Lulling the Kidnapper

by O. L. Gregory

  The attendant behind the counter looked up from some paperwork and asked ‘Sam’, “The usual?”

  “No, I think I’d like a cheese steak this time.”

  “Ketchup?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The attendant nodded, shifted her eyes over to me, and froze. Yep, she knew she’d seen me before. And from the look on her face, seeing me with ‘Sam’ wasn’t meshing in her mind very well.

  I gave her the smallest shake of the head that I could, and hoped that ‘Sam’ wouldn’t catch it. “I’d like an Italian sub, mayonnaise, sweet peppers, and no pickles, please.”

  She drew her eyebrows together and nodded. Asshole may not have ordered his usual, but I sure did. I didn’t know if that would help her place me, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

  After that, he walked away from me to pick up a couple of things in the short aisles.

  I noticed that the officer was watching me from the corner of his eye as I walked over to the candy aisle that was situated in full view of the register.

  “Hey, Rick,” called the asshole from a couple aisles over, “where do you keep the bait? I’m thinking about taking up fishing.”

  Back in the walk-in section with the cases of beer, you jackass. Wait… Fishing? Really? I wondered if he’d let me go sit out on the pier with him, and expand my little world past the porch? I’d be just that much easier to spot, sitting out there.

  Rick, the owner, called out and confirmed that the bait was in the refrigerated area.

  The cop’s eyes were still on me, alert and watching.

  I picked up a candy bar and clutched it to my chest. I turned and met the cop’s gaze head on. I stood there, frozen, tempted to blatantly stuff the candy bar under my shirt, forcing the cop to take me in for shoplifting. I wanted nothing more than for that cop to slap cuffs on me, throw me in the back of his cruiser, and take me to the police station.

  The cop waited, one hand moved to rest on his radio, the other on his nightstick.

  I’m sure I looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Tears threatened to erupt as I stood there. I was so close to doing it that I could all but taste the adrenaline flowing through my system. I wanted my freedom and here was my chance, damn it.

  But, the whole thing could backfire so gravely. This cop was alone. If he was busy grabbing me, Asshole could make a run for it. Or, if the cop read my body language correctly, he could go after Asshole and get shot. Did the cop know that ‘Sam’ was packing heat? If only I could have seen this opportunity coming, I could have passed him a note while Asshole was in the back.

  More than I wanted to go home, I wanted Creepazoid caught. My rescue would be hollow if that… thing… was allowed to continue to roam this planet. I’d forever be afraid that he’d come back, looking for me, and kill my parents in his bid to regain his so-called wife.

  And, worse yet, the cop could try to seize me. Asshole could shoot him, grab me, run, and punish me to no end. A shudder ran through my body.

  “Do you want that?”

  My heart skipped a beat when I heard Asshole ask his question from beside me and interrupted my internal debate.

  I turned and flashed an instant smile at him, “Yes, if I may. I love these, and I haven’t had one since… in a long time.”

  He returned my smile, oddly at ease in front of our tiny audience, “Of course, it’s a simple enough request.” He retrieved the candy from my death grip. “I wish you had told me you liked these. I could have been bringing one home to you, every now and then.”

  I don’t, Asshole, my dad does. My father always picked up a Skor bar when he saw them, they’re his favorite. And when I sit down later to eat this one, I’m gonna close my eyes and pretend that my daddy is right there by my side, helping me figure a safe way out of this.

  Our order was called and he placed our additional purchases on the counter by the register as I went to retrieve the sandwiches.

  The girl handed the sandwiches over to me without saying a word. But her expression spoke volumes. I could only hope that she and the officer would talk about me, once we left.

  “Ugh,” I said, making a face. “Your cheese steak is leaking grease!” I told him as I took my place in line behind him. I put the sandwiches down and showed him my oily hand.

  He looked from my shiny hand to my scrunched up face and started chuckling.

