False Security (14 page)

Tony obeyed by walking up beside
Mark and raising his gun. Mark barely registered the thud of the blow to the
side of his head before the darkness came.

Since leaving
the pawnshop with their new IDs, the same black sedan trailed behind Rachel, or
at least she thought it was the same one. There were enough cars on the darkened
roads that she couldn’t be sure. On her way to the pawnshop, she had been wary
of a white van that had the nerve to stay behind her car for more than three
blocks.

Paranoia had taken over.

She turned down a side street
and followed it to a T in the road, where she opted to turn left. She continued
through the large neighborhood for a bit, making a series of quick right and
left turns.

After several minutes, she
exhaled with relief at the absence of the sedan in her rearview mirror, but
then cursed herself for being foolish. She was lost, having paid more attention
to her would-be pursuer than to her location. Worse, she rarely traveled to
this part of town and the streets were unfamiliar. Had it not been so dark, she
would have found her way back to the main road without a problem. Instead, she
ended up on a different thoroughfare she didn’t recognize.

Two sets of directions from gas
station clerks and forty minutes later, she found her house. Mark’s truck was
parked on the street. She stayed in her car. Her heart raced and the thick air
in the close confines of her vehicle constricted her throat. She grasped the
steering wheel and squeezed it until her knuckles turned white.

Rachel let go of the steering
wheel and her expression cleared, becoming confident. She gestured with her
words. “Mark, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” She wrinkled her
nose and tried again. “Mark, I haven’t been honest with you.” She laughed and
looked at the front window. “And you’re probably in there right now looking out
the window at me talking to myself, thinking I’m half crazy.”

It didn’t matter how much she
practiced what she would say. Once she got inside and saw him, it would all
change. She would forget any rehearsed monologue and the words would come out
jumbled.

She didn’t want to go inside,
didn’t want to face Mark, didn’t want to acknowledge her past, but she forced
herself out of the car and up the walkway.

Rachel shut the front door and
secured the locks. In the short hallway by the living room, her mind prickled
and realization came over her. The chains on the front door were unlocked.
Danielle always remembered to lock them. With robotic movements as if
controlled by someone else, she turned into the living room, took a few steps,
and stopped.

Across the room, Donovan King
sat in a chair.

Her weak legs refused to turn
around and run back outside. No forest surrounded her, no black dress adorned
her body, no piano played in the background. The nightmare seemed so real this
time, much more so than all the others, but her inability to control the dream
remained the same.

Donovan smiled, and her heart
dropped to her stomach.

An unseen assailant grabbed her
arm from behind, and instinct took over. Her arm flew up and the back of her
hand connected with his mouth. She whipped around and her fist lashed out,
smashing against the man’s mouth.

The hit knocked him against the
living room wall with a loud thud. Before she could attack him again, she
recognized the man’s face and her breathing quickened. She had spoken to the
man in Mark’s bookstore yesterday.

She heard a noise behind her and
whirled back around. She froze at the sight of Joe’s gun leveled at her head.

“Remember me?” he asked. He
palmed the gun and the backside of his hand smashed against her cheek. The
weight of the gun threw her to the ground.

The other man wiped his mouth
and blood smeared across his cheek and the back of his hand. He grunted and
cursed under his breath. He lifted Rachel off the ground and jerked her arms
behind her back.

“I tried to warn you about her,”
Joe said, holding his gun flush against the side of her head. “You should have
listened to me. She’s a feisty one.”

Rachel attempted one last
struggle to get out of the man’s arms, but he only tightened his grip.

“Not anymore, she isn’t,” the
man said. “I’d say she’s pretty docile now.” He put his mouth near her ear.
“Aren’t you, sweetheart?” he asked. He gave another strong tug on her arms.

Rachel gnashed her teeth
together and groaned against the strain on her shoulders. The man continued
pulling her arms tighter until her shoulders were on the verge of dislocating.
She cried out with the pain and begged for him to stop.

