The Unrepentant, page 3
He doesn’t want to lie to Charlotte. Seems like she’s had enough shitty people in her life.
Tomorrow, Mace decides. Tomorrow he’ll talk with her, try and convince her that the cops or feds can help.
Mace settles deeper in the chair, rests his head back into the soft cushion. He sends an email to his office from his phone, telling them he had a family emergency and he’ll need a day or two off. The website development company he works for lets him telecommute, but Mace figures it’ll be hard to concentrate on coding with Charlotte hiding out in his home.
The argument with Eve returns to him. He never should have married an attorney. Mace has lost every argument they’ve ever had, from which cable package to buy to whether pancakes counted as dinner to tonight’s, whether or not Mace should see someone for his depression.
He’d try to explain that he wasn’t depressed.
“You don’t think so?” Eve had asked, skeptically.
“I’m good.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re in an apartment the size of a Hyundai with barely any furniture and…” She sniffed. “It always smells like pancakes in here. You’re lonely, Mace. I don’t want you to be lonely. You deserve more.”
There was an implication there that Mace didn’t want to pursue. Eve wanted him to be with someone, just not necessarily her. She wanted him to move on. And that was hard for Mace to believe…unless Eve had met someone else.
“Have you…” he asked, and let the question drop.
“Have I what?”
“Met someone.”
Eve didn’t look away, didn’t change her expression. Stared at him with those analyzing lawyer eyes. “This is about you, not me. And I want you to be happy.” Her expression changed, softened by empathy. “Wouldn’t you want that for me?”
“I’d prefer that you’re alone, too.”
A small trace of a smile. “Really? Even if you’d met someone else?”
“Yeah. Absolutely.”
Mace drifts back to the present, looks at the only picture in his apartment, a framed movie poster of Woody Allen’s Manhattan. The poster is black and white and depicts one of the iconic scenes in the movie—Woody Allen and Diane Keaton’s silhouettes on a park bench, staring at a morning mist-shrouded Queensboro Bridge. Mace has never seen the movie, but something about the image drew him to buy the poster. He liked the intimacy of the couple, the way they’re alone in a public place. It’s hard to tell, but it seems like Diane Keaton is facing Allen as he looks forward, his figure forlorn. Everything in the picture is shadowed but decipherable: the wooden park bench, a thin tree, authoritative street signs, the small dog next to Keaton.
Even the bridge is faded to the point that it almost blends into the white background, yet it dominates the picture.
Mace stares at the poster until his eyes close.
Chapter Seven
Mace could be a saint or a psychopath and, after everything she’s been through, Charlotte’s nowhere near comfortable enough to fall asleep in a stranger’s apartment.
Plus, she’s lactose intolerant and the mac and cheese hurt her stomach.
She sits up in bed. There’s not much in the room aside from the bed and a dresser full of Mace’s clothes. She’s wearing her jeans and one of his T-shirts, a grey one that hangs to her knees and smells like wood, as if it’s spent years in a dresser drawer.
She can’t stop watching the doorknob, waiting for Mace to try the lock.
She slides off the bed.
Charlotte pulls the door open and peers outside. The kitchen light is on, the living room dimly illuminated. She’s surprised that Mace is sleeping in the recliner and not in his bedroom.
There’s no way she can stay here.
Even if Mace was honest about everything he said, Charlotte doesn’t feel safe in this apartment, less than a mile from where she was almost murdered. And that cop already came. What if something aroused his suspicion? What if he comes back with the rest of them and they force their way in?
Her wrists burn from the ropes. Her mind is jumpy with memories of those men coming into the room she was held in, lying on top of her, pulling her out of the car’s trunk, dragging her through the woods. Men controlling her for weeks, maybe months, she has no idea. Those hands pushing and pulling and forcing her to bend until she nearly broke, like dried clay.
Charlotte walks across the apartment noiselessly, past snoring Mace, slips into his bedroom. She reaches for the light switch but decides not to turn it on. She leaves the door open, using the light from the kitchen.
She finds his wallet on the dresser, the same place her uncle kept his.
There’s not much, about eighty dollars.
Charlotte takes it all.
She figures she can use the money to get a cab, but she didn’t see much traffic outside the apartment building and has no idea how close the nearest major street is. Good thing the key fob to Mace’s car is right next to his wallet. Charlotte grabs the key and is about to stuff it into her pocket, but pauses.
What if Mace calls the police and reports her? The last thing she needs is to get arrested, brought back to that cop.
And Charlotte doesn’t want to steal his car. Despite her distrust, Mace has been nothing but nice to her.
She’s growing nervous, worried he’ll wake. Whatever she’s going to do, she needs to do it quickly.
She takes the car key.
Mace is still sleeping in the chair. She sees the thinning dark hair on top of his head, hears his soft snore. She tries to think of anything else she needs—food, water, more money—but everything she can think of runs the risk of waking him.
Charlotte walks to the front door, turns the knob, steps outside.
The hall is empty.
She closes the door and hurries to the stairs. Heads down. Pushes open the door leading outside. Peers through it.
