Misplaced Innocence (25 page)

“You’ll wish you were dead.”

She let herself melt into the coolness of the tile. She knew there was no ways she could ever prepare herself for what was to come now. She only hoped her call, and its punishment, would not be in vain.

~*~

Papers littered the desk, spilling out of manila folders in an organized chaos.
 
A single desk lamp illuminated the papers in its yellowed glow. Behind the desk, computer software monitored the phones of nearly 50 suspected locations. Alex sat at his desk, head in his hands, staring at the latest crime scenes photos. The lamp began to flicker erratically, and Alex subconsciously reached a hand forward without taking his eyes from the scene pictured in his other hand and fiddled with the wire.
 

“You’re still here, Alex?” Marguerite asked, coming up behind him. Alex didn’t respond, his face set in a deep frown.

“Alex?”

“Hmm?” he asked, startled, realizing he was being addressed.
 

“Alex, you should go home.”

“Yeah; I will. Just going to stay a few more minutes.”

“You’re not going to see anything now that we didn’t see before.”

“I know.” He sighed, returning his focus to the black and white massacre in his hand. “But I’ve got to try, right?”
 

“Go home.” There was an edge to her voice, but she smiled at him and let her hand brush his shoulder.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
 
He tried to smile back at her.
 

Alex leaned back in his chair. His replacement monitor would arrive any minute, and there was no way he would be leaving before then. They had the girl, the girl he had been after for almost a year. It had been a race against time, and a race against the mob. And they had won, they had beat the FBI to her. He couldn’t imagine why she had run from whiteness protection, opted to try and disappear from life instead of staying and being protected. If she had asked him, he could have told her that would never work, that the only way she could disappear without their protection was if she were dead.

But she hadn’t asked him. Instead, she had run from him, forced him to chase her in a wild goose chase across America. Every time one or the other got close to her, she had evaded them, relocated, and the search would begin again from square one.

“Jesus.” He sighed again, running a hand through his hair. There was nothing here, nothing in this picture, nothing in this case that drew a solid conclusion. These men were good at what they did. They were professional information extractors, specializing in torture and intimidation as their primary modes of operation. And yet there was nothing that linked them directly to the crime. Alex closed his eyes.
 

He shuffled the photographs in his hand, pausing at each one and staring at it, devoting his full attention to every detail. About half an hour later, he returned the pictures to the open manila folder and opened another file. These pictured were much older, each labeled “Candace Ackerman,” in the bottom right hand corner, dated and coded.

Alex tugged on his coat after reviewing the file for the thousandth time, flicked off the light, and locked the door behind him. He walked though the empty halls, the echo of his footsteps ringing in his ears. He stuck his hands in his pockets and realized he had forgotten his gloves. He rolled his eyes at himself.

“Damn, not again.” He said with exasperation, turning around and heading back toward his office.

He opened the door and reached for his top desk drawer. His hand lingered in the air above the handle, then moved suddenly towards the file again. He was obsessed, he knew it. Everyone knew it. Behind his back they said it was because he blamed himself for her escape, he should have gotten to her before she ran. And now, he should have gotten her before they did. He had the full power and resources of the FBI behind him for Christ’s sake.
 

He debated turning the light back on and sitting down, resigning to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from the file now that he had reopened it.
 

No, he had to go home, feed his cat. Toby would be waiting for him, meowing at the door. His dog-like nature weirded Alex out sometimes. Toby was going to have an identity crisis one day, Alex was sure. But until then, he appreciated the cat’s loyalty – unlike his ex-girlfriend’s – and how he made Alex feel needed.
 

He checked for the tenth time that the computers were recording the selected phone lines, but he wouldn’t get his hopes up that there would be something tomorrow for him to listen to. There never seemed to be. These guys seemed to know where the FBI was looking, and kept uncannily quiet.
 

He turned to the door again, but with his hand on this doorknob, he heard a voice from within his office

“Jared Williams,” a man’s voice said from his computer. Alex turned around sharply.

