Captured

Captured
is a work of fiction. Names and characters appearing in this work are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Tina Johnasen.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Kirsty Anderson had pictured herself lying on a cushioned massage table, happily daydreaming while a sturdy Thai matron pummelled the knots from her muscles. That had been the plan: massages, cocktails and shopping. Instead, she awoke feeling groggy and couldn’t open her eyes. Still shaking off the blankness of sleep, it didn’t strike her as odd initially. In those first few moments, she vacantly noticed it was bright; she could tell from the blurry sliver of light that filtered through her eyelashes. As she became fully conscious and blinked away the blear obscuring her vision, something about the pristine cream ceiling and recessed spotlights jarred with her.

Where the hell am I?

Panicked, she tried to sit up. Pain shot through her immediately. Her left hand darted up to massage the pain away, or she tried to move it, at least: her arm wasn’t budging from the side of her thigh. Her palm faced downwards: she could move it a fraction, and felt denim and dewy skin, but something prevented it from moving further. She tried to flick her wrist to identify the obstruction, but it was holding her hand down too firmly. She tried her other arm, and then her legs. Her heart raced when she realised that they too were immobilised. Was she paralysed? But she had moved her hand and felt it stroke against her leg. Where was she? She concentrated hard, trying to wiggle her toes and fingers.

The pain was grotesque. She hadn’t tried to move again after that first attempt, but it hadn’t ceased since. She couldn’t localise it; it felt like her whole body was on fire. Even her eyes burned in their sockets. She couldn’t tell whether the air was stagnant or if it was just her breath: her mouth tasted metallic, like she had touched the entire length of her tongue against a row of batteries.

“Hello?” she called. The word left her mouth as a crackled rasp that hurt her throat.

She listened, trying to block out the intense buzz of her pulse. She could hear noises from somewhere: car horns and shouts. People. The sounds were muffled, like she’d spent too long in a swimming pool. She tried hard, but couldn’t pinpoint anything revealing from the thrum. 

The room was nondescript – not drab, but by no means memorable. The walls were the same light grey colour as the ceiling, and were similarly pristine. She was lying on a bed; her head was tilted slightly further than a natural position, and she could see the wall and black leather headboard behind her. She strained her eyes to the left and could just make out a pair of greyish brown curtains that seemed to dominate the wall on that side. To her right there was a grey blob, about the right size for a door.  She squeezed her eyes closed and tried again. Because of the angle of her head, she could see nothing in front of her except the top of the opposite wall.

Dizzy from the adrenaline and the pain and the fear, her mind struggled to make sense of it all. Where on earth was she? It felt like her brain was wadded with cotton wool. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t recall anything. Faint images flittered through her mind, of Grant and Grace, of busses and jungles and market stalls, but there was nothing tangible to help her. Tinny music drifted in from somewhere. It sounded distinct from the street sounds. Louder. Had it always been there?

“Hello,” she whispered, more wary this time. “Is someone there?”

The tickling dryness in her throat sent her into a coughing fit. The pain was too much to bear. She had to see what was holding her down. Begging her muscles to ignore the pain and cooperate, she succeeded in moving a fraction before white dots swam in front of her eyes. The pounding sound faded in her ears. By the time the door opened, she had fallen unconscious.

Kirsty Anderson pushed against the edge of her desk, rolling her grey office chair backwards, and propelling the pen she had been holding into the corner of her cubicle. Cursing, she stood and shuffled through the mess of pages and folders to retrieve it. Ploughing through the rubble, a photo caught her attention. It had been pinned to the partition, positioned low enough to have been obscured by the detritus. Forgetting the meeting she had been in such a rush to attend, she removed the drawing pin that secured it, and examined the dog-eared picture. Her own smiling face beamed up at her, arm around Grace’s shoulder, noses red as they posed in front of a festive-looking department store window.

She remembered that night well. It had been their first trip to New York together, which they’d planned for months. They’d skipped to the Rockefeller Center with glee the night they arrived. After an awkward hour of collisions and apologies on the ice rink, they had strolled in circles around the bustling streets, only stopping to buy brown paper bags full of steaming roast chestnuts from a grumpy street vendor who was bundled up in full snow gear.  He had grudgingly taken this picture.

We look so much younger and happier
, Kirsty thought. Life had seemed so unpredictable back then; each day had brimmed with endless possibilities. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt as content as she had on that crisp, cold night.
That was only three years ago,
she realised with a jolt, once she’d mentally counted the Christmases since.

“Wakey wakey. Ready for the Callan meeting?” Daniel Lane crept up behind her and clapped his hands.

Daniel had joined Kirsty’s department two weeks before, a new recruit poached from Bailey Morgan by her boss, Richard Jones. They hadn’t really spoken (he had been tied up with the bank’s endless compliance and induction sessions until the start of that week), but she already liked him: he had an easy, laid-back charm –rare in the bank – that she appreciated.

