by Anna Lewis
Hex… no, not Hex. Hex hated me. He probably wouldn't even come back to work so he wouldn't notice that I'd gone. He might one day see me in the papers, but he would likely just shrug and assume that I deserved it.
Shit, this was the end for me.
Eventually I heard the outside noises change, which suggested to me that we were now indoors. That made everything inside of me tense up. My stomach knotted, my throat went dry, and everything ached.
Whatever this guy wanted, whatever he thought about me, whatever he wanted to do to me, I was about to find out.
I didn't want to die. I really, really wanted to live. How the hell was I going to get myself out of this one?
I felt my body slam on the ground, which made cry out in agony without even meaning to. “Argh, shit! What are you doing to me?”
“If you had just come easily, then none of this would have happened,” his voice drawled, confirming my suspicions. It was my stalker. He had me now.
“Well, I…” How was I supposed to answer that? Shit, I needed words, any words, words to get me the fuck out of here. “Please, don't do this to me.”
He moved closer to me. I strained to try and see his face but he had a hood covering it, and the room was so dark that all I could see was shadows crossing his face. I scooted backwards, trying to shrink in on myself, but I could still smell him really strongly.
“But, sweetheart,” he cooed, as if her were speaking to a child. He tried to take my hands in his but I snatched them back rapidly. “All I want is for you to see the truth. I thought that you knew it, but it's clear now you don't.”
“Wh… what are you talking about?” I stammered, racking my brain. Did this guy actually know something that I didn't? Was it possible that he actually had information about me that I didn't know about? Hex certainly had, so I knew it was possible.
“You don't see it yet, but you will. You'll soon understand that we're supposed to be together.”
Was that it? Did he just have some crazy notion that we were supposed to be?
“How can that be?” I asked a little firmer this time. “How can you assume that when I don't even know who you are? You might know a lot about me but I don't even know what your face is like. You must be able to see how crazy this all is?”
“But you do know me!” he insisted, sounding a little shocked.
“I do?”
He stepped backwards into the light, and slowly tugged his hood down, revealing some dark features to me. I expected to get a rush of emotions, a realization to who was torturing me, but me brain gave me nothing.
He had high cheekbones, blackened eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a really twisted smile. He was so distinctive, I was sure that I would have recognized him if I'd ever met him before. No, this man was a stranger to me.
“You see?” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if this was the most normal conversation that he'd ever had. “It's me.”
“Who… who are you?” There was no pretending that I knew this guy, it would only lead to trouble. More than I was already in.
“What do you mean?” he glowered, his entire body suddenly becoming threatening. “Of course you know me. It's Charlie, Charlie Thurston.”
Charlie Thurston? That name rang a bell. I knew it from somewhere but I couldn't work out where. I furiously racked my brain, but nothing was coming to the forefront of my mind.
“You're getting it now aren't you?” he sneered. “I can see it on your face. So… now that you belong to me, what do you want to do first?”
“I don't belong to you,” I gasped in a panic. “I don't belong to anyone. I have to get back to the hotel… I have work to do tomorrow. People will be looking for me, everyone knows my name.”
“Oh you don't need to worry about that,” he said in an innocent sounding tone of voice. “No one will ever find us here. I made damn sure of that.”
He was so serious, so sinister, it made my heart sink. Maybe no one would find me, maybe I would never be able to escape. Maybe this was going to be my life forever.
I'm sorry, Hex, I thought to myself miserably. I didn't mean to hurt you. Now I'll never get the chance to explain.
***
Hex
When my phone went off at 2.20 am I knew that something was wrong, and I had the strong sense that I was to blame. I had been awake anyway, and uneasy so it wasn't actually a surprise.
If I had thought that going out for a flight would make me feel better, then I was very wrong. I came back just as miserable and sad as before. The text read, I'm sorry, dude. She's gone.
'She' could only be one person, and the fact that she was gone meant that the stalker had gotten her. I had taken a few hours off, and the stalker had leapt in and taken advantage of that. I hadn't scared him off at all; if anything I had motivated him.
“Fuck,” I yelled out in frustration. “Fucking hell. Shit!”
Why had I allowed my emotions to get the better of me? Why hadn't I been stronger and better? Just because I'd shared a kiss with Kayla, didn't mean I had to go and develop feelings for her. Just because I felt something, didn't mean I had to freak out by learning that she had a past.
I was weak and pathetic, and now I was having to pay the price for that. Or Kayla was.
I hopped into my car and sped across to the hotel as quickly as the car would go, not at all caring about the law or limits, I needed to get to Kayla and nothing was going to get in my way.
I raced through the hotel at the speed of light, thundering up the stairs, just to find Fuller collapsed in a heap on the ground. He was conscious enough to have texted me, but he still looked really dazed and confused. Whoever did this to him had really done a number on him.
“Shit, dude, are you okay?” I asked, pulling him upwards. “Do you need a doctor or something?”
