Dark Mysteries

by Jessica Gadziala

  He pulled suddenly away from her, his hand slipping down her back and then stepping to the side. She swayed for a horrifying second, feeling unsteady without the support. She closed her eyes and took a breath. What the hell was she doing? She folded her arms across her chest, one of her hands snaking down and rubbing hard at the bandage at her side, the pain bringing her fully into her right mind.

  Gabe threw the keys toward Xander, moving to stoop next to Ellie's feet. He grabbed her dropped book, Wuthering Heights, turning it over in his hands. He held it up to her. "'I gave him my heart....'" he quoted, a brow raised expectantly.

  Ellie reached for the book. "'and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me'," she finished, holding the book to her chest. She wouldn't have figured him for a classic literature fan. And certainly not so much a fan that he could quote random passages by heart.

  "Rather the antithesis to the romance everyone thinks the book is about, don't you think?" he asked, getting back onto his feet.

  "It's not a romance," Ellie said, pulling her brows together. Who would ever think it was? "It's a tragedy."

  "You think she should have ended up with Heathcliff?"

  "No," Ellie said, firmly.

  "Why not?" he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  "Because that kind of love is all fire. And it burns everything given enough time," she answered, looking down at her book self-consciously.

  Xander watched them talking books for a long minute, his brows lowered. He had known Gabe for almost fifteen years and he had never seen him with a book in his hands. But the way he was nerding-out with Ellie suggested he was extremely well-versed. Maybe they should have a conversation for a change that wasn't about work... or women.

  "You ready, sweetheart?" he asked when their conversation finally died down.

  "Yup," she said, sending Gabe a sweet smile.

  "You ever wanna talk books," Gabe said, touching her cheek slightly, "I am right next door."

  "Okay," she said, almost sounding eager at the prospect, making Xander shuffle his feet with some emotion he couldn't quite place. "And... sorry again about your throat," she said, feeling Xander take her hand and start pulling her out the door.

  "Don't worry about it... Eleanor," Gabe said when Xander exited and she was almost out of the door.

  Ellie felt her stomach drop, fear coiling tight in her stomach. Did he just say Eleanor? Maybe it was just a guess. She looked up at his face through the door after it closed. One of his brows was raised and he lifted his chin at her. Like confirmation. Like he knew.

  He knew who she was.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  "You alright?" Xander asked, turning back when she didn't fall into step behind him. He turned back, looking at her staring through the door to the bail bond office. He moved next to her looking to where she was starting. Gabe stood there, looking back at Ellie for a split second before nodding at Xander and moving into the back.

  Ellie was watching him retreat, not looking away. She was barely blinking. Christ. Xander ran a hand over his chin. He knew women practically fell at Gabe's feet, but this was ridiculous. She couldn't look away. Even when he was out of sight.

  If he looked a little closer, he would have seen the horrified look on her face, but he just reached an arm around her shoulders, forcibly pulling her along, all the while she kept sneaking glances over her shoulder back toward the office.

  --

  Ellie sat in the car a few minutes later, her book open in her lap, staring blindly at the pages, pretending to read while Xander drove.

  How the hell did Gabe know? Her mind raced through its catalog of faces, trying to place him, trying to make a connection. But she was sure that she had never seen him before in her life. But he had obviously seen her. Back then. Before she started running. Before she became Ellie.

  Was he planning on exposing her? Oh, God. Was Gabe in league with... him? The thought hit her hard, making her feel like she couldn't breathe.

  She glanced at Xander from beneath her lashes. But Gabe was good friends with Xander. And, for all his dangerous airs, he was a good man, solid, mostly on the right side of the law. Even if he needed to do less than legal things at times, she was sure he did them for the right reasons, for the greater good, to help people. And she couldn't picture someone like Xander getting involved with someone who had... really awful connections.

  Maybe Gabe was like Xander, on the good side. But he knew things. He knew about him. And then, by extension, her.

