Chapter 13
Jessie
The ride home is calming, and I feel myself leaning against Warren for more than just my safety. He stays strong and rigid, only moving to swerve around corners, and I feel my trust for him beginning to seep in. I haven’t felt like this for anyone since I returned home, not since Jake. We make a strange couple, Warren and me; then again, my whole life has been one series of strange events. Perhaps Warren and I make the most sense out of everything.
The bar soon comes into view, and I feel relieved over the fact that it’s not yet busy. In fact, I can only see one lone car in the parking lot, and the bikes parked up front are only those belonging to Jake, Warren, and the other guy who works behind the bar. I begin to relax after momentarily tensing up over our arrival. With any luck, I can shuffle out back before anyone even notices.
When Warren parks up and turns off the bike, he turns to help me dismount, and the intense look in his eyes has me blushing. But it’s his smile that disarms me completely. He removes my helmet and brushes back my hair with soft strokes against my skin. I take in a breath through my nerves, but I don’t pull away. We crossed a line back in that cemetery, a line I don’t want to return to. I look right back at him when he cups my cheek with his large hand, prompting me to remember the night they had been all over my body, and I wonder if I’m ready to go back there.
“I want to kiss you again,” he says when he is but an inch away from my lips.
“Kiss me then,” I whisper back. And he does before I’ve even had a chance to take a breath after my words have escaped through my lips.
I melt against him, losing myself in his strong embrace and letting his mouth control mine. I’ve strived for control ever since I returned home, after it had been stolen from me for so many years. I’ve never done anything I haven’t wanted to since Daddy took my choices away from me. Whenever my parents tried to encourage me to go outside or to try and visit a new doctor, I would refuse and walk away from the situation. They never pushed and I never pulled for anyone. But Warren is different; he’s broken like me. He understands, and it makes me feel things I haven’t felt for a long time. He’s my Stanley, and I think I’m his.
“Er, Phoenix?” Someone calls from the door to the bar, the man from the first night I arrived here. Phoenix doesn’t pull away from me until he’s ready, and I blush for it. He smiles before he finally looks up at the man still waiting for him. When he does, the soft expression he had put on for me immediately morphs into one of tension, waiting for the man to tell him what he wants. “You better get inside,” he begins, then looks at me with uncertainty before finally saying, “You too.”
Warren immediately looks at me with just as much confusion in his eyes. Though I probably look more terrified than confused, so he grabs my hand, kisses it, and walks us toward the door with his tall, straight back, ready to face whatever it is. However, when we finally pass over the threshold, what I’m faced with both shocks and saddens me.
“Jessie!” my mother cries out as she rushes over to pull me into her arms. I remain rigid while she weeps against me, pulling me in more tightly until I feel like I can’t breathe.
“I don’t know who you are, but we’ve come to take our daughter home, where she belongs!” my father growls at Warren, showing more courage than I’ve ever seen from him, especially given how much bigger the man he’s snapping at is. “How could you take her after all that she’s already been through? You’re just as sick as that bastard was!”
“Dad –” I try to argue but he cuts me off before I can go on.
“Mark my words, I’ll be calling the police as soon as I’ve got Jess safely back inside of the car!”
“Don’t you mean Niamh?” Warren finally voices. The question prompts my mother to look at him with confusion, as though she is completely unable to comprehend how he would know such a thing.
“That is her real name, isn’t it?” he asks again.
“How do you know that?” Mom asks, still looking like she’s seen a ghost. It’s only then that both my parents look at where our hands our joined together, the sight of which causes them to gasp in open horror.
“What the hell is this?!” my father shouts for the whole room to bear witness to. “Some sort of twisted Stockholm syndrome? Jess, honey, come with us and we’ll help you.”
“How did you know I was here?” I ignore his plea and instead, ask the obvious.
“We received an anonymous note,” Mom answers me with caution in her voice, as though she is now aware she might lose me to who she perceives to be a monster. “It warned us not to go to the police because of how dangerous this man is. Your father still wanted to, but I insisted he follow the warning. I can’t lose you again, Jessie. Jessie, this man is dangerous! Please come home with us.”
