Jack said, “Um, I really need to go. I’ll call … I mean, message you some time.”
“If you saw it on my page, would you like it, Jack?”
He blinked and looked up toward the open window. “What? What do you mean?”
“It was a joke,” she said.
He nodded. “Right. I get it. If it’s okay, I’m going to use the door to leave.”
She laughed. “Yeah, you can use the door. Sorry if I made things weird.”
“No, it was fine.” He turned away and opened the door to the bedroom.
“Ignore the mess,” she said.
He stopped and looked back at the spot on the floor. “What?”
“I meant my mess in the apartment on your way out.”
“Oh. Right. No problem.”
He stepped out of the bedroom.
She sat up on the bed and called. “Wait.”
Jack stopped with his back to her and she could see his every muscle tense up. She had managed to be the first starlet to break and disturb her stalker. He cleared his throat again and said, “Yes?”
“Can you do something for me before you go?”
“Yes. Okay.”
“Will you call my phone before you go? I can’t find it.”
Jack paused for a moment longer and then started fishing through the pocket of his jeans with his back still toward her. “What’s your number?”
***
Chapter 5:
Another New Game
As she rode along in Susan’s Prius along the beach front road, Gia deleted more messages from Jack. Giving him her number to help find her phone was obviously a mistake. She wasn’t even reading the messages anymore and had blocked him from calling from three phones already.
He must have taken a break from calling and texting because she hadn’t heard from him once she took Uber up toward Don’s house. She deleted messages without reading them.
She stopped on the last one. It read, “I just want to see you again, Gia. You are important to me and we are good together. Please, let me be with you again. I can make you happy. I know I can.”
Gia sighed and typed back, “I need you to leave me alone. These games are over. We both need to move on. Stop contacting me, please.”
Gia sent the message and blocked yet another number. She knew it would do no good. It would put a kink in her professional communications, but she would probably need to get another number. Jack might get that too. He would probably publish the texts. Don would see them just as Gia was trying to work things out with him.
It wouldn’t be hard to paint Jack the Liker as a crazy stalker. Someone probably knew how to authenticate texts, but she had sent no pictures, so she might be able to go on denying it. Jack would probably lose it. She shouldn’t have taken it to that level with him, she thought.
He knew where she lived and had been there once before. Even if she put another lock on the window, the damn thing was made of glass and she knew her neighbors saw nothing and heard nothing. She was going to have to move too it seemed. She wouldn’t miss Onion Town, but still.
Don was taking her ring shopping today. Maybe she could talk him into letting her move in too. She wouldn’t even bring up the other half of the movie money he owed her.
Gia sighed and put her phone away. She was wearing jeans and a black tee shirt and a ponytail just like Susan next to her. They could be old friends, if they weren’t basically strangers. Don would probably complain that Gia should have dressed better because there would be photographers.
“You seem popular,” Susan said.
Gia blinked. “What?”
“You deleted like a thousand messages. Someone likes you.”
Gia sniffed. “Yeah, a little too much, I think.”
Susan shrugged. “You haven’t made it in LA until someone is obsessed with you.”
“Lucky me.” Gia shook her head. “I hope I’m not putting you out driving this far.”
“I’m an Uber driver,” Susan said. “This is what I do. My day was wide open, so I’m glad a call came in. When I saw it was you, I started to think maybe you were my stalker.”
Gia laughed. “You finally made it, Susan.”
“Do you need me to take you anywhere else after we get to this house? I’m open right now,” Susan said.
“No, Don has a car.”
Susan shook her head and squinted. Her ponytail whipped from side to side. “Not that I’m trying to talk myself out of work, but why are you using Uber, if he’s going to drive you around after you get there.”
Gia frowned and looked out her window away from the ocean. “Men are a mystery, Susan, and Don Blackheart is chief among them.”
Susan hummed and then said, “Women are supposed to be the mystery. You should make him chase you … just like whoever sent you all those messages.”
Gia sniffed. “Don will never be obsessed with me like that.”
“Not for nothing,” Susan said, “but you don’t have to settle for a guy that doesn’t make you feel special. You don’t have to have him in your life … not him specifically.”
Gia wiped at her eyes and gritted her teeth. She cleared her throat a couple times as her nose burned with the threat of tears. Gia finally said, “Thanks, but I’m kind of used to my way of making mistakes.”
They rode in silence until Susan pulled up to the curb in front of Don’s gate. A fence around a beach house always seemed like a bit much to Gia. The lawn inside the fence was a ridiculous shade of green that didn’t look remotely natural. If he had that color of grass in one of his movies, Don would be screaming at art direction. He had had his lawn painted to cover over the dead grass from the drought and water restrictions. It was just one more fake thing in their lives.
