Ransom's Redemption

by Rhavensfyre

  ***

  “Well?” They stood outside the interrogation room, watching the man on the other side of the one-way mirror pace back and forth nervously.

  A smallish, unkept man that could use a few more meals in him before he could even qualify as skinny, he didn’t appear the least bit dangerous, but Ransom knew from experience how deceiving looks could be. One of the deadliest men she ever had the pleasure of meeting was a diminutive Senior Chief who always had a joke handy. He also just happened to be a highly decorated SEAL team instructor. You didn’t earn that position because you had a pleasing personality.

  “No. He doesn’t look familiar.” Victoria rubbed her eyes, trying to force her brain to cooperate. She was afraid of making a mistake. “At least, I don’t think so, I don’t know.”

  “He’s a nervous little man, isn’t he?” Ransom observed. It wasn’t just the constant movement. He needed to touch something continually, scratching his head, smoothing his hair…then moving to his face before giving up and moving to something in the air in front of him. His lips moved in time with his hand movements, it looked like he was doing math on an invisible chalkboard. “Why are his hands shaking so bad?”

  “Probably coming down off something.” Roy joined them, a fresh cup of coffee in hand.

  “Hello? Hello?” The disheveled man ran towards the glass and stared into it, disturbingly close to Victoria’s face. She blanched and stepped back a pace.

  “Jesus, that’s creepy.”

  “Can I leave now? I still have to find her. She said I have to find her and apologize to her. It’s important.” The man started weeping, actually weeping as if his soul was on fire, and slid to the floor. “I didn’t mean to scare her, I love her. I would never hurt her, never. I need her to know that.”

  “What is he talking about? It sounds vaguely like something from a 12 step program.”

  “Hell if I know.” Roy took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Needs sugar.”

  “Screw it, I’m going in and talking with him.” It didn’t take long for Ransom to regret that decision. The man did smell as bad as he looked, and now she was locked in a room with him and some hellacious halitosis that had some time to build up since he was brought in earlier that day.

  “Who are you?” Ransom demanded, her voice cracking like a whip in the small room. The weasel started to sweat more, his eyes rolling around the room so that the whites showed.

  “No one, I’m no one.” He licked his lips, scraping an equally dry tongue across chapped, flaking skin. Ransom winced, but didn’t look away. Gross.

  Okay, let’s try this again.

  “Okay, Chappy, how about this. Why are you looking for Victoria Carrillo?”

  Victoria’s name barely made it past her lips before Chappy hooted and jumped up, starting his finger math again. The rhythmic movement seemed to help him concentrate, but he had to be encouraged to talk at the same time.

  “We were talking about Victoria?”

  “Victoria, yes. That’s the one. I need to find her. Do you know where she is? I lost her and I’ve been looking…and I…” He stopped, his expression going sly. He stood up straight and tugged at his clothes to make himself appear more presentable. He looked at her with a haughty expression far exceeding his dress, and addressed her in a very clear voice that didn’t sound a bit like his prior rantings. “I’m not speaking another word. I believe I get a phone call and a lawyer?”

  Roy waited for Ransom to join them outside the interrogation room. “I told you he was nuttier than a squirrel turd,” he said, sounding overly pleased with himself.

  “What do you think, Victoria? Could this guy be your stalker?” Ransom turned to their resident expert.

  “It depends; he’s obviously compromised right now. I’d have to know what his baseline is. There’s a good chance he’s off his medications and that’s why he’s acting this way.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Ransom said.

  “But not good enough for a conviction,” Roy added. “We need solid evidence to link him to your case. I’ll talk to the judge, let him know what’s happening and then see what I can get done this weekend. He needs a psych evaluation and that gives me a good reason to hold him.”

  Ransom rolled her shoulders, feeling the tension building there. It would have to do for now. At least the man was in a cage and not running amok.

  “Go home Ransom. Take care of your lady.” Roy slapped her arm before ambling down the hall. “I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “I’ve got some news for you.”