  Man, I was sooo tempted to wipe my hand on his perfect, white shirt. But that probably would have been pushing my luck a bit too far. As it was, any tension he might have been feeling about having me out in public like this was now broken with his amused grin, and I didn’t want to wreck that.

  The cop came up behind me with his purchases, sat them down, leaned over the counter, and grabbed a few napkins for me. “Here,” he said as he handed them to me.

  A thought suddenly dawned, bright and clear. I was about to completely waste this opportunity, and I didn’t have to. I had this cop’s attention, he looked young, but his senses were on alert. He was just waiting for me to trigger a response in him, he knew something was up, and I didn’t want to leave him and risk that he would doubt his instincts.

  I was going to use him to send a message, a freaking loud one.

  I met his gaze as I accepted the napkins with my, clean, left hand. “Thank you.” I proceeded to use the napkin to wipe only the palm of my right hand, just enough so as to appear to be cleaning myself up as Asshole paid for our meal.

  Just as he was getting his change, someone else walked in, recognized ‘Sam’, and started trying to make small talk with him. Since when in the hell is Asshole a social butterfly? Asshole thanked the owner, grabbed the bag, and took two steps towards the newcomer.

  Bingo.

  I angled myself away from Asshole, faced the cop, wiggled my fingers, and placed them on his bag of beef jerky. I pressed my fingers firm and even, made eye contact with the cop, and lifted my hand.

  I stepped away from the counter to go join Asshole as I quickly used the napkins to more thoroughly clean my hand. I could only pray that my efforts had left a decent set of prints.

  I’d certainly never been in trouble with the law. But thanks to my dad dragging me to my local elementary school, years ago, to have my fingerprints taken, they should be in the registry. I had complained about going to school that rainy Saturday afternoon. But he’d insisted that it would help the police find me if I ever went missing. If this worked, I’d owe my dad an apology for having whined that day.

  Asshole didn’t linger long with the newcomer, and I was disappointed that we hadn’t seen anybody else in the store. I had to keep in mind that this place was steady in its business and never really busy at any particular time.

  I threw my dirty napkin into the garbage can on my way out the door. And as I did, I turned and made eye contact with the officer at the register one last time before I exited the store. I wanted to make sure he remembered my face.

  I held my breath on the way back to the car. Please let him run those prints, please! If he ran those prints, they’d trace back to my file in Pennsylvania. If my case was closed for some reason, my prints, and the cop’s suspicions, would reopen it. If it wasn’t closed, this could bring it back to the forefront. But more importantly than anything else in the world, they’d tell my parents that a fresh set of my prints had been found.

  My parents and family would know that I’m still alive.

  They’d know that I was so close. Close to the marina, to getting free, and to finding a way home. Don’t count me out yet. I’m still alive, I’m still fighting.

  I still exist.

  I clicked my seatbelt into place and smiled at Asshole as he backed out of the parking spot and onto the street. Of course he couldn’t turn around in the parking lot and give the officer coming out of the store a chance to see his plate. “You really are setting up home here, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am. I’m making as many friends as possible. This is a small town, a
nd I want it to feel like home.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Good. That went well in there. And now that they’ve met you, maybe they can get off my back about never seeing the famous Mia.”

  “There were bound to be questions…”

  “Of course and maybe more to come with our age difference. That’s why it’s imperative that people know me, know us, as a happy couple.”

  My brow wrinkled. “Why? In case someone tries to track me down?”

  “Yes. And the more people who see how happy we are, the easier it will be to convince them that you left willingly, that you ran away and I rescued you.”

  “…Excellent thinking.” Was it just me, or did the world just tilt further off its axis? He was talking like he was convinced that all was going to go his way, that it was a done deal. “Does this mean that I’ll have to be seen out with you more often? If I just stayed hidden away, wouldn’t it be less likely that I’d be found?”

  “If you continue to remain hidden, it becomes suspicious. We have alternate identities, we’re far enough from your old home, and they’ve probably been told that you were likely murdered by now. It’s unlikely they’d be able to track you to this rinky-dink town. But, if it ever does happen, I want our story to be airtight.”

