The Unrepentant, page 18
Charlotte tells herself she didn’t have a choice, that she couldn’t risk making things worse.
Hopes she can believe it.
She puts her arms inside her sweatshirt to stay warm. Keeps watching the hospital doors.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“This doesn’t seem like you,” Dory says.
Frank nods too fast, nervously runs a hand through his short hair, feels it spring back into place. He’s already high and wishes he was higher. It’s been a long time since he did anything other than smoke or eat weed. For a while he was gobbling down mushrooms, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do it lately.
Frank feels like he needs to be in control.
So, just weed.
He holds the bucket he brought downstairs out to Dory. “Hey, you need to pee or not?”
A disappointed look crosses her face. Her head, lifted at an uncomfortable angle to watch Frank, rests back on the bed. “No.”
Frank feels like he let her down, tries to ignore the feeling. Tries to ignore her naked body chained to the bed in front of him, the same way he never looked at Charlotte’s body when she was held here. Even when he’d sneak downstairs and…
He shakes his head.
But even then, he never looked at her.
“I’m not like this,” he tells Dory, and he remembers being in this room with Will the night Charlotte escaped. How he’d told Will they needed to find Charlotte, said something like “cover that bitch with dirt.” Remembered how impressed Will looked, and how impressed Frank felt by the phrase. Or maybe Will wasn’t impressed.
Maybe he was surprised.
“That’s what I thought,” Dory says eagerly. Frank tries to focus on what she’s saying without looking at her, which is really difficult when he’s high. It took him at least three trips to get downstairs after Barnes told him to look after her. First, he forgot the bucket, then he brought the bucket but forgot why he’d brought it downstairs. Will finally reminded him and tried to do it himself, but Frank wouldn’t let him.
He needs to keep Will away from this life.
Everything changed when Charlotte burned Seth.
Not that he was scared of her, but the idea that Charlotte wanted revenge, that she’d taken one of them down, bothered him.
It bothered him because he didn’t blame her.
Frank realizes Dory’s been talking to him, has no idea what she’s said.
“…People are more than bodies. They have souls. That’s what I was trying to tell him. That’s also why legalization is a flawed concept. It hasn’t worked. Like safe spaces for sex work.”
Frank nods. Has he been nodding the entire times she’s been speaking? What’s he agreed to?
“Oh, yeah.”
“You know you can’t follow him.”
“Who?”
Dory looks confused, then pained. “Barnes. Who we’ve been talking about.”
“He scares me,” Frank says, honestly.
“Me too.”
Frank looks behind himself, turns back toward Dory and speaks in a low whisper, “I think he’s going to kill all of us.”
“So do I.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I can help,” Dory says. “If you let me out of here, I’ll find help. And you can come with me. I know lots of people. I promise you. We’ll be safe.”
Frank shakes his head mournfully. “Barnes will find us. We won’t even make it out of the house.”
“He’s going to kill us if we stay. We have to try.”
“But…he’ll probably kill you first.” Frank brightens. “Maybe me and Will can escape when he’s killing you!”
“What?”
“Do you think that could work? Honest.”
Dory squeezes her eyes shut, keeps them tightly closed for a few seconds.
“Who’s Will?”
“My little brother. He’s here with me. He’s not…he’s not like I am.”
“Like you are?”
“Will’s a good kid,” Frank says solemnly. Talking about Will always makes him feel older, gives him a sense of protection. Maturity.
“A nice pimp?”
“He’s not a pimp,” Frank bristles. “He wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for me.”
“And now he’s going to die because of you.”
Frank wants to respond, wants to argue the point, can’t.
He holds his head in his hands.
He should be drinking. Just leave this room and drink until he’s unconscious. Wake up days later and see if things have changed for the better. See if Barnes came in here and killed Dory and found and killed Charlotte and left for Arizona and they can go back to selling to suburban kids. Go back to a time when they wanted more money and more danger without taking that first shaky step toward it. That first step into this dark stone room.
He wonders if there’s a step out.
“Here’s what you do,” he hears Dory telling him, her voice a furtive whisper. “You let me out first. Let me escape. When Barnes comes down here to check on me, you and your brother leave. I’ll call and get help. Even if you don’t get out in time, we can get someone here. And if you want to disappear once Barnes is in jail, I can help with that too. I’ll do anything if you help me.”
Frank bites his lip, finally looks up.
“You’d really help me?”
“I promise I would.”
He reaches into his pocket, fishes around, pulls out a key.
“And you won’t let anything happen to Will? Even if something bad happens to me?”
“He’ll be safe.”
Frank slides the key into the lock.
“You promise that about Will?”
Dory is watching the key so intensely that she almost doesn’t realize he asked another question. “I do.”
He turns the lock. The steel circles around Dory’s wrists loosen.
They hear Barnes’s heavy footsteps upstairs.