  Maybe he was just going to tell Xander about her past. Which, she thought grimly, could be just as bad.

  They sat there for hours, Xander clicking away at his camera, getting more and more frustrated by the minute. He had gotten plenty of shots of the woman, who had decided to do a striptease and then be on the top. And at the angle they were working with, there was no way to see who was on the bed.

  Beside him, Ellie flipped through the pages of her book, seeming lost in her own little world, but getting antsy in her seat, constantly crossing and uncrossing her legs, fiddling her fingers against the door, readjusting her seat.

  "They're coming out," Xander announced, making Ellie jump. They hadn't said so much as a word since they got in the car. "Damn it," he cursed, snapping pictures of them kissing on the street, the man constantly ducking his head to the other side. "I just need one picture of his face..."

  Ellie looked up and around quickly, reached for Xander's cell phone, and quickly got out of the car.

  He almost called to her, but was too curious to see what she was going to do to stop her. She walked around the car and onto the sidewalk, holding his phone to her ear. "You cheating bastard," she yelled, making the man's face snap up and look around, worriedly. Xander snapped several quick pictures, chuckling to himself, listening to her as she walked past the guilty-looking couple. "She's my best friend you piece of shit," she yelled, moving to open the door to a coffee shop and disappearing inside.

  The couple laughed nervously and the man leaned and kissed her on the forehead before moving off to climb in his car.

  Xander put the camera down, getting out of the car and following Ellie into the coffee shop where he found her salivating over the assortment of bakery goods. "I guess I forgot to feed you, huh?" he asked, feeling sheepish. It was well past dinner time and the last thing she had eaten was breakfast with him, early in the morning.

  "I'm fine," Ellie said automatically, though her stomach was growling pretty insistently. "Did you get what you needed?"she asked, glancing back at the food.

  "Yeah," he said, smiling down at her as he slid into line. "That was pretty clever," he told her, thankful that the job was finally over. While he didn't exactly catch them doing the deed, he had gotten enough damning proof. The wife would be happy with it and he would get paid. Then he could focus everything on Ellie.

  "Large coffee, large tea," he said to the expectant barista, "and two corn muffins, two brownies, and two hot pretzels," he said, knowing what she had been looking at.

  "You don't have to..." Ellie started to object, but he ignored her, pulling money out of his pocket and paying.

  "It's the least I can do," he said, moving down the counter to where they were supposed to pick their food up, "for someone who saved my case. Besides, I was hungry too," he said, reaching for their drinks and watching as she did some kind of magic stacking of the six separate plates, balancing them over her hands, wrists, and forearms, somehow steady enough that they didn't even rock. "That's impressive," he said as they made their way to the table.

  "Oh," Ellie said, looking down and laughing a little, not having realized she did anything weird. "Impressed with my server skills, huh?" she asked, laying the plates down on the small round table.

  "Immeasurably," he said, his tone dry. "So Ellie," he said, watching her pick at the corn muffin, "tell me about yourself."

  Ellie looked down at her food, suddenly not feeling ver
y hungry. She knew it was coming. He was going to ask eventually. "How exactly is someone supposed to answer that question?" she asked, hedging. "I mean... without sounding self-centered?"

  Xander made a snorting noise and shrugged. "You're supposed to tell me about your home life, your hobbies, why you moved to the city. That kind of thing."

  Ellie sighed quietly. "I was raised by my father. He was a cop. As such, he wasn't around a lot as I got older. I took up reading, obviously. And I moved because I just... needed something new I guess."

  "No college?"

  "I started," she admitted, feeling a bit of shame well up. "I didn't finish."

  "Shit happens," Xander said, making her feel infinitely better.

  "What about you?" she asked, genuinely curious.

  "I grew up in the foster system," he said, his tone suddenly guarded. "I picked fights for fun. I've always lived here."

  "That was... vague."

  "And your story wasn't?" he asked, quirking up an eyebrow, his tone firm.

