling that writing bug now. So, I may need your verbal confirmation before I set you free.”
“You planning to keep me like a pet?” she asked with a slight giggle and jangled her cuff against the radiator.
“Only if you don’t sign away your rights for my story.”
“Guess that means I have to stick around till you finish writing it.” She grinned, her tongue poking between her teeth slightly. She watched intently, trying to gauge what he was thinking.
Dimitri let out a slow breath and picked at his boot laces. “I guess I probably should keep you around until then. Maybe longer if my fans demand a sequel.” He smiled, his eyes meeting hers.
That smile. Even in the darkness, she was taken by the way his eyes shined when he let his guard down. His grin broadened and took over his features. For the first time, Annalise noticed how inviting his mouth was. What would it be like … Fuck, stop it! “Of course, there has to be a sequel. The next adventures of Bonnie and Clyde,” she responded abruptly, realizing she was staring too long.
“But see, the readers know they die in the end. Where’s the fun in that?” He smirked. “They have no sequel.”
“You dishing up a happily ever after, Dimitri?” Just saying the words startled her. Annalise had never even dared to envision such a thing for herself. Even if all of this was fantasy, fate was a vile mistress. Only in seeking death and being kidnapped did she see a reason to want to live. Only in a soul as broken as her own did she find a glimmer of hope. How could one who had taken so many lives, be the one to give hers back?
“To me, happily ever after means a clean slate, a fresh start. And when it’s perfect, it means having that opportunity with another, a kindred spirit.”
“You mean, just start over … Free,” she responded, without realizing she even said it out loud. “Free,” Annalise repeated, and took a deep breath before snapping back to reality, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, I … um … Yeah, they should get away with it.” Free. What would it be like to start over? Walk away and never look back. She forced a smile; of course that’s not what he meant.
“That’s what my mom did. She retired from skating and moved to the States to be with my dad. Away from the conflict in Soviet Russia, and into a world of money and excess. The American Dream. But he said she always missed the skating, said she felt freer on the ice in Russia than she did off of it in America. She missed having that escape,” he said, his hand rubbing out his tired eyes. “Funny how that works.”
“An escape.” She nodded along. “Like dancing. This is the longest I have gone without training in ten years. I miss the music, but”—she hesitated—“despite the lavish accommodations, I like the company.” She looked up at him, wishing he were closer.
“Hard for a dead person to miss anything, isn’t it?” He looked to her and passed a facetious grin. “Had you gotten your wish, had we not walked in on you, you would’ve never danced again. Never known what missing it even felt like. Maybe, we walked in on you for a reason.” He wondered for a moment if, in fact, it was her who saved him and not the other way around.
His words fell through the stale air like a ton of bricks directly onto her chest, stealing the breath from her lungs. She had been so absorbed in her own self-pity and desolation that she never considered any other way out. “I guess I owe you my life.” The quiet words barely slipped from her lips.
Shaking his head, he responded, “You owe me nothing. If it hadn’t been us, it would’ve been your parents. And I somehow feel it doesn’t negate what we were there to do. So, I guess, now it’s kind of my business to keep you alive.”
“No good business with a dead hostage, I guess,” she joked, trying to get back to that smile.
“Well, you know, my conscience would really appreciate you leaving here in one piece and unharmed.”
She watched him rubbing the tattoo again. “Do they hurt? You rub that one sometimes, like maybe it hurts.” She cocked her head and tried to make out the tattoo in the dim light.
His focus shifted to his arm, his thumb rubbing the stopwatch again, and then he froze.
“The, uh, the new ones always do,” he stammered, the lie crashing and burning the second it left his lips. He pulled his hand away from the tattoo and placed it just beside hers.
So close. Barely an inch but it felt like oceans apart. She couldn’t explain why she so desperately wanted to feel his skin on hers once again. Annalise remembered when Kate from the studio had gotten one on her ankle and had to keep it hidden. It was red and irritated for weeks. His was smooth and weathered just like him. He was lying but she wasn’t about to call him on it.
“Can I feel it? Or would that be uncomfortable?”
She realized the moment she said it how awkward it sounded but it was too late. She didn’t know why she asked but there was something she couldn’t resist.
His eyes drifted to the pocket watch tattoo, and he said, “Yeah, I don’t mind,” and he reached his arm out toward her, watching as her eyes traced the inked lines that told the story of his life.
Carefully, Annalise reached up with her free hand and rested her fingers over the pocket watch. Gently, she traced its lines. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest speed up at the contact. The energy that radiated off his skin turned the air between them into an inferno and she longed to be consumed. The pocket watch reminded her of a steampunk relic. She barely grazed the inked skin beneath her fingers as she followed the hour hand and the minute. “How do you choose?”
He gulped, knowing instantly what she was referring to, thanking the darkness for its cover. “The truth?” he asked.
“That’s all we have to give to each other,” she noted, her hand still on his arm.
“I guess it’s the least I could give to the woman I have handcuffed to a radiator.” He laughed. “Four forty-five,” he responded, and he hesitated briefly. “The time of my mom’s death.” Swallowing thickly, he glanced toward her, his heart pounding.
Her small hand gripped his arm and she closed her eyes. Without thinking, she leaned forward and kissed the watch face gingerly. Her lips lingered for a moment and she pulled away.
There was a moment he didn’t recognize it as a kiss, couldn’t comprehend that she ever would. He was frozen as he watched her pull back from his arm, her lips still pursed. “I … uh …”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just … I—” She looked up at him, her words defying her, her eyes big and hopeful. “I’ve never met anyone like you … beautiful and broken, and I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“No, you didn�
��t startle me,” he responded, shaking his head confidently. “And you have nothing to be sorry for. Honest truth, before that moment right there, I didn’t know if you were just killing time until you’re out of here, or if you were feeling what I’m feeling.” His seemed to stumble on his last words and he took a breath. “I mean …”
Feeling what I’m feeling. Jesus. His words danced circles on every nerve ending and her body began to glow, dancing with the flame that would devour her in time. In the small glimmer of moonlight that filtered into the room, she caught the look in his eyes. “What do … you mean, Dimitri?” Fear and excitement raced through her veins in a head-on-head battle for control of her senses.
“Let’s just say, I wasn’t supposed to be here. That I made sure I was because I wanted to see to it that you were safe, and, if I’m speaking honestly, I’d much rather be wide awake bullshitting with you, than wide awake back home, thinking about you. You’re a lot better company than I am.” He hesitated for a moment as she let his arm go, and then added, “Is that a terrible thing to say to a hostage? It kinda feels like it is,” and then he chuckled.
“I’m glad you’re here. I like your company.” Annalise bit her lower lip. “I’ve never really enjoyed hanging out with a guy before,” she added nervously and looked at the floor. “I’m usually just trying to make a getaway.”
“So, what you’re saying is, this has been the best hostage experience of your life?” He wriggled his brows.
“Eh … at least a three point five on Yelp,” she answered with a grin and a shrug, then gave him a wink. “Don’t guess you still have that flask, do ya?”
“Music to my fucking ears,” he responded, his hand meeting his pocket. He dug in and pulled the flask out. Handing it over, he added, “Haven’t had any yet today.”