by J. D. Mason
“Hurry the hell up,” the woman snapped.
She was thirsty. Reluctantly, she pulled the sandwich from the plastic bag, lifted up and examined both slices of bread, and did the same thing to the single slice of ham. It looked fine, but—
“For crying out loud!” the woman exclaimed, stepping over and reaching down to take the food.
“No!” Abby jerked back, startling the woman, who immediately reached for her gun and pointed it at Abby. “I just … You can’t blame me,” she said, instinctively raising her hand in front of her as if she could actually stop a bullet. It was a dumb thing to do and she slowly lowered it. “You know you can’t.”
The woman stepped back inside the doorway and waited.
Abby took a cautious bite and chewed slowly, carefully, until she eventually swallowed. She was hungrier than she’d thought and immediately took another bite, chewing faster this time. She’d eaten about half of the sandwich when she finally gagged.
“Don’t you dare,” the woman threatened.
Abby took a drink from the bottle to help keep her food down. Crying? Why the hell did the tears decide to come now? They came because there was no mustard on this sandwich, and because she couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t poison in it or in this water. Because this bitch was standing over her with a gun, forcing her to eat. The tears came because she was here in this place away from her home, away from Jordan, her family. No one knew she was here. No one knew how to find her. She pushed the other half of the sandwich away and finished what was left in that bottle.
“That’s all,” she said, shaking her head, disgusted. “I can’t eat any more.”
Abby wiped away the tears and slid back across the room over to the mat, drew her knees to her chest, and prayed that she could keep that food down. As she’d eaten, Abby looked for signs of that key, but the woman must’ve shoved it into the pocket of her jeans.
“I … I need to use the bathroom,” she reluctantly said.
It was the truth. Abby had to pee. The woman noticeably tensed. She hesitated for a moment as if the thought never occured to her that Abby would ever have to use the bathroom. Abruptly she left the room, closing and even locking the door, returning a few moments later with a small, dirty plastic bowl.
“In the bowl,” she said simply.
“What?” Abby asked, stunned.
“You pee in the bowl.”
Abby hesitated, half expecting the woman to laugh and tell her that she was just joking, but she wasn’t.
“I have … to stand up,” Abby told her.
The woman waited as Abby rose to her feet, reluctantly pulled down her shorts, squatted, and relieved herself in that bowl while the woman waited and watched. The humiliation of the situation weighed on Abby almost as much as the fear that these people would kill her.
Abby finished relieving herself and reached for a napkin in the sandwich bag to wipe herself before pulling up her shorts. She picked up the bowl and held it out to the woman.
“Take two steps,” she instructed Abby, “and put it on the floor and then get back in that corner.”
Abby did as she was told.
“Do you think I can get a blanket?” Abby asked shakily.
The woman collected Abby’s trash and that bowl.
“It’s so cold in here, especially at night,” she explained.
The woman took a pensive stance, but she looked as if she wanted to hurry to leave.
“Please,” Abby said, swallowing her pride. “Or some sweats? Socks?”
The woman stared at her for several moments before leaving without saying another word and locking the door behind her. Abby stared at the door, specifically, at the extremely narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. The seams between the door and the wall were practically nonexistent. Practically. Was there a way to wedge it open in a way that the woman wouldn’t notice?
A few minutes later, Abby heard the key again and the woman opened the door wide enough to stick her arm through it and drop a thick blanket on the floor, then quickly pulled the door shut again and locked it. Abby stared at the blanket crumpled on the floor like she was looking to find the meaning of life in that thing. The fact that the woman had brought it to her definitely did mean something. It meant that she had some empathy and that she didn’t want Abby freezing to death. She was feeding Abby, giving her water, and now she’d given her a blanket.
Of course she picked it up carefully and shook it out, half expecting to see a snake wrapped up in the damn thing. But there was nothing. It was just a blanket. Not much bigger than a throw, but it was better than nothing. And she appreciated it. Abby examined the construction, hoping to find something on it, anything, that she could possibly use as a door jamb. She went back over to the mat, sat down on it, and tried to come up with 1,001 different ways to use a blanket to save her life.
I Got My Patience
GATEWOOD HAD CALLED. “I’m not going away. You call me and you tell me something—what you’re doing, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen, what you think you know.”
Plato didn’t answer because he didn’t have anything to tell him and because he didn’t dig the way the dude was sweating him. How the hell a cat like that had ever managed to stumble across an Abby was beyond puzzling. The two of them weren’t exactly like peas and carrots. But then, who was Plato to question chemistry?
“Something’s wrong with Shou Shou,” Marlowe said, sitting down at the breakfast table next to Plato.
Plato heaved a forkful of buttered grits mixed with scrambled eggs into his mouth. Shou, Marlowe’s aunt, gave Plato’s big ass the shudders. That old woman was blind as a bat, but she had a way of knowing things and doing things that should’ve been impossible for her to know and do. Beautiful honey-gold Marlowe furrowed her lovely arched brows and glanced at him, worried and expectant.
