by Mia Thompson
“I see,” he said and his lips grazed her ear, sending tiny tingles down her neck.
Sapphire turned around and found Marco looking at her with warm eyes. His arms framed her into his body as he held onto the railing behind her. He made her feel safe, as if he wouldn’t let her fall. Marco leaned in and Sapphire closed her eyes to receive a light kiss. His body pushed closer to hers and bright lights from the city around them faded away as their kiss got deeper and more energetic.
All Sapphire could feel was the life she didn’t want to think of slipping through her fingers. Since he believed she was Mary, it was easier for her to believe it too. She didn’t have to worry about Julia, because Mary knew no one named Julia. Mary’s mother wasn’t actually the housekeeper. Mary’s mother was probably the all-American kind. The kind who baked, cleaned, cooked, and didn’t have sex with aerobics instructors named Sven. Kissing Marco felt good in a wrong sort of way. Not like with Aston where it felt good in a right sort of way.
Crap! Was she seriously thinking about Aston while kissing another man?
Sapphire’s phone rang and interrupted them. Pulling away from the kiss left her feeling dizzy. Marco seemed happy, and even though they were outside and it was night, it looked like he was blushing.
Sapphire grabbed her phone while Marco backed up toward the sliding glass door.
“I’ll get some more wine,” he said and smiled boyishly. He turned around, almost walking right into the glass. Embarrassed, he looked over at her and slid the door open, disappearing inside. Sapphire laughed then looked at her phone.
“Aston,” Sapphire stated. He had now interrupted her kiss twice.
“Un-freaking-believable. I put a freaking tracker in your car and those incompetent bastards still lose you.”
“I knew it!” Sapphire exclaimed.
“Where are you?”
“It’s okay; I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask how you are; I’m not your fucking shrink. Where are you?”
“I’m on a date. Sometimes people my age go on dates. Not everyone gets the courtesy of one drink at a charity event then straight to the sack.”
It got quiet and she heard Aston light a cigarette.
“With who? The guy from the other day…what’s his name… Dickwad?”
Sapphire smiled, letting the silence speak for itself.
“Whatever; stay where you are and I’ll come pick you up. Shelly woke up.”
In the middle of taking a sip of her wine, Sapphire froze. “What did she say?”
“She gave me a name. The name.”
Sapphire waited breathlessly.
“Quinn Wallace,” Aston said and paused for Sapphire’s reaction.
“Quinn Wallace,” Sapphire repeated in deep thought. “I can’t say I recognize it.”
“It’s fine. We have a name. We have a description. It could be someone from your past. Apparently, some sort of religious fanatic.”
“Mhmm,” Sapphire said, thinking about the statue.
“He was her personal trainer. They’re working on a sketch right now. I told them to fax it to your house. So, again, where are you?”
“I’ll meet you at the house,” Sapphire said and hung up. She wasn’t feeling well, the little amount of wine she had was getting to her. She quickly scrolled her phone for a cab number. She couldn’t very well have Marco drop her off at the Beverly Hills mansion unless she completely wanted to blow her cover.
Marco came back out with a fresh glass of wine. He smiled at her and she felt horribly guilty leaving him like that again. She wondered if this was what it would be like if they were in a relationship. She would always leave him to go do her lame attempts of saving the world and he would always be left standing.
“So, what did you and Chrissy fight about?” he asked.
Sapphire took another sip of her wine, even though a sudden spinning head told her not to.
“Oh, nothing big, just…” Sapphire said and stopped. She stared at Marco who turned around to slide the balcony door shut. “I never told you Chrissy’s name.”
Marco froze and his muscular shoulders tightened. He turned around and stared at her. A peculiar look, one he’d never had before. “Well, then, I guess we’re lucky that the sedative is about to kick in.”
Sapphire looked down at her glass, watching it slip through her fingers and hit the ground with a crash. Her hands and body were weakening rapidly. Sapphire felt herself falling backward, over the railing, losing all control. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Marco coming toward her, reaching his arms out to grab her. And then, the cross tattoo on his underarm.
Chapter 18
The freeway was wide open, yet Aston played with the idea of using the siren. He looked at his speedometer and realized there was no point. He was already going over 100 mph.
He checked his phone for the seventh time. He had repeatedly tried to reach her without any luck. A feeling had grown in the pit of his gut and it wasn’t a good feeling. Some people called it cop intuition; Aston usually called it bad gas.
When he got to the Dubois mansion, the gut feeling turned down a few notches. Her car was in the driveway. Aston realized what the feeling had been…not cop intuition or bad gas but worry. Aston couldn’t remember worrying about anyone at all since he was a little kid, worrying if his father would drink himself to death or not that night.
“Hello!” He yelled, walking through the manor. He saw Charles parked in front of the TV, sleeping in his wheelchair. Aston stopped and listened, turning down the volume.
He heard a dull pounding somewhere in the house. An even, repeated beat. He followed the sounds to the upper level. The thuds grew stronger and led him to the bathroom across the hall from Sapphire’s room.
