False Security (24 page)

Rachel sat under
her favorite oak tree, her arms linked around her knees. Her sun-streaked hair
fell loose around her shoulders, one side tucked behind her ear. She stuck out
her lower lip and blew upward to get the hair out of her eyes once more.

She usually pulled her hair back
to keep the wind from blowing it in her eyes while on rounds, but the past few
days, she wore it down. The hair falling over her ear and cheek concealed the
discoloration toward the back of her jaw. The bruise covered the same area of
skin the first bruise did, the one that appeared after he struck her in the
library four years earlier.

That night in the library still
seemed like a bad dream. After a restless night of wondering what went wrong so
fast, Donovan visited her while the rest of the estate dreamed about more
pleasant things. His apologies had been sincere enough, his explanation more
than plausible.

With the painting missing from
the safe, Donovan spent the entire night doing damage control with his bidders.
Promises had to be made to each of them, who had come to expect so much more
from him. There was more than she realized riding on that painting, and the
pressure overwhelmed him. When she snapped at him, he momentarily lost control,
and he was sorry that he took it out on her.

Rachel forgave him,
understanding she had caught him off-guard during a stressful moment in time,
for which she took responsibility. As he apologized, she knew better than to
bring up her running conspiracy theory about Eric sabotaging the job. Donovan
hadn’t believed her the night before, and there was no reason to raise his
blood pressure again.

For the next several months,
they were back to being in love and eternally happy. And then, it happened
again. Another stressful moment where she said the wrong thing at the wrong
time. A couple months later, another punch, another plausible explanation,
another sincere apology.

Instead of the violence being
predictable, it turned sporadic, and she never knew what might send him into a
fury. Sometimes months would go by without an incident, other times it was
hours. Without warning, rage flashed in his eyes, and turned him into the
monster that was taking over the man she loved. For the next few years, Rachel’s
feet glided over eggshells, but it didn’t matter how carefully she stepped. She
always managed to rouse the monster.

Footsteps caused her to look up,
and she managed a smile as Paul approached her. She never spoke to Paul about
the anger inside Donovan, and he never asked her about it. The bruises were as
secretive as her initial relationship with Donovan.

After the first time Donovan hit
her four years ago, she learned the importance of leaving her hair down, of
placing a hand or a clump of hair over part of her face when someone passed by.
Other times, when someone caught a glimpse of a bruise, she made up stories to
explain it away. Learning to lie and hide was easier than facing the truth.

She would do anything to keep
Paul in the dark, even if it meant dealing with her hair flying in her face
during her rounds. As fearful as she was becoming of Donovan, Rachel was more
afraid Paul would someday talk to her about the bruises.

Rachel pushed another cluster of
renegade strands away from her eyes and greeted Paul. She lifted her fingers to
make sure her hair was still in camouflage mode. As an additional safety
measure, she propped her elbow up on her knee and hovered her hand over her
bruised cheek like a shield.

Paul gestured at her black short
sleeve shirt and black pants. Her radio was clipped on her belt, and her gun
secured in a shoulder holster, the standard outfit she wore to patrol the
grounds. “You don’t have rounds for another hour,” he said. “Are you enjoying
this wonderful summer day, or are you out here for a reason?”

“Daydreaming, I guess.”

He lowered himself into the soft
grass next to her and leaned against the tree. “I hope it’s at least a good
one.”

“Maybe.” She squinted her eyes
and studied his hair. “What is this?” she asked. She put her hands in his hair
and looked for the culprit.

“What?”

“Hold still.” She pinched a
short hair between her fingertips and yanked it out of the side of his head.

“Ouch!”

“It didn’t hurt that bad.” She
examined the thin strand of hair. “You have a grey hair.”

“I do not. Let me see.” He took
the hair from her and threw it down after examining it. “Thank you. You’ve
ruined my day.”

“Oh, it’s one little grey hair,
old man,” Rachel said.

“Are there any other aging
imperfections you’d like to point out?”

Rachel pressed her lips together
to stop the smile as she took in his receding hairline. “Nope, just the grey
hair.”

He looked off in the distance.
“I guess we can’t stay young forever.”

“Tell me about it,” Rachel said,
echoing Paul’s melancholy.

“What are you complaining about?
You’re only twenty-three to my forty-six.”

“Yeah, but twenty-three feels
pretty old to someone who’s never been that age before.”

Paul paused as he thought about
it. “I guess I can understand that. So what are you doing out here, old maid?”

“I’m trying to figure out what
it’s like out there.” She waved her hand in front of her.

“Well, there are lots of trees
and the ground is still a little soft from that rain we got yesterday.”

She scowled. “That’s not what
I’m talking about. I’ve been here for thirteen years. I don’t remember what
life is like beyond the estate’s fences. Tell me something about that world.”

He smiled, caught in a memory.
“It was a good one when Maria was alive.”

Surprised by his statement,
Rachel turned her body to face him. Paul rarely mentioned his deceased wife.
“You loved her a lot, didn’t you?”

“It’s too bad you were so young
when she died. I wish you could have known her better. She was the most
wonderful woman in the world.” He swatted her arm with the back of his hand.
“Next to you, of course.”

Rachel allowed a smile at his
compliment. “Did you ever want to find someone else?”

“I often wondered what my life
would have been like if she had lived, but from the moment I saw her, I never
wanted anyone else besides her.”

Another fairy tale, Rachel
thought. Paul lived for one woman and one woman only, even if she was no longer
alive. He would never stray from Maria as long as he breathed. Rachel wondered
if Donovan felt the same way about her. Aloud she said, “People my age are out
there falling in love, getting married, starting families.”

“Do you want that?”