Steps out into the cool night.
Charlotte runs over to a dark inlet in the building. From here she can see the parking lot and the sign for the apartment complex: Garden Crossing.
What garden?
She pushes a button on the key fob. A truck’s red taillights blink at her.
Charlotte hurries to the truck, pulls open the door, climbs inside. She has no idea where she’s going.
Just away.
Chapter Eight
Frank’s phone rings.
Will and Frank watch it, too nervous to answer. Their partner, Seth Yates, strides out of the bathroom, his curiosity gone the moment he sees the caller ID.
He puts the phone on speaker.
“Why isn’t Charlotte dead?” Barnes asks, his voice raspy, harsh.
No one says anything.
Will doesn’t know much about Barnes, and he’s not sure if the rumors are true. That Barnes spent time in the military, either Iraq or Afghanistan. But some people say he never went overseas. They say he stayed in the Southwest, traveled back and forth to Mexico to train the Mexican military to fight the cartels. No one is sure of the truth. Everyone is too intimidated to ask.
Will isn’t even sure if Barnes is his first or last name. If it’s real at all.
“She was with a couple of your guys,” Frank puts in, nervously. “Someone attacked them in the woods.”
“Was it one of you?”
“What?” Will asks. “No!”
“You think we’re that dumb?” Will can hear the fear in Frank’s voice.
“Maybe,” Barnes says. “I’m not sure how dumb you are. But my guys were in the middle of the woods somewhere in fucking Maryland, in the middle of the night, and they were jumped by someone who just happened to be in that same spot at the same time. That sound suspicious to you?”
“Well,” Frank admits, “when you say it like that…”
“Where’s Dave, the cop?” Barnes interrupts. “He there?”
“He’s out looking for her,” Seth says. “But he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Seth’s voice doesn’t hold the same fear that Frank and Will share. He’s always reminded Will of a worn wall; scarred but standing.
Barnes doesn’t sound convinced. Will understands why. It’s too unlikely a coincidence. He’d been with Frank that night, but Dave and Seth were both out. One of their group of four could have tried to save her.
But that doesn’t make sense.
Not after what they’d done to her.
“No one double-crossed you,” Frank is saying. “We’re looking for her. Dave’s checking all the buildings near the woods where they lost her. We’ll find her.”
“Three days,” Barnes tells them. “Three days from now, if she’s still out there, your gang of four is cut down to three.”
His line disconnects.
Chapter Nine
Mace can’t believe he didn’t hear Charlotte leave.
But its morning, her door is open, and the guest bedroom is empty.
He’s alone in the apartment.
He also can’t believe he slept as long as he did. He woke around nine a.m., and it’s been years since he slept past six. Eve used to hate that he was an early-riser.
It was part of his makeup. Even as a child, Mace liked structure, the more rigid the better. He put his toys away as a toddler, ate cleanly, woke and went to bed at the same time for years. Any disruption to his daily schedule caused tears. He relaxed as he grew older, but some of those early habits manifested in different ways: he was always on time, happily predictable.
And then his grandfather committed suicide when he was just out of college, and order was gone.
His grandfather had grappled with depression and lost. Mace remembered visiting him, the bleary way his grandfather greeted him, trying to speak through a haze of drugs. And when they heard the news, that he’d sliced his wrists open, everything about Mace’s mother collapsed.
It was like déjà vu from his childhood visits with his grandfather. Mace and Eve would find his mother sleeping on the couch, barely able to wake up for their visit. Mace tried to help, begged her to continue counseling, offered to move her into their house or even move in with her, but she refused. She had moments of sobriety where it almost seemed as if she’d recovered, when she smiled through tears, joked with Eve about Mace’s childhood or mischievously hinted at hopes for grandchildren.
She seemed happy the last time Mace saw her, a year and a half ago. She moved aside pillows and blankets, so he could sit next to her, and talked with him about her depression. She said it was genetic, said her struggles had grown worse. Claimed it caused her divorce, her listlessness, her absence from friends and family. She cried when she told Mace she was happy it hadn’t affected him.
Mace didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was on anti-depressants.
Had been ever since he left the Army.
Where the hell did Charlotte go? Mace rubs his face. He’s tired, and the soreness in his legs has spread through his chest and arms and back. But he needs to find her: for her safety, and for another reason he can’t quite understand. The more he’d spoken with Charlotte, the more familiar she seemed. Almost as if he’s known her for years.
He heads to the bathroom and strips down to take a quick shower before he goes searching. Mace turns on the water, looks at himself in the mirror, at the chest fighting a losing battle to hold definition, the softening biceps that used to be boulders.
At least, that’s how he remembers them.
Mace steps in the shower and lets hot water run down his back. The heat leaves his skin tingling. He closes his eyes.
And hears his front door open.
His head pops up, hand on the faucet, about to turn the water off. He leaves it on, figures it better whoever’s out there is unaware he’s heard them. Mace slides open the shower curtain, grabs a towel, wraps it around his waist.
“Mace?”