Her hand flew to her heart in fright. She laughed at her reaction. “Sure am. Wait ‘til you meet David Callan, he’s a character.” Carefully, she placed the photograph into her top drawer.

Kirsty couldn’t remember how she’d come to work in finance: it was something she’d fallen into it. After majoring in English, she had been carried along with the stampede of her classmates applying for internships and later, graduate programs. It still surprised her that she had landed the job at the London headquarters of Bank of North America at all: she often theorised that the results of her psychometric tests had landed in the ‘yes’ pile by mistake. She worked hard despite her initial lack of direction; though lately it seemed like her best wasn’t good enough.

Shaking out her long, dark blonde hair, which she had absent-mindedly wrapped into a messy bun at some stage that morning, she followed Daniel to the door.

“So what was that photo you were looking at? You seemed miles away,” he smiled, striding to the other side of the lobby and pressing the lift call button.

The doors opened and she stepped inside, turning around to answer him. “It was nothing, just an old photo from a weekend away a few years back,” she smiled. “Seems like a lifetime ago now. Do you ever wish you could go back and do things differently?”

She was surprised at her candour: she wasn’t one of those people whom Grace often described disparagingly as ‘sharers’. A sanitised voice announced their arrival. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant.”

“Rant away,” he shrugged, holding the door open as they alighted in the main reception area on the seventeenth floor. Their office on the fifteenth floor was a study in utilitarian decor: muted grey carpets, plain white walls and an endless sea of green fabric cubicles, clustered inside the glass-walled blocks that housed different departments. Each department had a separate area housing several self-contained offices, meeting rooms and cubicles within its own glass walls. The seventeenth floor was a world away, with wood-panelled walls, nautical artwork and deep-pile carpets.

“Your guests are in meeting room six, Kirsty,” smiled the receptionist from behind the highly-polished hardwood desk.

Kirsty opened the door, noting with relief that Jones hadn’t chosen to join them, as he often did when their larger clients visited the office. She walked over to the large glass conference table, with Daniel following closely behind. She held out her hand to the older man, who was wearing a grey three-piece suit over a baby pink shirt. As he stood up, she noticed an old-fashioned pocket watch hanging from the pocket of his waistcoat. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see him in a deerstalker hat and a monocle.

“David. Good to see you. Jeremy,” she shook the other man’s hand. “This is Daniel Lane; he’s just joined us from Bailey Morgan.” She always enjoyed seeing David Callan, the eccentric founder of the Callan Fund.

“Good to see you again too, Kirsty. We’ve been keeping you busy this month with all of the loan activity” He turned to Daniel. “Pleasure to meet you. Jonesy’s told us all about you; sounds like you’ll be a great addition to the team and we’re looking forward to working with you, although you have big boots to fill.” He looked at Kirsty and smiled.

Kirsty felt the colour drain from her face. She forgot what she had been discussing with Jeremy, who looked at her quizzically as she simultaneously tried to remember and hide her shocked reaction from the group. Maybe it was just David talking nonsense? The door opened a moment later.

Kirsty forced a smile in greeting. “Richard, I didn’t think you were going to make it!”

Richard smiled back at her momentarily, before walking towards the Callans. “Gentlemen,” he greeted with a boom to his voice that Kirsty only heard when clients or senior management were present. “Have you met my new recruit?”

When they were all seated around the table, Kirsty stared out the window at the bleak London skyline. She could just make out the City of London and the Eye in the distance. She had spent practically three years of her life in the sleek glass and steel high-rise that the bank called home.

“... and I just know that the transition will be a smooth one...”

What’s he talking about?
Kirsty tuned back into the conversation to hear Jones finish.
“Daniel, maybe you can tell us all a little bit about your background?”

Kirsty concentrated hard as Daniel began to speak: maintaining an expression of blithe interest required so much of her concentration that she barely heard a word of his brief speech. Jones was putting Daniel on the account? This was the first she’d heard of it. She’d assumed he was tagging along to the meeting to learn the ropes, not to tear them from her hands.

It took a few seconds for her to register the change in energy at the table. David was standing up, smiling effusively at Daniel.

“You never told us what you were leaving to pursue, Kirsty.” David smiled, turning his attention to her. “Is there a little one on the way?”

Jeremy soon sensed the tension and practically pushed his oblivious sibling towards the door. Jones followed closely, without glancing in Kirsty’s direction.

“Kirsty, I didn’t...” Daniel started, but trailed off as the door slammed, leaving him standing alone at the long table.

“I don’t know what that sneaky bastard is up to. You should have heard him. I was mortified.” Kirsty sat on the edge of her seat in the company’s top floor canteen.

Across the table, her boyfriend Simon sighed and reached out to squeeze her hand. “Sounds like he’s trying to squeeze you out.”