“I can’t,” I say quietly, looking at the floor because I can’t bear to look at the hurt in her eyes.
“Why not?” Dad asks with fear in his voice. “Has he threatened you? Is that what it is?”
It’s then that I feel Warren release my hand and walk away, leaving me bereft and frightened again. I feel a lump of emotion forming at the back of my throat as I huddle my arms around myself, letting my hair hang over my face to hide. I don’t voice an answer, instead, I shake my head.
“Then come with us,” my dad practically begs me, “we’ll take care of you!”
“Like you did when I was eleven years old?” I cry out of nowhere like it was gut instinct to finally say those bitter words. My mother begins to cry and my father gasps, the pain of what I’ve just said practically filling the room in front of me.
“Jessie, don’t say that, please!” Mom begs as she tries to reach out for me, but I back away before she can, shaking my head as I do so.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t not say it anymore.”
I finally let go and begin to cry so hard it hurts. The rest of the room remains silent, staring at me with worry in their eyes. The girl who got taken is finally losing her shit and it’s not pretty.
“Jessie?” Dad steps forward with his hands braced before him as if approaching an injured wild animal. “You know your mother and I would have done anything to stop what happened from happening all those years ago. We weren’t there though.”
“No, you weren’t,” I reply bitterly, “you were both at home while Tammy and I walked up that hill in the pouring rain. Was it nice and warm inside? Was that why you didn’t think to come and get me?”
“That’s not fair, Jessie, I was working, and your mother was cooking dinner,” he flusters, trying to get closer to me while my mother cries even louder in the corner. But when I look at Warren, he gives me a small nod of encouragement. Perhaps this is what I need to do, to have my say while he’s here to give me the strength. I hate hurting them, but I’ve been hurting ever since I was eleven years old.
“Well, I hope it tasted as nice as my freedom felt because that was the cost,” I mutter sadly. “I lived in a basement for over six years, haunted by my abductor for every second of it. I still am. He destroyed my childhood, but he’d always tell me that I was lucky he had found me, that he would never have left something as precious as me to walk home in the pouring rain, and that my parents obviously didn’t love me enough to come and get me.”
“Jess—" My mother whimpers to the point I can’t stand the sound of it anymore.
“Perhaps he was right,” I whisper, delivering the final blow with a deafening mutter of words.
“This is you, isn’t it?” my father lashes out at Warren, turning on him like he’s nothing more than a delinquent that needs putting in his place. Warren says nothing, just looks at me and waits for me to speak. “You’ve put these ideas in her head; brainwashed her so she’ll stay with you!”
“Leave him alone; he’s the only person I trust right now, and I…I need him!” I call out in a voice as loud as my nerves will allow me to. The looks on both men’s faces are practically the same – shock mixed with disbelief. While they remain stunned in a stupor, I take in a deep breath and walk over to take hold of Warren’s hand, just like he had done to me not three hours ago.
“Jessie,” my mother says sadly, reaching out for me, but still I shy away, burying myself in the crook of Warren’s arm. “I don’t know what to say except I have replayed that day every day since you were taken. And every time, I wish I could go back, get in my car, and come and get you. It didn’t matter what was in the oven or the fact your aunt had called, if I could go back and blow all that other stuff to hell so I could have come and got you, I would. But…but I can’t. And I’ll never forgive myself for it. I know I’ve lost you, Jess…Niamh. I knew when you decided to change the name that I had given you when you were still growing inside of me. I knew when you tensed up inside of my arms at the hospital when they found you. And I know now because I see it in your eyes as I have done for the past five years.”
I huddle myself inside Warren’s embrace because even now, with my mother making her heartfelt confession while she breaks before me, I cannot bring myself to reach out to her, to tell her she does still have me. My father is right, I have been brainwashed, just not by the man who I’m choosing to be with over my own flesh and blood. Daddy stole my childhood, as well as whatever trust I had in my parents. I no longer believe in make-believe dragons, and I don’t believe in them.
