by Leah Wilde
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gage,” the teenager said, tossing his head to flip some strands of messy brown hair out of his eyes. “And you?”
“That’s Fiona,” Gage answered for her, “my photographer.”
“Sweet,” Tommy said. “Well, step on in. I didn’t know you guys were doing a feature on the soccer team. Why? We’ve lost like the past three seasons.”
“The female soccer team,” Fiona said in a rush, the idea hitting her right away as they stepped inside the apartment. “We need a male soccer player’s perspective on their strengths and weaknesses.”
“Oh,” Tommy said, disappointment seeping into his voice. “Well, have a seat. You want something to drink? Water? Vodka?”
“I’ll take a martini if you’re taking orders,” Gage said with a laugh, clearly trying to sound as charming as possible.
As soon as Fiona sat down, two dogs came running out from one of the side rooms, pawing her legs and trying to climb up in her lap.
Fiona used to love dogs. She had family dogs as a kid, but after her kidnapping, they were ruined for her forever. Her captor had three or four big dogs. He’d bring them up to them to allow her to pet them. He’d even unshackle her hands and wrists so that she could reach forward and touch the dog. But then, the dog would growl at her and flinch backwards, preparing to fight. She remembered that even as a teenager, when she was still tied up in that basement, she used to think, We’re the same. That dog and me, we’re the same pathetic little beast. We’ll never get out of here. We’ll never be free.
Now, sitting in Tommy’s room with his big, fluffy dogs trying to climb up into her lap, all of that came back to her, hitting her straight in the heart. She gently pushed the dogs away from her body, letting them walk over to Gage instead.
Gage pulled out his notepad from his pocket and turned to an empty page. “So, who would you say is the strongest asset on the team?”
Tommy rolled his eyes up in the back of his head as he considered the question. “Mmm, probably Hailey Bennet,” he said a moment later, nodding up and down to himself.
“Really?” Gage said. “That’s interesting. Everyone else we interviewed said somebody else.”
Tommy’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “That’s weird. Hailey is the best. Who’d everybody else say?”
“Um, I don’t know. What was her name, Fiona? Oh, that’s right. Victoria Greenwood,” Gage said, petting the top of the two dogs’ heads.
Tommy was silent for a long moment, but Fiona saw his face fall. He suddenly looked about ten years younger, a little boy trapped in a corner, terrified, with nowhere to turn.
“What…what do you really want from me?” he whispered.
Gage pretended not to understand what he meant. “Just a few more questions, if that’s alright with you. I just wanted to get your insight on a few things.”
“No, I mean, why are you really here? You don’t care about the soccer team, do you?” Tommy asked.
Fiona looked at Gage, who turned and stared back at her. Together, they nodded, both simultaneously deciding to drop the act, at least in part. “We’re here because of Tori,” Fiona said, turning back to face Tommy. “We wanted to know if you could help us find her.”
“Why would I know anything about that?” Tommy asked, but his tone turned mean and angry as he got up from his chair. “I don’t even know her that well.”
“Mmm, I think we both know that’s not really true, Tommy,” Fiona said, uncrossing her legs and standing up to her full height, which was about an inch or two taller than Tommy’s. “I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t know anything!” Tommy shouted, and his voice actually broke and cracked on the last word.
“Stop lying to us, Tommy!” Fiona shouted back, walking closer to him. She saw him shrink before her, and some little piece of Fiona—a horrible, hateful piece—cherished his fear. That part of her felt satisfied, like causing somebody pain was the one thing she’d been waiting for all these years.
“We can help you, Tommy,” Gage said, obviously playing the “good cop” to Fiona’s “bad cop.”
“Just tell us the truth,” Fiona said, stepping ever closer to Tommy. “Just tell us.”
But then, Tommy suddenly stomped his feet and his dogs began growling, circling Fiona’s body like sharks in the ocean.
“Get ‘em, Porkie! Get ‘em, Donnie!” Tommy yelled, running to the other side of the room.
Fiona tried to stay calm, looking from one growling, snarling dog to the other, but her legs started shaking, so hard that her knees gave out, sending her tumbling to the ground. Get up, Fiona’s inner voice insisted. Get up. You can do it. You can get up. You can survive this, just as you’ve survived everything else. You can get out of this alive.
But her body wasn’t cooperating. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t budge a single inch. It was like her body had already given up, slipping away from her like the dogs had already torn her apart.
Fiona shut her eyes, letting the darkness overtake her. It was always waiting for her, after all these years. It was fitting that it would end this way.
“Here, boys! Here, boys!” Gage’s voice pierced through the darkness like a flaming sword, cutting apart all the fog that seemed to clog Fiona’s panicked brain. He must have yelled at the dogs from the other end of the room. “Come here, come here. It’s okay, babies, come here!”