The door was cracked open and he used his index finger to push it open the rest of the way. For the first time in his life, Aston wished he would have been blind, so that he couldn’t have seen what he saw right then and there. Mrs. Dubois in the shower, half-naked and held up by a young Hispanic man, her bare buttocks pressed up against the glass of the shower repeatedly, with each thud.
“Oh, God!” Aston yelled in disgust.
“Oh, God!” the young man exclaimed in humiliation.
“Oh, God!” Mrs. Dubois screamed in ecstasy.
Aston backed away from the door and knocked on it just as the pounding subsided.
“Mrs. Dubois! I’m looking for Sapphire. You know where she is?”
Two seconds later, Mrs. Dubois came out from the bathroom in a white robe barely covering the essential parts of her body. She might as well have stayed half-naked.
“Detective, how nice to see you. What was the question?”
Aston made a point of keeping his eyes level on her face. “Sapphire. Have you seen her?”
Mrs. Dubois waved her hand and marched through the hallway to Sapphire’s bedroom. She knocked on the door. “Darling, that handsome detective is here for you.”
She smiled at him and walked into her own bedroom to shut the door. Aston waited for Sapphire to open up as the young man came out from the bathroom with eyes as wide as UFOs, scrambling to get his socks back on. He hopped on one leg down the hallway toward his escape.
Aston waited for another second and then grabbed the handle. Unlocked. He walked in to find an empty room.
“Mrs. Dubois!”
Mrs. Dubois came in wearing a tiny kimono.
“When did she come in?”
Mrs. Dubois shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe two hours ago.”
Aston closed his eyes, irritated. “She wasn’t home two hours ago; I talked to her on the phone.”
“Well, then I guess we’re all alone, aren’t we?” She winked at him and approached.
Aston dialed Sapphire again. This time it went straight to voicemail.
“It’s me again,” he said. “Call me back now. You’re pissing me off!”
Mrs. Dubois stared at him, her flirtatious demeanor even more aggressi
ve if possible. She moved toward him and reminded him of a lioness that he’d seen on the Discovery Channel, creeping through the grass right before attacking a gazelle. She played with the rope of her kimono and loosened it little by little, with no less grace than a stripper.
Behind Mrs. Dubois above Sapphire’s bed, something suddenly caught Aston’s eye. On the ceiling above the canopy, something was odd. He moved toward it and jumped up on the bed, forcing the canopy to the side. His phone rang and he jumped back down.
“Detective Ridder,” he said and looked out the window to discover Mrs. Dubois reflection in it. She was tilting her head to the side and staring at his ass. Feeling like a piece of meat Aston covered his backside with his free hand.
“We’re faxing over the sketch.”
“Thank you,” Aston said. He walked out of the room down the hallway to the office with the fax machine.
As he reached the fax, he turned around to see the mother of the woman he had once had sex with standing in the doorway. Not half naked. Not semi naked. Buck naked. The kimono lay on the ground below her.
For a woman her age—and even for most women half her age—Aston had to admit she looked very good naked. He stared at her breasts, looking back at him like an owl’s ogling eyes.
“I’m a confident woman, Detective. When I want something, I get it. And it just so happens I want you.”
Aston, not a nervous man by any means, suddenly felt how he assumed Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate must have felt. With that in mind—besides the perfectly shaped breasts in front of him, Aston said: “Mrs. Dubois, you’re trying to seduce me…aren’t you?”
“I certainly am.”
Aston watched her watch him as she smoothly moved over to a small office bar to his right. Naked and not ashamed of it, Mrs. Dubois poured herself a scotch and then one for Aston. She held out the rocks glass for him to take and winked.
“So what do you say; it’ll be just between you and me.”
Aston looked at the glass of scotch then at Mrs. Dubois. She moved closer to him, leaning her body against his as she swirled the drink under his nose.
Aston grabbed the glass and finished it in one swig. “Tempting. But I’m going to have to pass,” he said and set it down behind him.
Mrs. Dubois frowned, or at least attempted to frown. Her face was like her tits, smooth and fake. She took a few steps back, so comfortable in her own skin that she acted as if she wasn’t standing there, rejected in the nude.
“As I thought,” she said. “You’re in love with my daughter; aren’t you, Detective?”
Aston laughed and shook his head. “No, I’m not the type.”
“For her?”
“To fall in love,” he corrected.
Mrs. Dubois circled him once and then looked directly into his eyes.
“Mmmm,” she said with the hint of a smirk. “Sure you’re not. I’ve seen the way you look at her. The way she looks at you.”
“It’s my job to keep an eye on her…literally.”
“Really? So then, why not take advantage of a situation if it presents itself?” She motioned her hand down her own body.
“Because…maybe you’re not my type.”
Mrs. Dubois swirled her drink as Aston heard the fax machine beep behind him, followed by the quiet noise of the paper printing.
“Yes, of course I’m not,” she said, implying the exact opposite. “Good night, Detective.”
“Good night,” Aston said and turned around to pick up the fax. “Shit!”
Mrs. Dubois pulled her robe back on and turned the side of her face to him. “What is it?”
“Your daughter has been kidnapped.”
Mrs. Dubois froze in her path and her shoulders tensed. Then she turned to him fully. Emotionless.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get right on that.”
Aston watched her leave the room and then looked down at the face of the man who had taken Sapphire.