“Do you want me to wait?” Susan asked.
“No.” Gia opened the car door. “I’m good.”
“You just seemed unsure. If you want me to wait a while for you just in case, I don’t mind.”
Gia smiled. “No. Really. I’m good. Thanks.”
***
She stepped out and closed the door. She walked around the back of Susan’s car and punched in the code at the gate. Out of the corner of her eye, Gia saw that Susan seemed to be waiting anyway. The only person that cared about her well-being was an Uber driver that she barely knew.
When Gia pulled the gate, it came open with no resistance. The magnet lock had not even been engaged. She looked back with the gate in her hand and saw the Prius was gone. Those things were particularly sneaky cars. Gia wondered why they weren’t used more in horror movies for that reason. Maybe a psycho villain driving a Prius was a hard sell.
Gia stepped in and let the gate bang closed with a harsh rattle. It bounced a couple times as the magnet would still not engage.
“A gate and lock don’t do you much good, if they don’t work,” Gia said to the weirdly green lawn.
She wondered if any of his neighbors had reported Don to the police for watering. Or if they might have called the police because his lawn looked like the after effects on an alien attack.
As Gia walked up the winding path through the islands of tropical plants, she said, “Officer, the entire yard is covered in alien blood. Send everyone. Quick!”
Her phone beeped as she reached the front stoop. The door to the house was sitting ajar. Gia frowned. Maybe Don had seen her and opened it to let her in and disabled the gate lock too?
Her phone beeped again.
Gia took it out and saw two messages from an unknown number. She was going to put her phone away, but then opened them. The first read: “I hope you like what I did for you.”
Gia sighed and shook her head. “Fucking Jack. How many phones do you have?”
She swallowed and looked up at the door wondering if Don could have heard her. She looked back down and opened the second message: “I’m the ONLY one for you. – Jack the Liker.”
Gia erased the messages and blocked the number without responding.
She climbed the stairs with the phone still in her hand and pushed open the door. The door thumped against the table behind it in the foyer and shards of broken mirror dumped onto the floor at her feet.
Gia screamed.
She shook her hands in the air and said, “Oh, Jesus, Don, I’m sorry. I don’t know how that happened.”
The frame of the mirror still hung on the wall empty except for the cardboard backing. The table was pulled out at an angle which was why the door had hit it when she pushed it open. A vase was broken on the floor in the open space behind the table. Water, flowers, and marbles lay washed out on the hardwood. Shards from the rest of the mirror laid on top of the table.
Gia walked inside a few more steps with her shoes splashing in the foyer. “Don?”
The leather couch was carved open and stuffing was spread white across the room. The wide screen TV was smashed and torn off the wall.
Two of the glass back doors leading to the patio overlooking the beach were shattered. One was broken with the glass on the floor on the inside; the other was shattered outward. Gia could see and hear people walking and playing on the beach and in the ocean beyond like nothing had happened. They weren’t even looking at the house.
People would report their neighbors watering their lawns, but didn’t notice a break in.
Gia took a couple more steps inside past the foyer. She said, “Why would they break one door to get in and then smash their way out a different one to leave?”
This is not a movie set, Gia thought to herself, get the hell out of here. Now!
She saw blood in the glass from both doors and she took another step. Gia looked into the kitchen. There were cabinets opened and plates smashed on the tile. The blood was thick through the kitchen and looked like it had been painted on the floor from counter to counter and from stove to refrigerator. It was smeared on the broken pieces of plate too.
She thought, Don never cooked in here anyway.
Gia saw multiple handprints and shoe tracks through the blood. A set of bloody tracks led out from the kitchen toward the stairs which led up to the bedroom.
Gia snapped back into herself and a scream escaped her throat. She wasn’t using her diaphragm to support it, so it left her throat feeling scratchy.
She turned and ran back through the foyer. Her foot rolled on a marble in the water. Gia dropped her phone in the water and broken mirror, but kept her feet under her. She ran outside and back up the winding path.
“Help! Help me, someone. Susan! Help.”
She stopped as soon as she could see the gate and empty street beyond. There was no one there to help. She needed to call the police.
“My phone.”
She turned and looked back toward the house. She saw her own dark, wet foot prints leading up the winding path to where she stood. The shoeprints slowly evaporating in the sun.
“It’s too bright for a murder scene,” she whispered. “It looks like we’re shooting a tampon commercial.”