“Jared, it’s Charisma. They have me; I don’t know where I am.” A woman’s voice hissed in a panic-stricken whisper. Alex ran to the screen, listening intently. Were they going to get a location? Who was Charisma? Was “they” the mob, holding her in one of the suspected locations?
 

“Oh my God!” the male voice said, rising in panic, “Do you know anything? Who has—”
 

“I think they’re from—” and then the line went dead.

Alex typed into the computer, extracting the location and picked up the phone, calling his team in at the same moment. This was it; this was what he had waited 16 months for. He was going to get these guys, and it was going to reek of victory.

~*~

Jared clutched at the cell phone in his hand. His face had drained of its color, his eyes widened and his breathing came in rapid bursts. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. It was his worst nightmares come true. He didn’t even know where to begin. He felt somehow that snapping the phone shut, replacing it in his pocket, would be destroying evidence. He wanted a recording of what he had heard, and a way to trace that call.
 

And more time.

Then he realized that he was wasting what little time he had. He snapped the phone closed and flipped it back open immediately, jamming his free hand into his pocket and pulling out the business card the FBI agent had given him. “ALEX LANSING” was embossed at the top followed by multiple numbers.

He dialed the first, hoping someone would be in the office.

“Detective Lansing.”

“Detective, Its Jared Williams, from-”

“Mr. Williams, get over here immediately. We need to speak with you, obviously.” Lansing’s voice was hard, rough, all the things Jared thought a good detective would be.

“I’ll be right in.” Jared had a fleeting moment where he wondered if Lansing had known he was in town.

Jared was out the door in a matter of moments, the door to his rental car slamming shut, his foot already falling on the accelerator. Tires screeched out from under him and the car jolter forward from its parking space and shot towards the office. He tapped his hand against his jean-clad leg and gnawed on his lip. He’d been aboard the first available flight to New Jersey, and now was more than thankful he’d hightailed it out here on nothing more than a whim.

As he drove, he could think of nothing but Charisma. He couldn’t bear to think of what they might be doing to her, how helpless and scared she must be. How much he longed to hold and comfort her, rescue her like her very own prince charming.
 

He was such an idiot, he kept telling himself. Why had he ever tried to deny the way he felt for her? This was his fault; he had driven her from his house with his stubborn refusal to admit how much he needed and wanted her, how special she was. And now, it might be too late. He might never get to tell her how he felt.
 

He chastised himself for even having those thoughts. He slammed on the brakes, skidding into the intersection. He would be lucky if he didn’t get pulled over for what would be generously referred to as reckless driving. In truth, he was driving maniacally, and he wondered briefly if it was worth the time he might save.

He pulled the car into the parking lot and hurried into the building. He met Detective Lansing on the ground floor, was ushered into the office where, at past eleven o’clock at night, FBI agents moved with purpose and focus, barely looking up from their work as he entered.

“This way,” Lansing gruffed. “We have to talk.”
 

Frankie tossed Charisma unceremoniously onto a chair, her hands newly tied behind her back, the heavy rope biting sharply into her wrists.
 
More ropes encircled her ankles. She hung her head, her chin nearly resting on her heaving chest. Her breaths came quickly, but she fought the urge to gasp. For an hour, nothing moved save the increasingly gentle rise and fall of her chest. Frankie had pulled a chair of his own to her side, turning away from her so he had a view of the door. Freddie had recovered a bit, and was sprawled on the floor. Every now and then a snore broke through the quiet.

Outside she heard the heavy elevator doors open, the smallest chime of arrival, and then the heavy sound of footsteps coming toward them. No doubt it was Dominic. Charisma didn’t look up for confirmation; she was afraid she might vomit.

Dominic’s eyes swept the room. There was Charisma, her hair a lopsided mess, the corner of her shirt torn, a new welt on her face rapidly changing color. Next to her, Frankie sulked, irritation emblazoned on every nuance of his movement. Freddie had yet to stir from his place on the floor, one hand gingerly resting on his throat. “What in the hell happened here?” It was an angry growl, the timbre enough to quake through Charisma’s body and settle in a hard lump in the pit of her stomach.

