The Unrepentant, page 6
“I can sleep in the other bedroom. It’ll be…”
“No.”
Charlotte’s arms are crossed over her chest.
“Sorry?” Mace asks.
“You’re right about a lot of stuff,” Charlotte tells Eve. “Our lives were in danger. They still are. Maybe the men who had me will find us. They’re looking, for sure. They don’t know how much I learned about them, and they can’t risk me telling anyone. But I don’t think they’ll find us tonight. I’m not sure how they even could. But let’s say they do, let’s say they come here and kill us. And you open the door tomorrow and find our bodies.”
“Remember,” Mace interrupts. “I’ll be sleeping near the door, so they’d have to get past…”
“If they kill us,” Charlotte continues, “then we’ll need you to find them. Get them arrested, throw them in jail. If you’re here, and they kill all of us, then they go free. I can’t let that happen. We need you to make sure they pay for what they did.”
Eve gazes at Charlotte.
Then she nods.
“You’re persuasive for an eighteen-year-old.”
“I grew up fast.”
Eve gives Charlotte a hug and walks downstairs with Mace. Charlotte listens to their low voices by the door but can’t make out what they’re saying.
She heads upstairs.
She stops at the top of the stairs and sits down. The hug from Eve was a surprise, and not in a good way. It felt like a cold shadow fell over her. Charlotte shivers.
She hasn’t felt another body since the basement.
Charlotte runs her hands through her hair, tightens her fingers, pulls until she feels the roots stretch. She stands and walks through a thin dark hallway with three doorways. Two doors lead into empty bedrooms, the other to a small bathroom. She walks into the largest bedroom and sits in the corner furthest from the door.
The memory of the man she shot that afternoon starts to push through. Charlotte fights the memory, the same way she has in the past.
She stares at the wall until she’s lost in its whiteness, blank.
Until that ghost vanishes, along with all the others.
Chapter Sixteen
Mace walks Eve out to her car, a silver BMW sedan.
“Sit with me a minute,” Eve tells him. “Let’s talk.”
She opens her door and climbs in. The door shuts and the outside noise is silenced. She watches Mace as he slouches into the passenger seat, hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie, knees nearly touching the glove compartment. He’s always had this relaxed style, and there’s something about the casual disregard that Eve loves.
He rubs his forehead, then his eyes.
Eve wants to touch him but doesn’t. “How you doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Charlotte felt like she was going to jump away when I hugged her. Should I stay?”
Mace plays with the strings tightening his hoodie before he shakes his head. “Charlotte was right. We shouldn’t all be together. I’m just not sure if we should call the cops.”
Eve taps her index finger against her palm. “Nothing’s changed from earlier. They’d still charge you as an accessory to murder. It doesn’t look like Charlotte has any proof of what happened to her. And the two of you killed somebody and deliberately tried to cover it up. I can promise you, the court won’t let you walk away.”
“But she can identify the cop who was holding her. The one who came by my apartment. Baker or something.”
“Maybe,” Eve acknowledges. “But then it’s her word against his. That doesn’t work well in cases of sexual assault, and definitely not if the accused has any type of distinguished record. If he was a repeat offender instead of a cop, that would be different.”
“But she said they raped her! Can’t the cops do a test or something?”
“It depends on how long ago she was assaulted,” Eve explains. “And whether or not she has his semen in her. She was held by several men. That cop may not have been the only one.”
“Then what else can we do? Legally?”
“I have a friend who might be able to help. But you’re safe here. Just keep an eye on Charlotte. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Mace stares out the window. “It sounds like you’re telling me to break the law by not going to the police.”
“I’m not.” Eve sighs. “Or maybe I am. I don’t want you to end up in prison. And if she’s telling the truth, then I’m not sure the law can give her the help she needs.” She pauses. “If she’s telling the truth.”
Mace is silent. Eve watches a brown leaf hanging on a branch, the breeze pushing it back and forth. Little moments like this have always captivated Eve, a sight or smell that brings her back to childhood. She looks at the leaf and remembers the fall days spent in Baltimore, the Saturday afternoons when she’d go to the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Eastern Avenue where her mother worked, and the quiet hours she’d spend reading at a table. Eve would lose herself in books, immersed in the pages until her mother’s hand on her back brought her blinking into the world. They’d walk home, heading past the row houses that run through Baltimore like brightly-colored jewels in an aged necklace.
Eve can remember where the paint peeled on certain houses, and she can remember which of their neighbors would sit on their porch steps, smoking and drinking and laughing. She can remember the smell of cigarettes on her father when he would come in, and the playful way he would try and hide from her mother, so she wouldn’t chide him. The smells of hamburger or corn on the grill in their tiny backyard. The day her older brother left for basic training, and how stiff and coarse his uniform felt when she hugged him goodbye.
Those moments stick out, despite the rest of her life seeming to rush by, like a movie fast-forwarded that is suddenly stopped, the screen frozen, before it moves on.
