Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (17 page)

“You need somewhere remote, at least
anywhere in the Southwest you will.  Her face is too recognizable from all the past
news coverage.”  Jack spins his cup of coffee around within his grasp.  He
looks up at me, catching me staring at him.  “What is it, Leo?”

“You’re figuring out where we’ll go?” I
ask
with surprise
.
  My sole focus these past
few months has been on getting Morgan back in my arms.  I haven’t even thought
about what we’d do after that.

Morgan looks at me with worried eyes,
so I resume my position with my arm wrapped around her shoulder.

“We can’t
take her
home,” Robert answers.  “Too many neighbors.  Too many eyes on the
house.  We can’t risk it.”

I look to Jack, to the man who is the
only person we can trust to keep an eye on Morgan’s health, the man who is
still the best candidate to deliver the baby.
 
“Where
will you go?  I hate to say it, but we’re going to need you.”

Jack smiles at me reassuringly.  “Don’t
worry.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’ve been forced into a
ctual
retirement by all this, and you already know I don’t have anyone
else.  I’ll follow you wherever you need me to go.”  He looks at Morgan and his
smile only widens.  “I need to see this through.  I owe it to you both.”

“We need you,” I
quickly
interject, “but not because you owe us anything.  You’ve already
done
enough just by being there for her
, Jack.”

“Well
,
I want
to do more.”  He turns to Robert.  “I have a rainy day fund that can finally
have a purpose.  I want to use the money to find a safe place for these two to
start their lives together.”

Robert shakes his head.  “You don’t
have to do that.  We can find–”

“I insist.”  Jack’s face is serious. 
The old man isn’t backing down.

I readjust to gauge Morgan’s face, and
the beaming reaction I see there makes me want to take her up in my arms and
swing her around and give her everything in the damn world.  Her grin is
absolutely heartwarming.  There’s a look of excitement behind the happy tears
that roll down her cheeks.  Her eyes are alive as they find mine, and she
immediately throws her arms around my neck.

Her smile persists even after she lets
go of me to look at Jack.  “Thank you.  We have so much to thank you for.”

Jack waves his hand in the air
dismissively,
as if it’s no big deal that he just offered to finance a new home for us
.  “You two deserve to be happy after all you’ve been through.”

I nod appreciatively and pull Morgan to
me again.  With her in my arms
,
I feel like I can
finally breathe again.  My entire life has led up to this moment.  I’ve
experienced all the bad, and now I get a taste of the good.  I have a strong
and supportive woman by my side, and though we still carry our own issues and
have more healing to accomplish, we can be there for each other and do it all
together.  We have a baby on the way, a home to be chosen, and a life to
begin.  It all starts now.

I’m ready.

His Fears

∞

All is well.

A sense of
normalcy.

We wear our masks
and continue.

Hiding that which
waits inside

itching to take
over.

Something we can’t
escape.

There is no
running.

He has his demons,
and I have mine.

In daylight, we
face them together.

At night, we face
them alone.

Our masks come
down.

It’s all that’s
left.

His fears and
mine.

∞

It’s hard to believe how much life can
change in the course of a week or a day, or even a minute.  It took less than
sixty seconds for Mark’s men to originally take me, drugging me unconscious and
stealing me from the only life I ever knew.  It took less than a day for me to
taste freedom when I escaped into the woods only to be brought back and
terrorized again before Dad and Leo rescued me.  It took less than a week for
us to go from a tiny motel room in California to a gorgeous secluded house in Arizona,
a three-bedroom beauty hidden away by natural rock structures well off the main
roads and fully funded by our own personal physician.

This is where the rest of my life will
begin.  It starts right here.

Jack bought the house for us under an
alias, paying in cash and setting up all the utilities to be automatically
drawn from his account despite Dad’s attempts to insist otherwise.  Jack was
overly generous.  I worry that we’ll never be able to fully repay him for
giving us a place to live and a home in which to raise our baby.

It’s our first night in the house,
though we’re not alone.  Mom and Dad are already asleep in one of the other
bedrooms after insisting on staying for a few days to make sure we’re settled
in and safe.

They tell me these excuses over and
over, but the truth is I don’t think they’re ready to let me go.  After all
this time I was gone from them
,
they’ve only craved to
have me back
.  Now
that I’m here
,
it’s too hard for them to say goodbye, even just for a
while.  The house is only a few hours
away from where I used to call home.  We’ll see each other often, most likely
on weekends at first, then maybe every few weeks, but that doesn’t make it any
easier to say goodbye
,
even on a temporary basis.