  Ransom landed on the couch energetically enough to bounce Victoria, taking the short route over the back rather than walking around.

  “You’re in a good mood.” Victoria looked up from the book she was reading. It was so nice to just sit and relax for once. She had been enjoying it, and so had Ransom. With the stalker locked up, it was just the two of them, and she had to admit, just sitting and enjoying each other’s company was wonderful. I could definitely get used to this, she thought, feeling a momentary sadness. This place was becoming a second home to her, mostly because of Ransom, but she was also falling in love with the house, the woods around it…even though she hadn’t had a good latte in weeks and she missed the Thai Take-out Palace down the street from her house terribly.

  “Yes I am. Here, I brought you a cold one.” Ransom handed her a tinted bottle, while she kept its twin for herself.

  “Beer? Since when do you drink beer?”

  “Mm. We’re celebrating so I brought out the good stuff.” Ransom clanked her bottle against Victoria’s and took a swig, then squinted at her while she swallowed. “The best micro-brewed root beer you can find in the state. Non-alcoholic, of course.”

  “Goof.” Victoria turned her bottle around until she could read the label.

  “Me? Never. I am the epitome of seriousness.” Ransom managed to solemnly swear she wasn’t acting goofy while still being a goof. That was true skill there.

  “Normally I would agree with you, until you brought me root beer.” Victoria chuckled, delighted to see Ransom’s playful side coming out. The last time she remembered drinking root beer there was ice cream involved and she hadn’t graduated from high school yet. She took a careful sip, expecting a mouthful of caramel flavored bubbles, but was delightfully surprised by the bite and undertones she tasted. “Wow, that’s different.”

  “See? You have to trust me.” Ransom grinned and took another swig from her bottle, then rearranged herself on the couch, tucking one leg under her and leaning back against the side cushion. “So, back to my news. We’re one step closer to proving this guy is your stalker. Roy was able to get our John Doe’s mugshot uploaded. Your assistant, Bridget? She positively identified him as the one who broke into the office. Even if we can’t pin the stalking on him we still have him for that, and since he assaulted her, it’s not just a simple breaking and entering. He’s facing a shitload of other charges when they get him back home.”

  “That’s great. I mean…other than Bridget getting hurt, at least he’ll get the help he needs.” Victoria nervously started peeling the damp label off her bottle. The man was not well, he needed therapy, not jail time. “Have they had any luck finding out who he is yet?

  “Oh, yeah. About that.” Ransom scratched her forehead. There was something seriously off about the entire case, she just couldn’t put her finger on it. “The minute a lawyer showed up, our guy was all over the place. Tossing out names left and right, demanding to see his family, to be released, threatening to sue everyone who was anyone in the county for holding him. A real nut job, right?” Ransom realized what she said and bit her lip. “Oops, sorry Victoria. I know that’s not what I should call him.”

  “It’s okay, Ransom, just go on.” Victoria waved Ransom’s concern away. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard worse coming out of the mouths of people who should know better. Those people she would correct but not Ransom. Ransom wasn�
��t trying to be cruel on purpose, and she was trying. That made all the difference.

  “Okay, so Roy looked him up. We thought it was odd someone like that didn’t have a record. Even with the system back up and running, we didn’t get a single hit on his prints…then we found out why.”

  Ransom rummaged around in her jeans and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. “Mr. Matthew Thomas Theodosis, the Third, no less. Seems he has a rich daddy who wanted to keep it quiet that his pride and joy wasn’t such a prize. He’s been in and out of institutions for the last few years, but it was all done privately. No court orders, no arrest warrants, and no prison time.”

  “So, how did he end up here and looking like that?” Victoria asked, mentally pulling up the image of the dirty, disheveled man that had been glaring at her through the one-way mirror. Blue-gray eyes so pale they looked washed out against the broken capillaries branching across his cheeks and nose like a hundred red tinged rivulets flowing beneath paper thin skin. Matthew Thomas Theodosis? Matt Thomas?