* * * * *
The candles on the cake blew out, like they always did, and Julia smiled like she always had. Sapphire was eight; it was her birthday and she and Julia were celebrating in the kitchen by themselves. Sapphire knew she was dreaming. She had been there so many times before that the whole scenario played out like a dance. A dance where she knew every step and every motion before it happened.
Julia cut the cake and served her a piece. She put a birthday hat on Sapphire’s head and Sapphire heard herself laugh. This time something was different though. The clattering of rain was heard every now and then. Sapphire looked up at the ceiling, confused; raindrops fell from it. That had never happened before. It was a new version of the same old dream.
As the cold drops hit her face, Sapphire focused on what usually came next.
“What did you wish for?” Julia asked.
“I wished I would find him,” Sapphire replied, always.
“Who?” Julia sounded concern.
Sapphire didn’t answer. She never did.
The rain turned into a downpour and the icing on the top of the cake got wet and soggy. The dream usually continued with Julia pulling out her present. But she didn’t. She stood looking at Sapphire as the rain ruined the cake. Julia mumbled. She said the same thing over and over, but Sapphire couldn’t understand her.
“What?” Sapphire asked loudly so that the rain wouldn’t drown out her voice.
“Wake up!” Julia screamed.
* * * * *
Sapphire opened her eyes with the raindrops hitting her face. She was outside and soaking wet. Her head was aching and it took her a few seconds to remember everything that had happened. Aston. The wine. Marco. That son of a bitch. It was him.
Sapphire looked around. She was on a rooftop, sitting upright and tied to a vent with her hands behind her back. A shadow appeared in the mist in front of her. Sapphire tugged on the rope holding her wrists together, but it cut into her arms, creating a burning sensation.
“Hey!” Sapphire yelled angrily. “Marco!”
The shadow slowly moved toward her.
“Polo,” came a sly and raspy voice.
Lightning cracked dangerously close, lighting up the sky. Marco smiled as he stood hovering above her holding a wad of rope in his hands.
“I’ve been waiting for this for what feels like so long. And now, here we are,” he said.
“What the hell is your problem? And where am I?”
Marco held his hands out and tilted his head back with a peaceful smile, letting the rain fall on his face. “The Los Angeles Church of Angels! The tallest church in the world. They say if you’re on the roof where we are, it’s as close to God as you’ll ever get!”
Sapphire tugged on her rope, kicking after Marco’s legs but he jumped to the side.
“See, there you go again, attacking with anger. What did I always tell you about that?” Marco went to get the rope and two tall boards of wood laying at the edge of the roof.
“What are you going to do to me?”
Marco seemed filled with ecstasy, as if somebody had given him a shot of endorphins, a stupid happy grin plastered on his face. “You, my darling Sapphire, will be my gift to the Lord!”
“Why? What in the hell makes you think that God would want me?”
“He gave you to me; he sent you and your sins my way, so that I could free you of them.”
Sapphire’s headache was getting worse. Talking sense into a crazy person was like trying to get Chrissy to shop at Walmart. Not plausible.
“When I first saw you, I knew there was something different about you. You said you never trained martial arts, yet you were almost a black belt. I didn’t give it much thought and then I followed you home, ‘Mary,’ and I definitely knew there was something odd about you.”
He placed a few nails in his mouth as he put the two boards together, then started hammering.
“I was going to kill you that first week just like the other sinful girls, but the more I followed you and saw what you did, the mor
e I realized what you were.”
“Which is what?” Sapphire said, watching him nail the wood with concern. Marco grabbed some rope and tied a knot.
“Why, Sapphire, you’re the Anti-Christ, of course.”
“Mmmm,” Sapphire nodded. “And did you realize this before or after you got off the meds?”
“God put me and many other ones on this earth to punish and free all young women who exercise promiscuity. We are God’s angels, born in human form to free the world of people like you.”
Sapphire had to repeat the conversation in her head to let her brain catch up. “So you’re saying that you believe serial killers, like Ted Bundy, for example, are angels?”
“Gabriel, yes.”
“And you, I am guessing, believe you are Michael the archangel, like the statue you sent me.”
Marco laughed, amused, as if she just said something preposterous. “I don’t believe I’m Michael.” He got serious. “I am Michael. The angel of the art of war.”
“And how am I the Anti-Christ again?”
“You…you have been capturing God’s angels, preventing them from doing their job!”
“How many of the young women out there are sinners?” Sapphire was trying to step into his world to understand him, but for a sane, well…semi-sane person, it was almost impossible.
“All of them.”
“What about nuns?”
“All of them!” Marco exploded in anger and Sapphire was almost relieved. His happy-go-lucky mood had started to freak her out. Soon he calmed back down and stared up at the dark sky above them. “The first time I heard the voice of God I was a young teen.”
“Did I ask?”
“After my father was out of the picture, my mother and I started moving around. She said we couldn’t stay anywhere for too long because it wasn’t our home. The only home we’d ever had was taken away from us by my father’s whores.”
“Heart-wrenching story.”
“I was a child without a place in the world, but each and every town we moved to God gave me a church, so that I would always have a home.” He stood silent for a while.
