by Lisa Ladew
Knox caught Mica's attention by heaving himself off of the wall and pacing through the room with heavy strides. His hands raised, seemingly on their own, and clutched at the air in front of him, as if they were closing on someone's throat. A low, meaty growl came from his chest as he punched at nothing then whirled around to face her.
"He tried to sell your virginity, didn't he?" Knox thundered, not waiting for a response from her. "That's why you were so eager for me to take it! I'll fucking kill him! The worm has no right to still be walking on this earth!"
Mica shrank into the couch, away from raging Knox. He wasn't angry at her, but he still scared her. He was huge, and strong, and very scary looking, his clear eyes flashing with hate and rage. His words shot through her, shaking her to her core. She never imagined he would be this angry over something someone had done to her a long time ago. She wondered suddenly if he still cared for her ... Mica pushed the thought away. It had been ten years.
Knox stopped a few feet from her, breathing heavily, but not looking at her. He was staring intently out the window, as if he could make Bailey appear from sheer indignation. Mica began talking, strangely calm now, eager to get the rest of the story out.
"Yes, he did. That's where we were going that day on the train. He hated to fly because of some sort of a helicopter accident in Vietnam. He had a ... a buyer for my ... for ... me in New York, and that's where we were headed. It had been almost a year since that incident, and I almost thought that nothing was ever going to come of it. I was seventeen and trying to make plans for what I was going to do when I turned eighteen. I would only have been entering my senior year in high school when I turned eighteen, but I didn't want to stay with Bailey any longer. I knew at that age I would be able to get a job and an apartment. Bailey wouldn't let me work, but I'd stopped at some grocery stores and coffee shops on the way home from school before and found out how much they paid. I would stay up late at night doing the math, combing through apartment ads, trying to figure out if I could make it work. I'd considered running away many times, but my friend Angela had run away and said it was awful. She'd been living on the streets in Seattle and had been raped twice before she finally went home. It was so strange, I was half appreciative that he'd let me live there after Karen had died, but also completely weirded out by the way he would look at me and just by how strange of a person he was. He never tried anything with me ... sexually, but I always felt the threat was there, just below the surface of our lives, know what I mean?"
Mica stared at Knox. It was easier to look at him now that the worst secret was out. Inside, she felt almost soothed, and finally detached from what had happened to her. The telling of it felt good, like she was finally scrubbing the stain of it off of her soul. It had haunted her for years, and when Bailey had reappeared in her life, she'd felt as out of control as she had when she was a child, with nowhere to go and no options. It had colored all of her actions, making her defensive and reactive and weak, but now she finally felt stronger. He was the freak, not her. She was a grown woman now, and she wasn't going to let him terrorize her anymore. The telling of the story ruptured the sticky web of shame that had grown around her. She felt good, right, joyful even, for the first time since her mom had been alive. She could feel Knox's anger radiating out from him, but it no longer scared her. A light feeling of freedom built up inside her chest and she almost believed she could fly from it. She stood and walked to the window, the words coming faster now.
"One day, just before school, he told me I owed him for all the years he let me live there. He slapped down a piece of paper that outlined everything he said I had to pay him back for. Food, rent, things like toilet paper and school supplies. The amount was insane. I still remember it to this day. He said I owed him seventy-four thousand dollars and sixty-two cents. I didn't like to talk to him much, but on that morning, I couldn't say a word. I just stared at him, and my eyes kept creeping back to the number. I couldn't imagine how I was ever going to be able to come up with all that money, but it didn't seem real either. Who does that? Who tells a kid they adopted that the kid has to pay them back for taking care of them?"
Mica took a deep breath, ready to tell the rest. Ready to finally release the burden of her biggest secret forever.
If only Dick Bailey would somehow disappear for good, maybe she could become a normal, healthy person. Someone who wasn't spending their present hiding from their past.