Eve looks at Mace, still slouched, staring despondently out the windshield. She remembers how J.T., a lawyer in a different firm, first kissed her. It’s been months, but she can still feel his chapped rough lips, and the heavy feeling of his hand on her back. Eve had left Mace by then, and it had been years since she’d kissed someone else. She worried she was doing it right, if she should even be doing it, if someone would be able to see them leaning into a doorway down the street from the bar where they’d just left happy hour, if that even mattered. She knew, technically, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but something about it was unsettling.
Maybe it was the secrecy. Eve had explained to J.T. that her marriage with Mace was over and told him about Mace’s struggles with depression. “I’m only telling you this,” Eve said, a week later when she and J.T. were in bed, “because I don’t want you to think I’m still attached. I’m not. But he gets depressed and finding out about us might put him over the edge.”
“I got you,” J.T. told her. Her head was on his chest, and she liked feeling his chin nudge the back of her head when he spoke. “It’s fine to keep this a secret.”
“Good.” She didn’t want to go into detail about Mace’s mood swings, his solitude, the way what could happen worried him more than what had happened. Eve and Mace were opposites this way. She preferred intimacy with people, sharing as a way of emotional commune. Mace stayed distant, kept everything and everyone an arm’s length away. And after his mother’s suicide, that distance increased. Eve tried to bring him back, but the more she tried, the further away he went.
She knew, early on, that J.T. wasn’t anything more than a fling. He was five years younger than she was, and more social. Eve liked spending her Saturday nights in, watching a movie or reading or doing work, but J.T. always wanted to go out. They didn’t go anywhere together, but he wanted her to meet up with him, and was irritated when she didn’t. “I’m just past that scene,” she’d explain. “Everyone there is younger than me. I can’t tell you how old I feel.”
“You’re crazy. You fit right in.”
But she didn’t. Eve always felt out-of-place in those environments and wondered if that had something to do with Mace. Not in his influence over her, but in how they got along. Mace always seemed like he was between worlds, not entirely belonging to one, mentally, emotionally, racially. After years of being together, something of that stuck in her.
After a few months, she broke things off with J.T. and decided to see how Mace was doing. They’d kept in touch infrequently, but she could never let go.
It always seemed unreal not to have him in her life.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” she tells him now.
“When you get here,” Mace replies, “call me. I’ll walk you from your car to the door.”
“Why?”
“Because of the sex traffickers.”
“You’re going to protect me?”
“Well, I was in the Army.”
“But that didn’t work out.”
“If they try to kidnap you and force you to become a sex slave, they can kidnap me instead. And then they’ll end up broke and out of business. That’s my plan. It’s a long con.”
Eve laughs. “I’m sorry. I sounded bitchy just now. I appreciate it. I guess I am a little scared. Charlotte killed that man right in front of you?”
Eve sees a shadow pass over his face.
He nods.
“Call me if you need anything.” She puts her hand on his arm.
It’s just a quick touch, but Eve can’t remember the last time she touched him.
After a few moments, he places his hand over hers.
Then she leaves.
Chapter Seventeen
Charlotte’s sitting on the staircase leading to the bedrooms when Mace walks back in. He looks up at her, his expression clouded.
“What?” she asks.
He takes a moment to respond.
“I’m bothered that you’re not bothered.”
Charlotte cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
“You killed that guy without any remorse. And you were held and…” Mace pauses. “…tortured, and you’re not acting like someone should.”
That curious expression stays. “How should I be acting?”
Mace feels like he’s walking on uncertain ground. “Scared? Closed off?”
“I kept the bedroom door locked last night. And I made sure the room I’m staying in tonight has a lock. And I have that guy’s gun. So, yeah, you could say I have trust issues.”
“But I just…how can you not hate everyone, most of all men, after what happened to you?”
“You don’t know what happened to me.” Charlotte averts her eyes. “And it’s not like that. I may not trust you, but I don’t hate you. You’re not those men.” She scratches her ankle. “But you’re right. I don’t feel bad about killing him. I’m worried I will, that it’s going to catch up to me. But I just don’t. I told you that you don’t know what happened to me. Something inside me is gone. Like any sympathy I’d have for those men was…” Charlotte pauses.
“Complicated?” Mace suggests.
“Destroyed.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” Mace offers.
“I’m sorry I left last night. I should have told you. I freaked out.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“This has been the longest day. I’m not sure I’m up for talking right now.”
“Want to get something to eat instead?”
They order a pizza and Mace pays the driver with a twenty. Charlotte notices his eyelids drooping as they finish. Her own are weighing down. She heads upstairs.
It’s a rough, restless night. Charlotte dreams of the man she shot, his naked body stalking her in the back of the van. His face keeps sliding off, revealing blood and skull. She runs to corner after corner of the van, but he won’t stop pursuing her.
Charlotte wakes abruptly, her heart beating so hard it hurts. She sits up, a hand on her chest, trying to calm her breathing. She’s relieved that the room is empty of furniture, that there are no hiding places, few shadows in the dark.