“Nothing,” Frankie growled right back, clearly not in any mood to cater to Dominic’s power issues.

“Nothing!” Dom exploded, suddenly spurred into motion. “This hardly looks like a nothing!” Dom was standing over Charisma, she would have been looking at his shoes had she been able to open her swollen eyes. He was staring at her; she could feel his eyes boring into her, taking in the bruises that marred her arms and face, the blood that had dried in a trickle from her mouth and a rust colored puddle on her shirt. He gripped her chin in his hand and tugged her face upwards, better able to see the extent of the damage in the light.
 

“You are going to tell me exactly what happened here,” he said, dropping Charisma’s face and rounding on Frankie and Freddie, who had scurried to his feet, and now stood as far back in a corner as he was able. She coughed at the abruptness, and tried to rein in what was left of the contents in her stomach.

“She tried to escape” Frankie said without preamble, barely lifting his eyes from a fingernail he found suddenly very interesting.

“I leave you in charge for an hour and a half and you let a tied up, starving girl escape?”

The silence was palpable. Charisma might have laughed at the dressing down and description had she been in a position to do so. But the fact that she was the starving, tied up girl squelched what humor she could muster.

“How about you tell me exactly how that happened?”
 

Charisma wished she were anywhere else. If she had known her life would come down to this – her poor bruised frame tied to a chair and in all likelihood not far from experiencing significantly worse events, entirely out of control, and surrounded by men who wanted nothing more than to hurt her – she would have stopped fighting to live a long time ago.
 

“I’m not sure.
I
wasn’t there” Frankie hauling himself to his feet in exasperation. “She’s still here, ain’t she? I took care of it, right?” He raised his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “What more is there to say, really?”

“I think there’s a lot you should say.” Dominic kicked out at the chair Frankie had been sitting in. “But I’m not the one you’ll need to be explaining it to. Boss is on his way over here and when he sees this…” Dominic trailed off, but there was little else he needed to say. Everyone was about to be in big time trouble. “Don’t think I’ll be the one held responsible for this,” he gritted out, shooting a look toward Freddie where he was cowering in the corner. “I’m sure you played a role in this, you useless shit. I want to hear all about how this little bitty thing was able to get away from you.” The derision spilled around the words and Freddie seemed to noticeably shrink before Dominic’s anger.

 
“She needed, you know, to use the little girl’s room.” Freddie said from the ground, his eyes were closed too, but more from embarrassment than pain. For a moment it seemed like that might be the only explanation he was going to offer. “So, I took her,” he added, like that was more acceptable as a play by play.

“And she did this to you?” Dom asked, gesturing toward the angry red skin around Freddie’s throat “When her hands were tied?” Dominic didn’t actually sound like he had any doubt that could have happened, and Freddie prickled at the insinuation.

Freddy shrugged. “Not quite.” He paused. “She seduced me.”

Again, Charisma fought the inexcusable urge to laugh. Because she really looked like a stellar example of a siren. Yes, she was seducing men left and right. She smiled in spite of herself and tore the just scabbing flesh at the corner of her mouth. A new trickle of blood left its metallic trail down her face.

“Right,” Dom said, looking back at her. Charisma wondered if she should be offended by the tinge of doubt in his voice.
   

“Don’t matter much anyway how. We got her before she did any damage.” Frankie said, glowering in Charisma’s direction and exchanging glances with Freddie. Frankie neglected to mention the brief phone call. He had heard the conversation and decided it didn’t warrant being reported. After all, no real information had been exchanged. Save their own asses a little bit. They would be in enough trouble as it was.

“Bitch,” Dom growled as he grabbed her chin in his hand and gave it a none too gentle squeeze. He grunted, finding her level of desperation admirable. He took a long look at her battered face and must have decided she was already bad enough off, because he let go as abruptly as he had the first time. “You just made life much harder on yourself.”