Ransom
Authors: Denise Mathew
Ransom
By Denise Mathew
Ransom-Published by Denise Mathew
© Denise Mathew 2014. All rights reserved.
This book is licensed for your personal use. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without prior permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1494233143
“There’s this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It’s the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me.” ~ Ritu Ghatourey
Part 1
1. LEXIE
I never hated anyone as much as I hated Mom right then. Dressed in her high-powered lawyer gear, a navy suit jacket and matching pencil skirt with a button down white dress-shirt, she had popped in for one final reaming before she went back to the office.
“Lexie are you listening to
me?”
I gave her a one shoulder shrug, which meant that I had stopped listening to her a while back. Probably when she had said I couldn’t go to Dallas’s party.
“Lexie, I was looking for an actual verbal response,” Mom said. She stood across from me, waving her index finger like I was a two-year-old. I wanted to break it in half because I wasn’t a baby. I was eighteen-years-old soon to be nineteen. She had never hesitated to leave me on my own when she had a business trip planned, but now suddenly I wasn’t old enough to go to a freaking party. It took every bit of strength I had to keep my lips pressed together and not scream the injustice of it all.
Mom took a few steps closer to me, opened her mouth then closed it again.
What I wouldn’t have given to walk out on her and just go to the party.
The ultimate in defiance.
Mom threw her shoulders back clearly waiting for me to say I was sorry. As far as I was concerned that was never going to happen. It was easy to see that my silence was pissing her off more than if I had yelled at her. That suited me just fine. When, after several minutes had passed and I hadn’t apologized, her face shifted. Now she mirrored the anger and venom that I was barely holding back. It felt good to see her squirm and know that she was as uncomfortable as I was. In my opinion she wasn’t being even remotely fair; she needed to realize that.
The bottom line was that I was the one that was going to miss what I knew was destined to be the best party of the decade. A party that people would talk about for years to come. Dallas’s parents owned a seasonal motel and since it was off season and his parents were out of town, he quite literally had the whole place to himself. Of course when Mom had gotten wind of what was going down I was banished from the kingdom of fun, sequestered to my room until further notice.
“What do you want me to say?” I said, my voice dripping with rage.
Mom shook her head and sighed.
“I’m only doing this because I care Lexie. I realize that you think that since you’re almost nineteen that you have it all figured out, but you don’t. Not in this case anyway. Too many things could go wrong with all those unsupervised teenagers, add in drugs and alcohol and you have a recipe for disaster. I’ve seen too many things happen to young girls not to worry…”
Her face softened and I knew she was trying to be reasonable, but it meant nothing to me. As far as I was concerned it was all crap. The real reason why she didn’t want me to go was because she didn’t trust me. That truth ticked me off more than anything else did. Though it didn’t help matters that she was in the midst of one of the worst cases of her career, that just happened to involve a girl, a party, and a horrific incident involving date rape drugs and at least a dozen guys. I shuddered just imagining what that girl had gone through, but just because it had happened to her didn’t mean that I would get caught up in that same kind of scenario.
“Whatever,” I said, sliding my eyes to the Oak hardwood floor.
I was kicking myself for having been stupid enough to mention it to her in the first place since Dad had already given me the green light. If only I had kept my mouth shut none of this conversation would have ever gone down, and right now I would have been getting ready to have fun. I didn’t bother bringing up what Dad had said since it wouldn’t have done any good. My mother had full custody of me, so truthfully Dad’s word probably wouldn’t have held any water anyway. Mom more than loved playing the part of supreme ruler where I was concerned. But all that was about to change when I turned nineteen in a couple of months. As soon as that happened all her rules would be moot.
Mom sighed again, pushing back at her chestnut brown bangs. It was the only moving part of her hair, that was wound up in a tight coil bun at the top of her head.
“I guess there’s no reasoning with you,” she said.
I was relieved that she was wrapping up her mother-knows-best speech. The meter on my temper was resting on red; there was a good chance that I wasn’t going to keep it together much longer.
She started to turn around but then seemed to think better of it. She narrowed her brown eyes into a cool stare.
“And Lexie, don’t even think about sneaking out because you know I’ll find out.”
I rolled my eyes and fell back against my bed with a dramatic flare. I didn’t bother answering her. I felt my face go even hotter. Then before I could stop it from happening I was sitting up again and the Lexie that could never seem to keep her big mouth shut, was in full force.
“I’m tired of you trying to control me all the time. I should have gone to live with Dad, at least he understands me and doesn’t need to dominate every move I make, ” I screamed.
My breath came out in ragged huffs, my heart beat a furious rhythm. I fisted my hands in my teal duvet.