Chapter 7
Mica
"I went to school and stewed on it. By the end of that day I got up the courage to say something. I knew that what I was about to do could get me kicked out of the house and onto the streets, but I was going to do it anyway. I felt like time was running out, and if I didn't get out of that house soon, something bad was going to happen. Something worse than the unknown. Besides, I kept thinking there had to be someplace for unwanted kids like me to go, right? I'd never been in foster care. Maybe it wasn't bad. So I went into the office after school and asked to talk to the school resource officer. He was an actual police officer assigned to our school, a burly guy with a unibrow and a constant 5'oclock shadow. I'd seen him in the halls but never talked to him before. Like I said, I was a good kid, but he seemed to look at all kids like they were thieves or hoodlums from the word go. Once I was in his office he didn't even ask me to sit down. He just looked at me like I was lying already. I remember forcing out the words, trying to ask him if it was legal for my adoptive father to demand I pay him money for rent and he laughed at me. He told me maybe I should do the dishes without being asked every once in a while and I wouldn't have that problem. I tried to explain to him that I did all the dishes, all the cleaning, all the cooking, and really everything there was to do around the house and he just raised his one big eyebrow and said, 'come now, that seems a little unrealistic.' I pleaded my case but I had a hard time getting the words out so that they made sense and finally he threw me out of his office. I didn't know what to do, so I ended up just going home. Bailey didn't say anything to me for a few days, and I began to think it was going to be ok. I didn't know how loans worked, but I had looked up what happens if you don't pay someone money you owe them and it seemed like he was going to have to sue me to force me to pay him, and he couldn't do that till I was eighteen. Bailey was still an enigma to me, but I knew he hated the government, hated the courts, and hated lawyers, so I didn't think he was going to do that. I started thinking maybe I could escape from him. I could wait until I was close to eighteen and just take off. One problem was I wouldn't be able to finish high school, but I figured I could get my GED. Another problem was he wouldn't let me work and didn't have any money to escape with. I tried to figure out a way to find a job after school without him knowing. I even thought about failing all my classes so I had to go to summer school ... or making it seem like I did. I didn't know how long it would take me to make enough money to escape from him, but I knew I had to try."
Mica turned from the window to face Knox, wanting to see his face suddenly. Wanting to gauge his reaction. Did he understand how it had been for her? Completely alone with no options? Or did he blame her for not getting out of there sooner? He stood, tense and tall, next to her couch, his arms crossed. His eyes were soft as they met hers and Mica's heart overflowed with the warmth of his stare. He was so handsome! She stammered for a moment, almost forgetting what she was talking about, then recovered and went on.
"M-my plans were accelerated a few days later when I found out what he really had in mind. He sat down in the same chair as the first time and told me that he understood my predicament, he wouldn't want to enter adulthood with that kind of debt hanging over him either. He wanted to offer me a way to pay for it all one-time, free and clear. He explained that he had a really good friend who was lonely, and who was too busy to date or find a wife, and he just wanted to go out on a few dates with me. Bailey said he just wanted a female to talk to, to buy things for, to take to dinner, and if I agreed to hang out with him for a week or two, Ba
iley would consider my debt completely paid, cuz this guy had saved his life in the war and he really wanted to do anything he could for his friend. I gaped at him. He made it all sound so ... normal. I couldn't believe what he was saying. He said it wouldn't even happen for a while, but all I had to do was agree, just say that I would do it, that I would go see this guy willingly, and that was enough for him for now. I could hear the greediness in his voice, and the unstated demand, and suddenly I was afraid that if I said anything, I would be locked into something I couldn't back out of. I didn't know it at the time, but I found his notes about this guy later, and he'd run an ad in a magazine, claiming to be me, saying I wanted to sell my virginity. He'd found a buyer for a sum I don't even want to mention and he'd talked to the buyer as himself, saying I'd asked him to help me set up the deal. So the big kicker was I had to agree."
Mica watched emotions fly over Knox's face. They all looked like some variation of anger. She dropped her eyes and her voice became softer.
"Later, I actually found a bunch of ads he ran, and not all of them said it had to be consensual. In one of them with very enigmatic wording, he made it sound like he was a seventeen year old virgin looking for someone to fulfill a rape fantasy, as long as they paid to do it. That one scared me. They all scared me. I had no job, no friends, no family, nowhere to go, but I was determined to leave. That afternoon I packed my clothes in a backpack and hid it under my bed. My plan was to put the backpack outside my window the next morning, then grab it on my way out the door to school. I was going to skip school and catch a bus somewhere, maybe Seattle. I'd read there were organizations in the big cities that would take teenage girls off the street and help them find a job and give them a place to stay. The problem was, I didn't have enough money to go anywhere. I had a few crumpled dollar bills and twenty-four dollars in change I'd found or gotten from digging aluminum cans out of the garbage and turning them in for recycling. That was almost enough for a bus ticket from Portland to Seattle, but I had to get to the bus station in the city first. My mother had left me some jewelry that I figured had to be worth something, but it had all disappeared after Karen had died. I assumed Bailey had taken the rings from my dresser, but I'd never confronted him about them or asked him for them. That afternoon, I knew they were my only hope. He wasn't around. I didn't know where he was, but I took the opportunity to do something I'd never done before, I snuck into his room to look for my mother's rings. I'd found the letters in his office while I was cleaning it, but his room had always been off-limits to me. I was terrified of being caught, but even more terrified of having to stay with him. His room was spartan, only a bed, a TV, and a dresser. I went through his dresser but found nothing, so I looked in the closet. I never did find my mother's rings, but on the floor of the closet, in a shoe box, I found money. Almost all twenties and fifties, but wads of singles too, all jumbled together. I stared at it for a long time before I finally stuck my hand in and took some. I didn't know how much I had but I knew I had at least fifty dollars, and I figured that was enough to get me away from him. I shoved the money into my pocket, then took it out and shoved it into my shoe, way up into the toe. Taking his money made me feel like I wanted to throw up, but I couldn't think of a way around it. I decided I would pay it back and that got me moving. I put the lid back on the box and got up to leave the room."
