by R. K. Lilley
I managed to stop laughing, but couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I didn’t think she was psycho, not even remotely. In fact, I thought it was pretty awesome. “No. I think you’re a hero to women everywhere. Any man that does that to the mother of his children should have much worse done to him. There should be consequences to breaking those kinds of promises.”
“I agree. And so do my sons, apparently. Though they were never close to him. He wasn’t exactly an attentive father. He missed every school function, every one of their games, but managed to never miss a football game on TV. I exhausted myself trying to get him to take in an interest in our boys, but he just wasn’t that kind of a father. I think that makes it easier for them to close him out so completely.”
“Maybe they just need more time.”
“That’s what I’m hoping, though they’re both grown men now, so I have no say in it. That’s something they have to decide for themselves. My ex calls me every few weeks, bitching that I’m putting them up to it. What am I supposed to do? They’re stubborn. They make up their minds and it’s not something I can change.”
“I think it’s good that they’re that appalled by his behavior. I think it means you raised good young men. Principled men. Why should they forgive the man who did that to their mother?”
“Because he’s their father.”
I shrugged. “That’s his fight. You just keep being the mother you need to be, and let them fight their own battles.”
“That’s a good way to look at it. I need to block my ex-husband’s number.”
“I did that with Tammy. Then she started showing up at my house.”
“She still do that?”
“Not for a while, thank God.”
“Well, that’s progress, at least. Gives me some hope for my own situation.”
We really had so much in common. It was a pity I was so obsessed with Iris that I couldn’t see or even think straight.
When we were finished, I walked her to her car. It was a silver Tesla (See what I mean? So much in common!)
She hugged me lightly, one brief press of our bodies, and kissed me on both cheeks. We said a friendly goodbye, and I casually mentioned calling her later.
I watched her drive away.
My brows drew together as I noticed a dark sedan filing in behind her. The windows were darkly tinted (illegally so) but I could swear I made out the shape of a big man with blond hair behind the wheel.
I was well aware of my overactive writer’s imagination, so I quickly shook off the thought.
It simply made no sense.
I sat in my car for a good long while afterwards and tried to analyze what I was feeling.
Disappointment.
But why? What had I expected?
The answer didn’t come easy, and when it did, I felt like even more of a fool.
I’d expected to see her. To see Iris. In some corner of my mind, I’d done the whole thing in some hope that going out with another woman would draw her out, if she were anywhere to be drawn.
Basically, I’d spent the afternoon setting myself up for a letdown and dragging someone else along for the ride.
CHAPTER THREE
I pulled back into my drive with a sense of relief. I’d only been gone a week, but a week with my parents over the holidays was more than I wanted to deal with.
A week of pretending I was okay, that everything was normal, that it was the divorce that had me acting like a robot; asocial, going through the motions, quiet and stuck in my own head unless directly addressed.
But of course it wasn’t the divorce. I hardly thought of that anymore.
It was Iris. Or rather, the lack of Iris.
My parents had fallen back on protocol, making polite small talk. They were civilized and well-bred to a fault. They may have been worried, but they’d never pry. Even as a child, they’d always given me my space, to a fault, sometimes.
It worked out for the best. There was nothing I wanted to talk to them about.
But the not talking had me thinking more. And thinking was not a good thing for me to do just then.
Iris had been gone two months and counting.
It had been a rough two months.
Two months of longing and mourning.
Two months of denying and grieving.
How perverse was it to realize just how in love you were with a near stranger only after finding out that she was gone forever? Possibly dead. Probably dead.
I could recite that cryptic last letter of hers by heart, and still, I wasn’t sure how to decipher its true meaning.
I wouldn’t be seeing her again.
Even after reading that letter a hundred times, I had to keep reminding myself of that.
She’d clearly been in some kind of serious trouble, but she’d never let me close enough to help her with it.
I was certain I could have kept her safe. That was the part I thought about the most—the what ifs.
What if she’d let me help her? What if she’d stayed close and let me keep her safe?
The letter had clearly implied that if I was receiving it she was likely dead, but I just couldn’t seem to accept it.
And as for moving on, I hadn’t been doing a bit of that. Instead, I’d been dwelling and obsessing, dreaming and fantasizing.
I’d started writing everything about her down.
I didn’t want to forget a thing about her. Not one tiny detail.
The color of her hair. The depth of her eyes. The stubborn shape of her jaw. The way her lips shaped words with such expression.
The way she listened like she cared about every word and gave advice beyond her years.
The way she made me feel—Alive.
Every curve and hollow of her body was recorded, in my mind and now my hard drive.
There was a bit of truth in every lie, and even if it had only been fed to me in the smallest increments, I wanted, needed to remember the real Iris.
I put my car in park and turned it off, sitting there for a time, summoning up the energy to get out.
I unloaded my car. Two small suitcases, very tidy, like my life used to be.
