He looked over at Ellie who had a name as sweet sounding as her mouse-quiet voice. He couldn't let that happen again. He couldn't let another woman get hurt on his watch. Not even if she couldn't pay. It wouldn't be the first time he did something just because it was right. Maybe this was his chance to make things right, prove to himself he still had it. Protect the girl.
"Okay," he said, looking at his notepad as he wrote, "how long has this been going on?"
"Well," she said, looking downward, tTrying to not let her eyes betray her, "since I moved here," she said. Lies. Lies.
"How long has that been?"
"Four months," she supplied.
"And where were you before this?"
"Portland," she said automatically. Inwardly adding: Seattle. And Philadelphia. And D.C. And, originally, Trenton.
"What made you think you were being stalked?"
"Small things as first," she said, leaving out how familiar she had become at looking over her shoulder, how it had been her life for years, how every shadow made her heart jump into her throat. "Like... thinking I saw someone behind me all the time. Stopping when I stopped somewhere. I brushed it off at first. This is a new city and I..."
"Thought you were being paranoid," he supplied.
"Exactly."
"And it escalated?" he asked, writing, scribbling furiously away. Even though she wasn't saying enough for him to be writing that much.
"I started getting phone calls." True enough. No matter how many burners she went through. There were always calls.
"Unknown numbers?"
"Yeah," she nodded. Nope. Not unknown at all.
"Alright. Did you ever get a good look at him?"
"Yeah," she said, not wanting to meet his eyes. She had gotten plenty of good looks at him.
"His handiwork?" Xander asked, reaching out toward her face. She flinched, pushing backward in her chair, like only someone who had had hands raised to them in anger could. She had been beaten by someone. At some point. And now she had some creep stalking and traumatizing her all the more.
"Yeah," she mumbled, letting the front feet of the chair hit the ground again. "Sorry... I..."
"Don't apologize sweetheart," he said, writing again. "So what happened tonight?"
Ellie took a deep breath, shivering still from the cold. Here goes. At least in this she could be mostly truthful. "I got home from work..."
"When?" he interrupted.
"At twelve," she said, feeling his eyes fall on the top of her head. "I work at a diner. I had a lot of tables tonight," she explained.
"Did you walk home?"
"Yeah," she answered. Like she could afford anything else. All the money had to be put away just in case... in case she needed to disappear again.
"Okay. So, you get back to your apartment?"
"Yeah... and I dunno. Something felt off at first I guess," she admitted. She had become acutely aware of the sensation of the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, of knowing something was wrong before you could see or hear anything that suggested so. "That sounds stupid..."
"Nope," he cut in, his tone clipped, "keep going."
"Okay. Well, I kinda brushed it off and locked all the locks, put my stuff down next to the door. I turned on the light as I walked toward the kitchen... and then I saw him."
At her pause, Xander looked up. "I'll get a description later. Keep going."
"He was standing in my kitchen, leaning against the counter. The kettle was on," she recalled, not realizing that before.
"Maybe that was what was off," Xander said, looking down at her. Her brows were furrowed, like she was confused about something. "Tea kettles make a... humming noise when they're on."
"Yeah, maybe," she shrugged.
"I assume you drink a lot of tea?"
Ellie looked up, almost wanting to smile. Almost. "Tons," she admitted.
"So, this guy knows you pretty well," Xander concluded.
You have no idea. "Yeah, I guess," she said instead.
"So, what happened next? Did you scream? Did he say anything?"
"He said, 'You're home late' and then he sniffed the air and said, 'diner work doesn't suit you. You smell like stale hashbrowns and hopelessness'."
"That's... odd," Xander said, looking at her. "You wear that to work?" he asked, knowing his tone sounded suspicious and not caring. He needed to know everything.
