Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (14 page)

On the other side of the front door
,
a light is now visible through the window.  I briefly see hands reaching
across the viewable
space of the
window for something,
but I don’t see who they belong to.  My heart is beating so violently in my
chest that I
’m sure
Robert can hear it next to me. 
The anticipation is almost unbearable as we wait to see who it is.

She enters our view.

An elderly woman.

“Fuck,” I curse under my breath,
dropping the binoculars from my eyes.  It feels like the world has just been
pulled out from underneath me.

“What is it?”

“This isn’t it.  It can’t be the right
place.”

Robert grabs the binoculars from me and
looks at the cabin himself.  Even without the binoculars
,
it’s
now
easy to tell
that
the person we’re observing is not Mark, Jack, or Morgan.

When a
n elderly man
enters the view of the window,
it’s
certain.

She’s not here.

With a quick sigh
,
Robert hands the binoculars back to me.  “Let me go talk to them. 
Maybe they have some information.  Back me up from here just in case.”

Robert drops the majority of his gear,
taking
only
his handgun and tucking it in the holster
on his hip under his jacket.

As he emerges from the tree line into
the clearing
,
I feel the tightening in my throat.

As he approaches the door and knocks
,
the tightening becomes a hard knot.

As the old woman answers, speaks with
him, and shakes her head, a tear falls down my face.

I wipe my eyes on my sleeve with my
shoulder without losing sight of where my gun is trained.  I take a deep breath
and refocus.

I will not
abandon hope
.  There is no giving up.

His Determination

∞

Not once have I
forgotten him.

The man who woke
me up,

made me see,
breathed life into me.

His grip tight on
my fingers.

Holding on.

Pulling me from
the gray,

the static, the
solitude.

He faced it all
despite his own demons,

never wavering,

and will continue
to do just that.

He will find my
reaching grasp again.

In his arms I will
be free.

∞

Comfort.  Warmth.

With my eyes closed
,
these feelings around me are even more pronounced, as if I have a
heightened sense for them given the amount of physical and mental pain my body
has had to endure.

I won’t be fooled, though.  I may only
just now be reentering the conscious world, but in that down time that I was
gone from here
,
I haven’t forgotten what happened.

Mark found me.

I open my eyes and draw a deep breath. 
Jack’s sitting in a chair next to me, his head bowed,
the
light
in the room
fighting to reach his
face.  His hand rests on my forearm just below where an IV line
is
inserted into the crook of my elbow.  The rest of me is sprawled
out on
a
rustic couch.  The cozy cabin that is my hell
surrounds me
, lit up in the teasing glow of sunset that seeps through
the window from the outside world
.

Jack
looks up at me, absolute concern
affecting every aspect of his face.
 
“Thank God,” he
whispers.

Mark doesn’t appear to be around, and
I’d rather keep it that way as long as possible, so I match my voice to Jack’s
whisper.
 
“The baby…”

“Is fine,” Jack finishes for me.  “You,
however, are not in good shape.  You’re dehydrated.  Your hands and wrists are
a mess.  If you got stuck out there
,
they could have
become infected.  So many bad things could have happened.  We’re lucky we found
you.”

I can’t help turning away as he says
this.  The disappointment
of
my failure weighs heavily
on me.
 
“I tried, Jack.  I had my chance
,
and I blew it.”

“You were in no shape to try to escape
this place.  I don’t know what the hell you were thinking.”

He sounds just Leo, and it fuels the
deep-seated fury inside
me that results from
the
people in my life question
ing
my decisions.  It makes
me angry, causing my words to come out as a low growl.
 
“I was thinking I needed to escape the man who beat me and raped me
and wants to take my baby as his own.”

“It’s his child, Morgan.”

“It’s not
.
”

The moment the words slip out of my
mouth
,
I look around the room in terror.  I cannot let
Mark know that there’s a chance the baby isn’t his.

Thoughts flash through my mind of what
he would do to the innocent, defenseless
child
if he
found out that it didn’t carry his own DNA.  He’d harm
it
, destroy it, or use it against me.  He could keep the baby from me
until he was certain I was pregnant again with his actual child
,
or
keep us separated
for the rest of
our
lives
.

He can’t know.

Jack’s
lips
part in shock.  He leans in closer to me.  I can barely hear him speaking. 
“What are you talking about?  You and Leo?”

I give him a small nod.  “The night you
told us.  I asked Leo to do it just in case our escape plan failed.  It’s
possible the baby’s his.”

Jack looks away from me, lost in his
own thoughts.

I’ve been so concerned about the baby
that I haven’t even looked at my own physical condition until now.  My left
hand is splinted with something in my palm and my fingers are separated by
something soft, cotton balls maybe, all underneath a thick layer of stretchy
material
that
keep
s
my hand
completely in place.  My right hand is wrapped in gauze from wrist to knuckle. 
The blood I taste on my lip and the aching feeling throughout my head tell me I
’m
probably better off not knowing what my face looks like right now.

