Instinctual

by Amanda Mackey

  Inside The Lord’s quarters, Stavros marveled at the luxuries that had been brought in to an otherwise dull cell block. Indulgent lounge chairs and pillows sat amongst giant ferns and exotic foliage, all kept at the correct temperature via an internal controlled thermostat. Giant artwork of big breasted, naked women hung high on the refurbished, bagged walls looking out over the two men, almost mockingly with their hand-carved giant gilded frames. It was a far cry from the patient’s cell that resembled a cold room at a butchery.

  “Sit, my good friend. Tell me of our visitor arriving tomorrow. He’s also proving to be a valuable ally.” The Lord lit a Cuban cigar and blew the smoke arrogantly into Stavros’ face.

  “Carlos? Mmmm. He’s been with us for a while now and has kept his nose clean. He’s managed to keep the authorities off our back and seems to have the hunger we’re looking for.” Stavros stifled a cough as his lungs filled with the spent cigar smoke.

  “Good. Good. I’m sure he will do an excellent job looking after our patient.”

  The two men sat in silence for a long while, lost in their own thoughts, listening to the classical music that seeped from every corner of the room.

  Stavros had an unsettling feeling that the man on the gurney was going to lead The Organization into a whole world of trouble.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jake reached Kate’s apartment in record time after sensing she was in mortal danger. What the fuck was going on? She’d been safe in her apartment the day before. He’d seen her at the festival, browsing the stalls, happy enough until she’d sensed Jake’s presence.

  He was on high alert, ready for anything. He’d been trained to take care of himself, quite well, actually. If anyone so much as laid a hand on her, so help him, he’d string them up on a meat hook and rip their insides out.

  He faltered outside, not knowing if he should just barge right up there and take charge or quietly, stealthily move in, sizing up the situation first.

  He opted for the second one, as knowing Kate, if she were home she would not appreciate him blazing into her apartment all guns firing, even if it were to rescue her. Well, figure of speech. He wasn’t armed. In fact he hadn’t used his weapon in some time. It felt like a lifetime ago. So much had happened since he’d needed it. He felt a little naked without protection. Who knew what kind of situation was transpiring upstairs?

  Very slowly he went to try the handle on the front door and was surprised to find it unlatched and ajar. He knew Kate wouldn’t intentionally leave it like that.

  He pushed it open as quietly as the door would allow and stood in attack mode, waiting for someone to appear, but the small foyer was deserted. His eyes focused on the iron-clad stairwell that rose to the second floor before taking in the rest of the space. Downstairs was merely a parlor room. It was totally bare, with not even a coat rack, which seemed a bit of a waste of space to Jake, but then Kate was always a minimalist. Terrazzo tiles lined the floor, butting the stairwell. Three walls had been finished in rich, warm red tones with definite brown hues, darkening the space but attracting a certain allure as to what might await upstairs. One wall was yet to be painted, still covered in undercoat.

  Jake let his senses take over and slowly ascended the stairs into Kate’s world.

  Upstairs he stopped suddenly. He could smell her. That same perfume she’d always worn lingered, teasing his nostrils, causing him to close his eyes and inhale her scent fully. It drifted over him and offered comfort, as if a soft blanket had been wrapped around him.

  “Kate. You have no idea what you still do to me.” It was spoken quietly, almost agonizingly.

  It felt like heaven to be in her home, surrounded by things that were … well, Kate.

  The living area looked to Jake like it was in the middle of renovations with concrete for the floor and a couple of slaps of paint in different washed ochres on the wall closest to the kitchen. A small coffee colored sofa and timber table sat on a large, tan woolen rug with a bookcase overstuffed with novels and magazines on the right. An ornate armoire sat grandly behind the sofa, the two glass-filled doors revealing a few knick-knacks he’d never seen before. Other than that the room was empty. Everything looked in order. Nothing ransacked or broken.

