Seduced in the Dark

by C. J. Roberts

  I look at her octopus sweater. I’m fairly sure nothing this woman does with her hands is meant for people to see, let alone consume.

  “So I left a note next to the cookies. It was a story explaining how a small village near K2…. You know that big mountain, right?” She looks at me to make sure I’m following along.

  I lie down on my bed and huff at the ceiling. Where the hell is the nurse with my drugs?

  “Anyway, they made a movie about it. Not my cookies,” she cackles, so fucking amused with herself, “…the mountain. Can you imagine if they made a movie about my cookies? So, I made up this story about how this village near K2 celebrates someone called the Christmas Amoeba instead of Santa Claus. He sneaks in undetected – amoebas are microscopic, so it stands to reason someone who’s an amoeba would be very stealthy – on Christmas Eve and leaves presents for everyone. In return, the people of the village leave a variety of oddly shaped cookies for the amoeba to eat. Amoeba’s come in a variety of shapes, so it makes sense.”

  She can’t see my face, so I don’t feel like a traitor for smiling at this preposterous woman’s story.

  “Well, the people in my office are just sticklers for the truth. You know, everything must be verified, blah, blah, blah. So sure enough, they do a Google search and – BOOM – up pops my entry on Wikipedia about the Christmas Amoeba.”

  She dissolves into peals of laughter.

  Oh my god, she really is crazy. I bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing. She is laughing so hard. It’s infectious, but I resist it. My shoulders are trembling with withheld laughter. I shut my eyes to assist in the effort.

  Caleb is there the moment I shut my eyes.

  Joy turns to grief and before I can control it, my emotions just spill over. I open my eyes and bolt up in my bed. I laugh for a second before I burst into tears.

  I can hear Dr. Sloan moving. Her steps are coming toward me, cautiously. I don’t care. I’m too tired to care. After so many months of being careful, and hiding every emotion as best I can, and fearing the future, and not knowing what’s going to happen next, and thinking I might die, and fighting for my life, and hating Caleb, and loving him….

  For fucksake – I watched a man die!

  When Dr. Sloan silently puts her arms around me, I crush her to my body. I hold on to her with all my remaining strength. I cry all over this ridiculous fucking woman.

  She doesn’t say a word and I’m grateful. Please, just hold me. Please, just hold me together.

  I’m so tired of holding myself together.

  She rocks me.

  I rather like rocking.

  Back and forth we sway for endless minutes while I cry and sob all over Dr. Sloan’s suit jacket. She smells nice. Her scent is light and almost fruity. It is distinctly feminine and therefore, far removed from Caleb. With this feminine scent saturating my nostrils, my brain cannot connect to memories of Caleb and the way he smelled when he held me. It feels nice, being free of the pain of missing him.

  Reluctantly, I pull away from her. I am still humming with shame. I don’t know what’s come over me. I wrinkle my brow in confusion and shake my head.

  Caleb’s scowling face is staring up at me from the photograph in my lap. I feel a pang of longing. Dr. Sloan pushes my hair from my face and I can’t help but think of it in a sexual way. In another time, I’d have thought nothing of it, but now all my interactions seem tainted by my newfound lust. Caleb trained me well.

  “I want to help you, Livvie. Talk to me,” she says, softly. I know she doesn’t want to startle me, but already, I feel the tension creeping back into my shoulders. She’s standing too close and the fact she’s talking to me makes me feel cornered.

  She must be able to tell, because she backs up. I relax, just a little.

  “I would like to see the charges against you dropped, but you have to talk to someone. Agent Reed is…” she searches for the word she wants to use, “very good at his job, and despite his behavior yesterday, he’s a great guy. However, his first priority is solving his case. My first priority is you. He shouldn’t have pushed you the way he did.”

  I look up at her from beneath my lashes. I wish she would hold me again

  “I’d like a lawyer,” I whisper.

  “Of course. If you’re ready to talk, I’ll find a lawyer for you. But, Livvie, the things you need to talk about go far beyond the legal charges. I’m here to help you with that.”

  I nod, but say nothing else.

  Dr. Sloan returns to her chair and sits. She looks at me expectantly with her green eyes. She’s pretty, in a very down-played sort of way. With her red hair, the brown suit she is wearing does her no favors. Still, there is something about her, something warm and pleasant.

