Smoke and Mirrors (2 page)

Eleanore was petrified.

The masked attacker held a knife to her husband’s throat and told her to say her goodbyes. Fat tears streamed down her face. She didn’t know what to do to keep that knife from slicing across Lawrence’s throat.

“No,” Eleanore cried. “Please! You don’t need to kill an innocent man. We were only out on our first date. I’ll come with you willingly.” If she could convince the masked man that his captive was only a casual acquaintance, perhaps he’d let him go. Eleanore tried to sound convincing, though the tears made it difficult for her to speak with conviction.

The masked man already knew she was going to go with him, because he’d planned it that way. He didn’t want to hurt her husband, but Lawrence was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he knew Eleanore was lying. The man against whose throat he held a shiny hunter’s knife was indeed, her husband.

“I don’t believe you,” said the masked man and lightly ran the knife across her husband’s neck. Just enough to allow a trickle of blood to escape past the neat line.

“NO!” she screamed louder. Her shoulders slumped and she lowered her gaze to the floor.

Lawrence had been bound and gagged by the masked man. Only able to use his eyes, he tried to convey to Eleanore that everything was going to be alright, that he’d find a way to save them both. But even he could admit that with his arms bound from wrist to elbow, his legs bound from knee to ankle, it was looking fairly desperate. He tried to shake his head, though the masked man had a tight hold of his hair so he really couldn’t move.

“I’ll come with you. Only please, let him go.” Eleanore stood awkwardly from her kneeling position. Her arms were bound behind her back, but her legs were free.

The masked man looked up and down at her figure. The thigh-high dress she was wearing was torn, her make-up was smudged and her hair was a mess.

My God, she’s beautiful
, thought the masked man.

“Please,” she whimpered in a last-ditch effort to try and convince him to leave Lawrence alone.

Standing behind her kneeling, bound husband, the masked man’s body was becoming aroused. She was begging; the husband was incapacitated. He held all the power.
Just the way he liked it.

Power. The funny thing about power…once you got a taste of it, you craved more, whether it was power from money, drugs, or power over another person.

Eleanore’s submission at this moment, with her eyes lowered, and sniffing back those tears… yep, it made him even harder.

“All right, sweetheart. I’ll grant your wish. But try to screw with me and I’ll come back and kill your entire family, including your three children.”

Her shoulders tensed. Eleanore realized this wasn’t random. The masked man knew her. Did that mean she knew the masked man? She hadn’t recognized his voice or his build. Who the hell was he?

The masked man hit the back of Lawrence’s head with the hilt of his knife. Her husband collapsed to the ground in front of her, falling without grace or ease. When he woke, his head would be throbbing, and his face would surely be bruised.

The man in control strolled over to the bound woman. Eleanore’s tears fell in big, plump streaks down her face.
God – she’s so beautiful, but why is she like this?
he thought.

He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the building into the night, to stumble toward his waiting car.

She blinked through her tears, trying to commit everything to memory, because if she got a chance she was going to take it and run.

She saw tall buildings surrounding the one they exited. Trash littered the alley; graffiti adorned the naked bricks. An odor permeated the dark, one that smelled of urine and rotted meat.

Where the hell am I?
Eleanore thought as she tried to get her bearings.

The man kept tugging her toward his car, just ahead.

She could scream, but from looks of the place, no one would hear, and if they did, they wouldn’t pay attention.

Her head snapped to the left. Something caught her peripheral vision, maybe someone in a position to help her. She slowed and opened her mouth to scream, but saw it was a matted gray cat scurrying along, most likely looking for food amidst the garbage.

It was useless.

Eleanore understood the moment she was in his car, she could end up anywhere.

Everything she ever heard about not allowing yourself to be dragged into a kidnapper’s car barreled back through her mind. She started fighting, struggling with the man dragging her. Although he easily overpowered her, it didn’t stop her from trying.

Until…

He whispered one word in Eleanore’s ear that sent a freezing chill straight through her blood, icing her veins completely, killing all her spunk and resistance.

“Claudia,” he murmured. It was her youngest daughter’s name.

At that moment, she stopped fighting and resolved to comply with whatever he wanted from her.

Eleanore willingly went with him to his car. She willingly climbed into the trunk. And she willingly resigned herself to becoming his next victim.

The moment the man started the car, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

That was easier than I thought.

He drove her to the house he’d prepared for her. When he opened the trunk, Eleanore was lying on her side with tears streaming down her face.

“Out,” he commanded.

She tried to get up, but it was impossible with her hands bound behind her. Her body was weak, and she was totally spent. Her mind had switched off and she simply didn’t have the strength.

Eleanore absently noted, as she looked up, that the man had removed his mask. His eyes were big and brown. His face wasn’t harsh, scarred, or even scary. He was a handsome man, a man who could’ve easily found a woman. So why had he taken her?

The night air was still. Frogs croaked on the banks of a small stream that ran down behind the house. The home itself was on acreage, with no other homes visible. No one was going to see or hear her out here.

Eleanore’s adrenaline had run out. She was becoming shaky, and her eyes unbearably heavy. Her feet dragged as he pushed her toward the quaint, white brick cottage.

When he opened the door, her eyes adjusted to the bright lights inside.

What the hell is going on?
Eleanore thought again.
What does he want with me?

He pushed her toward an open door. Inside, the one window was boarded over. Dominating the room was a very comfortable-looking queen bed, with a beautiful bedside table.