For one long, eternal, terrible moment, there was total silence. Nobody made a single noise. But a second later, Fiona heard the rapid pitter-patter of the dogs’ paws against the shiny hardwood floor, scurrying off toward Gage and away from her.
At first, Fiona just curled into the fetal position, keeping her eyes shut even as her other senses returned to her, gradually filling her brain with new perceptions. The dogs were panting now, whining a little bit, and their paws kept scratching against the floor. They obviously weren’t angry anymore.. They must be…playing, Fiona thought. Playing with Gage.
That’s right, Fiona thought as she slowly pried her eyes back open and lifted her head to see Gage laughing down at the dogs. His family had dogs, lots of them. She remembered from the first time she stopped by his house, the week after the trial ended. The dogs jumped up on her then, and she almost had a panic attack right then and there, but Gage talked them down, convincing them to stay away from her. He was always good with dogs.
Maybe for Gage’s sister, Abby, the kidnapper’s dogs were a comfort in the darkness of the basement. For Fiona, they just tortured her even more, giving her a glimpse of sweetness and softness that she’d never get to feel again. It was like holding a single drop of water above a starving man in the desert, just a cruel reminder of what was being snatched away from her. But for Abby, it must have been a reminder of her family. Maybe even a reminder of Gage.
Fiona was torn back to reality by the sound of Tommy’s weeping on the other side of the room. “What do you want from me?” he cried out. Fiona turned to see him sitting on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Tori Greenwood,” Fiona said, her voice squeaking at first but slowly restoring itself with each subsequent syllable. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” Tommy said. “Honestly, I don’t. She just disappeared. Nobody knows where she went.”
“That’s awfully convenient for you, Tom,” Gage said from the couch on the other side of the room, still petting the dogs and letting them lick his hands. “We got evidence that says that she was scared of you.”
Tommy blew out his breath, staring down at his own lap. “I tried to get with her, okay? But she turned me down,” he said a moment later.
“And by ‘tried to get with her,’ you mean you assaulted her?” Fiona asked, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach as she pictured Tori’s bright, smiling face.
“No, no! I just…I didn’t know she meant ‘no,’ at first, that’s all,” Tommy said, but Fiona still doubted him. There was a part of her that wanted to launc
h her body across the room and smash this little shit into the ground, beat the truth out of him until she got something that she could use.
But she held herself back, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet to distract herself from the urge cause harm to this punk. She wanted to tear into something, pound something soft and fragile into the hard ground. She wanted to punish somebody for how weak she felt, how helpless she still was to save Tori. She wanted to see blood. But instead, she just bit down on her bottom lip until she tasted copper and glared at the terrified teenage boy that cowered before her.
“We should search this place,” Gage said, still petting the dogs as if they were his own pets.
“Right,” Fiona said, walking deeper into the large apartment and turning the corner to search several bedrooms for any sign of Tori or spatters of blood or any other telltale evidence that she might find. But nothing came up. “Goddammit,” Fiona muttered as she came up empty on the right side of the apartment. She turned the other way, heading into the kitchen and den area, but again, it was just an immaculately cleaned, normal apartment. There was nothing to find.
“Nothing,” Fiona murmured as she returned to the foyer where Gage was still holding one of the big dogs in his lap while petting the other one with his free hand. Meanwhile, Tommy was in a pile on the floor, tear tracks visible on his face. Fiona’s stomach turned over as she looked at him, seeing how scared he was.
“Why’d you set the dogs on us?” she asked, but she didn’t feel as fiercely angry as she had before. It was clear this kid wasn’t involved in Tori’s disappearance.
“I don’t know. I thought…I thought maybe you were her family coming to beat me up or something. I didn’t mean to hurt her….I didn’t mean to do anything bad,” the kid said, rubbing the side of his face with one hand while he slowly pushed himself to his feet with the other. “Please, just leave me alone.”
Gage also got to his feet, gently pushing the dogs away, even though they whined at the loss of contact. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
“If…if we find out that you hurt her, really hurt her…” Fiona said, her hands curling up into fists automatically. She didn’t finish the sentence, letting the unspoken threat hang in the air instead.
Tommy nodded quickly, but his eyes were unfocused, staring off behind Gage and Fiona like he was too scared to look them directly in the eyes. Good, Fiona thought. He should be scared of me.
Gage and Fiona walked out of the apartment and went back down the elevator, heading towards the subway stop back to Gage’s apartment. Fiona had to restrain herself from banging her head against the back of her seat, a thousand different emotions colliding inside her skull.
Two suspects down and still no solid leads. Goddammit.
And besides, the further they rode away from Tommy’s apartment, the shakier Fiona felt about her own actions, intimidating the young boy the way she had as well as scaring the shit out of the sunglasses employee earlier.
What is wrong with me? Fiona wondered. She’d wanted to hurt these two young men so badly. She wanted to cause real damage. There was something broken inside of her, something bad and dirty and wrong. That’s why he took me, she thought. The kidnapper, years ago. That’s why I survived. Because there’s something evil about me, too.