On the old creaky hardwood floor, his steps sound like a sledgehammer shattering bones.
Frank hurriedly turns the key again.
Those circles tighten. Dory’s arms jerk, snapping the chains tight.
“What are you doing?” she cries. “Help me!”
Frank shakes his head. “Can’t do it,” he says, and quickly walks to the door. “Can’t do it.”
“Please! Please!”
Frank closes the door behind himself, praying he doesn’t see Barnes on the way to the kitchen.
Barnes is waiting at the foot of the stairs.
“Where did you…I thought you were walking upstairs.”
“I came down.”
Frank blinks. “You’re fast!”
“What were you doing in there?” Barnes asks.
“Nothing. Taking a bucket down to the prisoner.”
As frightened as he is of Barnes, Frank couldn’t be more relieved that Dory isn’t with him.
Barnes cracks a small smile. “The prisoner. She trying to make trouble? Get you to get her out? Promise you things?”
“I just, I just left her in there.”
Barnes’s knife flashes out. Frank isn’t even sure where it came from. He’s way too high.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his throat dry, eyeing the knife.
Barnes pushes past him, opens the door. Steps inside and closes it.
Frank stays in the hall for a few moments, listens to their low voices inside. And then he hears Dory scream.
Frank needs a drink. He starts to hurry upstairs.
“Frank!” he hears Barnes call. “Come in here.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Eve looks around the room. A TV is perched high on the wall opposite her. A tray with a pink plastic cup is on one side of her bed, Mace sitting awkwardly in a chair on the other. Worry is drawn so deeply in his face it seems permanently etched.
“You awake?” he asks.
“I hope so. If not, heaven is kind of overrated.”
A shadow of a smile on his face. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m…okay.” Eve tries to remember what led her here—the men breaking into their home, the shot, the rush to the hospital—but something seems missing.
Her wound has stopped hurting.
She gingerly touches the bandage covering her shoulder, winces as pain rushes down her arm.
There it is.
“Where’s Charlotte?” she asks.
Mace is quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure, to be honest. And I’m not sure we should find her.”
“Excuse me?”
That dangerous tone in Eve’s voice; Mace is familiar with it, knows that he’s about to lose whatever argument he’s making.
But he stubbornly stands his ground.
“This isn’t our fight,” he says. “And we don’t even know her. Or the people looking for her. Maybe we should have just called the cops.”
Eve glances at the door, makes sure it’s closed.
“You’d both be in jail if we had.”
“And safe.”
Eve gives him a look. “In jail?”
“Maybe.”
She pushes herself up to a sitting position with her good arm, grimacing. “Come on, Mace. You know better than that.”
“You don’t even trust her,” he says, accusingly.
Eve doesn’t take the bait. “Are you saying this because you’re scared?” Her voice isn’t unkind.
A beat passes.
“When that gun went off and you fell down,” he tells her, “I was scared for a second, and then it changed to something else. I’m not scared anymore.”
She nods.
“But you got shot, Eve. And I don’t care about anything else but that now.”
She reaches out, loosely holds his hand with her good arm. “Right now I’m in a hospital. I’m safe. And Charlotte’s out there. I know she seems tough and acts like she can take care of herself, but she’s a kid. You need to find her. And after you find her, we need to get her in touch with Dory. Dory can get Charlotte somewhere far away. You really have no idea where she is?”
“No, but she has my truck. I left her the keys.”
A moment of pain causes Eve’s expression to contort. It passes. “Do you think she’s going to go after them?”
“I have no idea what she’s going to do. But I’m going to stay here with you.”
“No.”
“I want to keep you safe.”
“I’m safe.”
“I just…”
“Mace. She needs us.”
Something finally awakens in Mace, the memory of first hearing Charlotte beg for her life, her young fear.
And the resoluteness in Eve’s face. And in her voice.
“Okay.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah.” He looks over his shoulder. “Gabe’s here, and your parents will be here soon.”
“Gabe’s here?”
“I texted him last night. Told him the same thing I told the cops. That it was a robbery.” He fidgets with his hands. “It just doesn’t seem right to leave you here. Not after what happened.”
“I’m in a hospital with my family.” Eve touches the end of a braid with her free hand. “Listen, one time this woman visited our office. She wanted a divorce from her husband. I was talking with her when her husband came in shouting. She turned pale and I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. He was outside yelling for her and she got up and left. I never heard from her again.”
“No one called security?”
“The office I worked for was small. No security.”
“You can’t put what happened on you. Maybe she wasn’t being abused.”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is I just sat there. I have to be better than that.”
Mace looks away, at the smudged gold of the door handle.
“The man I love has to be better than that.”
Silence for a few moments.
“Shit, Eve, ever think about working on your subtlety?”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Mace hears a low whistle when he walks out of the hospital. A parked ambulance is in front of him, sirens silently flashing. A sleeping overweight man is slouched over the side of a wheelchair, stomach sagging out of a red sweatshirt. Mace looks left, sees Charlotte by the side of the building. She ducks away.