  When it becomes obvious I won’t be the one to keep our little conversation going, she reaches for her knitting and resumes the mindless design.

  Dr. Sloan presses her lips together, searching for words.

  “Do you want to see your mother?”

  I don’t hesitate. “No.”

  She stops knitting. “Livvie, the people who love you, accept you for who you truly are. No matter what has happened to you.”

  “Well there you go. My mother doesn’t love me, Dr. Sloan. She wants to love me, I think, but…I just don’t think she does.”

  She nods, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me. What would she know?

  “I think your mother loves you a great deal.”

  I stare down at my picture of Caleb. I thought he loved me. Could it be the one person I discounted, loves me more than the one I trusted completely? My heart aches. It’s a question I am not prepared to have answered.

  Slowly, I crawl under my covers. I want to go back to sleep. I want to be with Caleb again. In my dreams, there is never a reason to doubt my heart. In my dreams, he is everything I want him to be. He is mine.

  As if on cue, Dr. Sloan stops asking me emotionally charged questions and once again regales me with tales of free-form knitting and interpretative taxidermy.

  Chapter Five

  Day 8:

  I’m feeling somewhat better today. I still miss Caleb, I don’t think the feeling will ever go away, but I can get through several minutes without wanting to break down and weep for him; it’s progress. Dr. Sloan says one day I’ll make it to an hour…a day – but that’s as far as I let myself hope. The thought of one day not thinking of him at all is just too much for me. It feels like a betrayal to ever hope for such things.

  Once again, I am sitting in the dreadfully cheery room they use to interrogate Kindergarteners. This time, I don’t have to do very much talking. I have a lawyer to do it for me. He and Agent Reed have been battling it out for the last hour. David, my lawyer, isn’t much to look at, but he’s very smart and incredibly aggressive. There’s something super hot about watching the two of them argue…or maybe I just like Reed when he’s unsettled.

  His hair is somewhat disheveled from where he’s run his fingers through it so many times to keep from punching David in his face. Every now and again, his eyes flick to me and I feel a dark thrill just thinking about what he’d like to do to me if only he could. If he were Caleb, I would assume a spanking is most certainly in order!

  “When exactly did you imagine yourself as…? My lover?” My heartbeat vibrated my skull. “Was it the first time I made you come with my mouth? Or one of the many times since, that I’ve put you over my knee? You seem to like that.”

  And there he is – Caleb, in my thoughts, in my blood. I can feel my face getting warmer, my stomach getting tighter and already there is the drumbeat of my arousal pulsing between my legs. I squeeze them together and get so lost in my thoughts it takes me a second to realize Reed is still staring at me. When our eyes finally meet, I blush – hard. I smile when he blushes too.

  Agent Reed clears his throat and takes a drink of water. It’s enough to bring back his control. I sigh through my disappointment.

  “Agent Reed,” David says,
reclaiming Reed’s attention, “my client is being held on ridiculous charges that would never stand up in court. She was living with her mother and attending high school at the time of her kidnapping. Even though she’s eighteen, the U.S. Attorney would be hard pressed to try her as an adult. If she’s considered a minor and involved in a human trafficking case, under Section 107 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, she’s protected from the FBI’s tactics of investigation. There’s no point in us even sitting here. I should be talking to the U.S. Attorney, not you.”

  Reed does not look happy, but he doesn’t look beat either. “Your client has two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars in a foreign bank account. How did it get there? She won’t say. Also, she’s been living with suspected terrorists. She’s admitted to it. Then, there’s the small matter of her knowledge of a meeting between enemies of the United States taking place in less than a week! We need information and her refusal to give it qualifies as an obstruction of justice –”

  “What terrorists!?!” I yell at Reed and move to stand, but David calmly pushes me back into my seat.

  “Muhammad Rafiq, Jair Baloch, Felipe Villanueva, and of course Caleb,” he says. “Do you or do you not, also have information about Demitri Balk?”

  “I never said I knew him!”

  “You said you knew where he’d be,” Reed says with a raised eyebrow.

  “Miss Ruiz, please stop talking and let me handle this,” David says in an irritated tone.

  “By the way,” begins Reed anew, ignoring my lawyer and focused on me, “Balk is suspected of having ties to arms dealing and narcotics trafficking. And until I know how you,” he jabs his finger in my direction, “are involved, you’re a suspect too. You can deal with me or I can let the DEA and Homeland Security in here and when they use Patriot Act against you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “That is enough,” David said firmly, glaring at us both.