We had a nice dinner together, the four
of us talking like normal people over plates of Mom’s famous chicken parmesan. 
I’m still amazed at the ease with which Leo fits into our family unit.  In the
days back at the prison, in the way Dad’s fury toward Leo radiated through
Mark’s phone call, I never would have imagined they’d be sitting together
sharing food, drink, and stories at the dinner table.

Over the past week I’ve heard bits and
pieces of all they went through together up until this point.  It was hard to
hear about their first encounters, my dad roughing Leo up and tying him to a
chair in the basement.  It was equally as hard to hear about their reactions
the day of the phone call when they thought my screams at Jack being beaten
were the result of Mark beating me senseless instead.  They recounted their
successes in the beginning when they were interfering with Mark’s operation,
and then their frustrations when they couldn’t go down that path any longer. 
For a
while they had nothing
to go on until I intervened, sneaking a piece of stray pine needle into the
letter Mark
had
me write to indirectly gloat over his
success with me.

Tonight’s dinner was void of talk of
the recent past.  We spoke
only
of the future, talking
baby names and tricks to get the little beast to sleep at night.  I held Leo’s
hand beneath the table as my parents recalled their experiences with me as an
infant and what worked and what didn’t.  I couldn’t help turning to Leo
throughout their stories, gauging the reaction on his face and always seeing
excitement and happiness there,
and
maybe a little
embarrassment, too.

I don’t think he ever envisioned
himself be
coming
a father, but he has only played the
part well so far.  After dinner
when
my parents
retired to their room, Leo and I remained out in the living room, talking and
laughing quietly.  Leo insisted I lay down on the couch and get comfortable a
s
he sat on the floor next to me.  He put his ear to my belly as if
he could hear the baby sloshing around in there and lifted my shirt just enough
to rake his fingers over the bare skin of the baby bump.  He cooed quiet words
to my belly, reassurances and promises intermixed with lullabies that his mom
used to sing to him.

When he noticed I was crying silent
tears while watching him interact with his child through my belly, he became
immediately concerned and carried me to bed.  I tried to tell him they were
happy tears, a sign of my
relief
that he was with me,
that he will be here with me for the rest of the pregnancy and for the baby’s
birth, and that he will actually get to know and love this child that he
created with me.  He was still worried, though, and brought me straight to bed.

I’m lying here in the comfort of
Egyptian cotton sheets, in our own bed in our own master bedroom, waiting to
spend my first night alone with Leo since the night before we were separated. 
At the motel
,
Leo shared a
separate
room with Jack
, and
I slept alone in one
bed and my parents slept in the other
bed
.  I know Leo
wanted to be with me at all times while we were there, and I would have loved
to have him next to me those nights, but
w
e
both
knew it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to do that.  It was
enough for me to know he was just next
door if I needed him.

My eyes peek open and widen as
Leo
emerges
from the bathroom
in nothing but navy blue
boxers.  The light from the lamp
on the nightstand
highlights his chiseled chest and the shiny sheen to his
tattooed
skin.  His dark hair dangles in his eyes, and I have to restrain
myself from moving the strands away from his face when he takes his place in
the bed.

Seeing him here practically naked next
to me reminds me just how much I missed this man, this beautiful human being
who is completely supportive of me, who loves me
and
would
do anything for me.

I smile at him.

“Don’t get any ideas over there,” he
says teasingly.

“What if I already have ideas?”

“You know what I’m going to say.  You
should–”

“Rest.  Yes, I know.  I’m always
supposed to rest.”

Leo moves himself under the covers
until his head
hits
the pillow.  We’re both lying on
our sides
facing
each other.  We’re quiet a long
moment, distracted by our observations of the other person and lost in thought,
until I finally make a move.

My lips
sneak forward
to kiss him, pressing gently against his mouth, teasing his tongue
with my own.  He hesitates only briefly before fully receiving my gestures, his
hand sneaking up my face as he kisses me back with pent
-
up desire from months of being apart.  His hand move
s
to the strap of my camisole
.  He
pull
s
it
slowly down my arm and expos
es
my
swollen
breast without taking his lips off mine.