  Her face went blank. She blinked, very slowly and raised her eyes to meet Ransom’s. “Oh, my God. Ransom. I know him. I know who he is.”

  The way she said “him” made it sound like a bad thing. Alarmed, Ransom scooted closer to Victoria and took her hands. They were ice cold. “You know Matthew? How?”

  “Matt, I knew him as Matt Thomas.” Victoria clutched Ransom’s hands. Afraid that if she let them go, she’d lose her way or her courage. Either way, she wouldn’t be able to finish her story, and Ransom needed to hear it.

  “Matt was going through the same study program I was. He seemed nice enough at first, but over time things kept happening that started to disturb me. Subtle things that sounded stupid when I tried to tell one of my instructors about him. They chalked it up to ‘student over diagnosis syndrome’…you know, where you start to see symptoms in every mundane behavior?” Victoria’s eyes widened and she shuddered. “But it wasn’t that, Ransom. He was creepy. He started following me around, checking up on what I was doing, who I was hanging out with. Even after I told him that I wasn’t interested in him one bit, he insisted that we had a thing. I told him I was a lesbian. He scoffed it off and started digging up fringe studies supporting his beliefs that homosexuality wasn’t part of the natural spectrum of human sexuality.”

  “What happened?” Ransom asked.

  “He became increasingly paranoid over the last semester. His grades started slipping and he started complaining to the instructor’s that it was my fault…that I was keeping him from studying either because I was ignoring him or because I was distracting him. He could never decide. The man was totally obsessed with me by the end of the semester. I was afraid to go out at night because he would somehow show up wherever I was. The movies, dinner, it didn’t matter. He’d just show up.”

  “Then what happened?” Ransom was almost afraid to ask. Behaviors like that had a tendency to escalate, then turn deadly.

  “We were supposed to start our internships in the fall. I couldn’t imagine him working with real clients and I finally decided enough was enough. I went to the dean and lodged a formal complaint against him. Matt, of course, denied everything. They almost believed him over me. It was terrible. As it was, I lost my internship with a great facility and had to scramble to find a replacement location. He got to them, somehow. God knows what he told them. He could sound quite convincing and sane when he wanted to.”

  Ransom nodded. She could see that happening after watching him flip so suddenly. The smooth, cultured voice, the arrogant way he looked down his nose at her…he certainly knew how to play the snotty little rich boy. Or maybe, buried beneath all that mental illness, that’s the real Matthew Thomas Theodosis, the Third.

  “That’s really frightening, Victoria. What made them finally believe you?”

  “That’s the thing, I’m not sure they ever did.” Victoria swallowed against the memory driven nausea and forced herself to continue. “The biggest insult wasn’t how long it took the school to act, it was the fact that my complaints had nothing to do with his removal. It was his academic status. Remember what I said about those papers? I think he was losing it and his altered mental status was showing up in his work. That was what sent him home, not my complaints.”

  “He must have found you again and decided he wasn’t done with you yet.” Ransom felt cold anger return to the pit of her stomach when she thought about what might have happened to Victoria. It was hard for her to reconcile her desire to punish the man that tormented Victoria so much with the one she talked to. He was sick, that was true, but at the heart of that sickness, there was still that twisted sense of entitlement that she hated so much.

  “Maybe,” Victoria said, sounding troubled. “But that takes me back to my last question. What happened to him after they kicked him out of school?”

  “His parents tucked him away in a comfortable little place that kept him medicated and happy, that’s what happened,” Ransom muttered. “Of course, it was all voluntary on his part so I guess he decided he had enough one day. He signed himself out and disappeared, much to his family’s dismay. My best guess? He’s been living on the street or staying at one of the homeless shelters downtown.”

  Victoria took a deep, cleansing breath and let it all out. “Well, it’s all over now. We can finally relax and get on with our lives. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.”