  “Caleb is not a terrorist. I don’t know about the rest of them, but he’s not a terrorist! And neither am I! And–” A cold wave crashes over me. Felipe. I never said anything about Felipe. Reed knows things he’s not saying.

  Caleb! Fuck!

  I can’t breathe; all of the oxygen is suddenly being sucked from the room, from my fucking lungs! I keep taking deep, deep breaths, lots of them, but I can’t get any air.

  My heart is racing.

  I can’t breathe!

  “Olivia?” says Reed and I can hear him shuffling around.

  “We’re done here, Agent Reed. I’ll be speaking to your superiors.” David reaches for me and tries to get me to stand. I don’t like his hands on me. I can’t breathe! He’s suffocating me. I need to think. I need to breathe.

  “Shut up! Everybody just shut up!” Reed and David go silent and I ignore them as I put my hands on the table in front of me and try to catch my breath.

  You fucked up, girl. Don’t make it worse.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to breathe slower, deeper, calmer. My heart starts to slow in degrees until finally I feel only a fraction of my panic. Without looking up, I think about what I need to do.

  How does Reed know about Felipe? Does he know more about Caleb? Is he really going to charge me with murder? It was self defense!

  I have a feeling Reed would be a lot more amenable if my lawyer weren’t here. Still a prick, but less likely to push this hard. Dr. Sloan said he was a good guy and would do right by me. I don’t have much faith in anything anyone says to me lately, but a glimmer of hope is better than none. I take a sip of water when Reed slides the paper cup beneath my face. I hope he feels guilty, the son of a bitch.

  David puts his hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off, “Don’t touch me.”

  “I think I should take you back to your room now, Miss Ruiz,” he says.

  “I want you to leave,” I whisper with my eyes still fixed on the table.

  “Excuse me?” David says, indignantly. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Miss Ruiz. I strongly advise you to keep silent and let me do my job.”

  “She wants you leave.” Reed says. He knows he’s won this round. He boxed me in a corner and I let him. I realize I should have assumed he knew a lot, not just about me, but other things too. I feel stupid, and angry and scared. But right now, I need time to think and Reed is the devil I know.

  They argue for a bit, puffing their chests at each other in some National Geographic display of machismo. In the end David gathers his things and leaves. Reed and I are alone again. I have a feeling it’s what he wanted all along.

  He sits quietly, relaxed and patient, unwilling to break the silence. He doesn’t want to lose ground. He wants me to come to him, and I know it’s exactly the way it’s going to play out. I need him on my side. Just the way I once needed Caleb.

  My voice is soft on purpose. I need him to see me as fragile again. I need to bring out the alpha male in him. I need him to believe I’m his to protect, even if I already belong to someone else. Caleb would have been proud. I remind myself that I am now my own master. “You wouldn’t really let them take me to jail would you? After everything?” I let the threat of tears simmer beneath the surface of my words.

  Reed exhales deeply through his nose and I hear his fingertip tapping softly against the table. “I would never put an innocent person in jail, Miss Ruiz, but I still need you to convince me you’re not guilty.”

  “I thought I was innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.”

  He chuckles a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He really is stunning. “I think most people subscribe to the better-safe-than-sorry philosophy these days.” He leans forward, conciliatorily, “The truth is, I think you’re just a girl who got caught up in a whole lot of awful shit. I think you did what you had to do to get back home and I think that makes you incredibly smart, and incredibly brave. You don’t have to be brave anymore, Miss Ruiz. You don’t have to protect anyone. You’d save yourself, and me, a whole lot of grief if you’d just tell me the truth so I can make sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to someone else.”

  It would be so easy to believe him. I’m more tempted than I’ve ever been to just spill my guts to Reed and let him figure out what to do. It’s no wonder he’s so good at his job. “I wish I could trust you, Reed, but I know I can’t.”

  His brow furrows in confusion, but there is a wry tilt to his lips, “Why?”

  I give him a small smile of my own, “You think you’re different from men like Caleb. You see everything in black and white, you don’t care about the whole story; you don’t care about the gray. Some stories aren’t black and white, Agent Reed.”