Though my words were meant to hurt, they were also true. My father actually realized that I had grown up a while back, and that I was quite capable of taking care of myself. Mom spun toward me and the look on her face made me want to retract everything I had said, but I was too furious right then to do it. I knew later when I had cooled down that I would feel like hell for knifing her like that, but right then it felt good that I had managed to kick her in exactly the right place. Tossing out the dad card, despite the fact that his cheating butt had been the reason for their breakup, definitely was playing it dirty.
Mom swallowed a few times before she spoke.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said.
Her quiet response felt worse than if she had hollered a bitchy retort. It was impossible to be mad at someone who was so reasonable. My stiffened muscles relaxed a little because no matter how livid I was, I hated seeing that I had upset her that way. Still it wasn’t near enough for me to recant my words. I wanted her to know how much she was messing with my life. I was going to give her some time to ponder my words, a few of which were the cruelest I had ever said to her. But desperate times called for odious measures, or at least it felt that way right then.
When I noticed tears glistening in her gaze I almost caved. Mom just didn’t cry, in fact I had only seen her break down two times before, one was when my Nan had died, and the other was when she had found out that Dad was having an affair with a twenty-two-year old associate in his office.
“No matter what you think Lexie, you mean everything to me. I make these decisions from a place of love not spite. If that means that you don’t go to a party than so be it. And to tell you the truth I just keep getting this feeling that something bad is going to happen tonight. It makes me even more adamant that you stay home, safe and sound.”
I shook my head. Whatever moment of weakness that I had experienced had left the vicinity; pissed off indignation took its place.
“The only bad thing that’s going to happen is that I’m going to miss the last opportunity I’ll have before college to hook up with Mitch Temple.”
Just saying the name conjured up an image of Mitch, the guy I had been crushing on since fifth grade, and who was just beginning to notice that I existed. At six-foot-two with golden blonde hair that fell in soft waves just touching his broad shoulders, he was nothing short of a sexy god. All he had to do was cast his green flecked brown eyes my way, and I went to mush. He was all lean muscle and had a chest that looked like he had spent quite a few hours in the gym.
Mitch was an all-star athlete who had managed to secure a football scholarship to the exact same university as I was planning to attend. Throughout our senior year I had tutored him once a week. Though we had mainly talked about fluid dynamics, a subject he was barely passing, I had felt a connection with him. Even now I couldn’t stop thinking about how he always managed to smell divine, like musky cologne and clean soap.
My stomach knotted into a thousand coils just thinking about missing the party. It was quite possibly the last chance I would have to get Mitch to really notice me. Even though we were going to the same university the pond was so huge there was a good possibility that I would never see him. If I didn’t go to the party I would lose my opportunity to hook up with him, and also the possibility of becoming a couple before we went away.
“There will be other parties Lexie,” Mom said, bringing me back to the present. She shook her head then glanced down at her watch. All signs of her tears vanished when she realized that I had taken up more time than she could spare.
“I have to go, Mick and Dave are waiting on me. I don’t know how long I’ll be working, we have to go over some new evidence in the case.”
She cocked an eyebrow for effect. “Don’t get any ideas about going anywhere. I’ll be calling frequently. I might just show up here to check on you, so don’t do anything that you’ll regret later.”
I flopped back on the bed, not bothering to respond. Obviously it was enough because I heard the soft click of her shoes as she moved out and away from my room. I lay there, focusing on the tiny cobweb that had managed to sprout up in the corner of my bedroom in the few days since the maid service had come to clean the house. No matter how many times they got rid of the webs there was always a new one to replace it every morning. I had to admire the spiders resilience. No matter what life threw at them or in this case vacuumed away, they always rebuilt.
I heard the garage door open, a minute or so later it closed and I knew Mom was gone. Another image of Mitch filled my mind. In a fit of rage I leapt up and grabbed the silver-framed picture of Mom and me, sitting on my dresser. I hurled it at the wall. There was a satisfying crunch and snap when the frame bent and the glass cracked. For added effect I stepped on the frame, wiggling my body so my full weigh pulverized the already broken frame. Mollified by my destruction, I grinned and allowed my thoughts to drift back to better things, like Mitch.
I recalled that when he had paid me for tutoring the week before he had mentioned the party at Dallas’s. The comment had meant so much more since everyone knew that he and his girlfriend of six months, Cherise, had broken up a few weeks back. With him wide open I was finally going to get my chance to pave a future for us as a couple. No matter what Mom had ordered, there was absolutely no way I was going to let the opportunity to be a part of his life, slip through my fingers.
With the edge of my fury a little frayed from my flip out, I threw myself back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I knew I had two options, sneak out and quite possibly hook up with Mitch, or stay home and let my life and only opportunity pass me by. It took minimal weighing of the scenarios for me to decide on what to do. What I came up with was, that sometimes the punishment for the crime was worth the risk. In my opinion Mitch was worth the risk.