by P Mulholland
“Do you recognize this asshole?” A person stepped out of the elevator wearing a black sweatshirt, a hood covering his head. As soon as he momentarily looked up at the camera, Leon froze the picture.
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Is he the guy who smashed the doors?”
“He painted the red X across the doors and left the dead rat in a box. But it wasn’t him who shot at the doors.”
“Shot? Did you just say, shot?”
“There are two bullet holes in the reception wall. The doors are made out of safety glass. Bullets fired from any caliber gun could smash them.”
He leaned over my shoulder to open another file. This footage was from today. Even though his face was covered by a black balaclava, it was obvious he wasn’t the same guy who painted the red X. This guy’s movements were steady and less agile and he was thicker through the midribs.
“Do you recognize him?” Leon asked.
“No. His face is covered.”
Leon clicked off the footage. “The problem is that all this trouble began when you started working here.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“You tell me.”
“I already asked you if the vandalism had anything to do with the article in the Tribune,” I said.
“We changed our mind,” he said, his tone completely without emotion or animation. “Originally we thought our competitors were making trouble for us. We put pressure on them to crack. They did not. Why? Because they knew nothing about it. Zilch.”
“Jake and I haven’t had any problems,” I said.
He sighed. “We believe the man in the balaclava is hired help,” he said.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what ‘hired help’ really meant. “Targeting who?”
He stayed silent.
“Me?” I asked.
“No. It would be easy to hit you so why come up here to do it?”
“Really? How easy? Jeez! Do I need to get extra security at the apartment?”
“No. They would’ve got you by now. They’re not after you.”
“So it’s you then, the Malones?”
“Obviously.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Hired help came just to fire bullets through our door. He didn’t enter the offices. He just shot at the doors and left. Why?”
“If he activated the alarms, that would stop him,” I said, trying to help.
“It was never his intention to go inside,” he sounded impatient. “He’s warning us.”
“From what?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t go through the agony of speaking to you about it. It’s like I’m having a conversation with someone with the intelligence of a blade of grass.”
“You’re so sweet, Leon,” I said, rising from the chair to leave.
“Before you leave,” he said. “Why did you give my number to that Austin chick?”
“I didn’t,” I rebuked. “I gave your number to Jake but he refused to pass it on.”
“Tell her to get off my back,” he bit.
“Tell her yourself. Or is Leon Malone too chicken to speak to a grown woman?”
He glared at me. “She’s not to my taste.”
“Because she has a pulse?” I retreated to the Dust Room.
With twenty minutes to go until home time, I began to pack the invoices into their correctly labeled boxes of Income and Expenses. I could hear raised voices and at first I thought Sledge and Holmes were having a passionate argument about sports teams, or something. Then I heard loud banging and the shouting became anxious and fear-based. My skin crawled.
A moment later the door to the Dust Room slammed shut, then I heard a click that made my stomach turn. Someone had locked me in.
I reached into my shoulder bag and found my phone. I wanted to text Jake. He’d be on his way, if not here already.
The voices were nearing. Men’s voices. There was sarcastic laughter and threatening tones. Maybe it should be Isaac I message.
Me: You better get down here. We got visitors.
Knowing that the Dust Room was out of cell phone range, I moved about the small room with my arm up, hoping it would strike.
A loud crash shuddered against the walls of my room. I heard sneering voices and heavy footsteps on the wooden floor. They were in the office next to the Dust Room. I pressed my ear against the door and could hear scraping furniture, and the sounds of drawers being opened then the contents tipped onto the floor.
My breathing hastened. I checked my phone. The loading circle was still going round and round. I glanced up at the air conditioning vent. It was my only way out.
“What’s in here?” a slithery voice asked, turning the doorknob to the Dust Room. I couldn’t hear Leon’s answer. I knew Leon well. The man could hammer nails into his hands and Leon’s mouth would remain shut. Not even a squeak from Leon Malone.
The man persisted, yelling with fury. There was another loud crash followed by thudding against the Dust Room door. I looked up again at the air conditioning vent, then climbed the shelves, quickly reaching the top. I pulled at the grill desperately, adrenaline running through me, my strength increasing with every thud against the door.
Part of the grill came loose and I ripped at it some more. But I was too late. The door flew open from one last violent kick.
A man walked in, coolly rubbing his hands together. He spotted me, raised his eyebrows and sniggered, “What do we have here?”
Chapter Twenty Two
Jake
I waited twenty minutes for Brydes to come out.
I text her to let her know I had arrived and where I’d parked. She’s usually quick to leave, so it surprised me she hadn’t turned up yet. I went to the entrance of Malone’s building but it was locked and I needed a keycard to get in. I messaged her again to see if she was coming.
I stepped back to gaze up at the floor Malone’s security company was on. The lights were off. The entire floor seemed vacant.
Me: Are u still in the building?
Brydes:
I dialed her number. It rang three times before it cut out. Something’s wrong. I ran around to the back of the building looking for an alternative way in, and smacked into a big security guy who stepped out from the shadows.
“Can you help me? My friend is working up there. Can you get me inside?”