Mica stopped talking for a moment, her throat feeling raw and overused. Her heart had begun to pound in her chest as she remembered what had happened next and she needed a moment to collect herself.
A buzz at the door sounded, startling them both.
Mica jumped and stared at her entryway, reality suddenly slamming back in on her. Knox made her feel safe, but she wasn't safe. Who knew how much crazier Bailey had gotten over the years.
Knox tensed and stalked toward the door immediately. He put a cautious eye to the peephole. "No one out there."
"It's the downstairs door. Press the left button and you can talk. The right one opens the door."
Knox held the button down and growled into the tiny speaker. "What?"
"It's me," a male voice unfamiliar to Mica said.
"Second floor," Knox replied, his voice lighter this time. He held down the right button, looked out the peephole one more time, then opened the door wide. "One of my brothers," he told Mica.
Mica's heart pounded. She hadn't had time to tell him the full story yet. She didn't know how he felt about her. She nodded, then stood and went to the kitchen, half-hoping to avoid the brother altogether.
As she moved, she caught a glance of the brother coming up the stairway to her floor. She knew immediately it was Daxton. His picture didn't flash across the entertainment news every few weeks like Knox's did, but she'd seen his picture in the Forbes article and other business publications. She knew his role in Knox's company was security manager and chief operating officer and she was surprised to see him out doing this kind of work. But then Knox was the president and CEO, and he was there.
She'd never seen Daxton in person before. His head was bent over his phone, but she could see his strong jaw line and shaggy light-brown hair. He looked as tall as Knox, slim-hipped with broad shoulders filling out a black blazer over an all-black outfit. He reminded her of a secret service agent. She put on a burst of speed, wanting to reach the kitchen before he arrived at the door. One Rosesson brother was all she could deal with right now.
Chapter 8
Knox
Knox swung the door open and stared long and hard at the mat in front of the door. The box was gone. That was bad news. That almost certainly meant Bailey had come back for it. So his plans had changed, and Knox was positive they hadn't changed for the better. The man had balls to come up to the second floor in broad daylight, either that or he had someone working with him. And he wasn't above toying with his intended victim just for the fun of it. That's all he'd been doing so far anyway. There was no way he had plans to climb in that bathroom window. It was too small. He just wanted to instill terror. Knox ground his teeth. Bailey needed a lesson on how to treat women and girls. Knox hoped like hell he could be the one to give it to him.
Knox's phone dinged in his pocket as Daxton drew close.
"That's from me," Daxton said to Knox, after a quick greeting. "It's Bailey's latest mug shot, but it's from thirteen years ago. I've got three two-man teams out in the neighborhood but we haven't found anything yet. Can I remove the ladder from the back of the building?"
"Not yet," Knox said. "I'll need to get a cop down here first. We want to document everything in case this gets dirty." Damn, he'd forgotten to call the cops. He had been too interested in hearing what his lovely charge had to say. The story boiled his blood but he couldn't think about that right now. He wanted to hear what Daxton had on Bailey.
Knox looked at the mug shot Daxton had sent him. Even though it was from thirteen years before it looked eerily like the man Knox had seen in the window, like the man hadn't aged at all. He had the same crazy gray hair and eyebrows and shaggy beard, the same scowl lines, and the same desperate, mean look in his eyes. He turned to Daxton. "What kind of a record does Bailey have?"
Daxton spoke quickly. "He's a strange one. He was a leader in the Brotherhood of Saints, which is an organization like the Ku Klux Klan, but not as well-known. They set up massive militant camps in the woods where they teach the members about guns and survival. Their particular belief is that we are in the last days, brought upon us by the wrath of God, and the only way to purify the world again is to rid it of non-conformers and non-believers. Their current specialty is hate crimes, but Bailey left or was kicked out right after that arrest in 2002 for threatening the president. It must have been a pretty credible threat to get him arrested."
A voice called from the kitchen and Knox and Daxton both looked that way at the woman rinsing a cup in the sink. "That's the year before Karen died," she said.
Daxton dropped his voice low. "Is that our client? She's pretty."
Knox stepped
in front of Daxton, blocking his line of sight, his eyes hardening, his voice also dropping. "She's off-limits," he growled at his brother.
Daxton grinned, his smile lopsided with teasing humor. "Sorry bro, I didn't realize you had dibs."
Knox's face hardened to match his eyes. "No dibs, Dax. This is a client we're talking about, not a ticket to the fair. Besides ..." Knox looked over his shoulder, then back at Daxton. "She's Rachel."
Daxton appeared confused for a moment, then his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. "What?!" he roared, punching his brother in the chest. "You're kidding me!"