“I… I don't think so,” he stammered, his eyes flickering everywhere. “You need to find that guy,” he whispered, really freaked out. “He means business. Whatever he has planned for Kayla, it cannot be good.”
“Contact the police,” I said, knowing that he could make a statement and be looked after all in one go. “I'm going to see what I can do. If I can pick up this guy's trail, then I'll have her back by morning.”
***
Three long days passed. Three days where no one could find Kayla. There was a massive media man hunt for her. The police were on it, the FBI were investigating. I had looked everywhere I could think of, but had found nothing.
This guy must have been planning this for a very long time to have covered up his tracks so well. I couldn't actually believe that he'd managed to evade so many people. It was sending my mind to areas that I hadn't considered before. Was it someone who knew Kayla? Was it a shifter? Was it someone obvious?
At one point I had even considered Mouse, but considering he was spending most of his time in front of the cameras, appealing for Kayla, I had to dismiss that theory. He was a dumb ass, and a manipulator, but not clever enough to be so evil. All my leads and hunches were exhausted. There wasn't anywhere that I hadn't been, any clue that I hadn't investigated, and I didn't have anything from it. I was doing some research instead, scouring the Internet and social media to try and work out anything from there.
I had searched the IP address of the computer sending all of the horrible messages to Kayla, but it was rerouted to China, so clearly he'd been hiding away his identity for a very long time.
He wrote, You will soon see.You look nice in this, I can't wait to see that outfit on my bedroom floor.Hot stuff, my girl.
He clearly was obsessed with Kayla, and not in normal fan type way. His obsession had gone out of his mind and into real life. I had a feeling that if he had her somewhere, he probably wouldn't have done anything bad to her. That made me feel a little better…
Unless, she had refused and that freaked him out. Oh God, this was not going well at all…
But then I noticed something a little off. It wasn't anything too unusual, it shouldn't have
caught my attention at all, but something about it sent a chill up and down my spine.
A school photo, a class one, with a geeky, awkward looking Kayla standing next to a boy who was looking at her with admiration in his gaze.
No, more than admiration. Obsession. He had been obsessed with her for years and years… if this was my guy. I had to do some more research before I could be certain.
Charlie Thurston was the name of the boy, so I searched for that name instead, just in case. I wasn't sure why, but I had a deep gut instinct it was him, a really wrong feeling about him, and it was making me feel sick.
***
After an hour of searching I felt convinced. It was him, I was sure of it. He liked everything related to Kayla and a long while ago he shared some of her stuff… until his other account started, when the obsession took over.
Plus, he lived nearby and worked in IT. He seemed to get hooked on ideas, and he didn't exactly display lots of friends. His weird, loner profile fit the crime exactly. This was the sort of thing lonely people like him did all the time, particularly when they assumed that something belonged to them. It was him, it had to be.
My heart lifted at the prospect of finally having a clue, something to follow. It might have led to nothing, but I had to research it… just in case. I had an address now, somewhere to go and that made me feel more positive.
I desperately prayed that this was right, and it would lead me to her. I couldn't take this anymore. It was making my heart ache like crazy.
***
Kayla
“Does that sound good, wife?” Charlie grinned brightly, before grabbing my shoulders a little too hard. The warning was there, made very clear, so I nodded quickly. My face was still stinging from the last time I hadn't listened so I didn't want to make that mistake again.
“Yes, that sounds good,” I whispered, moving my eyes down to the ground where they felt most comfortable. It might have only been a few days, but this already felt like it had been a lifetime. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep it going. He hadn't let me out of his sight, even for a split second, even to use the bathroom, so there hadn't been any hope of escape.
He had made a suggestion to me, and I thought it was a good one, but only because it benefited me. It bought me time and kept me safe, for now. But I certainly didn't enjoy going along with him.
He had proposed a marriage. He was planning a wedding, and he didn't want to have sex until after it. I was willing to do anything to put that off, but if the wedding went ahead I would be trapped forever. The way that things were going, I would never be able to go back to my old life.
“Great, glad you are on board,” he smiled serenely at me. I stared at him for a second, still trying to work out where I knew him from but my brain wasn't coming up with anything. He really did know me though, he knew all sorts about me that only people who had really been in my life would know. “Now, why don't you go and make us some dinner?”
This was all so fake, all so weird, but I couldn't stop it because I was so afraid. “Anything you like.”
As I stepped over to the cooker, I allowed my imagination to run free again, the way it only could when I was cooking. It was the only time that Charlie left me to my task, and didn't bombard me with incessant questions. He obviously wanted me to concentrate, which worked out well.
I stirred, and thought of Hex. I remembered his face, his smile that didn't come out very often, that kiss… We had something, we really did, and I threw it away. Sure Hex had pushed me away when we kissed, but that was because he felt afraid. He overstepped a boundary, risked his job, it was only natural for him to freak out. I should have cut him some slack.
It said something that all I could think about was him while my life was in danger and I was a prisoner. It said a lot, actually. It reminded me that we connected on some deeper, chemical layer. It allowed me to see that there was an intense chemistry between us, and now I would never get the chance to explore that.