Some tiny voice inside her brain tried to argue back, saying that it wasn’t true, that she was just a little messed-up because of her trauma. But it wasn’t convincing. Deep inside, she knew the truth about herself. She was every bit as rotten and corrupted as any killer. Her soul was full of holes, eaten-through like an old wedding dress. Soiled. Ruined. That’s what I am, Fiona thought as the subway rolled to a stop. I wasn’t broken. I was remade into something dark, something sick, something evil. I just have to accept it.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you okay?” Gage asked Fiona, taking her hand to lift her out of her seat and off the subway car before it started moving again.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Fiona said, but Gage could tell that she was lying. She wasn’t very good at deception, even after years of dealing with criminals. The next moment, she yanked her hand out of Gage’s, which hurt him like he’d been stung, but he should have expected her to pull away. We’re not together anymore, he reminded himself. He had to keep repeating that inside his mind until it really sunk in. Despite the fact that it had been over a year, somehow he had never really accepted it as reality.
He unlocked his apartment and opened the door for Fiona, who stomped inside, her feet falling heavy on the ground like she weighed a thousand more pounds than she really did. She was frustrated, that much was obvious. Gage felt it, too—the disappointment that they still hadn’t found anything, but Fiona was really worrying him. She seemed disconnected, like she wasn’t really there with him; her brain seemed to be a million miles away.
She stared at the ground as she walked back and forth across the living room and kitchen, turning around and retracing her own steps several times in a row.
In all their years together, he’d never seen her like this. Sure, he’d witnessed more than his share of panic attacks and crying fits, but nothing like this. She was so agitated and so angry, pacing around his apartment back and forth, back and forth, like she was stuck on train tracks that moved her on the same path over and over again.
“So what do we do now?” Gage said, trying to get Fiona’s attention. But she didn’t look at him, her head bowed as she continued to move past him. Gage cleared his throat, speaking louder this time. “We’ve got to go back to square one, right?”
“I can’t fucking believe that we…” Fiona trailed off, shaking her head.
“What? Say it,” Gage said, leaning against the wall to look at her as she moved.
Fiona sighed deeply, her breath coming out ragged and rough. “We’re just…wasting our time. We don’t know what we’re doing here. We might as well just sit on our asses while he carves Tori up into bits.”
“Hey,” Gage said. “Don’t talk like that. It doesn’t help anything.”
“Well, what the hell will? Huh? What the fuck can we do to actually help? I’m just…” Fiona shook her head again and fell back into silence, picking up the pace until she was practically power-walking across the room.
“Hey, baby, baby, stop,” Gage said, stepping in front of Fiona to freeze her in her tracks. He grabbed her shoulders to hold her in place, but his grasp was gentle. She could have shrugged out of it if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
“Don’t call me that,” Fiona whispered. Her eyes were now wide and full of fear, but at least she wasn’t running away from him.
“It’s what you are,” Gage said. “No matter what, you know? You’re my…well, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” Fiona said, shaking her head again and staring down at their feet. “I don’t…I don’t feel good, Gage. I don’t feel okay.”
“Okay, okay, how can I help?” Gage asked, beginning to rub his hands gently over her shoulders, trying to work out the tremendous amounts of pressure he found between her shoulder-blades.
Fiona’s throat worked as she visibly swallowed, finally lifting her eyes to look into Gage’s. “Maybe just…hold me?” She leaned forward, slowly folding her body into Gage, who quickly wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be alright,” Gage murmured into her hair, rubbing a hand down the top half of her back, feeling her spine through the back of her sweater and dress.
“It’s not; it’s not. It won’t be okay, Gage. I’m not okay,” Fiona whimpered into the fabric of his shirt, her words muffled but still audible.
Gage smoothed over the back of her head, scratching lightly at her scalp, feeling her sink deeper into his body. “Let’s go to the couch,” he murmured, dropping a kiss on the top of her head before pulling back to lead her over to the sofa.
They settled onto the cushions of the couch, Fiona pressing her body right
up against Gage’s and reaching over to grab his hand. He could feel her pulse pounding through the thin skin of her wrist, her blood rushing right against him. Gage rubbed his fingers over the back of her hand, willing her heart to calm down, but it thumped hard and fast like a war drum. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispered to Fiona.
“How can you say that?” Fiona whispered, clutching harder at his hand until her nails dug into his skin. “I’ve never been okay, as long as you’ve known me. I’ve always been…”
“You’ve always been strong,” Gage argued. He didn’t mind feeling her nails dig into his skin. He was willing to take whatever pain she had to offer if it would make her feel better. “You’ve always been tough. You’ve weathered every storm. You’ll make it through this one, too, even if…” Even if we don’t find Tori in time, he thought to himself, not saying the words out loud. He wasn’t sure if Fiona could bear to hear them right now.
