by Ella James
And all at once, she reaches out in sleep to grab onto me, and things get loud.
I’m looking down at her, only instead of sitting in this car, I imagine us in a chair on the deck of my yacht. And all around us is the sound of Miles Davis.
And I know we’re celebrating out at sea because I married her.
In another life, a better life, a different life, I marry Angel, not because it makes a fucking bit of sense—but just because I want to, and I can.
And it’s autumn and we’re walking Central Park and she’s got on a huge coat, tied around her awkwardly, and under it, her soft belly is growing big and round.
It makes my dick hard. Thinking about Angel with my baby growing inside her makes me hard as a motherfucking rock.
Because I love her.
This woman in my arms—I love her. Angel. She’s my other half. My compliment. She makes me not care what the future holds for me. If I can see her, even once a year, I want to be here for it.
I sit there with my heart slamming against my sternum, bathed in the scent of her, warmed by her soft, slender body, worshipping every single cell of hers—this woman who is infinitely better than every specimen that’s come before her.
And I think that maybe Davis would appreciate the tragedy.
Because tomorrow, I’m probably going to die. And there will never be a chance to tell her how I feel.
*
There are some things I can do, so as she sleeps, I do them.
I write down my bank account information. I’ve got a few accounts that no one knows about. I use the phone under the driver’s seat to call those banks, which are open, because they’re located in Switzerland.
Through a series of elaborate emergency questions, I prove my identity, and designate Angel as the accounts’ new beneficiary. My photographic memory knows her social security number, and for that reason alone, I’m able to complete my task. Just before the sun comes up, I risk one more call to a man named Hebert Frank, my financial attorney.
I give him verbal instructions that if something happens to me, if I’m deceased or unable to make medical decisions for myself, I’d like Annabelle Mitchell to receive my royalties.
“Ric—how much of them? Er, what percentage?” he asks in that stalwart voice of his, which has yet to sound surprised by my call.
“All of them.”
I nestle Angel into the blanket she bought at the pharmacy and drive carefully toward the city. And when she wakes up, rosy-cheeked and bathed in the sunlight that spills around L.A.’s cityscape, she climbs into the front seat and kisses me on the lips.
I pull the car into a car wash, fuck her twice, and eat her pussy twice after, crouched in the passenger’s seat floorboard with her legs over my shoulders. Then I buckle her back up, give her the paper from Thom specifying a contact at each applicable law enforcement agency, should any problems arise for her, and speed toward Cedars Siani.
We find out on the radio that her mother’s still alive—at least as far as the public knows, and I can see the relief on her face. A little of it ebbs away when an analyst explains that I kidnapped her from prison.
When I frown, she says, “I don’t want people thinking that’s what happened.”
I clasp her hand. “Don’t worry, Angel. No more worrying. I want you to promise.”
*
Annabelle
“You must think I’m either a heartless bitch, or some kind of robot. Ricardo, I’m going to worry. I’ll be worried until you call me later tonight. You are still doing that, right?”
He nods, his eyes flickering over mine, then returning to the road, where L.A. traffic is starting to thicken.
“I’ll call you as soon as I’ve finished what I’m doing,” he says. “Phone number 555-155-2398.”
I nod. “You better call me. I still don’t like this. Do you really think they could get your sentence shortened back to how it was?”
He told me that this morning—that, according to his handlers in the FBI, he could probably get the extension removed—and it’s filled me with elation ever since.
“I think it’s possible,” he says.
“It needs to happen. But if it doesn’t, I can still see you?”
He nods. “In exchange for the favor I’m about to do them, I’m going to be just another prisoner. Juan Juarez might run things on the inside, but I’ll be segregated, and his instructions will be to leave me the fuck alone.”
I catch his hand in mine. “I’m so glad. I just wish they had done this sooner.”
He shrugs. “Sometimes you have to give to get, especially when it comes to pricks like them.”
“Give and get.” I grin. “I’m already a horny girl again.”
“Come see me next week.”
Hope bubbles around inside my chest. “I will, for sure.”
He checks the phone in his hand. “We should be about eighteen minutes from the hospital.” His fingers squeeze mine. “You’re not gonna give me any trouble, are you? Getting out and going? You know I need you to go so I can do what I have to do.”
I nod. “I know. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“Good girl.”
As he brakes for traffic, he leans over and kisses my lips.
I have to turn my gaze away from him and focus out the window, because I’m starting to feel like I might cry.
Ten minutes later, he takes the exit for the hospital, and I do cry.
He pulls over at a fast food joint. Walks around the car, opens my door, and gathers me into his arms.
“Don’t cry, Angel. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
“I just don’t want you to go. I’m scared.” I cling to him.
“I promise you will be okay.”
“And you?”
He smiles a little. “I can take care of myself. No need to worry.”
He kisses my eyes and cheeks and lips, then eases me back into the car.
“You’re sure about this plan? Like—totally sure?”
He nods. “Go home to your sister and your mom, Angel. Don’t think about me until I call you.”
“I’ll never stop,” I whisper.
His fingers stroke mine, and we turn into the hospital’s vast parking lots.
