Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, but I have to ask if there’s anything I’m missing.”

  She nodded and unlocked the station door. “After you left, I thought of something. Figured if you didn’t come back, it wasn’t important.”

  Riley followed her inside, arms crossed. “Here I am.”

  “Here you are.” Sonny went about a few small tasks as she talked, her tone a laconic drawl that made Riley want to take a pack of the wakefulness pills and shove them down her throat. “I think, maybe, she might have decided to turn hobo. You know? Walk the tracks and catch the freight trains as they move through the curves. They have to slow down then, because of safety and all that. We used to hop on them all the time when I was a kid. Man, I miss having that kind of energy.”

  The epiphany sent her bolt upright. El hadn’t left the tracks! She’d just taken them in a different way. But where the hell had she been going?

  “Any idea which way she was going?”

  “Mmm . . . Charleston, I think. I told her that was the nearest bus depot along the train route. I think she said she was looking for something along the train. Sorry, I have a toddler. I don’t sleep much, and my memory is pretty shitty.”

  Adrenaline titrated her blood for action. This time, before Riley went after any more wild geese, she made sure to ask after Sonny’s contact information.

  “If you don’t hear from me, everything is fine.” She pulled a Red Bull from the cooler and paid for it in cash, meeting the woman’s eye with a grim stare. “If anyone else comes by, like say . . . maybe some guys who look a bit hard?”

  The half-asleep surprised emoji face returned. “Yeah?”

  “Tell them she went to Beckley. Tell them . . . I don’t know, lie?”

  “Who are they?”

  “The guys who blocked the train.”

  Riley left her with her mouth hanging open. A quick scan of the regional map showed a triple stripe of railroad tracks, river, and road, running more or less parallel for miles and miles. Riley directed Aella slowly, casting her eyes to the tracks every few seconds.

  On foot, El could have made it about ten miles the first night, and possibly about twenty-five or thirty the second day, if she could manage that. At the ten-mile mark, Riley exited the road, and just after a trestle bridge, brought her bike directly onto the track.

  Keeping her attention divided between safety and the search, Riley counted miles. Worry set in as she neared the twenty-mile mark. All at once, an olive-colored shape formed in the greenery. A shape rather like a dome.

  Letting out a yelp, Riley shoved the bike up and over the rail. Skidding to a halt on the gravel incline, the bike wouldn’t stand upright and had to be propped against a tree. Calling out for El, she crashed through the bushes. The tent was wide open, sleeping bag still in it. No other trace of the girl could be found.

  As the true horror cast its shadow over her, Riley’s knees buckled. El wouldn’t have gone without packing these things. Even a slow-moving train and a finite window to jump aboard wouldn’t induce that kind of stupidity in someone as circumspect as El.

  No, this was a sign that Riley had been right. Something had happened. The worse part was that she had no idea how to proceed. Her genius was tapped out, and El was nowhere to be found.

  Riley finally bowed her head and cried.

  “Stop it,” she said to herself. Riley repeated it over and over, her entire torso bobbing back and forth over her drawn up knees. But the tears wouldn’t stop coming and shudders hit her in intense waves. “Stop it! Fucking stop! Focus. Focus, Riley. Focus!”

  She pinched the skin around her wrists as hard as she could. The sharp pain drew her thoughts inward. Riley closed her eyes on the tent.

  “Think. Six questions. Answer all of the ones you can.”

  Whatever had happened to El had happened after she’d camped, but before she’d risen fully, or she would have packed the tent. That put the when in the last eleven hours.

  Riley got onto her hands and knees and slowly combed the area around the tent in increasingly large circles. Finally, her eyes fell upon some flattened leaves and snapped twigs—signs of foot traffic. The tent was immaculate, no rips, tears, or signs of struggle. Even the sleeping bag was neatly laid out as if El hadn’t yet crawled in. If she’d been removed by force, the kidnapper would have come back for the tent, to make sure all proof of her existence was erased. All this combined with the missing pack led Riley to believe that El had walked out of the camp under her own power.