  It was Ransom’s turn to feel nervous. All that fear and trepidation that Victoria had been feeling somehow transmitted itself to her through their joined hands and it made her feel shaky. She smiled and nodded, but her heart wasn’t in it as much as she wanted it to be. “What are you going to do now? I mean, now that he’s been caught?”

  “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to have Samuel drop me off at home and make sure my house is still in one piece. I don’t live in a bad neighborhood, but a vacant house in the city is sure to attract attention. My rose garden is probably a mess, and I need to make sure nothing is rotting in my refrigerator.” Victoria made a face, anticipating the mess she was expecting to find. “Samuel’s a good guy, but I doubt he thinks about stuff like weeds and expired milk. Then I need to go into the office and see what’s left of my practice.”

  And talk to Samuel about a few things, Victoria thought to herself. People like Mrs. Johannsen shouldn’t have to rely on charity donations like that to survive. Something has failed miserably here and I have a feeling Samuel might have a few ideas how we could help.

  “Tomorrow?” Ransom asked, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  Of course Victoria would be raring to get back. This stalker situation had already cost her weeks out of her life, and like she said, it had already affected her practice. Asking her to stay would be greedy and selfish.

  “I’m going to head out tomorrow, not because I’m in a hurry to leave, but because the sooner I leave the sooner I can come home to you.” Victoria exhaled slowly. She was banking a lot of what she was saying on assumptions. “We’re only a few hours apart. As soon as I get everything settled, I’d like to come back. If that’s okay with you?”

  The uncertainty in Victoria’s voice quieted Ransom’s doubts about where they were headed. She hated that part of herself that told her she wasn’t worth it, that her emotional baggage was too much for anyone to want to deal with. At least she had moved past the ugly voice inside her head that swore Victoria’s interest in her was motivated by some perverse need to fix someone she thought was broken.

  “Okay? That’s more than okay.” Ransom wanted to jump up and hug the woman sitting there so calmly discussing their future…the woman who just saved her from having to swallow her pride and ask if she was planning on coming back. “When will you be back?”

  Victoria chuckled. “I haven’t even left yet!”

  “I know, I know. I’ll try to curb my enthusiasm.” Ransom felt something shift in the air between them. It was reflected in the way Victoria looked at her, and in the way
her lips shaped themselves around her next sentence.

  “Not too much, I hope, and not just yet.”

  Victoria uncoiled from her spot on the couch, that was the only way to describe the slow and sinuous movement as she made her way to Ransom’s corner. All of a sudden, Ransom found herself straddled by a very intense woman gazing down at her with a smile on her lips that spelled trouble and a look in her eyes that told her it was the kind that could get them both arrested in some states.

  “I believe that you and I have unfinished business to attend to. If I have to leave, I want to make sure you remember exactly what you’ll be missing while I’m gone.”

  Victoria leaned down and nuzzled Ransom’s neck, kissing the sensitive flesh there before bringing her lips close to her ear. “I think you and I need to go to bed, where you can tell me again how much you love me. Unless you prefer the confines of the safe room?”

  The teasing voice sent Ransom’s pulse skyrocketing. She flashed hot and cold, goosebumps rising wherever Victoria’s breath brushed across her skin. She became painfully aware of how open and exposed Victoria’s position made her. Straddled open legged across her lap, she was pressed against the seam of her jeans, close enough for Ransom to feel just how hot she was. Lust jumped like a flame in Victoria’s eyes just a second before a wicked smile curved her lips into a delicate bow. She moved against Ransom, just the slightest bit of movement, but it sent a wave of arousal coursing through her body. Her hips jerked in response, forcing Victoria to grab on to Ransom’s shoulders for support. The low moan that followed was sweet in Ransom’s ears.

  “The bed will do just fine,” Ransom growled, rapidly losing the ability to think past what Victoria was doing to her body.

  “Are you sure?” Victoria reared back, the evil glint still shining brightly in her eyes. “The safe room is right down the hall, no stairs to run up.”

  “If you don’t get up those stairs, you won’t have to worry about the damn safe room. You won’t make it off the couch.”