He pulls up at the main entrance and stops. He grabs my mouth and kisses me, so hard and hungry. He keeps it brief, and fast, then comes around and lets me out. He walks me up the stairs, where a uniformed man greets me.
“Are you Annabelle Mitchell?”
“I am.”
Beast tugs me into his arms abruptly, and we rock together, hugging. He’s holding both my hands as I look back to the bell hop.
“I’ve got an envelope for you, ma’am.”
He hands it to me, and Ricardo releases my hands.
He kisses my forehead, then my cheek, and finally my lips. I throw my arms around him, holding tight until he steps away and holds his hand up. “Bye, Angel.”
I follow him down the cement steps, and he laughs at me. “Go back up and call your cab.”
“I love you,” I say as he opens his car door.
He freezes and his face loses its expression.
He gets inside and drives away, and I cry as I call my cab.
Several minutes later, a yellow van pulls up. I get inside, already preparing to ugly cry in privacy.
That’s when someone grabs me from behind.
*
Beast
I know Angel’s home address. I looked it up. So when the van she gets into turns the other way out of the hospital parking lot, I know my sixth sense about Thom was right. Just not quite in the way I thought. Thom isn’t going to let me get killed by the Juarez Cartel and help Angel live happily ever after. He’s going to get us both. Remove all threats.
I speed after her, following the van as it drives toward LAX.
CHAPTER 13
Annabelle
Ugly cry, I do.
I cry so hard, my captors seem a little bit afraid.
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In the driver’s seat is Glasses, a short man of indeterminate nationality. Then there’s Hairy, an American-seeming man with a long, gray beard; and Pervy, a man who might be Indian, who leans over me every time the van hits a bump and tries to adjust my seatbelt but instead ends up touching my boobs.
Yes, that’s right—I’m buckled in, in the middle seat on the back row.
My mouth is bound with a long strip of tape, and my wrists are bound together in front of me by that same gray tape.
From the moment they grabbed me, as we careened out of the hospital parking lot, to right now, as we’re bouncing down the interstate, I’ve been sobbing like a mental case. I’m blowing snot bubbles out my nose, so I can barely breathe. Instead of calming me, my snotty state makes me sob harder.
I strain my hips and abs to stay upright as the van makes yet another hairpin turn, and in the whirl of our momentum, I think I see a sign for the airport. I sob harder still, because this is just my fucking luck! And a mile or so later, harder still, because we’re definitely going to the airport. Finally, just as I have to slow my sobbing roll because my nose is so stopped up I literally can’t breathe, Hairy leans back and holds a cell phone to my ear.
“When your mother passes, we will see nothing but the best for your sister Adrian. It’s not your fault you know what you know,” says the man who answered the call I made for Ricardo last night. “You’ll be going to Pakistan to be a rich man’s companion. No sex. Only business, lunches, and dinners. Play along if you want your Beast to live.”
The line goes dead, and Hairy raises his eyebrows.
No more crying for me. I sit numbly, trying to process that unlike last night, when my fate was still fluid, it’s sealed now. I may never see Mom, Ad, or Ricardo again.
A minute or an hour later, in what looks, to my blood-shot, puffy eyes to be an airport parking lot, Hairy picks me up and hauls me into another van—this one the boxy, European style. I’m thrown into the floor space between the two pilot seats in the middle of the van, where I lay while the three men pile in with me.
I’m too stunned to cry or even move as we shoot off moving again. Glasses turns up a National Public Radio program that seems to be about the cultural importance of pigs, and I hear a woman talking about how more and more people are keeping them as pets.
I start to tremble as my situation begins to feel more real, and immediately I begin imagining Ricardo’s hands on me. I imagine he said he loved me when we parted at the hospital. I imagine him stroking my hair. I imagine us somewhere far away, tucked into a bed. The bed is soft and warm. I’m in that bed, not here. I can handle anything that happens to me now, because Ricardo will be right back.
There’s a fine line between positive visualization and outright denial, and I don’t give a fuck where that line is.
I keep my eyes shut, even when Pervy’s boot repeatedly nudges my thigh, and I try my best to feel Ricardo’s fingers stroking through my hair.
I picture Adrian’s face, not premeditating the logic of this move, and of course, the mere thought of my poor sister sends me into a fresh wave of hysterics.
My sobs ebb and flow as the men in the seats over me talk in a foreign language. I picture myself wearing strange lingerie, carrying a tray with martini glasses balanced on top. I’m going to be a sex slave.
I can’t believe this is my fate.
A low whine comes from my nose, followed by a bunch of snot, and Hairy says, “Stop!”
I think he’s talking to me, but he must be talking to Glasses, because instantly, the van jerks to a stop.
Pervy looks down at me and says something in that other language: Pakistani?
Then they’re all moving at once. This time, both Pervy and Hairy grab one of my shoulders. They thrust me out the door so hard, when they startle and let go of me, I fall face-first to the asphalt, busting my nose, which promptly starts to pour blood.
Lots of blood.
Or maybe that’s not my blood.
I kick my legs hard enough to roll over and blink up into the bright sun. I squint, because it’s bright, and all I can see is shadows. Warring shadows.