Gatewood had asked him if there wasn’t someone in his life he’d die for or fight for. And he was looking at her. She was looking at him, too, waiting for him to respond appropriately.
“I’m supposed to ask, ‘What’s wrong with her?’” he said.
“Exactly.” She smiled. Oh, those pretty lips of hers were mesmerizing. “Belle says she’s been quiet the last few days.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Shou’s never quiet. She’s always got something to say.”
He took a bite of bacon.
“Belle said that Shou called her in the middle of the night but hardly said more than a few words to her,” she explained, concerned. “When Belle asked if she should come over, Shou told her not to, but Belle went anyway.”
“And?”
“Physically, she was fine. But she seemed distant, according to Belle. Like she had something on her mind, but she couldn’t say what it was.”
Plato had no idea why Marlowe was coming to him with anything to do with Shou Shou. He kept his distance from the old woman, as much as possible, which she didn’t seem to mind.
“You’ve been quiet, too,” Marlowe continued.
He certainly had been. Plato was working, and the cardinal rule agreed upon between the two of them was that when he was working, he would keep her out of it and she wouldn’t try to get in it. She knew the drill.
Marlowe stared knowingly at him. “Are you going to be leaving soon?”
Typically, his job took him out of town. Sometimes, out of the country, away from home and her. Abby Rhodes was her friend. And Plato found himself perched precariously between one hard-ass rock and the proverbial hard place. Keeping a part of his life secret was his way of keeping his lady love safe. Plato never knew who or what he might run up against in his line of work, and he wanted to make damn sure that none of it ever boomeranged back around to her. Basically, the less she knew about certain facets of his life, the better.
This was different. This was personal for her, but even now he felt it best not to mention that he was searching for her friend who’d been abducted from her house l
ess than twenty minutes from this one.
“I could be,” he answered, purposefully leaving it at that.
He was considering getting away from the house, maybe renting a room in Clark City or something, just to ease the pressure of trying to keep his mouth shut around Marlowe about Abby, or to keep her from using that whole sixth sense thing of hers to somehow figure it out. A part of him believed that maybe Marlowe or that crazy aunt of hers could look into a crystal ball and tell him where Abby was, making this job a whole lot easier. But then again, he needed to hold to his oath, that keeping Marlowe safe meant keeping her out of his business. And even if he did ask them to read his palm or stare into a crystal ball or read tea leaves, what if they still came up empty? She’d know too much and she could panic and do or say something to the wrong people. Blink was small. And he was convinced that somebody in town, maybe even somebody who knew Abby, was somehow involved.
Marlowe stared at him as if reading his mind.
“I love it when you look at me,” he said warmly, “except when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He shoveled more food into his mouth. “Like you’re trying to see something that you’ve got no business looking for.”
“There you go again, being paranoid,” she said softly, reaching across the table and taking hold of his hand. “I’m just looking at you, baby.”
Marlowe cast spells. Especially when it came to him. He was convinced of it. Why else would he have strayed so far off his beaten and destined path to end up here, in Blink? Beautiful and bountiful breasts pressed against the material of her blouse. Was it his imagination, or were her nipples hardening right before his eyes? Was his dick swelling in response?
“You are vexing me, sweetheart,” he said with warning as Marlowe laced her fingers with his.
She chuckled and he wondered if he should take that as confirmation. Plato could forgo what was left of his breakfast, carry this curvy woman up the stairs to the bedroom, and make lazy love to her until he was utterly empty.
Abby needed him to find her.
He finished his coffee. “I’m working, baby,” he said, tenderly kissing her head as he reluctantly stood up to leave.
Disappointment shadowed her face. He could live with that for now. But what he couldn’t live with was not finding Abby Rhodes alive because he opted to postpone his search for her and make love to his woman. Plato walked out of that house with a dick so hard it hurt.
* * *
“It’s customary in my line of work for my employer to give me time to resolve the issue I’ve been commissioned to resolve,” he explained to Gatewood’s voice mail.
This dude was understandably desperate to get his woman back safe and sound. But sweating Plato was not the answer.
“I will be in touch when I have a reason to be.” He abruptly hung up.
The truth was, he had nothing. More than a day had passed and he still had no idea where to even begin to look for this woman. Her truck was missing along with her. So whoever had taken her wanted to make it look as if she wasn’t home. The blood on the walls was likely Abby’s. That matchstick he’d found could’ve been something. Could’ve been nothing. He drove back to her house once more. He was in and out in five minutes with no new clues to speak of.
Plato sat in his car and studied the photograph of Abby. After some consideration, Plato texted it to a number in his phone, then followed up with a call.
“Wonder Boy!” he exclaimed. “It’s me.”
“Who?” the young lad responded.
“Me.”
“Oh. You sent me something.”
“I did.”
“Wow,” the dude said. “She looks to be in dire straits.”
“She is. I need you to take that photo apart and find me some clues.”
He sighed. “It’s gonna cost you a couple of grand.”
“Fine.”
“And I suppose you need it in a hurry.”
“Look at her. Of course I need it in a hurry.”