Donovan raised his hand in a
silent command to the man behind her. The man loosened his grip on her arms in
response. Though the pain let up somewhat, he kept her arms pulled tight enough
so she couldn’t squirm her way out of his grasp.

Donovan rose from the chair and
walked toward her, his hypnotic, amber eyes never departing from hers. Rachel
realized with dismay that even after three years, his power over her had not
diminished in the slightest.

His knuckles moved over her
cheek. “Rachel
Thomas
, is it?”

Her chin trembled at his tender,
loving touch, and lines of tears marched down her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Donovan didn’t respond. Joe
stepped up next to Donovan and held out a syringe and alcohol swab. Donovan
first took the swab, and hinged the short sleeve of her shirt on her shoulder.
He rubbed the cold alcohol swab against her upper left arm. He turned to Joe
and exchanged the alcohol swab for the syringe.

Rachel bit down on her bottom
lip and her neck muscles tightened when the needle entered her skin. “I’m so
sorry, Donovan,” she repeated.

“So am I,” he said. He pulled
the needle out of her arm. “Joe, Sean, you can leave us now. We’ll be right
out.”

Sean released her arms. Rachel’s
arms and legs went limp, and she tried to take a step forward. She lost her
footing and fell into Donovan’s familiar arms. Her vision blurred and her
thoughts scrambled in her head.

Donovan brushed her hair out of
her eyes and kissed her forehead. “It’s all going to be okay, Rachel. When you
wake up, you’ll be back home with me.”

Rachel woke with
a start. She pushed herself into a sitting position and took in her
surroundings. She was in her old room, the room she’d hoped to never see again.

Her head ached from where Joe
hit her with the gun. Placing her hand on her upper arm, she rubbed at the
soreness where the needle entered her skin. She realized Donovan gave her a
sedative, and she remembered nothing after falling unconscious.

Pulling the covers off her body,
she climbed out of the plush, king size bed. The bare walls, the white carpet,
the lack of decoration. Everything remained the same. Even though she could
have decorated the room in any manner she wished, with any amount of lavish she
desired, she never cared for anything more than what was in the room now. She
always enjoyed the simplicity.

She stood in the middle of the
room and turned around in a circle. It was as if she had been transported back
in time by three years. The same king size bed protruded from the far wall and
was covered with a simple down comforter. The same short, oak dresser stood
across the room. She knew if she opened the drawers, they would be filled with
her clothes that she left behind. The same overstuffed, comfortable armchair
rested in the corner of the room. Towering over the armchair was the same brass
floor lamp she used for late night reading.

She walked to the dresser. A
hardback compilation of stories by Edgar Allen Poe sat in the same location
where she left it. She flipped the book open to the bookmark and saw it marked
the same page where she stopped reading three years earlier.

She set the book down. Her eyes
landed on the large, black jewelry box next to the book. She opened the lid of
the box, and placed her hand on the delicate diamond necklace inside the box
without directly looking at it. A memory flickered in the back of her mind of a
dance she shared long ago while wearing the necklace. Not wanting to dwell in
the memories, she snatched her hand back from the ornate piece of jewelry and
replaced the lid on the box.

Rachel rubbed her sore arm again
and moved into the walk-in closet, where the dark colors of her old wardrobe
greeted her. They were a stark contrast to the white in the rest of her room.
Her eyes fell on a leather garment cover in the front of the closet. She
rotated the garment bag on the hanger until it faced her. Though she already
knew what she would find, she unzipped the bag.

She peeled back the flaps to
reveal a black dress, the same one from her dreams. She stepped back and her
insides curdled. This was not a nightmare from which she would wake. She zipped
up the garment bag to hide the dress, and rushed back to her bed, as if it
would provide her sanctuary.

Her bedroom door opened a few
minutes later. Donovan stepped out of her nightmares and into her bedroom. She
knew someone would be close by, standing guard. He wouldn’t allow her to escape
a second time. She rose from the bed to meet him, and watched each step he took
toward her.