She tries to sleep again but that corpse returns. This time she’s back in the basement, chained to the wall, and he’s coming down the stairs. She can’t see him, but she knows it’s him; she hears his heavy footsteps just outside the door. The chains bite her wrists.
Charlotte wakes sitting up. She stands, walks to the window, peers out into the night. The neighborhood is still and quiet, windless. And suddenly Charlotte wants to be in it, as if this frozen moment is a chance for her to run off, the world paused so she can dart through it unseen, until it eventually resumes.
She remembers that Mace is sleeping next to the front door.
He said he’d protect her.
But he’s actually trapped her.
Charlotte lowers herself to the floor. Reminds herself that Mace isn’t bad. Thinks about Eve. Eve will help her.
She can trust in her.
And Eve will be back in the morning.
Charlotte sits with her back against the wall, the window above her, and stares at the door to the bedroom. And waits.
Chapter Eighteen
He stands outside Baltimore Washington International Airport in a line of people waiting for taxis.
Barnes is bigger than everyone else around him, not just in height, but girth. There’s something threatening about his presence, immediately intimidating. A woman cuts through the line and bumps into him, turns to apologize. Their eyes meet.
Barnes smiles at her, but it’s not a friendly smile. There’s cruelty to it, in the way his eyes travel up and down her body, in the way they pointedly stop at her breasts.
Under normal circumstances, she would have said something rude. She’s dealt with leering men before, takes pride in not backing down.
But this man is different. She senses the danger.
She crosses her arms over her chest, turns away.
Barnes adjusts the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, then reaches down and adjusts his cock as a cab pulls to the curb.
He’s come for Charlotte.
But there’s someone else he needs to find first.
Chapter Nineteen
Charlotte wakes to footsteps on the stairs. She can’t believe she fell asleep, has no idea how long she was out. She looks around the empty room for a weapon and sees nothing useful.
“Can I come in?” Eve asks through the door.
Charlotte relaxes, but only a little. She walks over to the bedroom door and unlocks it.
“I brought breakfast.” Eve holds out a crinkled paper bag. Charlotte smells pancakes. “McDonalds.”
Charlotte blinks and looks back at the light seeping around the edges of the window blind. “It’s morning?”
“You two must be tired. Mace was asleep when I came in. Still is.”
“That makes me feel safe,” Charlotte says wryly.
But moments later, she’s too distracted by the pancakes to care. Charlotte isn’t embarrassed by the ferocity with which she attacks her food. She barely notices until she sees Eve looking at her, mouth open.
“Sorry.” Charlotte swallows hard.
“Didn’t Mace feed you last night?”
“He ordered a pizza, but it was from Domino’s.”
Eve frowns. “I’m not sure how he survives on his own.”
Charlotte’s noticed something off about Eve ever since she walked into the room, but can’t put her finger on what it is.
She uses a napkin to wipe syrup from her chin. “Something on your mind?”
“I told a friend about you,” Eve blurts out. “She’s a lawyer and works with a group that helps victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence.”
“You told someone?”
“You can trust her. I promise.”
Charlotte doesn’t say anything.
“It’s just, after you told me that stuff yesterday, I thought you could use some help. And she can do a lot more for you than Mace or I can.”
“Okay.”
“And—” Eve takes a moment to exhale, “—she’s downstairs.”
“What?”
“I thought you should talk with her right away.”
Charlotte’s quiet.
The silence lasts. Eve crosses her arms loosely over her chest and waits.
“I get what you were trying to do,” Charlotte tells her. “And I appreciate it. But I didn’t ask for your help. Everything you and Mace has done means a lot. But I’m not ready to talk to anyone else. Especially a complete stranger.”
Eve touches her braids, pulls one nervously. “If you have to run, she can help.”
Charlotte is quiet again, but not for as long this time. “It’s like this. I was trapped in a dark box for a month. And everything in there was pitch black. Then the top was pulled off and I’m blinking into the light. The only thing is, I can’t see very well.”
“Let me help you.”
Charlotte shakes her head. “I need to get out on my own.”
“Why?”
“It’s just hard for me to trust anybody.”
Eve nods, slowly. “Do you want me to tell her to leave?”
“I think so. I’m just not ready yet.”
Charlotte hopes Eve’s not upset. And she’s surprised at her own resistance.
She reminds herself of her mother.
Charlotte’s mother, Olivia Reyes, had moved to America with her boyfriend when she was just nineteen years old. Her family had warned her, told her not to trust him, said that America hated Mexicans. Olivia just smiled, told them she was moving there legally and they had nothing to worry about. Her boyfriend—she never told Charlotte his name—had dual citizenship. He’d gone to college in the United States and returned to Mexico to teach for a year. He met Olivia her first year at the university. And disappeared when they moved to the states and she told him she was pregnant.
Charlotte’s earliest memories of her mother are of a stout woman with a round face and thick black hair and a constant smile, so happy that it was always on the verge of turning to laughter. But then that smile fades the more Charlotte remembers, and lines furrow into her mother’s smooth brown skin, grey lines shine in her black hair, and her expression turns pained.