I hear a door open and close.  Mark
walks in the room from down the hall, and my body instantly stiffens.  I wish I
could sink all the way into the couch and disappear.

Jack sees him coming straight for me
but makes no move to get up from the chair by my side.  He’s protecting me, and
I love him for it.

Mark looks down at me with disgust. 
“You’re a stupid girl, you know.”

“I’m strong,” I bite back.  The sharp
tongue I’ve held back for far too long is
reemerging
with a vengeance.

“No.  You’re just foolish and
careless.  I don’t know how you thought you could survive out there like this.
”

Internally I know he’s right, but I
won’t admit it to his face.  I remain silent.

Mark moves for my shirt, grabbing it
and pulling me up from the bed forcefully
until
I’m
right in his face.  I should be terrified, but I’m not.  I think of Leo and how
many times he must have been in this situation with Mark when he was growing
up.  Mustering all my strength, I keep my face even and hold his gaze.

“She’s been through enough!” Jack yells
from behind Mark.

Out of the corner of my eye
,
I see him pulling at Mark’s shoulder to get him off me, but Mark
pushes him back with the simple
sharp
movement of one
arm, knocking him off balance and causing him to slam his head against a shelf
and crumble to the floor.

Mark’s full attention is back on me,
his
deep brown eyes bulging
.  “Don’t you ever endanger
the life of my child again.  Do you understand?  That baby saved your life
today.  If not for it growing inside you
,
I may have
ended you back there in the woods or strangle
d
you
here on this couch.  If I didn’t need you to provide nourishment for the
baby
when it’s born
,
you wouldn’t live past
childbirth.  If I didn’t want to keep you around to provide me more children
,
I’d have no reason to let you live beyond the first.”

He’s trying to break me down, to
instill fear in me and remind me of my place, but
I’ve found my
stubbor
nness again
.  I won’t give in to
him, not yet.

I remain silent.

Mark lets go of my shirt
,
and I fall back to the couch.  For a moment I bask in the feeling
of success in remaining strong, enjoying this rare victory over him.

Then he grabs my face, digging his
nails into my skin and drawing blood.  He brings his nose within inches of
mine.
 
“You’ve only made things worse for yourself.  I
hope you realize that.”

My breathing quickens involuntarily as
his other hand pulls up my shirt to find my tender breast.  He cups it in his
palm and squeezes hard before pinching my nipple and giving it a violent
twist.  It’s the first time he
’
s touched me intimately
in months, and I can’t deny the fear that
suddenly
swells
within me from it
, chipping away at the tough exterior I’ve put forward
.

I start to panic as Mark reaffirms his
grip on my face and lowers his mouth to my nipple
,
pull
ing
at it and suck
ing
on me
aggressively
.  “You’ll give in to each of my wants and
desires
.
”
  H
e
take
s my nipple between his teeth
and
bites
down, causing me to flinch at the sharp pain.  “You’ll sleep in my bed at
night.  You’ll live in this part of the cabin
,
but
you’ll never leave my sight.”  His free hand slides down beneath the lining of
my underwear, and I gasp as his fingers invade me and rub me and feel me, his
entire hand participating in this latest sickening violation of my body
that I am powerless to stop
.  “I will own you, Morgan, more
so
than I ever have before, and there will be no further attempt
s
at escape.  Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

My body trembles beneath him as his
words sink into me
, and what’s left of m
y stubbornness
gives way.

I nod slightly.

“Good.”

When
Mark’s hands leave me and he walks
away
,
I feel like I’m left with nothing.  I look to
Jack recovering on the floor from his fall and observe the concern and worry on
his face.

I’ve truly failed.  My face and hands
are mangled.  My body is no longer exempt from Mark’s
sexual
intentions.  My sleeping arrangements have just taken the worst
possible turn.  I will be tied to the hip with this monster for months and
possibly years to come, expected to give him anything and everything he wants
from me.

There will be no escape, but I will
continue to be strong.  I may slip back into the depths of darkness but with
the hope that a guiding hand might find me.  Someone may be there to pull me
back up someday, and I will be ready for it.

I will endure so that someday I
may
be free.

Her Beauty

∞

My eyes had never
seen

that which is true
beauty.

So fragile, yet
serene and content.

Out there and
unafraid.

Perfection.

Inward and
outward.

Mind and body.

In all things so
real,

yet simultaneously
impossible.

She is and will
remain to me

beyond beautiful.

∞

The darkness of night
is well upon us,
but we continue through the mountains.  We follow a winding
dirt
road, endless and teasing, through the valleys.