This is really weird.

“Behind that door is a bathroom,” he pointed to one of two doors against the interior wall as he freed her wrists. He looked at her intently and gently stroked one cheek.

She was too weak to try and fight him, and even if she could, she had no idea where the hell she was. Any escape attempt would have to wait. Her body was shaking uncontrollably.

He left, closing the bedroom door behind him. Three loud clicks made it obvious he’d locked her in there.

She took her exhausted body to the bed and curled up on the oddly comfortable mattress, completely perplexed by the entire situation.

This lovely place, the beautifully made bed, the comfortably warm room, the vent in the ceiling providinging fresh air, none of it seemed designed to imprison a captive. Every effort had been made to ensure her comfort. Obviously, her abduction had been planned well in advance. How long had this man been stalking her?

This is not a room for torture.

Time passed as Eleanore lay on the bed trying to make sense of her situation. She wasn’t sure how long because she couldn’t see outside; nor was there a clock telling her the time.

But she could tell it had been several hours. Her body began to shiver violently, despite the comfortable warmth of the room. Her skin started to ooze a fine sheen of sweat, and her mind started to slip. Eleanore had experienced this before, and knew exactly what was happening to her.

She reached around for her bag, but of course, that was dropped at the site where she and her husband had been attacked.

Shit!
What was she going to do?

Soon, knots began to tighten in her stomach, and that sick feeling was quickly rising to the surface.

She stood and ran into the bathroom.

Oh no, not now…please, not now.

She collapsed beside the toilet and heaved into it, bringing up everything in her stomach.

She tried to lift her eyes from the mucky gunk in the toilet, but she felt a heaviness that completely weighed her down.

She threw up again, her body fighting against itself.

The moment she stopped vomiting, her captor came into the room holding a wet cloth and dabbed it gently against her face.

She was even more confused than ever.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You know what I’m doing,” he replied. He sat beside her on the cold, sterile tile floor, softly patting her forehead with the cloth in one hand, and holding her hair back with the other.

They sat in silence for a time. All she knew for certain was that she was sick and physically hurting.

When she finally lay on the floor, exhausted, shaky, skin clammy and deathly pale, she closed her eyes for a moment.

The man lifted her, stripped away her sweat-soaked clothes and placed her in bed. She was too helpless to object. He walked out of the room, locking the door behind him. In the kitchen, another man sat at the table. His hands were knit tightly together, and his knee was bouncing up and down.

“How is she?” he asked the kidnapper.

“Not good. She’s much worse than you thought, and pretty much how I expected she’d be.”

The man sitting at the table couldn’t help himself. He angrily swiped at the mug of steaming coffee in front of him, smashing it to the floor.

“Fuck!” he yelled. “Just… fuck!”

The kidnapper stood and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’ve seen much worse, but you need to prepare yourself. It’s going to get pretty ugly.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I’ve read all the material you sent me, and I know this is the only way to save her. It’s just that…”

“I know; you’re concerned. But an intervention is the only way for someone that refuses to admit that she has such a strong drug dependency. And what she’s using is nothing to fuck around with. It’ll kill her if she keeps going.”

Lawrence nodded. He knew this was their last chance to live a normal life. He knew the way they went about the intervention was intended to shock her into accepting the reality of her condition. She needed to be saved, not just for herself but for him and their children, too. And this was the only way. 

They had to scare her straight, for ice was one of the most addictive drugs that had ever been created.

Lawrence wondered what would happen when Eleanore emerged on the other side.

Would she thank him?

Skye looked left, looked right, then looked left again.

She didn’t see the car approaching, because the sun had created a blind spot. Her earbuds were in her ears, blasting AC/DC. She was listening to “Thunderstruck” and singing along.

Skye’s right foot came down off the curb first, quickly followed by her left. One step, then a second.

Xavier was running late for work. He was supposed to start in ten minutes, and yet he was a good twenty minutes away if he didn’t hit any traffic.

He looked down at his ringing phone and saw his boss’s angry face blinking up at him. Obviously, the boss was pissed off already this morning, and so, “I’m running late” wouldn’t be something he wanted to hear.

He looked up from his phone just as he hit the girl crossing the road.

Xavier hit the brakes with everything he had, both feet stomping on the pedal and locking his brakes as he tried to stop the car as quickly as he could. But traveling above the speed limit wasn’t going to help, and neither was the fact the he’d been distracted by his cell phone.

“Oh shit! What have I done?” he cried as he finally managed to stop the skidding car.

He jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward the mass of blood and flesh lying on the road. Without thinking, he scooped her up and cradled her bloodied body against his elegant Armani suit. Blood poured from her. He shouldn’t have touched her, not because of the warm, red liquid oozing out of her, but because he could have done more damage than he already had. But Xavier wasn’t thinking.

“I’m so sorry,” he kept chanting, over and over again.

Skye didn’t know what happened. One moment she was happily singing to “Thunderstruck”, and the next she was being thrown in the air. She didn’t see Xavier’s car, she didn’t hear it, and she had no idea that in a blink of an eye her entire world was about to change.

She could now hear someone saying they were sorry. She could feel warm, strong arms hugging her, stroking her hair and telling her to, “Hold on, help’s on the way,” but she didn’t quite understand what was happening.

It was so peaceful, so beautiful as Skye stood beside herself, looking at the handsome young man caressing her hair and crying as he kissed her forehead.