  The very thought chilled Riley so fully that she instinctively tugged her motorcycle jacket closer around her.

  She’d answered the when and the how. Now for the where. Crouching over the almost invisible trail, she followed it for as far as she could. It terminated abruptly in a fallen tree, as if El had been forced over the log. Orienting herself against the river, Riley formed a mental gridwork. During search and rescue operations on TV, the authorities always searched in a systematic pattern. She was going to have to follow suit, even though her hands were again shaking, and her mind was frantic.

  Bugs whined around her head. Perspiration dripped from her face as she clambered around the fallen tree searching for the trail. Mud and moss and cobwebs caked her leathers as she knelt looking for footprints. Her hair was plastered to her face and decorated with bits of lichen. After almost thirty minutes, she gave up.

  El had to have been going somewhere.

  But there was nothing for at least a mile—no city, no tiny town, not even a gas station. Fanning outward, Riley moved away from the water, and back toward the tracks. About two hundred yards in the direction she’d ridden, Riley’s boot struck a large rock. Shaky limbs could not hold her. She tumbled forward with an oath, putting a gloved hand out to stop herself. What she clutched was a block of chiseled sandstone.

  No town. No buildings. But here was an entire pile of precut stone, growing saplings in the woods.

  Her head snapped up. All at once, Riley was back on her feet, prowling around the pile in concentric arcs. Cutting through a particularly dense wall of brush, Riley shoved an entire branch the thickness of her arm aside. To her absolute shock, she was looking at a chimney stack, crusted in greenery.

  Ducking beneath the foliage, Riley followed what she could now see was an ancient wall. The jungle opened up as she crept around the building—someone had been clearing the area around the small A-frame. Piles of brush and shriveled vine had been collected and cast aside. Rotten lumber was stacked beneath a shattered window, while a fresh pile of timber sat beneath a tarp. A new set of wooden stairs were propped up to the front door, though no actual door hung in the jamb.

  But there, at eye level, was a small, muddy boot print.

  Riley’s organs squirmed and goose bumps rose. If this was the where of El’s latest vanishing act, it had the instant creep-factor that put all of her instincts on alert.

  She stepped back. It was dark inside and though she could see the shady forest through the window across from the portal, there was no telling what dangers existed. Taking her phone from its holster at her waist, Riley called up the camera. With her back to the wall, she fired a few flash pictures up through the windows and door.

  The pictures revealed a vacant space with external walls of laid stone. What walls had not begun to crumble were covered with graffiti. The ground was littered with debris and stripped down to the sub-flooring. Garbage was in piles, some of it—like the box of washing powder—apparently dating from as far back as the fifties. An ancient skirt front kitchen sink was against the far wall, and a pile of tools rested beside a hole in the floor. Strangely incongruous, a perfectly serviceable table and metal bedstead sat in one corner.

  Riley’s heart beat so fast that her necklace swung in the air like a pendulum. It dipped forward and back as if to coax her in, reading her body and the map as if scrying.

  Inching up the stairs, she swiped the phone’s glow from left to right. Riley searched the detritus on the g
round, pushing bits of plaster caked wallpaper and tin cans to the side with a careful toe. Something glittered in the corner of her eye. Riley brought the light around swiftly.

  Beneath the leg of the table was a dull gunmetal sheen against the plywood subfloor. She knew that shape at once, but even as she bent down to retrieve the knife, she wanted it not to be real.

  From point to hinge, Tizóna was smeared with oxidized blood.

  Riley’s mind fell silent.

  From the top of her head to the tip of her toes, a painful tingling began. Tunnel vision set in as she stared at the blade. Muscles locked in place as her body went through the stages of terror. Riley could not focus her eyes on the brown smudges or the blurred droplets of goo that spattered the ground around her feet. Every creak of the ancient structure became a shout. The hot summer wind in the trees outside was suddenly roaring. The cold shadows burned like ice.