  But he didn't press and she felt more gratitude toward him than she had before. They sat quietly the rest of the time, each of them picking at their food but not eating much.

  She said was. Her dad was a cop. That could have meant he was retired, but there had been a sort of guarded sadness when she said it. Like her father had died and it was something she didn't want to talk about.

  But at least it was another piece. Something he could look into. Cops in Portland.

  They drove back to his apartment, Ellie glancing over at him occasionally, seeing his dark eyes far away, his mind working. It was probably about her. Because, to him, it was the only way he could find out about her stalker: if he found out about her. She looked down at her hands. And he was going to research her past. In Portland.

  When she grew up in Trenton.

  Six

  Sleep was evasive. She laid there, staring at the ceiling for hours, listening as Xander's breathing took on the deep, slow cadence of sleep. She should just tell him, swallow her fears and tell him. Because for all she knew, Gabe was going to tell him and then there was a chance she could be out on her ass because she lied. Because she intentionally put him in danger.

  And he had been nothing but good to her.

  She sighed, turning slightly onto her side, glancing over at him. He wouldn't throw her out. Not even if he found out in a less than perfect way. He was too moral for that.

  That thought hit her as almost funny, as she brought her hand up to her mouth to cover the strange strangled snorting sound she made. Moral. The toughest, most ruthless private investigator slash private security guy in the city happened to be one of the good guys, one of the ones in white caps, one of the ones people could rely on to do the right thing.

  She stayed awake for a long time, watching his chest rise and fall, finding the motion oddly soothing. Until, despite the ever-present anxiety, she drifted off to sleep.

  -

  And she dreamed of him. Back when she first met him. She had been barely out of high school and at a party her friend had dragged her to because someone had gotten their older siblings to buy them alcohol. She remembered the stifling isolation after her friend had ditched her to go make out with some shaggy-haired, burned-out hippie. She had been standing in a corner, looking out the window with a red cup in her hands full of some God-awful smelling liquor that she refused to even try.

  She wished she had brought a book. She had promised she wouldn't do that. But she could have. She could have stashed it away in her purse, for that very reason. She knew she would end up hugging the walls and feeling utterly alone.

  "You look like you'd rather be anywhere but here," a voice had said behind her, making her jump and slosh the alcohol all over her clothes.

  She turned to see him. Tall, dark, handsome, cool, and confident. He was all the ridiculous stereotypes that women had been known to go gaga for since the beginning of modern civilization. And he was talking to her. Of all people.

  "Here," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out an actual pocket square. "May I?" he asked, holding it up, waiting for her response.

  She had fallen hard and fast before she had any idea what he was really like. Or what he did for a living and how he conducted that business.

  She had moved in before she even started her fist college classes.

  It hadn't started for a while. There were five blissful months of lazy, albeit unsatisfying, lovemaking, afternoon picnics, random gifts on the bedside table in the morning, and enough compliments to build up her fragile ego. She had called her friends and boasted about how lucky she was, how she was living a romance novel, how men like him were too good to be true.

  It turned out she was all too correct.

  One night, he had taken her to a restaurant with a bunch of his business partners. When he had asked her to step outside for a while right when the entrees got to the table, she had quietly objected. He had turned back to the table, his charming smile glued on his face and asked the men to excuse them for a minute. He helped her out of her chair and led her through to the back of the restaurant, his hand holding onto her arm roughly enough to leave bruises.

  He pushed her out of the back door, waiting for it to slam behind him, locking them down a long, abandoned alley... and then he had turned her to face him quickly, then shoved her hard, making her slam back into the brick wall of the building next door.

  She barely had a moment to register the pain before he was right in front of her, pulling an arm across his body, and backhanding her across her face.

  "You stupid bitch," he had yelled, making a bird perched on the light post startle and fly away. "Don't you ever fucking embarrass me like that again," he said, his hand reaching out and grabbing her throat.