Now it was a sham, but I spent a lot of time and energy going through the motions, keeping everything in order.
In my mind, though, chaos reigned.
Before visiting my parents, I’d taken to making a grueling daily schedule for myself, without a minute of idle time, and even while traveling, it never let up. I needed to jump right back into that.
If I allowed myself to indulge my feelings, such as they were, I’d take to my bed and never get up.
I entered the house via the laundry room. I was heading straight to my bedroom, but was stopped in my tracks one step into the living room.
I had company.
Unwelcome company.
“You,” I breathed, suitcases dropping from both hands and hitting the ground with two loud, echoing thuds.
“Me,” he agreed.
The fucker in the Jaguar.
In my house.
“How did you get in here?”
He smiled a less than friendly smile. “Is that really the question you want to ask me?”
It felt like a tight hand squeezed my chest. “What happened to her?”
His mouth twisted bitterly. “Do you even care?”
I was trembling, I wanted to hit him so bad.
Was this the man responsible for my Iris going missing? What had he done to her?
I tried my best to hold onto my temper. “Yes. Yes, I care.” I swallowed hard, having to force the next part out. “Please, I’m begging you. Tell me what happened to her.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he said, and I lost it, charging him where he sat, my fist slamming into his stomach twice before he could react.
Theoretically, I knew how to fight, but I’d never used those skills in a serious fashion on a real target.
It was much harder when it was real, and this fucker obviously knew wha
t he was doing.
He moved so fast I was in a headlock before I realized he was moving. I slammed my elbow back into him hard, again and again, rage giving me strength, and an inability to feel any of the damage being inflicted on me.
He squeezed my neck tighter and tighter, until I felt my vision getting fuzzy, my limbs going slack.
“You think this will help her?” he growled into my ear. “You think fighting me will get you even one step closer to finding out what happened to her?”
I shook my head, and began a fresh bout of struggling out of his hold. Finally, an elbow to his groin had him releasing me with a curse.
“You said help her?” I gasped, staggering back.
I’d latched onto that part fast. “Is she okay? Is she . . . alive?”
He shook his head, and it took everything in me to keep from charging at him again. “I can’t tell you anything. I have to show you. If you really care about her, you’ll come with me, no questions asked.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Fine. Let’s go.”
“Leave your phone behind. I’m driving.”
I took my phone out of my pocket, tossing it on the sofa. “Where’s your car?”
“Just outside of the security gate. You’ll sit in the back. I can’t have you seeing where we’re going. And I need to pat you down first.”
I let him, holding my arms out, thinking of taking his thick neck in my hands the entire time.
He straightened in front of me when he was done, and grinned, though his pale eyes stayed cold. Bastard was enjoying my antipathy. He was young, mid-twenties, if I had to guess, but something in his eyes told me he’d seen and done things I’d only ever written about.
The fucker was tall, maybe an inch taller than I was. And bigger than I’d realized, muscular and broad shouldered. Probably outweighed me by fifteen pounds.
I really hated that.
It was a bit of a walk, and as I followed him, watching his back with gimlet eyes, I couldn’t help but poke at him. “You know she loves me, right? I don’t know what you have over her, but it’s me she wants. Me she belongs to. I’ve staked my claim on every last inch of her.”
He didn’t say a word, just turned on his heel and punched me square in the jaw.
I staggered back, but recovered with a mean left hook aimed right for his teeth.
He ducked, and I caught him in the right temple.
“Shut the fuck up!” he roared, blond hair falling into his crazed eyes, fists clenched, looking like he wanted to come at me again. “You talk about her like that again, and I will fucking end you, you understand? And I sure as fuck won’t give you any answers.”
I didn’t speak, just nodded at him to keep walking.
I didn’t have one single, civilized word to say to him, so it was best to stay silent.
I had more than a few reservations about getting into the back of a van with no windows, driven by a man that hated me, but I barely paused before climbing in.
I knew it was possibly the stupidest thing I’d ever done, but what choice did I have?
If there was even a chance I could find out what had happened to her, I had to take it.
There wasn’t even a seat in back, and the compartment was completely blocked off from the driver’s cabin.
I had essentially walked into a moving cage.
He started driving just as I sat. He was a maniac of a driver, turning corners hard enough to send me sliding across the floor, accelerating so fast that I slammed into the back door.
And it wasn’t a short drive.
I didn’t have any way to keep track of time, but it must have been hours before he started to slow, then turn sharply, then stop.
I had plenty of time to wish I hadn’t worn a suit to travel from my parents’ home. It was a habit, though, with them. No jeans for the Masters, no. And whenever I went home, I had to pretend to be one of them, though in reality, I spent most of my time in sweats in front of a laptop.
I loosened, and finally removed my tie, undoing the top three buttons of my white dress shirt, and taking off my dark gray jacket.