His chilling smile reached
inside her body and took hold of her heart. “Rachel,” he said. “It’s so good to
have you back. Seeing you here again...” His fingers traced her cheekbone. “I
have missed you so much,” he whispered.

His familiar touch burned
through her skin, but she restrained herself from jerking away from him.
“Donovan, I don’t—”

Before she finished speaking, he
struck her cheek. The sudden force of the blow threw her back onto the bed.

His voice hardened. “I gave you
everything you could ever want or need. I gave you every part of me. You were
the only thing I lived for, Rachel. Then you stole from me and left me here alone.”
He hit her again.

She raised her hands to protect
herself, but somehow his fist found her face twice more, each hit harder than
the last. Her brain bounced against her skull, and she sank deeper into the
bed, hoping to disappear and stop him from hurting her more. He didn’t stop,
but punched her several more times before walking away from the bed.

Rachel’s tears dried up in her
eyes, and the pain replaced all the air in her lungs. She tried to call out his
name, tried to beg him to stop, but no words came out with her raspy breaths.
Everywhere she looked, she saw red.

“Three years,” Donovan said,
oblivious to her struggle for air. “I’ve been searching for you for three years
and when I find you, someone else has taken my place.” His fist connected with
her face again.

“No,” she managed to say when he
pulled back his hand. Hard as she tried to talk, to give him some sort of
explanation for her actions, nothing else came out.

Donovan’s eyes smoldered with
anger. “Did you have sex with him?”

“No, of course not,” she said.
She hoped he didn’t detect the lie.

“I believe you, which is good
for his sake.”

Rachel tried not to show her
relief to know Mark was alive, and she wondered about Danielle. “Please,
Donovan,” she begged.

“But you let him kiss you, and
hold you, and touch you,” Donovan said. He picked her up off the bed and
slammed her against the wall. The back of his hand smacked against the side of
her mouth. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

Warm, salty liquid seeped into
her mouth and onto her tongue. Red polka dots of her blood stood out against
the white carpet, but it did not compare to the amount of blood soaking into
the comforter on her bed.

“Don’t you remember what
happened the last time you let someone do that?”

Her eyes once again produced
tears. “Not again,” she said. “I’ll do anything, just please, Donovan, not
again.”

“You are mine, Rachel. You
belong to me. That’s never going to change.” He leaned over and his lips
covered hers. Even though three years had passed since the last time she experienced
his kiss, she remembered every detail as if she had never left his arms.

She wanted to collapse on the
floor and sleep until the pain was gone, but she let him lift her shirt over
her head and unbutton her jeans. Done with punishing her physically, he now
wanted her to sleep with him. Her jeans slipped down to the floor and she
stepped out of them, as his eyes drank in her exposed skin.

His fingers tightened around her
arm. “Show me,” he said.

He didn’t need to say anything
else for her to know what he wanted to see. Rachel turned around and lowered
her head. She closed her eyes, and her cheeks and neck burned crimson.

His fingertips traced her scars,
and electrified her back. Every movement of his fingers sent phantom pain
throughout her body. He moved closer to her and lowered his mouth near her ear.
“I knew they would still be there,” he said. “I’m sure you thought of me every
time you saw them. Your little reminder that you’ll always be mine.”

He turned her back around kissed
her again. His mouth strayed down and trailed the base of her neck. The loving
and tender kisses were a stark contrast to the outburst of violence he
demonstrated only moments ago.

Even though he wouldn’t hurt her
anymore tonight, Rachel would sleep with him without fighting him. She didn’t
want to take a chance of what might happen if she resisted. She had to show him
that she wanted to be with him.

This same sequence of events had
occurred so much in the past that it was like the proverbial bike ride for
Rachel. A beating, followed by sex, and then apologies or explanations for his
actions. Over and over, the cycle never changed with Donovan.

She would somehow make it
through the intimacy without so much as a whimper, no matter how bad the pain.
It was the only way to regain his trust, something she needed to do if she
wanted to survive. In the short time she had been back, she resigned herself to
the idea that her days of running were over.

Rachel was home.