  She didn't fight. She didn't even argue. She just stared at him, wide-eyed, too shocked to do anything but stand there, feeling his hand tightening around her throat.

  "When I tell you to do something, you do it. No arguments. Do you understand me?" he asked, his hand pressing harder into her throat, making her make a gagging sound. "I asked you a fucking question. Do. You. Understand?" Her breath was caught under his punishing grip, making words impossible. She nodded her head slightly and he quickly released her, moving to push his cuff links back into place. "Now get yourself cleaned up and come back to that table and do what you're told," he said, swinging the door open and storming back inside.

  Alone, she fell back against the wall, slowly slinking down, hugging her knees to her chest. She didn't cry. She sat there in stunned numbness, her hands shaking, for a long few minutes before the door opened again, making her yelp and straighten immediately.

  But she didn't see him. She saw Bobby, one of his business partners. Or friends. She wasn't quite sure what the connection was at the time. All she knew was he was always around almost twenty-four hours a day. He could always be found within yelling distance of them. He looked down at her, his eyes oddly empty, taking her in. "I'm supposed to escort you to the bathroom to clean up," he said.

  She should have run. She should have made a dash down the alley, hailed a cab, went straight home to her cop father and told him what had happened. She should have done anything but what she did.

  She stood up, nodded, and followed him back into the building. Inside the bathroom, she carefully wiped the long gash on her face, courtesy of the huge malachite stone on the ring he wore on his right hand. Even wiped clean of blood, it was red and angry-looking. Her throat had a slight hint of blue under the skin. She straightened her hair, adjusted her dress, and walked back to the table, not meeting the eyes of the men sitting there, staring down at her lap.

  His hand settled on her thigh, light and friendly, like nothing had happened. "Why don't you eat your dinner, Eleanor?" he asked and despite the rolling of her stomach, she picked up her fork and did what she was told.

  He didn't touch her in anger again for weeks. Things settled bac
k down and she had somehow convinced herself it was an isolated incident. He had been in a fowl mood. He didn't mean it.

  She knew better. She had been raised with a father who had carefully detailed to his teenage daughter the touchy subjects of rape and domestic abuse.

  Yet somehow, despite what she knew, she didn't realize until it was too late that she had fallen for every last trick.

  He had made her move in with him. He had happily suggested she share his cell phone plan. He slowly convinced her that she had outgrown the childish antics of her old friends. He took her own words about how her father had been absent a lot of her life, twisted them, made them into something ugly... and made her believe the man who had wanted nothing but to love and protect her was, in fact, a maniac. He'd convinced her to drop out of college because a degree in literature would get her nowhere in life. And, besides, didn't she want the free time to travel all around the world with him?

  He had successfully isolated her from everything in her life and replaced it all with himself, making her emotionally and economically dependent upon him. So by the time the physical abuse started, she had no where to turn, no one to go to for help, no way out.

  The next time he had hit her was after a night at the symphony. They had had a great evening. Or so she thought until they got back home. They got back into their bedroom where she stepped out of her high heels and was pulling one of her earrings out. He closed the door quietly.

  "That was so much..." she never finished her sentence, feeling his hand grab her throat and throw her to the ground. Before she could even suck in her breath, he was down on top of her, his knee stabbing into her ribs, pressing with his weight until she felt a snap and cried out in pain. "What did I do?" she whimpered out, hating herself, hating her vulnerability, hating that she loved him.

  "I gave you a beautiful fucking diamond necklace and you don't wear it?" he raged, moving to straddle her waist. "You wear these cheap plastic earrings instead?" he asked, reaching for the one still in her ear and pulling at it until it tore the piercing hole wider, the pain a burning, searing sensation. He leaned down close to her face, reaching behind her head, grabbing her hair, and pulling it violently to the side. "You will wear that necklace whenever we go out. In fact," he said, leaning forward and biting her lip hard, "you will never take it off again. Do you understand me?" Too terrified to do anything else, she nodded rapidly.