Hero (3 page)

His answering chuckle coats my skin with goose bumps. “Pretty girl like you ought to be more careful.”

“And there’s Hero,” Frida says.

Guy’s smile falters with a twitch. “Hero?”

“She’s sort of got a thing for our masked avenger.”

“Interesting,” Guy says.

“You see that thing on the news recently where he killed the Cartel guy?” Juan asks, his eyes darting between each of us. “That was fucked up.”

“Cataline didn’t think so. Justice being served makes her hot.” Frida looks at Guy. “Maybe over a dinner date she can tell you all about it.”

I mutter under my breath, and she scowls when I kick her shin.

“So men in masks do it for you, huh?” Guy asks.

“Don’t tease her. He’s her knight in shining armor. If you, say, ever wanted to see her again, I’d recommend playing nice.”

Guy holds his palms up and this time his laugh is lighter. “Message received.”

“We should get back or we’ll be late,” I say.

Both men stand from the booth. “Thanks for letting us crash your lunch.”

I smile at Guy. “No problem. Enjoy your meal.”

Outside the restaurant, the early-fall breeze is nothing compared to the icy look on Frida’s face. “Goddamn it. What was that?”

I squint at her. “What?”

“You’re all talk, Ford. You should’ve asked Guy out.”

I glance back through the glass doors of the restaurant, but I only see my own reflection. “I don’t know. There’s something a little off about him, don’t you think? Did you see all those tattoos?”

“They’re super hot.” She leans in and lowers her voice. “Also, I need to switch professions. He was wearing a Rolex.” She raises her eyebrows. “Go back in. Get his number.”

My teeth imprint on my bottom lip as I consider it. “Really?”

“Definitely.”

I sigh. Before I can decide, the door flies open so I have to jump out of the way.

“Sorry,” Guy says, running a hand through his hair. “I came out here to ask you on a date, not knock you down.”

His candor leaves my mouth hanging open.

“She’d love to,” Frida answers for me.

I snap my jaw shut. Guy is laughing melodically, showing off a perfect row of white teeth. The smog breaks, and the gilded undulations of his gelled hair glint under the sun’s attention. Time seems to stop as we all look at each other, appreciating the moment, and then the sun disappears again behind its black cloud.

Guy clears his throat. “I’m not in the business of forcing dinner dates on girls, no matter how pretty they are. I’d like to hear it from Cataline.”

That’s twice he’s called me pretty, and twice more than I’ve heard it in a long time. It makes me smile. I’m having a hard time deciding if he’s just what I’ve been looking for or if he’s something to run from. Frida’s voice is in my head, telling me I’m making excuses.

For no reason at all, I tilt my head back and look up. Three enormous crows are making a leisurely circle above us, evaporating behind the smog, then reappearing. Three black silhouettes of flapping wings and pin-sharp beaks. I glance over my shoulder expecting something, but nothing’s there.

Frida’s watching me with an eyebrow raised as Guy waits patiently.

“I don’t even know your last name.”

He smiles. “Fowler. Guy Fowler. So, what do you say? Can I take you out?”

Frida sighs.

“Sure,” I say finally. “I’d like that.”

“I’ll call you,” he says with a warm smile as he backs away.

“But you don’t—” I stop when he disappears into the restaurant and look at Frida. “He doesn’t have my number.”

“Hale’s going to go ballistic if you don’t move your ass.”

My entire body freezes suddenly as a chill runs down my spine. I’m motionless and braced for whatever’s behind me, but nothing happens. Frida’s already halfway down the block, so I run to catch up with her without looking back.

———

I’m shutting down my computer when my desk phone rings. I debate sneaking out, but it’s still two minutes to five o’clock. “Mr. Hale’s office.”

“Cataline? It’s Guy Fowler.”

Stunned, I don’t answer right away.

“You there?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m impressed with your stalking skills.”