Ellie looked at him, lowering her brows at his words, feeling insulted that he thought she was lying. Though she knew it was ridiculous. Because she was lying. Just not about the diner. She stood up, putting her mug next to his hip on the desk, and reached for the hem of her sweater. In one quick motion, she pulled it off and discarded it on the floor. Underneath, she wore an awful mustard-colored shirt with black stripes. A golden name tag hung from her collar with her name on it in silly, frilly script. "No," she said, waving at her shirt, "I wear this to work."
He almost wanted to laugh. Almost. Half at her somewhat defiant attitude, and half at how insanely ugly her work shirt was. He coughed, bringing his hand to his lips for a second to hide his smirk, before looking down at his pad. "Okay. Go on," he urged.
She reached for her coffee, her fingers brushing against his legs, sending an unexpected jolt of desire through his body. He shook his head. She was a job, he reminded himself. And she wasn't even remotely his type.
Ellie sat back down, even colder without her sweater, soaked as it was. She was going to skip the next few lines of conversation that actually happened. "Then, ah, I... grabbed an old mug of tea from the morning and hauled it at him."
"Good girl," he said, shocking himself. He hadn't meant to say that out loud.
"And I ran for my bedroom. Past him. I had to run past him. There's a fire escape from my bedroom window," she explained. "But... he was too quick. He grabbed me and we both went down."
"He wanted to hurt you? Or did it just happen because you were struggling?" There were so many kinds of stalkers. He needed to know what he was working with.
"Oh, he wanted to hurt me," she said. He wanted to hurt her more than he could ever imagine. "I scratched at his face, he punched mine," she said, motioning toward her eye. "Then he grabbed my wrists and held them over my head and..."
"And?" Xander asked, trying to keep his tone professional. He had a feeling this was about to go from bad to worse. She squirmed in her chair uncomfortably.
"And he kissed me," she said, looking away from Xander. She could still feel his lips on hers, bruising, punishing. His tongue shoved into her mouth, gagging her. "I bit his tongue," she recalled, remembering his screams as he reared upward, looking down at her, disbelieving. You fucking bitch. You stupid fucking bitch. "And I kneed him in the groin. Then ran for my bedroom. I had just made it onto the fire escape when he grabbed my ankle, sending me falling onto my face," she said, touching her sore lips. "I kicked and scrambled down. He was behind me, but I was a few feet ahead. I had to jump off the landing to grab the ladder and pull it down with me. It didn't reach the ground," she recalled, making a mental note to check that out when... if... she ever needed a new place. "And he... slammed his foot down on my hand so I fell..." she said, remembering the hard ground beneath her hands and knees, the sick fear that maybe she could have broken something. The cuts, the burns.
At her long silence, Xander took a deep breath, trying to keep his mind straight. He needed to not think of how terrified she must have been, about how amazing it was what she kept her wits about her in such a crisis. Most people froze. Most people forgot there was any exit aside from the front door. Most people didn't fight.
"And, um. He jumped down. He knocked me over in the process. We... fought. I got a few punches in," she said, holding out her knuckles. God, it had been such a good feeling for her fists to collide with his skin. She never would have considered herself a violent person before. But, that was... before. Before him. Before... everything. "He got... a lot of punch
es in," she said, her hand snaking across her stomach and ribs. Which she was sure we bruised, maybe broken. They were painful, making it almost hard to take a deep enough breath. God, how had she run so far like that? "And then someone yelled."
"Someone else? Not you or him?"
"Yeah, someone else. Some... kids, I think? Like... teenagers? Guys. They were yelling."
"At you?"
"At him," she clarified, almost wanting to cry at the memory. Her sweet little saviors. "Telling him to get off me."
"Good kids," he said, making a mental note to try to track them down when he checked out her neighborhood.
"Yeah," she agreed. "He didn't stop though. I don't even think he heard them. So, they came running over. One of them threw something. A bottle. Like a big glass liquor bottle maybe," she tried to remember, things getting almost foggy in her head. She wanted to hold onto that memory. She wanted to hold onto the good guys. There were so few. She had known so many who just... watched, who said nothing, who did nothing. She needed to remember the good ones. "And then I guess one pulled him or kicked him because he was off of me suddenly. And then one of them was grabbing me..."