It’s difficult to know that Morgan is
somewhere in these woods but remains unseen.  She is well within my reach
,
yet I am blind to her.  I can almost hear her screaming for me,
her sounds all around me, and I have no direction how to find her.

It’s maddening.

My fingers tap nervously on the
steering wheel as I drive the car as fast as I can take
it
without running off the swerving road.  Robert sits next to me
quietly.  The deflation in spirit between us is disheartening, but we aren’t
giving up.  Not tonight.  Not ever.

A curve in the road comes up too
quickly for my speed, and I jerk the steering wheel to keep the car from
running into a ditch.  Adrenaline shoots through me
,
but I readjust and slow down, my senses now hyperaware and focused on the road
ahead.

“You okay?  Not falling asleep, are
you?”
Robert asks with concern.

I glance at
him
.  In the glow of the lights from the dashboard
,
he looks a bit terrified.  I’m about to apologize to him for my
wild driving when my eyes turn back to the road and I see it.

A
smaller
dirt
road
ahead curves off up the hill
in a perfect
spotlight from the car’s headlights.
  It has to be the turnoff we’ve
been looking for in this part of the mountains.

A chill runs through me
,
and my nerves peak again.  I immediately slow down and take the
dirt road, turning off the headlights so that only the yellow glow from the parking
lights illuminate our slow climb up the
hill
.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up again,”
I say quietly
,
as if whoever is at the end of this
road may hear me.

Robert shifts around in the seat next
to me,
readying
his weapon and double-checking his gear. 
“There’s nothing wrong with hope.”

Hope.  I suddenly love that word and
want to embrace it fully, to pour every ounce of my broken soul into it and let
it repair me.

The moment I see the light from a
building in the distance
,
I take in a mental image of the
road in front of me and cut the parking lights completely.  The light of the
moon through the break between the trees for the road is just barely enough to
guide me to where it opens up in an area surrounding the cabin.  I stop the car
just before it and kill the engine.

As I step out of the car
,
I realize we’re much closer
to the cabin
than
I’d ideally want us to be for an approach to evaluate the scene.  The dirt road
was too narrow though, there being no turnoffs or wide shoulders for turning
around.  Our only course was up.

Robert and I are silent as we arm up
again and sneak through the trees
,
looking for an unblocked
window.  When we get a view of the other side of the cabin
,
my heart just about explodes in my chest.

An old pickup truck, the same
general
model as Russo’s truck used the day that Morgan was taken
during
our failed
escape from Mark, is parked
next to a newer
truck
in
the faint light coming from inside the house
.

“This is it,” Robert whispers with
excitement next to me.  “We fucking did it, Leo.  She’s inside this house.”

I’m speechless.  I don’t even know what
to say or think
.  My brain is
thrown into even greater
chaos when my eyes gaze upon the most beautiful sight.

Morgan st
ands up
into clear view through the window, her head bowed and her face
shadowed, but the light from behind makes her hair and aura glow for me,
highlighting the outline of the soft curves of her cheeks and the wisps of hair
that fall down past her shoulders.  My body screams at me to go to her, to pull
her body to mine and hold her there for the rest of eternity
,
because I don’t think I could live through losing her again.  She
is right there.  I need her, and she needs me.

As she tilts her head up and turns
around toward the light
,
all the excitement and
elation
I felt at seeing her gets ripped from my body.  Her
somber
face is bruised and swollen
,
and her lip
is cut.  Fury builds inside me
,
but the moment I move
to act upon it and run up to the house
,
Robert’s hand
grabs my arm.

“We can’t go barging in.  We need a
plan.”

Robert’s eyes pierce into me through
the patch of moonlight highlighting his face.  I remain completely still.  His
words aren’t getting through to me.

“We have one shot at this,” he
emphasizes.  “One shot.  If we fail, he’ll kill her.  We can’t blow it, Leo.”

With another glance at the house
,
I realize Morgan has disappeared from the window.  I wonder for a
moment if she was ever there, if perhaps my mind conjured her up out of the
hope I had been
clinging
to so desperately.

My body finally concedes and stands
down, inching back away from the cabin.  “Okay.  We observe and wait it out. 
We plan.”  I take
in our surroundings
then look back
to the cabin.  “We need to scope out the entire place, identify entry points–”

In an instant
,
all thoughts of going into this prepared leave me and are replaced with sheer
terror.  Robert and I turn our heads to the sound that I’m much too familiar
with.  It makes my insides feel hollow and my skin
solidify into
ice.

Even at our distance from the cabin, we
can hear Morgan scream.

I run out from behind the cover of the
tree
line and bolt toward the
cabin.  Robert’s quick steps follow closely behind me
,
and he practically runs into me when we reach the next window around the side
of the building.  The foundation is built up higher from the ground than where
we’re standing so
that
we can’t reach the glass, but
the window is low enough that we can still see inside through the small opening
between the curtains.