“How long have we been driving?” I asked when he opened the back doors to glare at me.
“I’m not going tell you that, and don’t bother trying to figure it out. The less you know the better. We aren’t there yet, anyway. Just a pit stop.”
He tossed me a bottle of water. “Drink up.”
I caught the water. He shut the door again.
It had been roughly three in the afternoon when we’d left, and the sun was beginning to set now. Roughly four hours of driving so far, I guessed.
More time passed. Lots of time.
All the while, my mind raced.
I slept propped against the side of the van for a bit, my jacked held against my temple as the most useless pillow in history.
Even sleeping, I dreamt of Iris.
Where were we going? There was no way of telling, but when I’d been counting turns at the beginning, with some notion of where we were, I thought we’d headed east out of town.
In my mind, we were somewhere deep in Utah by now, but again, that was the vaguest of guesses.
The van careening to a stop again woke me, and when the back doors opened, it was to darkness.
He tossed me another bottle of water and a protein bar, told me to shut up before I spoke, and shut the doors again.
More driving. More sleep. The doors opened this time it was to the bright morning light.
“Get yourself presentable again. Wouldn’t want you looking like a slob for this. After that, turn around and back up to me. You want to do this, you’re going to let me blindfold you. I don’t need you picking out any fucking details.”
I scraped a hand through my hair, smoothing it back, then set to work on the buttons of my collar, watching him to see if he was serious about the making myself presentable part.
“Put your tie and jacket back on,” he ordered me.
I did what he said, vividly imagining doing him bodily harm all the while.
I backed up to him on my knees.
“I need to pee,” I told him.
He slid a cloth bag over my head and clicked handcuffs tight onto my wrists.
“In a minute. Unless you prefer to piss on a tire, there’s an actual restroom close by.”
I hoped he meant that minute part literally.
Logically, I knew I should be worried, and I was, to an extent. But the feeling that ruled me just then was anticipation, because finally I would get some answers, and it was much more powerful than any concern I felt for myself.
What was in store for me here? What would I learn, and could I live with the answers? And, if the worst had happened, did I really want to know?
He gripped the back of my upper arm and led me across gravel and onto a sidewalk, from the sun into the shade.
I heard him working a key into a lock and then he barked at me to step inside.
“Use the bathroom, and then stay put. You take a step out of this room, you’ll regret it.”
He undid my cuffs, and I heard the door slam shut behind me.
I pulled the bag off my head, glancing around.
It was an old, musky hotel room. I headed straight for the bathroom, used it, and explored, peeking out the window, which was frosted over and apparently bolted shut.
The whole setup was creepy in the extreme. Just the type of place someone would take you to finish you off.
I checked my appearance in the mirror, and thought I was turned out rather well, all things considered. Suit only marginally wrinkled, hair disheveled, but not more than usual. Eyes only slightly bloodshot, but not terribly so. Slight bruise on my jaw, but nothing too gruesome.
The room didn’t have a phone, but it did have an alarm clock that read ten minutes past seven.
There was an ancient TV centered between the two double beds, and after waiting thirty minutes, I switched it on. Turned out, it actually had a good lineup of channels.
Sadly, how bad it was just made me miss her more.
Around an hour after I’d been left in the room, the door opened. That blond son of a bitch poked his head in, customary glare in place.
“Turn that shit off,” he growled, then shut the door again.
I heard his voice faintly outside again not a minute later, though by his even, non-hostile tone, he clearly wasn’t talking to me.
“Brought you something,” he was saying.
There was a long pause, then a quieter, fainter voice responding softly.
Something about that voice had me standing, breath growing short, heart skipping beats.
“Go inside and see,” the bastard responded.
I watched the door, body drawn taut in anticipation.
Hands clammy and shaking with it.
Finally, mercifully, it opened. It creaked wide slowly, and the sight that filled it nearly brought me to my knees.
“Iris,” I breathed.
There stood Iris.
She looked different.
Wearing gray sweats and thick framed glasses, her blonde hair braided thick to one side and draped on her shoulder. Her face was clean of makeup, and as beautiful as ever.
She looked about fifteen, dressed like that. It was a perturbing development, but overshadowed completely by the burst of sheer joy in my chest at the sight of her.
She was whole and alive. Safe and sound.
Ironically, she seemed even more shocked to see me, her hands covering her mouth as she gasped.
“Dair,” she sobbed, then rushed forward, throwing herself into my arms.
They were ready for her. I caught her to me, holding her tight, my face buried in her hair.
She tipped her face up to me, eyes closed, glasses askew, her whole body shaking, and threw her arms around my neck.
I lifted her, and she wrapped her legs about my hips.
I lowered my mouth to touch her trembling lips.
“Jesus, can you not do that in front of me?” the bastard growled. “You’re already making me regret this.”
With that, he slammed the door, and I heard when he drove the outside bolt home.