He laughs. “Fortunately, there’s only one major media company near Taco Shack. I won’t keep you. I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed meeting you, and I hope to take you on that date very soon.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

His voice drops suggestively low. “If it didn’t go against conventional dating rules, I’d take you out tonight.”

“Tonight?” My hand is sweating around the receiver when my eyes are drawn up from the desk. Calvin is standing rigid near the office entrance, glaring coldly in my direction, maybe even at me.

“Don’t worry,” Guy says. “I can be patient. I’ll see you again soon.”

There’s a click, but it takes me a moment to hang up. The conversation leaves me unsettled, but it’s Calvin who’s making me squirm. Lyla approaches him, waving her hands in front of him, almost blocking him from my sight. I keep staring, feeling as though I’m trying to receive whatever message he’s sending.

I faintly register an echo, a blurred-bokeh din. It’s a rude disruption to my moment with Calvin. By the time I feel for the receiver, I have no idea how long the phone’s been ringing. “Mr. Hale’s office.”

“Cat, it’s me.”

“Frida?”

“Going to happy hour, want to come?”

“It’s a work night.”

“Hey, guess what? You were right about Guy Fowler.”

“What? Why?”

“At lunch I thought the tattoo on his forearm looked familiar—a small rose. Well, just now I remembered where I’ve seen it. All the Riviera Cartel members have that—”

A finger drops in front of me, landing squarely on the phone’s hook. “Frida?” Mr. Hale asks, cocking his head. “I realize it’s after five, but do you think that allows you the luxury of personal calls?”

“No, sir. It was my roommate about something important.”

He lifts his finger, and I replace the phone in its cradle. “Your roommate?” he asks, scratching his chin with a crooked index finger. “The girl from the holiday party?”

I nod, and he grunts. “So what was it? What did she have to say?”

“I’m not sure. She didn’t finish her sentence.”

“Was it about her latest crush? Or maybe she bought a new lipstick?”

I stare at him dumbly. The word
unemployed
lights up in my mind, a flashing reminder of what will happen if I react how I want.

He sighs, clearly frustrated by my lack of response. “Save the girl talk for your living room, okay?” He thumbs over his shoulder at the clock. “You’re free to go.”

I take my purse from under the desk as Hale watches. On my way to the exit, my eyes go automatically to Calvin, whose back is to me. That feeling from outside the restaurant is back, a shift in the air while Guy waited for my answer. Even turned away, he draws me. The day almost calls for something as tragic as me finally approaching Calvin Parish. I swivel and push my shoulder into the office door, heading for the elevator.

Night falls all at once. Oncoming pedestrians with downcast eyes and shuffling feet force me to weave down the sidewalk. White steam ghosts from manholes, deceitful cottony clouds masking my surroundings. It becomes so unusually thick that for a moment, it’s all I see. When it dissipates, the slick streets are yellow again with the reflection of streetlamps. As I get further from downtown and closer to my apartment, people darken into silhouettes.

My heels puncture the night, a mocking clickety-clack that echoes off the concrete. I’m about to cross the street to my building when I stop mid-step. My heart flurries into a rapid beat. Our corner is oddly empty, not a person to be seen. Just this presence I’ve been feeling all day.

I fumble in my purse and whip around, pepper spray raised to attack. I heave a deep breath when nothing’s there and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. When I call out, it ricochets off the buildings. “Hello?”

The street glistens with recent rain, and pockets of amber light spot the sidewalk. Nothing feels real. Even the sky, black and starless, seems to end beyond my sight as if I’m under a dome. I step backward and connect with a wall that wasn’t there a moment ago. Arms of steel surround me, squeezing my breath away. My scream is silenced by a damp rag and an inconceivably large hand. Something harsh and chemical fills my nostrils when I inhale. My heels thrash as I’m lifted in the air and spun around. The last thing I see before everything dissolves into black is the door to my apartment building, just outside my grasp.

It takes several long blinks of my heavy lids for a hazy world to come into focus. My eyes adjust gradually to blackness as dense and opaque as my sleep. I’m just horizontal floating numbness, perhaps on a bed, though I feel nothing beneath me.