  I smiled as though I were proud of his planning, despite all the holes the police would drill into that story. “You think of everything,” …except for the little turn of events where eventually I’m seen by somebody who knows me well.

  I hope my ex-army father and his ex-army brothers see me, follow me to your house, and wait outside to ambush you as you leave for work one morning. I hope they all have their guns and permits on them and bring you down with a deafening hail of gunfire, turning you into Swiss cheese.

  “It’s too bad I won’t be going in there to get lunch again.”

  You little son of a bitch. “Why not?”

  “So many people at work get take-out for lunch, we’re all just going to pick a place each day and have everyone order from there. That way, one of the office staff can just go and pick it up all at once. I won’t have much reason to go back into that store.”

  Well, hell. My new cop friend probably didn’t even know that he couldn’t just keep an eye out for the creep to return to the store. And I doubted that Asshole, here, had let very much of his personal information slip out. Those people probably didn’t know where he worked, or where in town we lived. Buddy boy was dumb, not stupid.

  Ugh.

  Chapter Seven

  Lapse in Patience

  The next morning I was gathering laundry, and had just reached the top of the stairs to head down them, when I caught a glimpse of something truly amazing.

  I sat down on the top step and stared out in wonder, with the clothes basket resting on my lap. It was a Coast Guard boat lazily passing by. One Coastguardsman kept his eyes on the water as he steered, the other one was scanning the shore. I’d been here for months, and this was the first time I’d seen them.

  After they were gone, I got back up and continued down the stairs. I hoped that I’d only appeared to be taken with something out on the water. It certainly was something that happened often enough. I also hoped that he didn’t have a camera watching the water. If he put together that I had been fascinated by a Coast Guard boat, I was going to have to start pretending to be afraid of being discovered, paranoid that they were looking for me. The real trick would be in trying to figure out if, and when, he ended up putting it together. I didn’t want to act paranoid if there was no need. But I couldn’t act fascinated and then change my tune when he called me out on it, after watching me for a while once he figured it out.

  I just wasn’t sure how the paranoia would go over with him. I didn’t know if he would feed off my faked paranoia and try to move me or if he would become even fuller of himself and wave my fear off.

  Hmmm. I could always fabricate something later on about not wanting to alarm him by telling him. If nothing else, I could act very nonplussed that the Coast Guard would be patrolling the coast as more and more people came into the area for the season.

  Life wasn’t easy when trying to deal with the criminally insane.

  I was sitting at my desk, later that afternoon, when the boat returned for another slow drive-by. And later that evening, I’d just turned out the kitchen light and was ready to settle down on the couch, as Asshole worked in his lair, when another Coast Guard boat passed by at a faster clip than the last two times.

  I was used to seeing a Coastie pass by my grandparent’s place during the summer. Though only once a day during the preseason, and then twice at the height of summer, never three times a day. They were looking for something… or someone.

  The next day, they passed by at the same three times.

  And they did it again for a third day.

  It was entirely possible that ‘Sam’ had pridefully mentioned that he had bought his wife a house along the water. He’d have let that little tidbit of information slip if he was trying to make a good impression. He also would have been fishing for a little bit of admiration and approval for his accomplishments.

  I went into the master bedroom closet after I’d seen the afternoon boat pass by on day three. As soon as I turned on the light and shut the door, I crawled on the floor, behind the dresses he’d bought for me, and let the material hide me from the rest of the world.

  I was shaking when I finally let the tears start flowing. They were looking for me and I knew it. I’d done it, I’d gotten word out that I was still alive and fighting. That cop had figured it out and he was fighting for me, too.

  And there I sat, having an identity crisis.

  To say that I had been pissed at God from the moment I’d been taken would be an understatement. Yet I still continued to pray. I don’t know why though, maybe because it was all I had left.

