“It’s a bit of a trip to town,” he said when he handed me the items. “Will you be okay without me? Being sick and all?”
The pen could be a weapon, I thought as I took it from him. “Yes. I’m a bit better now. Thinking about us being together has me feeling better. All I need is some food, I think. It should settle my stomach.”
“That’s fantastic.” He rubbed my head again, like I was his dog. “I’m going to have to be with you tonight, and I want you to be able to enjoy it.”
My pen froze in the middle of the word I was writing. His greed was palpable. The way he wanted me, the weight of his lust pressing against me like an avalanche.
It would be fine. I’d be gone when he got back. He wouldn’t get to have me.
Hurriedly, I scrawled out as many items as I could think of, hoping the more that I added, the more time he’d take at the store. Bread, steaks, potatoes, green beans, wine, shampoo, conditioner, hair dryer, bobby pins, hairspray, toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream. I wasn’t sure I could get away with it, but I also added a couple of items that could potentially be weapons if need be. In case. Razor. Curling iron.
I tore off the sheet to hand to him and suddenly thought of one more item, an item that I hoped to God wouldn’t be necessary. Condoms.
It felt like a betrayal to write it. The opening of a door. Like, by putting the item down, it was inviting it to be used.
I’m sorry, Hudson, I thought, as I handed the list to David. But if it was going to happen, I had to make sure it happened safely.
He scanned the list, and I held my breath, hoping he didn’t call me out for the razor. When he frowned at me, I was already prepared.
“Laynie,” he reprimanded. “You’re being naughty. I can’t buy everything you’ve asked for.”
“That’s okay. I just…” I’d get out while he was gone. I had to.
“I can’t buy the condoms,” he said.
My head jerked up in surprise. “What?”
He bent down in front of me and rubbed his palms along my bare thighs. “I’ve waited too too long to be with you,” he said, staring at my skin as his hands ran back and forth. “I need to feel you bare. There can’t be anything between us anymore. And how will we start our family if I’m wearing a rubber?”
“I… I…” I stammered. I hadn’t thought it could get worse, but he wanted to get me pregnant? God, I was on the pill now, too. I could be fertile after missing only a couple of days.
I didn’t want to think that I’d be there that long.
But...if I was...
I tried another tactic. “I was thinking about protecting you. From Hudson. He’s been inside me. He’s left all that… that toxin inside me. I don’t want to share that with you.”
His palms stilled, his expression turning unreadable. “So smart. I’m sure it won’t take very long before he’s out of you. Maybe with your period. It will clean you all out. When are you due for your next one?”
“In another week.”
He winked. “I’ll add maxipads to the list. I know you might like tampons instead, but from now on nothing goes in your cunt unless I put it in there.”
Gross.
And lewd and wrong and creepy and I was nauseated again and on the verge of a panic attack.
David, on the other hand, had a dazed look on his face, like he was imagining things I didn’t want to know about. Fantasizing. Smiling like a kid on Christmas, he rubbed his finger over my mouth, roughly tracing the line of my lips. “We’re going to have so much fun together, Laynie. So much fun. I can’t wait to show you.”
I couldn’t help it—I shuddered.
His face turned hard and mean, and he rose to his full height then stared down at me.
I frantically started to make up an apology about being cold, about having the chills—I was still sick, and all that. But it wasn’t my reaction that seemed to have him upset, I realized before I started speaking. It was what he was staring at.
I followed his gaze to my hands and realized I’d been playing with my wedding ring set. I did it all the time without noticing, a nervous habit.
I stilled. But it was too late.
“That needs to come off. He gave it to you. It needs to go.” His tone said no arguing. The gun was there too, right at eye level.
“I’m so used to it, though,” I said as casually as I could. “I like the feel of it. We can pretend you gave it to me.”
“I’ll get you a ring. That one needs to go, baby, so you can move on.”
He’d said I needed to obey him. But I was stubborn sometimes. Too stubborn for my own good.
“No. Please.” I couldn’t lose my wedding ring. I couldn’t. It was stupid, I knew that, to risk my life over a symbol, but it was all I had right then. All I had tying me to Hudson and I was sure that if David took it away, I’d lose all hope.
I could almost hear my husband, though, in my head, telling me to be reasonable. Telling me to do what I needed to do to survive. Telling me to come home to him in one piece. To come home to our children.
David went to reach for my hand, and I tried to let him take it, but as he started to tug on my ring set, I pulled it away from him again.
His anger was blazing hot, the heat of it burning me just in the way he stood, the way he stared. “He still has that hold on you,” he said. “I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.”
He turned away and started toward the door, and with him, I felt my chance at freedom slipping through my fingers.
“He doesn’t have a hold on me!” I protested, following after him. “I want to be with you! If you get those things for me, I’ll be able to show you how much I appreciate you. And...and… want you. I’m not thinking straight right now.”
He opened the door and went out, but I had to pause in the door frame, dizziness clouding over me and turning my vision black. When it cleared again, I saw that immediately outside the room were stairs going down. I was in some sort of loft.