Again with the sighing. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Do that,” he said, hanging up.
Run This Game
JORDAN HAD BEEN ASKED to be the keynote at the Texas Coalition of Business and Corporate Leaders annual brunch. If he hadn’t agreed to speak at the event, he would have sent his apologies and opted out of the invitation. Needless to say, his paranoia had risen to new heights. Jordan shook hands and nodded acknowledgments with dozens of people on his way into the banquet hall filled with close to a thousand attendees.
Most were strangers to him, but Jordan recognized a few faces: Marshall Walsh, CEO of Variant; Amanda Coefield, who headed up Coefield Construction; and Brandon Degan, who sat at the helm of Degan Oil and Gas Refinery, started by his father, Lars. He smiled and made small talk where needed, but he met each gaze with laserlike intensity, forcing himself to appear unbothered and not at all concerned that the woman he loved might already be dead.
Sitting through speech after speech, poking at overcooked eggs and undercooked bacon, Jordan did everything he could to act like he gave a damn about being here. Even managing to force himself to swallow a bite of toast.
“We are honored to have as our keynote today a man who really needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway,” the woman at the podium said, smiling.
The crowd laughed as she went on to read Jordan’s accomplishments from the time he’d taken the helm at Gatewood Industries to now, thankfully leaving out his long list of failures and very public but personal tragedies. Applause filled the room as he made his way up the stairs and across the stage to the podium. Every move he’d made the past few days had been with robotic purpose. It took everything inside him to make himself look and sound convincing, to inject humor and sincerity in a way that looked and resonated as genuine.
Hiding the truth of the chaos and turmoil churning inside Jordan drained him. But he had to stand tall, to appear to be the man they all believed him to be and not the one unraveling inside because the love of his fucking life had been snatched right out from underneath his nose. It had taken him a lifetime to find Abby. Jordan had resigned himself to the fact that he had done so much shit in his life that the gods would deny him the kind of peace and love and contentment that came packaged in her. He figured that Karma had had enough of his antics and had shoved emptiness and loneliness in his face to last the rest of his life, and then, out of the blue, in Blink, Texas, of all places, there she was. She was everything he’d never had and always wanted and needed. To go back to a life without her in it was unacceptable and impossible.
“Thank you all,” he said warmly, eventually wrapping up his speech. “Enjoy your breakfasts.” Jordan even managed to smile, but it nearly killed him to do it.
He located the organizer of the event, explained that he had another meeting to attend, and left through the private entrance out to his waiting car. Jordan climbed in the back, and for the first time all damn day, he took a breath.
The first thing he did was check the voice mail left to him by Wells. Jordan immediately called him back. This time, he answered.
“I guess you got my message,” Wells stated flippantly.
“And you got mine,” Jordan retorted.
“I got nothing to tell you.”
Jordan ground his teeth together. “What the hell have you been doing?”
“My job.”
Jordan waited for him to elaborate.
“I went to the house yesterday,” Wells reluctantly continued. “She put up a fight, but other than that, I’ve got nothing.”
Jordan’s heart felt as if it had dropped to his stomach like a rock.
“What are you planning on doing next?”
“It doesn’t work like this, man,” Wells warned. “You can’t expect me to do what I need to while you’re riding my ass like I’m a gotdamn horse.”
Reason and logic understood what he was saying. But logic had been swept up
into a vortex of desperation. Nothing this man was saying resonated.
“What’s your next move?” Jordan demanded to know.
Wells sighed. “When I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know,” he said, abruptly ending the call.
Jordan immediately called back, but of course that fool didn’t pick up.
A few minutes later, his executive assistant, Jennifer, called. “You’ll have an hour after we land before you have to get to your next meeting, Jordan,” she said. “Did you eat at the brunch? If not, I can order you some lunch if you’d like.”
Suddenly a question flashed in his mind. Could she be involved in this? How long had she been working for him? A few years? Jennifer knew his schedule better than he did. But she didn’t interact too much with Abby. Phyl did, though. Jordan immediately felt ridiculous for even considering that Jennifer or Phyl could have anything to do with Abby’s abduction, but then again, he’d have been a fool to not consider all the possibilities. Phyl knew more about him than even Jennifer. She knew where he’d be on any given day at any given time. She knew Abby. Phyl was the last person Abby had spoken to before she’d left the penthouse and headed back to Blink.
“Jordan?” Jennifer asked uneasily. “Are you all right?”
He was anything but all right. “A ham and cheese sandwich from Wanda’s.” Wanda’s was a deli a block away from Gatewood Industries.
“Fries, coleslaw, or chips?”
“Just the sandwich,” he eventually said. “And were you able to get me those financials I asked for?”
“Yes. I sent them to your in-box ten minutes ago.”
Ending the call, he began to contemplate just how close Phyl and Abby had become. Besides Jordan, Abby spent more time with Phyl than with anyone else in Dallas. Was it possible that she’d mentioned her trip back to Blink to Phyl? Jordan’s thoughts were beginning to make him uncomfortable.