I think I hear Ricardo’s voice, and I make a mental note that if I ever am a therapist, I’ll need to warn my patients that positive visualization can lead to a mental break a little faster than one might expect.
Then I see the glint of a knife.
Ricardo has Hairy on the ground beside me and is prying a huge knife from his hands. He stabs Hairy in the chest, then whirls and slashes Pervy across the neck. Pervy’s knees hit the ground, and blood gushes everywhere—and yet, this is my fairy tale come true.
I’m sobbing again, happy tears this time, as Ricardo kicks both Pervy and Hairy, and the sound of their moaning fills this new airport parking lot.
Beast looks down at me—Ricardo. He says, “I love you, Angel.”
Then he opens the driver’s door, pulls Glasses out, and starts to kick his ass. And it’s perfect—absolutely perfect—until I see something glisten in Glasses’ hand, and Ricardo is clutching his chest as Glasses stabs him once, twice, three times, four times. Ricardo hits the ground beside me, pouring blood, and Glasses stabs him three more times before the van speeds off.
I’m screaming, but no one can hear.
I long to touch him, but my hands are tied.
Warm blood leaks out of him, penetrating my clothes. His eyes are shut. His face is white. His body limp.
I can’t even sob. I drag myself to him and lie my head against his arm, as blood soaks through my hair.
*
I don’t know when or how, but an ambulance arrives. Paramedics wearing blue scrubs much like ours jump out and start barking questions. They jerk the tape off my mouth, and cut the tape binding my wrists, and I start screaming. I grab at Ricardo, frantic to check on him, but they put him on a stretcher and whisk him up over me faster than I can even get a glimpse of him.
I jump into the ambulance behind him, and I hear one of the EMTs say “Cal Hammond” while another one says “dead.”
Someone yells something, and the female EMT is pushing paddles against his chest. She yells again, and I watch in horror as his torso comes up off the cot.
He’s dead, he’s dead…he’s dead. He’s dead!
She does it again, and I clutch my stomach. And again.
“Last time,” she says, and the other paramedic is speaking quickly into a little phone. I hear her say, “actor.”
I jump on Ricardo. I grab his leg, and a male paramedic yells and jerks me off, but I’ve got my idea and I’m not backing away. I start screaming.
“BEAST, HELP ME! BAD GUYS HAVE ME AND I’M HURT!”
“Miss, you need to—”
“Beast, PLEASE! PLEASE help! I NEED YOUR HELP!”
“You need to—”
“BEAST, RICARDO, PLEASE! Please, please!” My screams die out as sobs punch through me. I collapse into a bucket seat, wailing so loud it startles me at first.
A paramedic hovers over me, telling me something I can’t understand because I’m screaming. He keeps repeating himself, over and over, the same words from his lips; his eyes are wide, but I don’t care. The other two are moving all around Ricardo’s pale, dead body, holding onto the sides of the ambulance as we whip through traffic.
I’m sobbing so hard I can’t breathe, sobbing so hard I’m deaf and blind to everything except my pain.
One of the women cleaning blood off Ricardo grabs my arm, and I just sob harder—until she yells, “HE’S NOT DEAD! He’s hanging on for now! So shut your mouth, please, and quit disturbing my patient.”
I stop sobbing, instead gulping huge breaths back, and things go fuzzy as someone puts something plastic over my nose.
CHAPTER 14
Annabelle
I’m in a hospital bed when I wake up, and an unfamiliar man is standing by my bed. For the first few seconds, my mind tries hard to make him into Beast, but this man’s coloring is so different that it’s impo
ssible, even for my addled mind.
“Who are you?” I croak. My eyes can’t seem to focus. They flit from his lightly bearded face to an IV sticking out of my arm.
Some time passes, no more than a minute or two as I try to get my bearings. He sits in a gray plastic chair beside my bed, which I notice is surrounded by curtains.
“Do you know where you are, Annabelle?”
I shake my head. “Where’s Ricardo? I came here with…” I swallow, and find my throat is dry. So dry. My head feels dried out, too. It aches, and it’s so hard to think.
I came here with Ricardo, didn’t I?
I hold my hand out in front of me, and that’s when I notice: there’s blood caked in my fingernails.
My heart pounds hard. “I came here with him.”
“With who,” the man beside me prompts—and something clicks inside my head.
That voice…
“You’re Thom.”
He nods, and I pass out again.
*
FIVE DAYS LATER
I can’t take Adrian to the hospital with me. In the three days since Mom passed, every time I close my eyes, she starts to cry. The trick is, letting her go to sleep first and then nodding off beside her, so if she wakes up before me, there’s no lag time between the moment she wakes up in her bed and the length of time it takes her to run into my room and be sure I’m still alive.
To me, she doesn’t seem to be doing very well, but the hospice counselors tell me that all of this is normal for a kid her age.
Without Holly helping me watch Ad, I have no idea what I would do. The only thing that keeps me from feeling totally guilty for monopolizing all of Holly’s time is, two nights after Mom died, when she stayed over to help me with Ad, I got her to agree to let me pay for some community college courses she’s been wanting to take.