  Intuition let free a surge of painful sensations as a tiny shuffling filled her ears. Riley turned, limbs aching, but eyes cutting through the dark.

  A male shape blocked the doorway—weary from an apparently sleepless night, his overalls stained with a dozen shades of rust. His pallor was bad, his eyes were sunken and furtive, his breathing was ragged. Around his upper arm was a wad of scarlet fabric, tied with a handkerchief of deep green.

  El’s favorite color.

  Their eyes connected in an instant of electric fire. Riley knew him for what he was, and he knew she did. Her weight shifted and daylight gleamed off the weapon in her hand. Before her right leg could sweep back, he was hurling his bulk through the portal at her. She had only a heartbeat to ground herself.

  Everything slowed. Each tiny movement of his seemed exaggerated. He tilted his head as he lunged, his nostrils flaring as he glared at her. He was tipped forward, his balance off. He wanted to take out her legs. Once he had her on her back, he’d try to pin her.

  Without an instant to spare, Riley propped her boot on the edge of the metal bed frame and jumped upward. He crashed full speed into the table, knocking it into the far wall. Spinning, she dropped onto his back and lifted the knife, but she had underestimated the strength of his temper. He rolled, tossing her easily to one side. Tizóna flew from her grip and skittered to the pile of tools, but she didn’t focus on it. Riley kicked away as he grabbed for her, and staggering up, found the first thing that would fit in her hand. She swung it with all her might.

  The sound of the small shovel smacking him across the face was like a bell ringing. He toppled, letting out a grunt. His bulk hit the floor so hard the planking quivered beneath her boots. Riley heard a shriek of fury and realized only as she fell on him with blow after blow, that it was she who had made it.

  The tool leaped from her fingers. It wasn’t enough. She cast around for the knife. With it in her hand again, she approached the body, kicking it in the legs for good measure. Fingers like steel cords, she grabbed the handkerchief around his arm and yanked it free. The blood that had seeped through it had turned the hunter green into a deep burgundy. There was no denying it—it was El’s scarf, the one Riley had helped her choose.

  Her glove squeaked as she clenched the knife. Her breath came in hisses through clenched teeth. Her hips and shoulders squared, Riley dared him to test her. His body was completely still, a deep gash oozing crimson at his brow. Riley put a foot on his hand and stepped down. He remained senseless.

  If El was hurt . . .

  Wrath twisted in her flesh. Fury like none she’d ever felt possessed her. This person, whoever he was, had dared to touch El and he was going to pay for it. No one would miss him. She could leave him there to rot and no one would ever know she’d been there.

  Riley lifted the knife. Even as the idea formed in her mind, she knew it had been the truth of her last few days—she wanted the promise of El, and without her, her life had no direction to it. Without El, she didn’t really care what happened to her. She planted her boot in the small of his back and put the knife to his throat.

  A shrill mechanical chord sang out, shattering Riley’s state of mind like the most fragile of things. In an instant, Tizóna was forgotten for her phone, resting on the disgusting mattress. The words danced as Riley scanned them. It was the answer she’d needed far more than any other.

  I trust R. I know that she would fight and she would probably win, because that is what the world has built her to do, but I don’t want that for her. I want her to find as much peace in me as I find in her. I want her to have the chance to fight for everyone, not just some stupid girl whose mother is a monster.

  That’s what I want for her. Until I can give her that, I’ll keep working. Until I am a person who can fight for her, I’ll get stronger.

  A sob echoed in the tiny room. Riley looked at the shallowly breathing body sprawled beside her. It stank like the swamp and rancid meat, dark circles colored the shirt beneath the armpits, a layer of mud coated the cuffs of the pant legs.

  Everything about him disgusted her, because looking at him, Riley was uncertain if she had really ever known herself fully.

  His wallet was a large bulk in his back pocket. Riley liberated it and the phone on the other hip. The driver’s license gave what appeared to be a local address. The ancient smartphone was protected only by the birthday of its owner. She rifled through his life, from his banking information to his text messages. As the latest picture he’d taken appeared on the screen, Riley’s thoughts again collapsed on themselves beneath the weight of her rage.