His fingers dance across my skin,
teasing my nipple and causing an instant rush of heat and excitement to flow
throughout my body and between my
thighs
.  I can’t
take my lips off his the entire time he massages my breast, or when he pulls
down my underwear, or when he slips two fingers inside me.  We’re still kissing
when he swirls his fingers around, inside and out, opening me up and getting me
wet for what’s going to happen next.

He sucks gently on my lower lip between
kisses as he removes his fingers from me and orients his body over mine.  Something
hard and eager presses up against me, prepared to invade, ready to take over. 
He finally pulls back from our endless kiss.  I open my eyes as he plunges into
me, and
then
I see him.

Mark’s face.  He’s smiling down at me
with
his evil grin of malevolent intent
as he forces himself in
and out, ripping into me, destroying me.

I close my eyes and scream and thrash
in every direction with all the strength I have.  Tears streak down my face as
I feel his hands all over me, touching me everywhere, holding me down
and
forcing me to his will.  I
struggle and
fight against him
with every ounce of my remaining willpower
until I have nothing left.  My body finally
surrenders,
and I stop resisting.  I give in to my weakness and let his hands touch
me and have their way with me.

I’m waiting for the next invasion of my
body
,
but it never comes.  The hands are soothing now,
almost inviting.  They comfort me and transfer their warmth to me.  They are
gentle but hold me with subtle intensity.

The hands are shaking now.  They grip
on
to me tightly.  Something
else is reaching out to me.  A voice.

“Please,” the voice says.

I hear something else–sobbing–and it’s
not from me.

“Please,” the voice says again. 
“Morgan.”

My eyes shoot open.

I’m drenched in sweat in Leo’s arms,
his tear-stained face and bloodshot eyes above me in the lamp light from the
nightstand.  I’ve never seen him so upset, so beside himself with pain and
grief.

“Leo?”

He breathes a desperate sigh of relief
as he pulls me tightly against his chest.

When
we finally separate from
each other,
I see that my parents are standing in the room,
shocked and fearful looks on their faces.  They rush to the side of the bed.

I’m so lost and confused.  “What is
it?  What’s wrong?”

“You were screaming,” Leo says
unsteadily.  “Some nightmare state.  You wouldn’t snap out of it.  I was right
here with you, but I couldn’t reach you.”

“I’m okay,” I reassure him, looking
between him and my parents. 
I woke up in a panic from several
nightmares at the motel after I was rescued, but those instances were not
nearly as intense as this. 
“Just a horrible dream.”

Mom leans in to kiss my forehead
as
Dad grabs my
hand
supportively.
 
“You had us worried,” he says
with noticeable
shakiness in his voice
.

I don’t know what to say.  I honestly
don’t want to think back on it.  I don’t want to commit any of the details or
images to memory. 
My broken mind is too full of them already. 
The only way for me to
move
forward is to
forget.

“I’ll be fine.”  I look to Leo’s face. 
He’s slowly coming back down from the painful place I put him in.

“We’ll be down the hall if you need
us,” Mom says before kissing my forehead one more time.

My parents seem hesitant to leave, but
with my slight smile to them
,
they make their way to
the door and close it behind them.

The moment they’re gone
,
Leo leans in to kiss me, briefly and with a slight tremble to his
lips.
 
“I felt so helpless,” he explains.  “I couldn’t
save you when you were right in my arms.”

“It’s okay.  I’m here now.  It’s over.”

“This time is over, but what about the
next time?  They won’t stop, Morgan.  They never do.”  He sounds completely
dejected.  “How can I protect you from memories that never leave you?”

“You can’t.”  It’s a simple and painful
truth, but it needs to be said.  “I’ll have to face these on my own.  I’ll get
through them, just as I’m sure you’ve got through your own all these years.  I
saw
you during your nightmares back at our apartment.  I
tried to comfort you through them.  You’ll just have to do the same for me, and
we’ll hope for the best.”

Leo leans his forehead against mine.  I
wish I could make him understand that despite what I’ve been through, I’ve
tried to remain strong.  I have my moments of weakness, but my overall resolve
is stronger than ever.  It won’t be an easy road, but I
’ll
get down it.  We
’ll
walk its treacherous
path together.

I tilt my head up just enough to kiss
Leo softly on the lips.  I can feel the cautiousness with which he accepts my
gesture.  When I pull back
,
I see that he looks
disappointed in himself.  He’s acting as if he failed me, and I quickly realize
that the only thing that will make him feel better is
to let
him comfort me.  He wants to be my protector.