I didn’t have a chance to look around more, because then David had returned, pushing at my sternum so that I stumbled backward into the room.
He caught my wrist roughly and dragged me across the room. “I’m still going to the store. You do need to clean yourself up before we’re together. I want you fresh and pure when I make love to you so I’m going to get the things you need to do that. I’ll give you another chance to take off that ring when I get back. If you don’t do it willingly, I’ll cut it off.”
He pushed me down hard to the cot. “I also think you might be trying to trick me.”
I bolted back up. “No, I’m not! I swear.”
He pushed me down again, this time kneeling over me so I couldn’t move. “I’ve decided it’s okay if you are. I know it’s going to take some time before you realize what Hudson has done to you. I know how you can get obsessed with someone. It’s what you do. He used that against you, it wasn’t your fault. But you’ll get over him. And, when you finally do…” He gathered my wrists in both of his fists. “I’ll be able to leave you here without having to do this, but for now, I’m going to have to make it so you can’t run away.”
I had been too focused on his face and what he was doing when he came back to notice the silver roll of tape he was wearing like a bracelet. Holding my hands with one of his, he took the tape and wrapped it around my wrists several times, then cutting the tape with his teeth.
Fuck, fuck. I couldn’t get away if I was bound.
“Please, no! I’ll be good! I’ll take off the rings! Leave me loose! Please!”
But he wasn’t listening. Or at least he wasn’t responding. He put my ankles together—I’d lost my shoes somewhere in the night—and taped them too.
Tugging me up to meet his lips, he kissed me once more, deep and slobbery and possessive, before dropping me on the cot.
Then he took off, shutting the door behind him. I heard a click, and I knew he’d left me bound in a locked loft somewhere that was a bit of a trip to any town.
/> I was fucked.
I was fucked.
I curled my knees up toward my chest, rolled to my side, and, holding thoughts of Hudson and my babies in my head—my babies!—my Brett, my Holden, my Mina—I cried harder than I had in my entire life.
20
Hudson
Celia and I spent all night around her dining room table re-reading the journals. I read the ones she had gone through before; she read the ones I had gone through. I even used her laptop to access my old digital records from before I started working with her. There was nothing there. Nothing. Or if there was, we were missing it.
Just after six AM, Edward came out from his bedroom, already dressed in a suit and tie. "Any luck?"
He'd addressed the question to his wife, so I let her answer. "No.” She looked genuinely downcast.
She stood to kiss him goodbye, and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on their intimate moment.
"Please make sure you get some rest today,” he said, softly. “Let Elsa take one of the feedings for you." The concern for his wife was apparent, and I felt a stab of guilt.
"I apologize, Edward, for keeping her up all night. I know how precious sleep is with a little one." I was sincere, even though I simultaneously believed Celia and I deserved to never sleep again, if that was the required payment to get my wife back. I was well aware that every hour that passed increased her chances of suffering something irreversible.
Things I refused to give power to by naming.
Edward Fasbender looked at me with hard, unreadable eyes. "No apology needed. It's understandable. At times we have to push the limits for the ones we love."
"Yes. That." There was nothing I wouldn't do, no length I wouldn't go to in order to get Alayna back, to find who had taken her.
"I wish you the best of luck in your search," he said then went on his way.
When he was gone, Celia said cautiously, "Hudson… Maybe it's not here. Maybe this isn't—"
I didn't want to hear it. I needed to have control. I needed to have a path, a direction.
"Read me the letters again," I said cutting her off. Maybe if I heard them out loud, it would trigger something else in my head.
With a sigh, she picked up the first letter of the stack and started reading through them one by one. I listened carefully, with my eyes closed, as if I'd never heard them, as if I didn’t have them all memorized at this point. As if I were someone different listening.
"Wait a minute," I said, stopping her midway through the third letter. "Read the line again about playing at marriage."
It took her a second the find the place, her manicured finger trailing over the paper.
"’You played at marriage and think that makes you a husband.’ He sounds skeptical of your marriage, if you ask me," Celia said. "What kind of person would say that? Who would care that much about your marriage? Somebody's else’s marriage that we ruined?"
"No. Someone who doesn't think I deserve my marriage." Doesn’t think I deserve Alayna. Something was coming together and I couldn't quite see it, but it was almost there. "Is that a reference to the time that you and I pretended to be married?"
She scratched the back of her head while she thought about it. "I suppose it could be. Though it would be strange if someone would want to get revenge for that scheme. I don’t think that other couple ever realized they were being played."
I nodded, but not just because what she was saying was accurate, but because of where the train of thought had taken me.
"Where is that account recorded? It's not in any of the journals that we've read. Did you leave one out for some reason?" And then another piece of the puzzle fit in together. "And what about the mask reference—you said it might be reffering to the masquerade party, but I don't remember reading about that in any of these journals either. Where are those stories?"
Celia’s expression seemed to indicate that something had clicked. Then she suddenly went pale.