  It was El’s face, covered with tears, dirt, and absolute dread.

  The next thing Riley knew, she was gasping in the doorway, blinded by sunlight. Her leg hurt so badly she could barely walk, and she knew she had kicked the unconscious man several more times.

  A phone in each hand, Riley stumbled away from the building and into the tree line. A choice in each hand, she dropped to her knees.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispered, scrolling through his pictures as if watching countless horror movies unfold. El’s wasn’t the only face—women, a teenaged boy—and prominent in the background of every image was the abandoned building. “Oh, holy shit. Oh, fuck.”

  Riley dropped the device as if bitten. She’d always known such people existed. She’d practically grown up knowing it, but it had always been tempered by all the good she’d seen. In that moment, beauty was overshadowed. The world was a horrible, malicious place, full of disgusting people who clawed at each other to get what they wanted. Hungers and lusts drove society. There was nothing at all redeemable about any of it.

  She lifted her phone to her ear. When she heard her father’s low voice, the barriers broke and everything she’d been holding within burst free. It was haphazard, the facts pieced together in a collage of atrocities and outrage. He interrupted seldom, understanding her slurred speech without much effort.

  “Dad . . . No one will care! No one would even know!” Her voice sounded alien to her, so high-pitched and hysterical. “Oh, my god, her face! Dad please. Jesus, what the fuck did he do? I can’t—”

  “Stop,” he commanded. The word was sharp, steely in a way it never had been. “Right now. Stop. Breathe.”

  A wave of shivers wracked her. Her teeth were chattering, and nausea was threatening to punctuate their conversation. She did as she was told, sucking down air and shoving it back out again.

  “Are you physically hurt?”

  “No. I’m fine. I knocked him out.”

  “Where is El?”

  Riley sobbed, her words garbled. “I don’t know, but she’s safe.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “She just answered my message on the blog.”

  “Could that be timed?”

  “No. It doesn’t work that way. Dad, he doesn’t deserve to live. I’m going to—”

  “You’re going to listen to me, do you understand?”

  The shaking stopped. Her throat sore, Riley knew she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to.

  “I know
you, Riley. I know you.” There was desperation there, but this was the voice of a man who had stared down his own demons. He wasn’t afraid of hers. Her father was never afraid. He would say what she needed to hear. “I know how angry you are, because I feel it too, but that’s not how we handle anger. Anger is blind, it’s deaf, it’s senseless. You know that, baby. Say you know it.”

  Tears slid off her chin. “I . . . know it.”

  “There are pictures, you said. On his phone.”

  “Yeah. A few different people. Dad, they’re all so afraid—”

  He let out a growl. “Send them to your email. Right now.”

  “Dad, I have to stop him!”

  “No, you don’t! That is not your job. You have one goal right now, and that is staying safe so that you can find that girl! Think of how afraid she is. Think of what she’s been through. You have to find her. That is who you are.”

  “But—”

  “No! Tizóna . . .” Emotions flooded his throat until his voice was barely treading above the misery. “I know you don’t want to make the same mistakes as me. Don’t let this person you don’t even know tell you who you’re going to be for the rest of your life. This isn’t about who or what he is. This moment is yours. His came and went. He made his decision as soon as he put hands on another person.”

  She sniffed, wiping snot across her face. She’d never wanted to ever disappoint him, but there it was, in the soft undertone of his bearlike rumble.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Honey, no . . . I’m the sorry one. I’m not with you and I should be. I should be.”

  She shook her head and gathered enough strength to get to her feet. She wasn’t a child. She didn’t need him to fight her battles for her. She had grown out of that a long time ago, and every individual who got in her way was going to learn that. They were going to regret the person they’d made when they stepped to this bitch.

  “No, Dad. This is mine. I will figure it out.” The steps thumped as her attacker reeled stupidly over them out of the ramshackle house. “Hang on.”