  The apartment was silent to his keen sense of hearing. No shower running. No kettle boiling. No movement of any kind. Empty. Well, what the hell was he supposed to do now? Ignore the sense of danger? Assume that it too was just another manifestation of his fucked up head in that moment? No. If there was one thing he’d learned while training to enter the force, it was to never ignore a gut instinct. Sometimes even without proof you had to act on a hunch.

  This hunch felt too strong to let go.

  Jake brazenly moved over to the bookcase, touching the spines of a row of books. Mills and Boon. Stephen King. Val McDermid. Cookbooks. Hmmm. Nothing strange there. Kate had always been diverse when it came to genres of reading. A ragged spine sitting between Stephen King and Val McDermid caught his eye. There was something familiar about it. Old and well-read. A relic amongst the more modern. Dog-eared pages. Worn cover. The insignificant novel triggered a memory as he pulled it from the shelf and toyed with it, turning it. Opening the cover, he smiled. She’d kept it. After all these years, she’d kept it. A gift Jake had given her for her twenty-third birthday. An original 1934 classic novel, Little Women by Louisa Alcott. The age discoloration was part of its charm. The blue book with the brown spine had been hard to get but one that had been well worth the blood, sweat, and tears trying to find, just to see the look on Kate’s face. His penned scrawl dedicated to Kate had barely faded on the browned page inside the cover. It was something from him she’d actually kept. For whatever reason, it didn’t matter why, it still sat in her bookcase. It obviously meant too much to her to throw out. A small token of him that had stayed with her. He wondered how many times she’d read it now. Or how many times she’d just opened the book to his hand-written message to grasp on to all that she had left of him.

  Carefully he placed it back in its rightful place.

  He took a minute just to absorb the surroundings, knowing that this was the closest he had been to her in ages. To be standing in her home, touching her things, was nothing short of a miracle even if it was an invasion of her privacy. Maybe it would be the closest he would ever get. It was an unwelcome thought he quickly dismissed.

  Slowly moving from the living room to the bedroom, listening for any sign of life, his eyes widened at the doorway.

  The bed! It was unmade and in disarray. The pillows lay lengthways down the bed as if she’d been hugging them. This was so unlike Kate. She’d always been so meticulous when it came to keeping the bed made up. He’d never known her to go out and leave it in such a state. The wardrobe door hung wide open. Clothes loosely draped over the railing inside. The front door had been left unlocked. Something was off. He could feel it. It was almost as if she’d fled in a hurry. Professional mode took over. Analytical and defensive. Had she been kidnapped from her bedroom?

  Moving across the floor in two easy strides he perched on the edge of the bed, pulling a pillow up to his nose and smelling it, breathing in her aroma that had attached itself to everything in the small villa. His hand balled at the back of the pillow as he immersed his face in it, letting his eyes close.

  “Where are you, baby? Who’s got you? Why did you leave the place unlocked and in such a mess? Connect with me. I need to know you’re okay.”

  Still clutching the pillow, the fingers of one hand traced the hollow where she had slept. Another memory swamped him.

  Brushing his lips over every dip and hollow on Kate’s sensuous body, he felt her glorious gasps of desire echoing his own. Tasting the fullness of that pouty-mouth while burying his hands in the wild mane of cascading hair. His fill of her never enough.

  “You’re turning me into a greedy man, Kate.”

  “Mmm. Only for me, I hope.”

  “Beautiful, I’m addicted to you. You’re every br
eath I take, every thought I think, every emotion I feel. The more you give me, the more I want.”

  “Don’t ever stop feeling this way, Jake. I love you so much. As close as we get to each other, it’s never enough. Sometimes I just want to crawl inside you and become a part of you.”

  “You are a part of me, Kate. You’ll always be a part of me. Nothing will ever change that. Nothing will ever destroy what we have. I promise.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kate. I never meant to hurt you. You still are a part of me. I’ve tried to stay away and let you move on but I can’t. The pull is too strong, baby. I know you feel it, too. That look you had in your eyes at the festival when you peered into the crowd. Amongst the fear and hatred, there was recognition.” There was no point in getting his hopes too high, though. Too much had happened. Too much time had passed. He couldn’t expect her to welcome him with open arms. She had a lover. A life.