I missed him. I hadn't even gotten a chance to really be with him and I missed him like crazy.
What the hell was wrong with me?
By the time I had the food plated up and I laid it in front of Charlie, I could see that his expression had darkened all over again. My heart rate kicked up a notch and I started to tremble fearfully. What had I done? I tried desperately to work out what I'd done wrong, was the food wrong? Had I stepped wrong, or made a noise or something? There were so many things that angered him, I found it hard to tell.
It was almost as if he had spent so long planning our fantasy relationship in his mind that he was disappointed to know that things weren't always plain and simple. I wasn't the person he assumed I was in his mind, and that irritated him.
“Do you remember Greg Vickly?” he asked me suddenly, sending a rush of emotions through my body. Greg was my high school boyfriend, and we'd had a really sweet relationship until he went off to college. We were too young for long distance, so we gave it up without a second thought.
How did Charlie know about Greg?
“Erm, yeah, I remember that,” I replied quietly. “W… why?”
“Did you love him?” he asked sharply. “When you were together, did you love him?”
He was acting crazed and jealous about something that had happened years ago. Although this wasn't the weirdest thing that Charlie had done. “No, I didn't love him,” I insisted. “I was too young for love.”
“You weren't,” he told me seriously. “I loved you back then.”
Back then? This was the first time that he'd ever mentioned school. But the way that he said that made me think… was he in school with me? Was that where I knew him from? Was that how he knew so much about me?
“You… you were?” I gasped out, a sickness gripping onto my heart. “I didn't realize.”
He mustn't have been someone that even registered on my radar. I mustn't have acknowledged him at all. Was that why he harbored these feelings? Why it had become something so serious? Maybe if I'd been more aware, I would be okay now.
“Of course you didn't,” he smiled kindly. “You were surrounded by the popular girls, you had lots of friends. I was a nobody, always stuck in the corner.”
I couldn't really recall the people that I spent a lot of time with in school anymore, never mind anyone else. So much else had happened in my life since that it was insignificant now.
“Erm, well, I'm sorry,” I told him, desperately hoping that might be enough. “I never knew, but I was young then, and immature.”
He leaned forward with a serene look on his face, then he mushed his mouth against mine sending me into shock. “Now you aren't,” he said kindly. “Now you're mine. Soon to be my wife.”
Shit, there was no getting out of this, however hard I tried. I was going to be stuck with this crazy man for the rest of my life.
***
Hex
My heart raced in my chest, self doubt spinning through my brain. Even though I knew that I could probably do this, I wasn't one hundred percent sure, and if I screwed this up I would be left with no hope.
Especially if my suspicions were right, and Charlie did have Kayla. My gut was still utterly convinced that this was right, and even though my logic wasn't in total agreement I was still going through with this.
I was at Charlie's address. I really needed to look through the window, but I needed to do it right. If this guy spotted me that would give him the chance to run. If he ran I might never find him… but then I couldn't exactly continue to stand here doing nothing, could I? People were starting to acknowledge my presence anyway, so I had to take some form of action.
I strutted forward, walking with as much confidence as I could muster towards this guy's front door. Chances were, he was human anyway, which gave me the strength advantage. I just wasn't as used to psychopaths as I probably should have been.
An eerie feeling crept over me as I got nearer, a cold iciness overcoming my heart, but I forced myself to keep on movin
g. This was for Kayla. I felt responsible for what had happened to her, so I had to keep going no matter how I felt inside. She needed me, and I wouldn't be able to rest again until I knew that she was safe.
Actually, the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that the fear was because of Kayla. My fear wasn't anything to do with facing a psychopath, it was what he could have done to her.
As that hit me, I pushed the door open, watching it swing far too quickly, too easily. My heart raced painfully, a sickness swirled. I became convinced that I was about to stumble across a dead body.
But the whole building was empty. Cold, quiet, and empty. I raced from room to room, just to be one hundred percent sure, but in a way I already knew.
Charlie had outwitted me.
I sank to the floor and held my head in my hands, trying not to let the emotion get the better of me. I had so desperately needed this to be the answer, I really wanted to be right, now I had absolutely no idea what to do.
“…yeah, okay pal…”
Footsteps and an unfamiliar voice, followed by the clicking of a door had me leaping to my feet. Someone was coming in the house, and if I didn't want to be spotted breaking and entering then I needed to make a snap decision. I could have ran, I could have jumped out of the window and been on my way, but I couldn't shake the sense that I needed to know more.
I spotted a small cupboard under the stairs, one that I would have to absolutely cramp my body into, but I didn't have a choice. I needed to get out of sight somehow, and this seemed as good a spot as any. I forced myself into it, and listened carefully.
“…well, I'm back at my apartment at the moment, but only for a second. I need to get back to my project…”
What the hell did he mean by 'project'? It wasn't inherently suspicious, but because I was so desperate I was clinging onto it, trying to figure out if that could mean Kayla.