"The kids?" he asked.
"Yeah. He had a giant afro... with a pick in it," she recalled, wanting to smile.
Xander chuckled, and she smiled back. "So, he grabbed you..."
"Yeah, he grabbed me, pulled me onto my feet. I was... I dunno. I must have been spaced-out because he was talking to me, but I couldn't make out what he was saying."
"Normal," Xander said, still taking notes.
"And then he shook me once. And then I heard him. He told me to run. Run as fast as I could. He said they would hold him off for a few minutes."
"Did they?"
"Yeah. I mean, by the time I was down the block, I could hear him screaming for me. But I was so far away. He couldn't have caught up. I kinda... zig-zagged up and down a few streets before I made my way down this way."
"To this neighborhood?" he asked, looking at her, his black eyes piercing into her. "Why the hell would you come here?"
"I came across your name when I was researching private investigators. Before... well, before all this happened."
"Okay," Xander said, reaching for a sticky pad on his desk. He handed it to her with a pen. "I am going to need your address," he told her, watching as she wrote on the paper. She wrote something once before scribbling it out and writing something else. Like she wasn't sure of her address. Weird. He took the pad back, pulling off the note and attaching it to his pages of notes. "Alright. Well, I suggest not going back to your apartment," he said, standing, moving toward the door, like he was going to walk her out. "Stay with a friend. A coworker. At a hotel," he suggested. He looked down at her, waiting for her to grab her wet sweater and walk toward him. "If that is all..." he said.
"No," she said, looking down at her hands. God.
"No what?"
"No, that's not all," she said. "I don't have any friends here. All my IDs and cards are at my apartment. I have nowhere to go."
Xander looked at her, her lower lip tucked slightly in like she was used to biting it but couldn't because it hurt. What was she getting at?
Then she looked up with her big, sad, scared eyes. "Can I stay here?" she asked.
Three
What? Xander's head shot up and over to her. Stay with him? What the hell? Who asked to stay at their private investigator's office? He watched her, her face focused on her hands. Her thumb on her left hand was worriedly poking at the cuticle on her other hand. She was still drenched, still trembling slightly at the cold.
She was so small. And so scared. Could he really be the kind of beast to throw her out on the street when she asked for sanctuary? Especially knowing her stalker was of the violent variety. He wasn't going to stop. And it wasn't like he seemed to have some twisted stalker notion that they should be together and live happily ever after; he seemed like he wanted to hurt her. Which was a little odd. But his unpredictability truly meant danger for Ellie.
And if he turned her out with no place safe to go, what option did that leave her but to go back to her apartment? And probably be beaten or killed. He couldn't let that happen.
"I can sleep right there," she said, squirming in her chair, pointing to the worn leather sofa. Was he actually going to tell her no? Was she going to be thrown out on the street? He looked conflicted, leaning against the wall, a big hand running over his jaw.
The silence drug on and she felt her hope fizzle away. It had been a long shot. She knew that. But that didn't stop the disappointment from rising from her belly, up her throat, making her feel like she was choking on it. What other choices did she have? It was too soon to go back to her apartment and find her stash of money, her pre-packed 'get out of dodge' suitcase with a few changes of clothes, basic necessities, a new burner phone, and a few books. That was what she had been living on for years.
She could move again. She had done it plenty before. She could try to talk her landlord into bringing her up there under the pretense of a busted pipe, grab her stuff, and get out. She could grab the first train out of the city. Run.
Run. Run. Run. That was all her life was about: running. And she was tired of it. She wanted to be able to stay put. Even if that meant staying put on the couch of one dangerous-looking man in one hellhole of a neighborhood.
Xander sighed, watching her face. Hope was quickly replaced with disappointment, a quick flash of fear, and finally... resignation? Determination? Was she making a back-up plan? Whatever it was, he couldn't imagine it being a good alternative to staying with him. At least with him, no one would dare mess with her.