  Gathering his senses and standing to leave, a photo on the bedside table caught his eye. A photo of Kate and her new lover.

  “Christ. They look so… happy?” Hmm. He wasn’t even sure if that was the right word. His gut clenched at the same time as his teeth as he picked it up and studied it in more depth, revealing more than at first glance.

  His eyes focused on the man who had claimed Kate’s heart and a pang of jealousy hit him. Quite good looking apart from the receding hairline. Dark eyes, a little too far apart. Kate always did have a thing for brooding eyes. Again, no surprises there. A smile that didn’t quite reach the man’s eyes. Almost as if he was hiding something.

  Jake always had a knack at reading people. That’s why he’d been at the top of his game. Respected and admired. Able to see what others couldn’t. He could tell if someone was lying. Of course a photo had always been harder to read. Unsure if it was just wishful thinking or something more, he brought the picture closer, trying to position it to erase the glare from the light he’d switched on moments earlier, moving his gaze to Kate.

  He traced her face with a finger, trying to read her eyes.

  “You want the world to think you’re happy, baby, but those gorgeous eyes are lacking something. I’ve stared into those eyes more times than I can recall and they almost look hollow. You’re searching for something, beautiful. What is it? Happiness? Passion? Me? Damn it!”

  He looked back at the man with his cheek pressed in to Kate. He could barely contain himself.

  “What the fuck have you done with her, asshole? Where is she? So help me, if you’ve hurt her, I’ll hunt you down.” He was feeling very protective of her.

  Unable to look at the photo any more, he threw it on the messy bed and skulked into the kitchen looking for something that would help ease his rising anxiety. Shit! It was at times like this he hated his powerful connection to her. The unwelcome influx of dread that would continue to churn until he found her and knew she was safe.

  Maybe the overwhelming reaction at seeing her again was making him crazy. Overprotective as always. She was probably sitting drinking wine in that loser’s apartment, relaxed and carefree.

  “That loser! Listen to yourself, Jake. You’re green with envy at the thought of another man’s hands on her. You can’t accept the fact that she’s moved on and may actually be happy. She’s over you.”

  He almost choked on that thought. He rubbed his temples as he stopped at the “dog’s breakfast” of a work-station, just inside the long, cluttered kitchen. It looked in original condition and as old as the building itself. A cupboard hung askew on one hinge and the limited bench space meant enough room for a small table with two chairs, plus the office area. Paint peeled off the walls, leaving bits of white antiquated, undercoat in splotches here and there. The room screamed out for some TLC.

  “Jesus, Kate! When did you become so messy?” He couldn’t help but wonder if his leaving had changed her that much that she was now a stranger to him. Changed forever because of the fucked up outcome from his decision to leave. Could it be that she just didn’t care about anything anymore?

  His eyes targeted on the floor and a frown formed across his brow as he bent to pick up the remains of a cell phone. Judging by the pink decal on the front, it belonged to Kate. He gently inserted the battery and placed the case back together before slipping it into his pocket, needing by this stage to punch something. He closed his eyes, trying to breathe through the mounting discomfort.

  It was all his fault. All of it. He would never stop blaming himself for the way things were. For the fact that he was snooping in Kate’s apartment, looking for clues to her whereabouts, sniffing pillows and getting aroused at her scent like some animal looking to mate, feeling like they were now strangers when he could have been sharing her life, living in her apartment and making love to her right now.

  How reliable was that little voice in his head when he damn well couldn’t remember things from a week ago? He had to be losing it. Whatever had happened to him had affected his mind, surely. Kate could be anywhere. Maybe she’d just stepped out to buy dinner.