“Which floor?” he asked.
“She works at Elite Security.”
He shook his head. “They’ve all left for the day, I’m sorry.”
Maybe she got a ride and was already home? My head was spinning. I drove back hoping to find her there on the couch, smiling. “Just a misunderstanding,” she’ll say.
I opened the door to our apartment and instantly knew without stepping inside that she wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. After waiting two hours, I rang the police who said it was too early to report a missing person.
I went to her bedroom and lay on her bed. The vanilla scent rising up off her bed covers comforted me. I closed my eyes.
I heard the click of the front door and my eyes snapped open. I waited a moment before getting up. I could hear a man’s voice. My first thought was she met someone and brought them home. My heart sank. Why bring a stranger home when I’m right here?
Or maybe it wasn’t a stranger, maybe it was the Bear or one of those men that had asked her out. The guy from her work or the coffee guy. Again, why choose one of them, when I’m right here? It then occurred to me that if she had brought a man home, I’m about to make a dick of myself caught lying on her bed.
I heard water run in the bathroom, the hollow sound of the Jacuzzi being filled. Neither of us had used it since we moved in, although I had hinted we should have a bath together for old time’s sake.
Still, I couldn’t hear Brydie’s voice. Something wasn’t right. The hairs on my arms were raised and my skin prickled. I sat up and listened. The man’s voice was s
till droning on, a one-way conversation. But where was Brydie?
I got off her bed just as a man emerged with a swollen face and bloody nose. It took me a moment to identify him. Leon fucking Malone. He had a phone pressed to his ear.
“Out,” he ordered me.
I stepped out into the hall. I still couldn’t see Brydie.
“Clean her up,” he said, pointing to the bathroom, then wandered up the hall to the living room to continue the conversation on his phone.
I stepped to the bathroom door and looked inside. A body lay on their side on the cold, hard floor. Their back was facing me and a large patch of reddy brown covered their torso.
“Brydie?” My heart hit my throat and I lost my breath. I knelt down next to her and brushed her tangled hair away from her face. She was almost unrecognizable. Blood now dry had run from her nose to cover her mouth and chin, and the soft skin around her eyes was so swollen her eyes were forced shut.
I got to my feet to find Leon. “What the fuck did you do to her?” I ran at him and punched his already swollen, bruised face. I wanted to kill him. He just looked at me with those soulless eyes as blood ran from his nose. He failed to fight back. He couldn’t care less if I killed him or not.
I checked myself. This wasn’t me. I stepped away from him and shook my hand.
“The doctor is on his way,” he said. “Get her in the bath and clean her up.”
I ran back to Brydie and checked the temperature of the bath water. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. She should be going to the hospital, not waiting for some halfwitted doctor of Malone’s to arrive.
I gently tugged at her white blouse which was stuck to her skin from the blood. Where it had ripped I could see open, weeping wounds. She moaned.
“It’s okay, Brydes,” I whispered. “You’re home now.”
I checked the water again, then turned the faucets off. I knelt down and carefully slid my arms under her, lifting her up. She yelped in pain. “I’m sorry.”
Carefully, I stood up and placed her in the water and immediately the dried blood seeped into the water turning it pink for a moment. I leant her head against the side of the Jacuzzi, found a face cloth and proceeded to wipe the blood off her face, neck and arms.
She touched my face with her hand and muttered something. I held her hand and kissed her grazed palm.
Under the water her blouse had come unstuck and I gently pulled it off her to check the wounds underneath. Skin had been pulled away along her left side as if she’d been dragged along bumpy concrete, and she was holding her arm at a precarious angle. Her black trousers were ripped on the left side and I suspected there were more wounds on her thigh.
I got up and went to the kitchen to get some ice to put on her eyes. Malone was sitting on the couch with his head down. I took two bags of ice out and handed one to him. “What happened?”
“We got attacked,” he said.
“At Malone’s office?”
He nodded.
“She won’t be working for him again, will she?” I said, meaning it. Those fuckers are going have to kill me first if they think Brydie is going back there.
The doorbell rang and I peered through the peephole. It was Isaac with another man who I assumed was the doctor, even though he looked more like a butcher. But maybe doctor and butcher were the same thing in Malone Land.
I took the doctor into the bathroom to inspect Brydie. I had the ungainly job of removing her trousers so the butcher, I mean doctor, could inspect the wounds on her legs. She lay in the water, undignified in her underwear as he prodded, inspected and lifted her limbs.
After several moments he came to the conclusion that she had cracked ribs along with a radial head fracture on her left side and superficial wounds on her back, left arm and leg. Her nose wasn’t broken, but she would have black eyes for the next few days. It was shady guesswork without a CT scan to determine the broken bones, but it was enough to satisfy Malone.
“It actually looks worse than it is,” the doctor/butcher said.
“That’s okay then,” I bit sarcastically. “No problem Brydes, you’ll be back to normal by the morning.” I couldn’t help being an asshole, but I was pissed off.
“Ah, I don’t think so,” the doctor said. “it doesn’t look like she has any internal bleeding but please keep an eye on her.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if she was in hospital?” I stressed.