He finds her tucked into a small alcove, pulling leaves out of her hair.
He wants to ask about the leaves, but she speaks first.
“How’s Eve?”
“Eve’s okay. She won’t need surgery. She’ll stay in the hospital through the day, then she’s going home with her brother.”
“Will she be safe with him?”
“He was in the military and collects guns. She’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Charlotte reaches into her pocket, pulls out his car key. Hands it to Mace.
“What are you doing now?” he asks.
“I’m going to find those men.”
“And then what do we do?”
Charlotte’s surprised. “We?”
A car horn blares angrily in the distance. “They shot Eve,” Mace says, simply.
“Yeah?”
“They need to be stopped.”
Charlotte’s puzzled. “Not to be rude, but how are you going to help stop them? I know you were in the Army, but wasn’t that like a hundred years ago?”
“A little less than that.”
A mom and a young boy walk past them, the boy holding her hand and skipping. Mace waits until they’re close to the hospital entrance.
“Eve’s brother gave me a gun.”
“What kind?”
“It’s a Ruger 380.”
“Decent power, but nothing special.”
Mace gives her a quizzical look.
“My uncle used to take me shooting.” Charlotte crosses her arms, frowns. “So we have one weapon and no plan.”
“We have a plan. To find them and stop them.”
He’s changed.
And Charlotte doesn’t like the change. The humor that underlined Mace’s voice when she first met him is gone. And whatever that humor was guarding has emerged.
It makes sense. The attack last night, the injury to Eve, all these violent disruptions to his life. And now he’s hiding between a hospital and a forest, talking about revenge with a victim of sex trafficking.
Days ago, this hadn’t been his life.
It still doesn’t have to be.
She can step away from him and Eve. Neither of them needs to be involved. She should have slipped away last night, disappeared into the forest or driven far away, but she wanted to make sure Eve was okay.
And she wanted to say goodbye.
“So listen, Mace…” Charlotte begins.
He’s squinting down at his phone and ignoring her, concentrating on dialing in the fierce way that older folks focus on technology.
“Who are you calling?” she asks.
Chapter Seventy
Will almost drops Dory’s phone when it buzzes.
Barnes had told him to search it and find something useful. Will wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he hadn’t found much. Mainly a bunch of apps for volunteer organizations and one defunct dating site. But at least it distracted him from the sounds downstairs.
Will heads to the stairs, yells to the basement, “Someone’s calling her phone.”
“Bring it here,” Barnes yells back.
Will takes a moment to gather his courage, reminds himself that he hasn’t heard Dory screaming for a while now. Walks down the stairs to the same small room where they kept Charlotte.
He walks in, and then he can’t walk anymore.
He can’t move.
Barnes stands next to the bed, a long-bloodied apron covering his bare chest and jeans, hands on his hips, grinning.
Frank is sitting in the corner closest to the door, looking down.
Dory’s face is beaten beyond recognition, bloated and bruised. She’s naked and curled tightly, her breasts ballooned flat against her thighs.
Her back bleeds from knife lines. Barnes grabs a white towel forever stained red, runs it over her back, drops it on the floor.
Will looks away as Dory stares at him, her mouth covered in tape, her eyes wild and desperate.
Barnes wipes his hands on his apron and takes the phone.
“This is Luther Ford.” His voice smooth and light, the gruffness gone.
He listens, then says, “Who’s this?”
Barnes waits, listens. Then he grins, picks up a knife from the floor and holds the phone in front of Dory’s face with his other hand. “Want to say hi?”
She stares hard at the knife. Doesn’t move.
Barnes sits next to Dory and sets the phone to speaker.
“Dory can’t talk right now.”
“Where is she?” a man asks, his voice encumbered by static, like thorns holding back someone emerging from a forest.
Frank hasn’t acknowledged his brother, lifted his head, moved a muscle.
Will desperately wants to leave the room. Wants to forever forget Dory’s desperate, fearful eyes, the blood rising from her back.
“Dory’s here,” Barnes is saying. “But like I told you, she isn’t much for talking right now. You said my friend Charlotte wanted her. She with you?”
No response for a few moments.
“Barnes, you stupid sick fuck.” Right away, even with the static, Will can tell the voice belongs to Charlotte. “What’d you do to her? What are you doing here?”
“Came to see you. And Dory’s fine.” He swings his giant fist down to Dory’s face. Everyone in the room flinches. His hand stops inches from her nose.
Barnes extends his thumb up.
“Prove it,” Charlotte says. “Let me talk to her.”
“You were a good worker, Charlotte,” Barnes replies. “That was what, a hundred men in a week?”
“You’re going to burn,” Charlotte threatens, thickly. “Let me talk to her.”