  He shakes his head a little, obviously amused, but still professional, “In my experience…the only time a woman wants to tell you ‘the whole story’, is when she wants you to make a decision based on emotion instead of logic.”

  My eyes narrow and I stare at the surface of table, the scars not visible at first glance but clearer as I stare, unblinking, “Maybe,” I begin, my voice hollow and far away, “but if it weren’t for emotions overriding logic, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Reed’s smile is gone, his gaze intent, “Meaning?”

  “Caleb. It wasn’t logic…what he did for me.” The words are a revelation. I hadn’t been expecting to say them, but I know they’re true. Caleb might not love me, but he cared. He kept his promise to keep me safe, even if it meant we couldn’t be together.

  It makes the pain so much worse.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time – manipulating people to get my way. That’s why you think you love me. Because I’ve broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn’t an accident. Once you leave this behind…you’ll see that.”

  “Please. Please Caleb. Don’t make me do this, don’t make me go back to trying to be someone I don’t know how to be anymore.”

  “It’s time for you to go, Kitten…”

  Reed’s voice jolts me back into reality, �
�What did he do for you?”

  I wipe my eye, sweeping away the tears pooled there, “Everything,” I say through a pained smile, “but it had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion – revenge, honor, betrayal, lust, even love...all of these things stem from our emotions.” I paused. “I’m sure you’re not doing what you do without some kind of emotion, Agent Reed.”

  “You made your point,” Reed says softly and leans toward me, “but I’ve been around and seen some shit.”

  “Why should that matter to me? Is that supposed to make me trust you?”

  Reed shrugs. “What other choice do you have?”

  “How do you know about Felipe?”

  He smiles, “I thought that might get your attention. I’m good at my job, Miss Ruiz, and I’ve been digging through anything I can find on Muhammad Rafiq. What I’ve found so far is pretty damn disturbing. Looking through his known associates, and cross-referenced with those in Mexico, it didn’t take me too long to find Felipe. As far as I can tell, the man is quite…eccentric.”

  Eccentric wasn’t quite the word I would have used. “Wait…if you know where he is, why haven’t you–”

  “Mexico, isn’t the US, Miss Ruiz, we can’t go rounding up every criminal in another country based on suspicions we can’t substantiate. Also, he’s left the country and gone who knows where. Maybe Pakistan?”

  I look up and shake my head. “Hard to say.” I wonder if they’re all dead: Felipe, Celia, Kid, and Nancy. I’d like to believe Caleb wouldn’t hurt Celia, but then I remember the blood and I wonder if…. No, I can’t handle it.

  “Miss Ruiz, where’s the auction?” Reed’s words are sharp and serious. This is his end game. I really would have to make a choice.

  “I don’t really know, Reed. I don’t. Not specifically, but I could probably give you an idea. Maybe if you listened to the whole story you could figure it out for yourself. You probably know more than I do.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  It’s my turn to smile and shake my head, “No. Not without some concessions.”

  He’s exasperated, “WITSEC. I told you, I can’t guarantee it. More than that, I don’t think it’s the right move for you. The last thing you need is to be separated from everything and everyone you know. It’s a cop-out.”

  “I don’t care what you think it is. I want to disappear. I want this whole mess behind me and if and when I ever decide to deal with it – that’s my business. Not yours.”

  Reed and I go around for a few minutes as I lay out everything I want in exchange for my story. It isn’t pleasant. Reed is a scary bastard when he wants to be and I would be lying if I said he didn’t intimidate me, but I’m willing to take him on. There are things I will not bend on. There are battles I’m determined to win.

  “I know what I want, Reed, and if you can’t give it to me…you’re shit out of luck. After what I’ve been through, I don’t care what you think you can do to me.”

  Reed’s jaw is clenched and I can hear the subtle pop as he grinds his teeth. He stares long and hard at me for a while and even though I want to, I don’t shrink under is gaze. “Start talking.”

  “Will you help me?” I whisper, but keep my chin up, my eyes level on his.

  He exhales slowly and unclenches his jaw, “I’ll do my best. If you get us there, get us to the auction, I’ll help you.”

  My heart is in my throat. I want to leap over the desk and hug the hell out of him. He’s given me hope. Hope for all the things I want most in the world. With great care, I lick my lips and prepare to tell Reed what he wants to know.

  ***

  Where to begin?

  So much was different between Caleb and me.

  So much remained the same.