Morgan is being held by a fistful of
hair face down on a bed
, completely naked
.  She’s
struggling, desperately trying to flatten herself to the
mattress
as Mark approaches her from behind
.  His chest is bare and
his belt is undone as he
pull
s
at
her
hips
to bring her
backside
closer to him.  He yanks on her hair and she screams again, her
pain reverberating through the wall
and directly
to
our ears.

I turn to Robert, and the mortification
on his face tells me without asking that we’re going in now, completely
unprepared and without a plan, but we have to do something.  I grab him by the
arm and pull him with me as we run back around to the front of the cabin.

“You get Morgan.  I’ll handle Mark,” I
quickly instruct as I run up the stairs
of the porch
to
the front door.  “No matter what happens, you get her out of here.  Get her
to
safe
ty
, Robert!”

I fire two shots each into the deadbolt
lock
and the door handle before kicking hard at the
door.  It swings open with a crash into a living room area
,
but all I
focus on
is the hallway
straight ahead.  In just a few long strides, I reach it and burst through the
first door.

The yellow glow of a lamp highlights
the profile of Mark’s face and body hovering over Morgan on the bed as he
’s
taking
the gun on the nightstand in his grasp.  He points it
at me as I enter the room, and we each fire a shot as I jump toward him.  My
body collides with his
,
a
nd
I
grasp on to him, pulling him with me to the floor.

In the momentary daze of reorienting
myself after the fall
,
I hear Morgan sobbing from the
other side of the room and Robert’s words of comfort to her. 
She’s in
his arms. 
She’s
finally
safe.

It’s time
for my own revenge
.

I quickly roll over and bring myself to
my knees, smacking Mark hard across the face with the gun that
’s
still
clutched
in my hand.  I hit him
over and over until his lip and nose are bleeding and his cheek and forehead
are
red and swollen
. 
My throat emits a bellow
of rage as my hand tightly compresses his neck, my body expunging all my hatred
for this man and what he did to me and Morgan and so many other innocent
people.

When I finally realize that Mark isn’t fighting
back
,
I
notice the
blood spilling out of
a
hole in his bare chest,
dripping sideways down his skin to the floor.  Then I see blood dripping down
from me onto him.

I don’t even feel it, though.  I don’t
bother looking for my wound
,
because I’ve just
glanced
behind me
to see Robert standing in the doorway
with
Morgan
carried
in
his
arms and Jack standing behind
hi
m.  They
watch
me with worry and pain and confusion in their eyes
, looking
at me like I’ve reverted back into some wild beast or vicious monster, exactly
the man Mark is, but that’s not me.  Mark may have raised me, but I’ll never let
myself become him.

I suddenly have a desperate need to physically distance
myself from Mark to make it clear just how far I am from him in who we are as
people.  My hands are shaking and my breathing is erratic as I release my grip
of his neck and s
coot back
to
look
at the
man
bruised and bleeding and struggling to
breathe on the floor in front of me.

“I gave you everything,” he growls out
between coughs, “and look how you repay me.”

“You killed my family,” I retort, my
voice low and
deadly
.

Mark’s eyes narrow toward me.  “And you
killed mine.”

All breath leaves my lungs, my mind
threatening to pull me into that dark place
of guilt
that
still lingers within me
, but I shut off
the
thought
and put it away.  I will not let
Mark
get to me again.  I’ve moved beyond this.  I’m not the scared
little boy he used to beat into submission.

Yet I can’t do it. 
As my most
painful memory flashes before me,
I can’t put a bullet
between his eyes.

I struggle to my feet and step backward
toward the door.
 
“Goodbye, Mark.”

Jack and Robert move out into the
hallway as I
pull
the door to the room closed behind
us.

“Jack.  Lighter,” I ask, and he quickly
grabs one from
the jacket he’s carrying
and hands it
to me.

I flick the lighter, starting the flame
that will end this, all of this.

“A slow and painful death,” I say in a
whisper as I hold the flame, hungry and eager, to the wooden doorframe.
 
The dry wood catches quickly, the flames already reaching the
ceiling.

“We have to go,” Robert ins
ist
s, moving with
Morgan
in his arms
toward the front door.

Jack
nudges me as he
follows behind him, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off the
burning door in front of me, the heat searing against my skin already with how
quickly the flames have grown.

“Leo, we need to go.  Now!” Jack yells.

He pulls on my arm
until
I finally snap out of it.  I follow him to the door
,
and we’re out of the cabin just as the flames start to dance
across the ceiling.  By the time we make it to the car
,
the entire building is engulfed.

I open the back door for Robert
,
and he carefully drops Morgan into the seat.  He holds his hand
out to me expectantly.
 
“You’re bleeding.  I’ll
drive.”