"The couch in the apartment is more comfortable," he heard himself saying as if from far away.
Ellie's face shot to his, her eyes wide, skeptical. Like maybe she thought she misheard him.
"I'm sorry... what?"
Xander turned to lock the front door, but found the lock already turned. Had she went and locked the door when he wasn't looking? He shrugged off the thought that was an unusually diligent behavior for someone who should be in shock, and walked back to grab his coffee cup. "My apartment," he said, moving toward the hallway and waving a hand out, "is through that door. It isn't much," he said, feeling almost self-conscious. What the hell was that? He had never given his living space much thought before. And he had brought plenty of women back there before without hesitation. "But the couch is more comfortable than that leather one. And you'll be behind another locked door."
He was asking her to stay in his home? With him? She looked up from under her lashes, suspicious. Why? Why not just make her stay on the couch in the office? Why would he want her in his personal space? Because if he had any ideas about them... hooking up or anything... he could squash that right now. She was not interested in that. No matter how sexy the man was. If there was one thing she had learned in her life, it was men were trouble.
"Relax, sweetheart," he said, smiling at her discomfort, "you're not my type. I was just thinking of your comfort. Take the office couch," he said, moving toward the door in the hallway.
Ellie jumped up out of her seat, grabbing her sweater and her coffee. Watching him walk away, she realized how much safer she would actually feel with him close by. He was a giant, hulking, intimidating figure who apparently owned at least one gun. Judging by the ease at which he handled it, she imagined he knew how to use it. Or any other weapon that crossed his path.
"No, wait, please," she said, coming up behind him. "I'm sorry. I'm just... not myself tonight."
"Normal," he said shrugging and opening the door to his apartment.
Ellie walked in behind him, looking around. Looking for escape. Because that was where her mind was trained to go. She had to find the exits, know the floor plan, know the layout of furniture. She had to close her eyes and count the steps so that even in the dark, she can find her way around. So no matter where she was, she have the home field
advantage.
"Are those windows solid?" she asked, feeling anxiety bubble up. They didn't open. She couldn't slink through. Wasn't that like... illegal? Didn't you need two exits from every building?
"Yeah," Xander said, watching the near-hysteria on her face. Weird. Very weird. He walked over to one of the windows, tapping on it. "But it's real glass. Not that plastic glass shit they use now. You need to get out, you throw something at it and you're out."
Ellie nodded, looking over at the kitchen, the makeshift dining table, his bed. Where he would be sleeping... just a few feet away from her. The red couch looked worn, but plush and soft. And she wasn't about to complain. She had done more than her share of sleeping upright on trains, in train stations, on buses. An old couch was certainly better than that.
"Here," Xander said, walking over and pulling the sweater out of her hand. "I'll take this and hang it up."
"Thanks," Ellie mumbled, not wanting to sit down and get everything wet. She sipped at her coffee, watching Xander walk around, finding a hanger and hanging the sopping wet material on the curtain rod next to the kitchen. He walked slowly, but deliberately, with what she could only describe as a swagger. Like cowboys in old west movies walked.
She moved over toward the dining table, picking up one of the many newspapers he had sitting there. The page was opened to an article on New Jersey heroin. She glanced it over, knowing the story. Until she found a picture. Then her stomach twisted in an awful grip. Of course they suspected him. It was him. The picture was a surveillance picture of him walking out of a restaurant, his ear pressed to his cell phone, one of his henchmen at his side. He looked cool, collected, intimidating, commanding.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Xander commented, coming toward her holding a blanket and pillow.
Ellie jumped back slightly at his words, dropping the paper like it had burned her. "Oh. No. It's this... overdose story," she covered, "they were so young."
"Drugs," he shrugged, walking over and placing the bedding on the couch. "A bad economy in which even grads can't get a job breeds an air of hopelessness. Kids turn to anything that makes them feel anything else. It's not a problem that is going anywhere anytime soon."
Dark Mysteries Page 2
