Chapter 13
Laura
I wake up in a comfortable bed. I’m not sure what happened.
I almost think it must all have been a dream, except for the fact I am not at home in my apartment, and I have no memory of getting home either.
My memory of the previous evening is hazy.
I have a faint memory of getting on a bus, and then… I don’t know.
“How are you feeling?” Sam is by my side, a faint frown on his face.
“Weird,” I say. “Why are we at your house? I thought people were trying to kill you.”
“They’re not trying to kill me. They’re trying to control me,” he says. “I’m far too useful to be killed.”
I sit up.
“Don’t get out of bed,” he says. “You’re not well right now.”
“Why aren’t I well right now? What happened?”
He sits down on the bed and puts his hand on my knee. “You were abducted.”
“By you?”
“No,” he says. “Not at first.”
“Not at first?” I repeat his words with a question because what the hell does that mean?
“You were taken by some people who have ties to the government, but also international bodies. Unfortunately for you, I am not merely a professor and a stalker. I am an asset. The kind of control they want over me does not allow for someone like you.”
“Because I’m too young? Too stupid?”
“Too free,” he says. “I cannot have anybody in my life who can be used to leverage me.”
“So you’re breaking up with me?” I feel tears pricking my eyes.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “There’s no way I will live without you, Laura.
You have become the center of my world in a way I never expected.
My plan, initially, was to enjoy you anonymously and send you on your way with a good grade and a scholarship to the school of your choice.
I was always going to look after you. But things have changed. ”
“Why?”
“Because you followed me to Los Angeles, and they were watching. You made a spectacle of yourself.”
“I did? I asked some questions and went to your room…”
“You came in a disguise and spent the rest of the evening and morning in my room. I did not think I was being watched at the time, but obviously I was wrong. They clocked you, and now they’ve assessed you.”
“And?”
“And this will be your world from here on out,” he says. “You are going to have to stay away from the world, lest the world come for you.”
“This is the captive thing again,” I say.
“You were taken and drugged and left for whoever might find you,” he says.
“If the people I know get their hands on you again, it will be worse. It won’t just be a matter of being drugged.
You will be hurt badly, perhaps turned into an asset and used.
There are roles pretty young women can play in this world, and I can promise you that you do not want to play them. ”
I get that prickly chill feeling again.
“I don’t want to be a captive,” I whimper.
“I know, baby. But you will get used to it. You’ll live a life of luxury and comfort. You’ll spend every single moment being looked after. You’ll never have to provide for yourself, and I will ensure that your family is well looked after as well.”
He’s speaking to me with a gentle kind of understanding, but there’s a hard steel underneath it. This is what he intends to do, and I have no choice in it. I’ve gotten myself mixed up in a world where there’s no hope of freedom.
That’s what they all want me to believe anyway. I don’t believe that’s how the world works. I know I can get free. I know I can make my own way in the world.
I sit and I think about this while he brings me breakfast.
The way he’s speaking is just so odd. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even really sound like him. I know he is a man of many faces, but I don’t think he’s this… pathetic?
“I’m not buying it,” I say.
“Not buying what, baby?” He gives me a curious look.
I can see something glittering in his eyes.
Not quite disbelief. Something else. Something like it.
Excitement, maybe. He likes it when I surprise him.
He loves it when I defy him. That means he gets to punish me.
Underneath everything between us is a current of pure filth and kink that is never really all that far away.
Scratch the most kindly conversation and you’ll find sex spilling out between us.
“I’m not buying the notion that you would let some federal agents force you to hold me captive. You called yourself an asset. There’s no way you see yourself that way. You are the master of your own domain. Of everyone’s domain.”
He smiles. A little at first, and then it broadens more and more until he is outright grinning at me with a Cheshire cat expression.
“You are starting to get to know me a little too well,” he says.
At that moment, his phone rings.
He listens for a moment, then hangs up.
“I have to go,” he says. “I’ve been called away to a gym.”
“Why do they need a world-renowned psychologist in a gym?”