The doctor turned to Isaac for some input. Isaac was standing at the doorway with his arms crossed, wearing a face like thunder.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” the doctor said. “They’d do nothing you’re not already doing.” He handed me a stack of dressings from his briefcase. “Change them daily and try to keep her wounds dry.’ Next he produced a sling. “Her elbow won’t need a cast, but put her arm in this just to take the weight off.”
I shot Malone a glare. “Do you want to see what you did to your little sister?”
He ignored me, instead thanking the doctor with a shake of his hand.
“Come on, Isaac. Ice Man. Don’t you want to see the skin peeling off her?”
Brydie moaned and I looked down at her and faltered. It just hit me. My beautiful girl was lying in a bath of her own blood. I just about lost it. I turned to the Malone fuckers, my fists clenched and the rage I felt boiling over. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
They hesitated before moving, but I helped Isaac along by giving him a good shove. He gave me a warning glare that I ignored as I shoved him again.
I heard Brydie call me, her voice muffled by her swollen face. I waited until the Malone filth were gone, before I went to her. She lifted her right hand up to me and I took it in my hand. I helped her stand and step over the side of the bath. Then I grabbed a clean towel and wrapped it around her, tenderly patting her dry.
I walked her into her bedroom and found some sleepwear under her pillow. She was still wearing her wet underwear and I paused. She started to pull down her black panties and I turned my back. From the moment I met Brydes, I would’ve given the sun, the moon and the stars to see her naked. Except now it seemed wrong, yet right.
Once the panties were gone, she tried to unhook her bra. Because of her fractured elbow she couldn’t reach the hooks, so I turned her around to unhook them, letting her black wet bra drop to the floor.
There she was, standing before me completely naked, her skin shiny from the water, her hair wet and tangled. Even with gashes and grazes, broken bones and swollen eyes, she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
I opened the dressings and placed them over the deep gashes that ran down her left side. Then I took her tank top and slid it over her head. Due to the fractured elbow, her arm refused to straighten, so it took quite an effort to get her arms into each armhole.
“I’m usually better at undressing women,” I whispered.
She grunted a laugh, then winced in pain.
Next the shorts. She sat down gingerly on the bed and I helped pull them up over her taut bare butt. That ass was something special. I tried to avoid looking at her pussy, but I couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t hairy like she said. It looked perfect, just like her tits, her legs, her face. Everything was perfect even though it wasn’t perfect. It was an imperfect moment.
She lay down on the bed on her good side and I lay alongside her gazing into her narrowed eyes for a few moments, trying to read her thoughts. I pulled my eyes away to run my finger over the shape of the tattoos on her arm, along the trails of vines, looping over flower petals and circling the face of a tiger.
When I looked back at her battered face, a single tear was running down her swollen cheek. I wiped it with my thumb.
A river of emotion surged through me; anger, sadness, rage, shock infiltrating every cell in my body. I swallowed over a newly formed lump in my throat. It didn’t help, the emotion kept coming, brimming over.
I rolled over and got up off her bed before the tears fell. I went into
the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face, then stood in front of the mirror watching the drips run down my unshaven cheeks. In the reflection, I could see her bloodied ripped clothes piled on the floor and blood splatters all over the side of the Jacuzzi.
The emotion kept pulsating through my body, burning me up on the inside. It felt like I was drowning, my lungs filling with invisible water and my stomach was scoured with nausea.
I couldn’t breathe and dropped to the floor in a desperate attempt to catch my breath. What the hell is happening to me?
I rolled into a fetal position, covered my face with my wet hands and sobbed uncontrollably.
Chapter Twenty Three
Jake
An urgent knock at the door early the next morning pulled me away from Brydes.
I refused to sleep the entire night in case she stopped breathing, or started crying, or just needed me to hold her. I couldn’t hug her without hurting her and that pissed me off. Instead she hardly moved and remained perfectly quiet all night, a scary silence that made me nervous. At one point I checked the pulse on her slim wrist to see if she was still alive.
My mind swelled like an angry flood thinking of the injuries I planned to inflict on the person who did this to her. Darkness did strange things to my mind, the later it got the more sadistic my thoughts became. I was taking pleasure in torturing the fucker who laid his hands on Brydie O’Neal. I skinned him alive, impaled him with fire pokers and then tossed his body into a sea of hungry great white sharks.
I rolled off Bryde’s bed and wandered to the door, checking the peephole first to find an attractive, dark haired exotic-looking woman on the other side. Farrah Malone.
As soon as I opened the door she rushed inside in a panic, cradling a large bag on her arm, her flowing summer dress billowing as she breezed past me. “Where’s my baby girl?”
I escorted her up to Bryde’s room and immediately she set to work examining the injuries, then opened her bag to reveal a bunch of small bottles of liquid and tubes of ointment. The entire time she was whispering in a warm, comforting way that only a mother would know how to do. She was better and more equipped at this nursing business than I was. Yet I still felt a twinge of jealousy within me that I hoped a strong cup of coffee and hot shower would fix.