Kirsty had met Simon in the lobby of the same building, where the new graduate trainees had been instructed to congregate on their first morning. If she was an anomaly at the bank, then his presence on the program was a complete mystery. Simon was a natural introvert and abhorred company social events. He had struck her as different to the ambitious, sycophantic clones in their class, and they became fast friends almost immediately. Their relationship was relatively new: they had only become involved after the most recent Christmas party.

“Squeeze me out? I don’t understand why! I’ve worked so hard for the last three years. I haven’t done anything that makes him look bad. It’s this arsehole Daniel, Dick is just obsessed with him and I have no idea why.” Kirsty exhaled deeply, drinking from the coffee cup clutched tightly in her cupped hands.

Simon shrugged. “It happens. Sometimes people are just assholes.”

Kirsty glared at him. “And I’m supposed to put up with it?”

He held up his hands. “I’m not the enemy here. I could ask around my department, see if there’s anything coming up?”

“Let’s see how this pans out. I’m not just going to give in to him.” she looked up, surprised to see Daniel walking towards their table, looking sheepish. 

“I figured you’d be up here,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards into a nervous smile. “Look, that was pretty poor form of Rich in there, but I didn’t know he was going to do that. He...”

Daniel stopped speaking abruptly as Simon, who was sitting with his back to the door, turned his head to face the new arrival, and their eyes met.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Simon asked, blanching.

Kirsty was astonished: even though she could only see his profile, his tone was one she’d never heard before.

“I work here, mate. What’s your story?” Daniel looked at Kirsty and frowned before he turned and walked away. She noticed that the usual nonchalance was missing from his movements.

“What the hell was that about?” Kirsty hissed a few seconds later, when the door had closed behind Daniel. “You know him?”

Simon tore his gaze from the door and looked back at her, shaking his head.

“No?” Kirsty probed. “Because it seems like you do.”

“Just leave it Kirsty. We were in school together years ago. I haven’t seen the guy since.”

“You seemed pretty shocked to see each other.”

“I said just leave it,” Simon replied, his raised voice drawing curious looks from the group at the next table. He stood up quickly. “I’ve got a meeting at half past, so I’d better get back.”

Kirsty remained seated at the table as he retreated to the door.
That was weird
, she thought.

She still didn’t know what she was going to say to Jones, but she knew she was going to have to speak to him as soon as she got back to the office. Callan was one of only two clients she managed. She picked up her empty cup and headed for the coffee machine. She wanted to be prepared.

“Miss Anderson. I was starting to think that you’d disappeared.” Jones stood beside Daniel Lane’s desk, his cashmere coat over one arm, flanked by Susan and John, the other members of his department. “I thought we’d have a team lunch; celebrate Daniel’s joining the team.”

“Can I speak to you for a moment first?”

He looked at his watch. “I made reservations for Cipriani’s, but I suppose since we’re waiting for Daniel to come out of a meeting...” His eyes flickered towards the glass-walled meeting room as he trailed off.

Kirsty followed his eyes to the room in the corner, confused to see Simon sitting at the small table with Daniel. Her and Simon’s paths had never crossed professionally, and she couldn’t imagine the two men wanting to catch up after their exchange in the canteen.

“Have you changed your mind?” Jones eyed her impatiently.

She followed him to his office and closed the door. He sat down in his expansive chair, leaning back and fixing her with an icy stare. She looked around. The white walls were bare. His desk always adhered strictly to the firm’s ‘Clean Desk’ policy, she noticed, with documents stacked in neat little piles. She couldn’t see any personal effects anywhere. He cleared his throat theatrically.

Kirsty counted to ten in her mind. “What was that all about?” she asked in an even tone, returning his stare.

He shuffled through a thin stack of documents before tapping it twice against his desk and placing it into the paper bin. She noted his perfectly manicured hands with distaste. “What was what all about?” he asked, innocently.

“The meeting with Callan,” she replied, careful to keep her tone light. “It’s my account. I should have been told about the change before going into the meeting. I’m also confused as to why Daniel is taking over that particular account: they’re big, but by no means our most important client. It’s effectively shaved my responsibility in two. What I’d really like to know is why David Callan appears to be of the belief that I’ll be heading off on maternity leave.”

He watched her impassively as she spoke. “The most important thing here is the client, not our own egos. I reshuffled the client coverage as I saw fit. That’s my job,” he smiled benevolently, puffing his chest. Her fists clenched involuntarily at the sight of it.

“I’ll need you to get Daniel up to speed on the account, and then assist him with the account management,” he continued.

“Let me get this straight. I’m being demoted?” she could hear the cracks in her voice.

Jones sighed, quickly losing patience. “No. Don’t be ridiculous. Daniel has excellent experience and it’s something I want to leverage. The Callans are an important client.”

“He has less experience than me and you’re telling me I have to work for him? That’s fucking ridiculous.”