  And left her front door ajar? Hmm. I don’t think so. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s in trouble. When it comes to Kate, it’s almost like my intuitive side awakens. Maybe she brings that out in me. I’ve never felt so in tune with someone.

  He opened his eyes and saw the dangling faxes, flicking through each one, hoping for another snippet into Kate’s life. Work. Work. Work.

  “Good to see you’re still slogging it out, baby. I always loved that ambitious side to you. Looks like you’ve got a lot on your plate.”

  Glancing at the times on the faxes and the fact that all of them were from the same person it became evident that Kate hadn’t been home all day.

  Quickly he read the first fax.

  Time: 10 a.m.

  Hi Kate,

  Just wondering if you’d finished the article you promised me yesterday?

  Call me,

  Cindy.

  Thumbing to another one it read:

  Time: 12:17 p.m.

  Hi again, Kate,

  Where are you? Tried calling your cell three times during the day and you’re not answering. Call me as soon as you get in. We’re on a deadline here.

  Cindy.

  The earlier unease tripled in intensity as he read on:

  Time 6:06 p.m.

  Okay, now I’m starting to get worried. In the four years you’ve been working for me, you’ve always been contactable. Is your cell broken? Now, I’m getting the “please check the number and try again,” message. Article was meant to go to print in the morning and I’ve got nothing to give them. Hope you are okay.

  Cindy.

  Upon reading the last fax he swore loudly. His mouth set in a dismal line in front of clenched teeth. He wasn’t the only one worried now.

  He had to find her. He couldn’t help but feel her life depended on it. Something monumental had happened between his last sighting of her at the festival and the present moment.

  We’ve got your girlfriend!

  The repetitious words stripped him of rational thinking. He was out the door and practically running into the darkness to find Kate in a heartbeat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “This is useless!” Kate was stomping her feet like an errant child. So far, endeavoring to retrace the day’s events had taken her from the apartment, past Mr. Matioli’s familiar restaurant that was closed now, and into Market Square, that mainly housed drunken tourists imbibed with costly Italian wine. It was hard to think with all the noise. She felt out of place and almost invisible as party-goers stumbled around her.

  “I remember running. From what, though? What could have frightened me so? Think, Kate!” A constant buzz, maybe from the loud music and atmosphere of the night hummed through her body, causing a dizzy spell.

  Trying to stay upright, she wandered up the hill away from the belly of the festival to try and help clear her fuzzy thoughts, stopping every few seconds to steady herself.

  The labyrinth of skinny, confine
d passageways gave Kate the creeps at night on her own. Around each bend she half-expected to see a hooded figure wielding a scythe, as if she were immersed in some medieval horror flick. Nervously checking behind, she suddenly felt that wandering around on her own in the dark with so many drunken strangers in town was not one of her brighter moves. She should be tucked up at home in bed. What on earth was she thinking?

  Remembering back to last year on festival day, events had played out very differently. Unattached and single, Kate had gathered with friends visiting from the U.S. in Market Square and danced and partied all night until the sun came up without a care in the world, finally able to celebrate the new life she’d struggled to pull together. It was a bittersweet memory.

  The air was suffocating and still under the blanket of clouds that had eased in earlier to cover the stars. There was an edge to the night temperature now, away from the body heat of so many people.

  Turning down a tight street, although marginally wider than the last, she paused against an uncluttered section of wall no more than about ten feet across. She could almost reach out and touch the building opposite. The street resembled a tunnel with no roof. The two and three story residences appeared to concertina, they were so askew. It was hard to imagine such a slender walkway could exist amongst the clutter, and to make matters worse, one owner had placed large colored urns filled with bamboo out the front in order to pretty up the appearance of such an un-orderly facade. No two homes were the same.

  Kate’s eyes shut involuntarily as a reaction to the dizziness that almost floored her. In that moment she really didn’t feel herself. It was as if a large vortex had engulfed most of the day and evening, leaving stolen time and forgotten memories in its wake.