“They just do,” he says, flicking a wink. He seems to have completely forgotten his concern of earlier. Or maybe it was never really concern at all, just a warning to keep me where he wants me.
I was abducted. There’s no doubt about that. Well, a little doubt because I don’t really remember it, but I have the feeling something bad happened, and the vehement expression in his eye makes me think he wasn’t lying about that part. The best lies have a kernel of kidnapping in them, after all.
Sam
There are a lot of police at the twenty-four-hour gym on the nice side of town.
I’m sure they’re putting the regular clientele very much off leg day and every other kind of day, much to the manager’s chagrin.
The crime scene tape across the door is going to remain in minds for quite some time, I imagine.
“Gentlemen,” I say as I bow under the tape, lifted for me by an obliging officer.
They’ve called in the Feds because small city cops don’t know what to do when a head is found perched at the front of a treadmill. Run of the mill shooting and stabbing and general carry-on they’ll deal with easily, but this has an element of ritual to it that puts them automatically ill at ease.
The Feds have called me in, because I am an expert in violent crime. Funny how that all works.
The head is still where I, I mean, the responsible party left it.
It is quite firmly affixed to the treadmill, a fact they will discover when they try to remove it later on.
For the moment, I feign a small amount of shock and disgust. Not too much, of course.
These people expect me to have seen all this before, and indeed I have—not seven hours ago.
“Victim is law enforcement,” the detective in charge briefs me.
His name is Victor Wider, and he’s the sort of man who is completely unreadable, even to me.
I like him. I respect him. He’s good at his job, and if I were sending someone to catch me, he is precisely who I would have chosen for the job.
“The man’s head was found on the treadmill in his wife’s gym.”
“That’s terrible,” I say calmly.
“Yes,” he says. “It is. And if we were to uncover evidence as to who were responsible for that atrocity…”
My heart does not so much as skip a beat.
Sometimes I envy those who experience fear.
It must be thrilling to go through the world constantly on edge, living in a state of low-grade horror at the smallest of things.
One of my clients is afraid of pressing the buzzer at an intersection.
I wish my body would respond with such ardor to such little things, but I require much greater conquests to make my blood run.
“They would be facing the death penalty, I imagine,” I say. “Which makes it all the more interesting that the killer has chosen to make this a very public display. This person is brazen, practiced, and supremely confident in his or her ability to get away with the most heinous of crimes.”
He looks at me with dishwater eyes. His mustache twitches slightly.
“His or her?” he says. “Takes a man to remove a head from a body.”
“Not necessarily. Not if the right kind of power tool is used.”
Victor winces. He’s a good man underneath all that alleged nothing. This work must pain him. The yellowing of his eyes tells me he’s been drinking a lot of his sorrows and horrors away. The whiskey bottle will be getting another workout tonight, I imagine.
“I would keep your canvas open, Detective,” I say. “This killer likes to paint with a bloody brush.”
“Are you saying there will be more like these?”
I give a shrug. “Depends on the motive. Depends if the officer in question drew attention to himself directly, or if he was part of a wider project. It may be worth looking into recent missions and seeing if anybody leaps out.”
I am pointing the finger directly at myself now, but I am willing to bet that little bus stunt was never officially signed off on.
They borrowed a bus, found an empty warehouse, and decided to fuck with me.
I’d say I hope they learn their lessons, but they won’t have long to put those lessons into practice.
I intend to end each and every person involved, one at a time.
“I will write up a report and send it to you,” I say. “I have classes today, but will make this my absolute priority. Reach out to me if you need anything in the meantime.”
I shake his hand and leave him to clean up my mess.
They’re going to have an interesting time removing the head from the dash of that machine.
I used a highly specialized bonding agent to attach it.
They’ll end up taking the whole treadmill, I imagine, and the whole thing will sit in an FBI forensic chamber looking like a modern art installation.
I feel at peace as I leave the gym. I’m almost glad those idiots tried to bring me to heel. It has been a long time since I’ve had a good excuse to be this bad.
Laura