"Is there a journal missing? Is there one that's not here?" My voice was getting louder with each new question. If all the answers had been somewhere else all along, how much time had we wasted?
"I forgot all about it. I'm sorry! Please don't be mad at me." She looked so uncomfortable and guilty that I was certain whatever was coming was something I was going to be mad at.
"Years ago… when I was trying to… when I was sure that Alayna wouldn't want you if she knew about the games of your past…" She trailed off, her face beginning to redden.
I'd been burning with rage since the moment that I realized for sure that Alayna was gone—rage at whoever took her, rage at myself.
It was easy to turn the rage now toward her. "What did you do, Celia?"
"I took one of the journals and planted it in the bookcase in the manager's office at The Sky Launch. I thought that if Alayna found it, she would understand who you were by reading it. That she'd—"
"That she'd read the horrible and terrible things we'd done together and leave me right away. I'm getting the picture. Fuck you, Celia." I ran my hand roughly through my hair.
I didn't really mean it, didn't really mean fuck you. She didn't have to tell me this. She could've said the journal had gotten lost, that she didn't know where it had gone. She'd been honest and vulnerable.
And God knew that we'd both made mistakes in the past.
"Well, she never found it," I said, calming down now that I’d put things in perspective "and she loves me anyway, that crazy woman. What we’re missing has to be in that volume."
I stood up from the table, eager to be on to the next clue. "I guess we’re done here, then. Thank you very much for helping me with all of this."
"Oh, don't you dare pull me into this and then dismiss me at your will." She stood up from the table as well. "Give me five minutes to put on some clothes and tell Elsa that I'm leaving, and I'll come with you."
I didn't argue with her, because I knew I still might need her help reading through the last journal, looking for the final missing clue. And besides, I was determined to find Alayna on my own if I had to, but that didn't mean I couldn't use a friend.
It was too early for the staff to have arrived, so I used my own key to get into the club and disarmed security while Celia headed up to the manager's office. When I got in there, she was walking around the room with a puzzled look on her face.
"There used to be a bookcase in here. I stuck it in with all the other books." She looked at me quizzically. "This is all different since I was last here."
"It was fully remodeled when Alayna was on maternity leave." The same time the letters started arriving...
Another piece of the picture was attempting to come into focus. "You left the journal for Alayna to find, but how did you expect her to know that it was me and you it was talking about? All the references to me just say him." Celia had thought it best to disguise our identities that way, not use any personal references to ourselves. Just in case.
"I put a picture of us from the masquerade ball it described inside." She shrugged, as if to say she knew she was guilty, what else could she do now but own up to it?
"Then anyone, really, who had their hands on the journal would have realized who the stories involved." I pulled out my phone and started dialing Gwen's number as I talked. "The person who has Alayna wasn't a victim from our past—he read our past."
Gwen answered, and I nearly tripped over my words in my haste to get them out. "I'm sorry it's early, I have a question that could be important. When you remodeled, where did all the books go that were on the shelves behind the desk?"
She already knew Alayna was still missing, since I'd called her again when I couldn't find her in the event space so she didn’t delay things by asking why I wanted to know.
"Um, the books were, well… Some of them we threw away. Some I think we probably donated." She paused for a minute thinking. "A lot of it was David’s stuff. Alayna had me call him to collect, and he came and picked up the box right before we did the remodel."
>
My heart started racing. "That's exactly what I needed to know. Thank you."
Before I hung up, she said, "Oh, and I don't know if this is important, but David was at the club yesterday. He came in for the job fair."
I looked at Celia, as if she could hear the whole conversation and was having the same aha moment that I was. "And he was still here when you left?"
"No. He left a couple of hours before I did. He stopped and said hi. Alayna invited him up to the office, and we all talked for a while, old-times chat and all that."
"Did you actually see him leave?" I asked her.
I knew her answer before she gave it, and when she did, I thanked her again and hung up. Immediately, I called Jordan. "It's David Lindt.”
Jordan called his team in to the security offices, located in the basement of the Pierce Industries building. I told him I’d meet him there, promising not to get into any accidents on the way.
I didn’t agree not to speed.
Knowing I was antsy to get to my destination, Celia offered to take a cab to her hotel. We parted on the sidewalk outside The Sky Launch, my mind so preoccupied, I didn’t even say goodbye.
“Good luck,” she called after me, when I was already halfway to where I’d parked my car.
I started to wave in acknowledgment, then realized I couldn’t leave on that note. I jogged back to her so that I wasn’t shouting, so that she’d know I wasn’t just throwing out niceties. “Thank you,” I told her earnestly.
I resisted the urge to qualify my gratitude—she hadn’t been willing to help in the beginning, and it hadn’t been lost on me that Alayna might be safe and in my arms right now if it hadn’t been for Celia and that damn book she’d planted years ago. None of that was productive. And in the end, if we were to play that game, I couldn’t forget that there would never have been a devious and scheming Celia if there hadn’t first been a Hudson.
I’d carefully groomed her to become exactly who she turned out to be.
I’d hatched the dragon egg.