The tension disappears.
He opens the bathroom door and steps outside.
Eve’s sitting on his recliner, long legs leisurely crossed.
She looks more relaxed than she did when he stormed out the night before. She’s wearing black pants, brown boots and a brown blazer. The way she’s sitting accentuates her legs and lean body, and the colors in her outfit contrast nicely with her black skin. She’s bound her braids at the bottom and turned her hair into one long lovely rope. He can smell her lotion from where he stands. Like its drawing him closer to her.
It’s hard for him to look at her face, her full lips and soft eyes, and not feel overwhelmed by love.
But Eve’s trying to play it cool. He plays it cooler. “I thought we were done talking.”
Water’s running down his face, and Mace runs his hands through his wet hair.
The movement accidentally causes the towel to fall to the floor.
“You’re not happy to see me?” Eve asks.
In his bedroom, Mace pulls on a pair of boxers, jeans, and a T-shirt. He hears Eve changing television channels in the living room, staying on each channel longer than he would, one of those meaningless married habits that used to inexplicably irritate him.
Mace walks into the living room, leans against the wall. Eve is watching some show about people renovating a house.
“I thought we were done talking.”
She turns toward him. “I’m worried about you.”
Mace shrugs, tries to make the motion nonchalant. “You said that last night. I’m fine.”
He wonders about Charlotte. Wonders where she went, if she’s okay. He’d planned on searching for her, taking his truck around the neighborhood, seeing if he can spot her. The odds are slim, but he has to do something.
And if that doesn’t work, he’ll call the cops. Tell them everything that happened.
“You don’t seem fine,” Eve is saying. “And how long do you plan on living here?”
“What’s wrong with this place? It gets cable.”
Her forehead furrows. “Cable? Who still has cable?”
“I’m not coming back.”
“I’m not asking.” Eve doesn’t let the sentence linger; this is the point that caused their explosive fight the night before. “I don’t want to look after you. I’m not your babysitter.”
“Right.” He’s not sure where she’s going with this.
“All I want is for you to talk to somebody.”
“Another counselor?”
“I think you should try someone else. There’s nothing wrong with trying, right?”
Mace takes a moment before he speaks.
“I appreciate you coming back here,” he tells Eve. “I do. But you don’t have to.” He walks to the window, pulls open the blinds, looks out to the wooded path that leads to the Jones Fall River.
“You’re not going to kill yourself,” Eve says. “You’re not her.”
“You have no idea what it’s like when you’re down. Really down.” It feels easier to talk this way, looking out the window instead of at Eve. “Doesn’t feel like you’re ever going to come up.”
“You’re taking your medicine, right?”
Mace nods.
“Then it’s not going to drag you down forever. When depression hits, it’s not real. And the sadness won’t last. When you’re on your pills, that’s the real you.”
“What if it’s not? What if the real me is the person without pills?”
“Remember what that doctor said? How the body naturally heals bruises? We’re not meant to suffer. Our bodies recover. The medicine helps with that.”
Mace doesn’t say anything.
“I’m worried about you, no matter what you tell me. Especially because you don’t seem like you want to get better.”
And at that, like a suddenly struck match, anger flares. He faces her. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.” Eve’s expression is blank, refusing to let emotion in. “What don’t I understand?”
“When I talk about that stuff, it feels like it’ll drag me down. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t want to talk about it, and you won’t turn to someone else?”
Mace nods. “That sounds about right.”
Eve stands. “I’m not doing this. I’m not having this conversation again.”
“Go ahead then. Like you left our marriage.”
That stops her, just as Mace knew it would.
“You didn’t make it easy to be around,” Eve tells him, struggling to keep her anger controlled. “I tried.”
The word “tried” stirs something in Mace, sends him back to the time when he’d found his mother’s body on the couch, pills spilled on the floor like confetti, smiling childhood pictures of him on the table. After her funeral, he couldn’t be close to anyone. He pushed her away emotionally and, eventually, they stayed in different corners of their house. Mace was downing Paxil and Xanax, numbed and alone, turning cold whenever Eve approached.
She tried to help, her family tried to help. He rebuffed their efforts. And Eve was alone, and she was never the type to be alone. She turned to Mace helplessly, begged him. He held her with limp arms. When Eve gave up, Mace didn’t begrudge her. Helping someone who’s sick is a romantic notion; in reality, it’s a superhuman effort. He couldn’t ask it of her.
He left.
The new situation didn’t feel better, but it did feel natural.
They stayed in infrequent touch for months but, a few weeks ago, Eve had returned. Showed up at his door and tried to get him to talk.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says now. “Just a goodbye.”
Something in Eve’s expression cracks, almost breaks. She starts to say something but goes to the door instead.
Mace wants to call out to her.
But he doesn’t.
A few minutes later Mace is chewing his thumb knuckle and wondering if he should go after her.
Yeah…
On one hand, Eve’s got a good future ahead of her without him dragging her down. She’s smart, beautiful, tough, funny, ethical…Mace should let her go, let her step away from him and his dips into depression.