  I grew up in a family that believed in God and Christianity, but didn’t go to church. Call it hypocritical if it pleases you, but that’s how I was raised. That homegrown faith is all I had to latch onto when I was taken. And I was also raised to believe that everything happens for a reason. - It took me months, and a failed escape attempt, to conjure up a possible reason for all this.

  I’d made a run for it. I’d put the lid down on the toilet, stood on it, got up on the counter, and popped the window open. Like an idiot, I dived head first through that hole. I landed on my back, gasping for air until I could breath normally again after the impact. Then I stood up, tried to shake off the pain that was already taking a portion of my attention away from my task, and took off.

  I’m made a run for it, all right, and then he found me. I could have knocked on a neighbor’s door, but I was too afraid that whoever opened the door might be some sort of twisted friend of his. I knew nothing of covering my tracks, how best to find your way out of nowhere, which direction would be best to pick, nothing. I thought I was doing well by running into the woods and staying away from a road where he might see me. I’d kept the road just out of sight, but still within hearing distance. I had run, I had listened to my surroundings, and no one drove by that I could hear. And still, he found me, shot me in the leg to make me drop, drug me back to the house, threw me in the basement to beat the shit out of me, then shut off the electricity, and stormed up the stairs.

  For the very first time, I truly thought that I would lose my fervent grip on sanity.

  And in the darkened, dank recesses of that basement, I called on Jesus and cursed Him out. After I called Him every dirty, filthy name I could think of, I demanded to know why. Why was this happening to me? Why couldn’t He just have let me get away? Why… just… why?

  I’d like to say that I heard some booming voice, or saw a burning bush, or some sort of something. But I’d gotten no response, just dark, desperate silence. I like to think that He was just giving me time to cool off.

  At some point during that sleepless night, I began to wonder if I was the first one he’d taken. I wonder
ed, for the first time, if he would have taken another girl if I had gotten away. How maybe the next one would give up and die, or go insane, or begin to believe the lies he tried to pass off as reality.

  This was the point at which I had begun to think that I had discovered my purpose here, the reason Asshole had been led to me. Maybe I was meant to be the one that got him caught. Maybe the last girl couldn’t do it. Maybe the next ones wouldn’t be able to do it, either. But maybe I could. Maybe I was the one capable of snaring him in his own trap, so he couldn’t hurt anybody ever again.

  Every single day after that, I prayed to be able to find my way home, and for Asshole to find his way into a jail cell.

  And yet, with the help of a would-be angel in a policeman’s uniform, it seemed as though I was being thrown a lifeline. At some point, I had to consider that I would be the stupidest kind of fool to not accept the life-ring being tossed out for me grab hold of.

  As I sat huddled in that closet, I pictured my family, my friends, and my boyfriend. I shivered, I cried, I mourned. All I wanted to do was to go the hell home. Even if home would no longer feel the same, even if no one knew how to talk to me, and instead looked at me strangely. Even if my friends wouldn’t know how to connect with me anymore, even if my boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend, I just wanted to go home.

  Lord, help me, because I don’t want to be here anymore.

  I gave myself a few more moments for my pity party, and a few deep breaths to calm myself back down, and I crawled out of the closet. I cleaned my face up and got dinner together. When he came home, Asshole suggested that we eat out on the porch, so we did. And when that U. S. Coast Guard boat came by that evening, I got up. “I’m going to get some more lemonade. Do you want more, too?”

  “No, thank you,” he answered as he got up. “I’ll help you clear the dishes, though.” He placed the dishes on top of each other, picked them up, and followed two steps behind me.

  His eagerness to help me clear the table was an obvious indication that he had seen the boat, too, but he didn’t say anything about it. He must have been pleased that I had wanted to go inside when they passed by, or he would have said something. I didn’t know if he was worried about it or not, maybe he just figured it was about time they started patrolling the coast. Whatever his reasons, I decided that it was best to not worry about a reaction until he gave me a reason to worry.