“I have to—" I begin but I can’t finish what I’m trying to say because I don’t know what to say anymore. Anger has been replaced by stabbing heartache over everything.
“Jessie?” Warren whispers in my ear as he leans down, kissing my head in a protective gesture.
“I need to go,” I declare, but not to him, to my parents. Before they can answer in any way, I run out back where I feel more at home than I have in my parents’ house in the last five years.
The sound of my mother and father crumbling against one another as I make my escape is enough to have me collapsing onto the floor as soon as I hit Warren’s cozy little living area. I clutch a hand over my heart as I try to make my own whimpers as silent as possible, though it doesn’t stop Jake from coming after me. His arms wrap around my fetal body posture, and I let him shield me from all of it.
Phoenix
The situation before me is more uncomfortable than anything I’ve ever had to face before, even worse than when I had to walk Lou down the aisle wearing a monkey suit in front of a bunch of my brother-in-law’s wealthy family. They were nice enough but it didn’t stop me from feeling like a clown walking into a funeral. I may as well have worn a giant sign saying ‘Killer For Hire’ given that it felt like they all knew. But now, in front of Jessie’s weeping parents after having been accused of abducting and brainwashing her, I can’t help but begin to pace, all the while sighing and running my hand through my hair. Give me a bare fistfight any day of the week; I would feel far less nauseated.
“Look, I’m not good with parents,” I begin as I march back and forth in front of them, “or shows of emotion, or people in general, but I want you to know I never took Jess to hurt her. I’m not saying I’m the most normal of people, but I swear to you, I won’t let anything happen to your daughter.”
“Says the hardened killer from what the letter said!” her father spits at the same time as he continues to try and comfort his distraught wife. I merely give him a smile with my teeth before moving in a little closer, just so he’s clear with what I’m about to say to him.
“We both know you don’t think I’m going to hurt Jess,” I tell him, even though he’s starting to back away a little. I’ve had years to practice looking like a psychotic ass who’s about to put a bullet in your head. I graduated from learning how to make grown men piss their pants with just a look when I went after the motherfucker who attacked Lou. By comparison, this is nothing, just a friendly warning to not push me any further. And only because he’s Jess’ father. “If you did, you wouldn’t be testing my patience like you are. Truth is you don’t like the fact that she feels safer with me, or that she’s opened up to me. I took her because we’re not sure if the man who abducted her is still alive or dead, and unfortunately for you, until we know that, she is safer with me.”
“She called you Warren,” her mother says with sudden confusion spreading across her face, effectively cutting her husband off before he can dig himself further away from my good graces. “But the letter said you were called Phoenix. The man at the bar told us you are Phoenix.”
“My real name is Warren, but only your daughter calls me by my Christian name,” I tell her, softening because she really is distraught and because she vaguely reminds me of my own mother.
“Do you really care about her?” she asks, studying me for any sign of doubt.
“Yes,” I tell her resolutely but with a voice I don’t recognize as being my own. It sounds too emotional to be mine.
“Then I trust you to look after my baby,” she says with tears already building at the bottom of her eyelids. “Come on, Jim, it’s time to go.”
With one more scowl in my direction, Jess’ father eventually concedes and follows his wife over to the door. However, something makes me call out to her one more time. When she turns to face me, I too, march myself over to meet them.
“Do you still have that letter? The anonymous one,” I ask.
“Er…yes, at home,” she replies, looking a little dazed and confused by my question.
“Do you think you could send it to me?”
“Why?” her father pipes in, sounding accusatory.
“Why do you think?” I reply, scowling at him. “Whoever it is knows where your daughter is, and knows about me, which sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, God, it’s not him, is it?” Her mother begins to panic, so I put up my hand to try and quieten her. The last thing Jess needs to hear is that her psycho abductor is still alive and seeking her out. Fortunately, she appears to heed my warning and nods her head in understanding. “Yes, of course, as soon as we get home, I’ll send it to you. You have my word!”
I nod in thanks before they finally exit blank together.