Materializing in the dark is a silhouette. I can’t tell how close or far it is, or even if it’s moving. My mouth ignores my brain’s command to scream. My limbs only sink further into the mattress when I try to lash out.

There is a terrifying maleness about the shadow as it watches me. Inside, I’m trembling, waiting for him to act or speak. My fingertips and toes tingle. But he simply remains there, and I’m plummeting back into myself, clawing at nothing, slipping away, darkness advancing, and I’m being sucked down, down, down.

———

I sigh and hug my pillow closer, satisfied from a deep sleep. The bed is a cotton ball cloud that swallows my heavy limbs. My smile becomes a yawn. My foot glides between the sheets like a knife through butter.

I vault upright as my lids tear open, and I have to fist the comforter to steady myself. My eyes adjust to a lavish room. Dread dispatches through my system, flooding right up to my pores until I’m bloated with it. Until I think I might burst.

On my street corner, somebody took me.

My fingers wrap around the base of my throat. It burned, struggling for breath—I don’t remember screaming, but it’s sore. I press the hollow there until my erratic heartbeat vibrates the pads of my fingers and I almost choke.

I back up against the headboard, drawing the comforter close. The harder I try, the less I’m able to catch the small, fleeting breaths stuttering my chest. My tongue fills my mouth like a fat slug.

My surroundings ooze luxury and highbrow indifference. The room, with its dark-stained cherry wood floors and high ceilings, must be half of my apartment. It’s rich with burgundy velvet, gold silk, and intricate, carved moldings. The massive, four-poster bed I’m in sits beneath a white, gauzy canopy.

My brain struggles to connect the broken pieces of my thoughts. Those unforgiving arms I struggled against in a deserted street—they brought me to a place like this? And how? Was there a car, a second person? I fight the impossible explanation though it crushes me flatter by the second.
Kidnapped
.

Dread shades into fear. I’m certain my skin will split open, I’m shaking so violently. My hands rush to my body and touch silk. The slinky, red nightgown clashes with the room’s almost-plum interior. A sob hitches in my throat because I’m braless. I feel my body for signs of mishandling, lifting the sanguine fabric and running my fingers over matching lace underwear.

My vision sharpens with tears, and my head swims. Whatever was used to knock me out leaves a misted veil over my memory. Since before I was a teenager, nobody’s ever seen me completely naked. Not Frida, not my foster parents. Now a stranger has.

I swallow back what’s rising in my throat because crying will only slow me down. I need to think clearly.

It takes me a moment to ease out from between the sheets. My limbs move at their own lazy pace, separate from my brain. I should be sore from running for my life last night, but I never even had the chance. I glance at the door. Fear of what’s behind it sends me in the opposite direction to a large bay window. I climb onto the cushion, and my body thrills when the window gives way to my push. I peer over the sill into what appears to be the backyard. It’s a sharp drop without even so much as a ledge to balance on. I assess that I’m on maybe the third or fourth floor. Below, stone paths carve a maze between manicured green grass and trim rosebushes that bloom deep red. The lawn is expansive, like my room, and ends at a wall of large trees that continue until the horizon.

I take a lungful of fresh air and decide that the window is a last resort.

On the bare balls of my feet, I cross the room. My eyes furtively scan as I tiptoe. There’s a small sitting area between the window and a fireplace, one closed door, a set of French double doors, also closed, a desk, and nightstands that flank the bed. Because of its size, it takes me longer than it should to cross any room.

Everything in my chest evaporates when I touch the door handle, my throat painfully dry as I swallow. My blood churns through me as I apply pressure to the knob. It turns, and keeps turning. It doesn’t stop. I can hardly believe when I pull and the door slivers open.

It hits me then that I’m wearing an expensive negligee and sleeping in a heavenly bed in what appears to be a very large home. Could I possibly have jumped to conclusions? I’m still frozen with my fist curled around the knob when a man speaks.