She swallowed and thought, I have to go get my phone and call the police. There’s no one else around to help. His neighbors are less available than the ones in my trashy apartment. They won’t even answer the gate, if I buzz asking for help. The people on the beach won’t have phones. Maybe. I have to go back and get my phone …
“That’s how they get you,” Gia said aloud.
The bag dropped over her head plunging her into darkness. As she was pulled backward and felt her shoes sliding through Don’s weird grass, she looked up still seeing the sun through the gridded material of the bag over her head.
She screamed until her throat burned and her voice gave out.
Her feet were on concrete again and she tumbled over a metal bumper onto the ribbed, metal floor of a van or truck. She reached for the bag, but then gloved hands grabbed her wrists and pulled them behind her back. Her shoulder and one of her elbows crackled at the joints and she felt shots of pain up through her arms. She heard the rip of tape from a roll.
As the sticky tape wrapped her wrists behind her back and she couldn’t see or feel the sun anymore, she thought, it doesn’t look like a tampon commercial now.
***
Chapter 6:
Can’t Go Home
He sat her up against the wall of the vehicle and clipped something to the tape between her wrists. Gia still had the bag over her head and couldn’t move much to feel what was happening. The clip felt like a jumper cable with metal teeth and jaws and rubber coated handles. A hard cord ran up behind her between her back and the metal wall which felt hot through her tee shirt and against her exposed elbows.
“Is he going to electrocute me? Oh, God!” She thought.
She wondered if the teeth on the grip at the end of the cable might tear the tape and she could get free.
The tape ripped away from the roll again and he taped her ankles together in front of her. He caught her skin and the frayed ends of her jeans in a clumsy wrap. He jerked three times to snap the tape loose and then slapped the tape with his hand to try to make it stick. Gia whimpered inside the bag afraid that the noise would make him angry or turn him on. He growled and ripped the tape again adding to the binding on her ankles. When he was done, she already felt her toes going numb inside her sneakers.
A muffled pause followed. She couldn’t exactly hear him breathing, but she felt him near her. He was at least as close as her feet, but she felt like he might be closer. It was hot inside the van even with the back doors open and breeze coming off the ocean through Don’s tropical plants.
If she screamed, they might hear her. They wouldn’t be able to get through the fence, if she was still in Don’s yard. She hadn’t heard a gate, but she wasn’t sure how far she had been dragged or in which direction.
No one was coming and if she screamed, he might hurt her sooner. And he was going to hurt her. There was no doubt about that.
The metal under them popped either expanding from the heat or from her unseen captor shifting his weight. He moved. His feet scraped the floor and rocked the van on its shocks with his motion. She felt air pass her neck that felt hotter than the breeze and she was sure it was his breath even though he was still moving. She turned her head away inside the bag and bit her lip to hold in another dangerous whimper.
He’s going to rape me. He’s going to do it now or later, she thought. Or both. After he’s done, they will identify me by my dental records. I’m overdue for a cleaning.
Gia lost her grip on the whimper and it escaped her as a sob. The sound scared her and she started crying harder.
He stepped off the end of the van and the vehicle swayed before going still. Shoes scratched on a dusting of sand over the concrete. Hinges groaned and the doors slammed on one side first, then on the other. One of the doors bounced changing the quality of light coming through the bag as it swung back open.
Her cries caught in her throat and she swallowed trying to catch her breath again.
He muttered, “Fucking doors.”
She couldn’t draw in air.
It was Jack. She recognized the voice, but also the frustrated uncertainty in the words that she remembered from their game in the apartment. She should have known it was him, but knowing for sure was a cold reality. He had murdered Don. Jack had tortured him and killed him in a bloody mess. He had waited for Gia to come and had taken her too. He was going to torture her too for playing with him and trying to leave him behind. He was going to do more to her than he had done to Don and then she was going to end up the same way.
Jack whispered to himself. “Left side first and then the right.”
Gia sucked in a ragged breath and bawled. “Grits … Grits, Jack. Time out. I want to go home. Grits. Grits. Grits. Please. Please.”
He cleared his throat and said quietly. “It’s too late for that, Gia.”
He closed one door and then the other. They caught this time and the darkness inside her bag got even deeper.
The driver’s door opened and closed in front of
her.
***
As the van started, she had a mental picture of the shape and dimensions of the vehicle. These vans were only used for painting houses and murdering woman, she thought. She had shot more than a few scenes inside them. This would be her last, she thought. It was going to be one take with no chance for resets.
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