When Rachel was eighteen and
starting her relationship with Donovan, she would have answered yes to that
question without doubt or hesitation. Even after the first several times he hit
her, maybe even up until a few months ago, she still would have answered yes.

She wanted to tell Paul she
welcomed all of that with Donovan, but something held her back. She had spent
many nights wondering if this was the way all relationships were. Thinking back
on her parents, she never knew her dad to touch her mom except out of love. She
wondered if her mom hid the bad parts of their marriage from Rachel, the way
Rachel hid her bruises from Paul.

Still, she thought Donovan loved
her as much as she loved him, even though he hurt her sometimes. After each
outburst, he always showed her how much he loved her, and he was always so
sorry. He would tell her it wasn’t her fault, and he would never hurt her
again.

At first, she believed him. Now,
she was simply confused. She lived her life bracing herself for his next
attack, knowing it could come at any time. It didn’t matter whether he was
angry with her, or if they had just spent hours in each other’s arms.
Inevitably, he would hit her again.

“I don’t know what I want,” she
said. “I wonder if my life was supposed to turn out like this. If it was
preordained I would live here on the estate forever and never have a normal
life.”

“Having what people out there
call a normal life is impossible here, isn’t it?”

“Could you imagine? ‘Sorry I
can’t make it to dinner, honey, but I have to drive all the way to Sacramento
and take out this target. Don’t wait up.’ I don’t think it would go over too
well.”

Paul laughed with her. “No, it
wouldn’t.” After a moment of silence, he asked, “Do you want to tell me what
this is really about?”

Her smile faded. What could she
tell him? There were so many things she could say. She could tell him how the
guilt from the jobs was destroying her. With every safe she opened, with every
person she killed, she felt as if the devil himself had broken away another
piece of her soul for his gnawing pleasure.

She could tell him about Eric
and how much she disliked him. How she avoided him as much as possible, and
ignored the snide comments tossed her way if caught alone with him. At times
his words were beyond crude, when he told her exactly why she would love
spending time alone with him in his room. The looks he gave her, as if he
stripped away her clothing every time he saw her, made her shudder with disgust
and a bit of fear.

After her accusations that he
sabotaged her job, she couldn’t tell Donovan anything he said. Eric would deny
it, and Donovan would assume she was trying to undermine Eric. Her aggravation
with Eric had built to the point that she thought at any moment she could snap
and either take her frustrations out on him or just plain kill him.

She could tell Paul her
relationship with Donovan didn’t resemble a single fairy tale her mother had
told her. She wanted to get back to the way things used to be before the night
he hit her in the library. She longed for the times when he would hold her in
the early morning hours, or sneak kisses around the estate when they thought no
one was watching. Back then, she didn’t jump at his slightest move.

“Rachel?” Paul asked.

She looked at Paul’s tired face.
She wouldn’t tell him anything. She never did. Paul had enough on his mind
without having to worry about her problems. They were so minor anyway: not
being able to stomach her work, Eric’s jealous outbursts, Donovan’s tendencies
toward violence. She could handle it.

She opened her mouth to once
again tell Paul that life was perfect. “I don’t think Donovan loves me,” she
said.

Paul wrapped his arm around her
and she rested her head on his shoulder. He brushed back her hair and kissed
the top of her head. “Honey, he loves you in his own way, but he’s not good at
showing it. In fact, he sucks pretty bad in that department. The question is,
do you love him?”

“I’m not even sure what that
means anymore. I thought I did, but now I feel more like his mistress than
anything else.” The uninvited words flowed without thought, spilling out from
the dark place inside where she hid her fears from the rest of the world.

Rachel lifted her head, her
mouth twisted into a frown. “And sometimes I feel like a prisoner to this
place. The only time I’m allowed to leave is for a job. I’m twenty-three years
old and I don’t even know how to drive a car. I couldn’t leave on my own if I
wanted to.” Rachel hesitated, and she drew a deep breath. “No one’s ever told
me I can’t leave, but it’s unspoken, isn’t it? ‘Rachel doesn’t leave by
herself.’ Why is that?”

Paul appeared unfazed by her
rant, as if he expected it. “You’re the only one who didn’t know the stakes
when you came here. Every one of us came to the estate knowing what we were
giving up and what was expected of us. We all had our own reasons for leaving
that life behind.” He gestured toward the boundaries of the estate. He lowered
his voice and looked at her. “You know how it is here, Rachel.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed
her forehead, the reality that she had always tried to avoid washing over her.
She
was
predestined to spend her life here. She would never know the
world outside of the estate.

It was time for her to forget
the fairy tales her mother told her. In real life, Cinderella never went to the
ball; her hands were always too dirty from her work. And in real life, Prince
Charming fell off his white horse and snapped his neck before he could rescue
the princess.

“You were a child when I brought
you here,” Paul said. “You had no idea what it was like or what you were giving
up. If you had known, would you have come here willingly?”

Rachel thought about his
question, but was afraid to respond. She didn’t want to admit she doubted
everything she ever knew. Instead of answering him, she said, “You never told
me why you came here. I remember you were a doctor and Aunt Maria died, but how
did you meet Donovan?”

“I met him because Maria died.”
He paused for a long moment and stared off in front of him. “Do you remember
when Maria and I used to take you to church?”

Rachel searched the depths of
her mind. She saw a vague image of a petite, dark-haired woman standing next to
a much younger Paul, but no distinct memories came with the picture. “No, I
don’t remember that,” she said.

“I didn’t think so. You were
only five when she died, and six when I left to come here. Maria and I attended
church every Sunday. Even though we lived in Los Angeles at the time, we went
to San Diego every few weeks for a visit and we took you to church with us. We
were both active in our church. Maria was in the choir.”

“You never told me she could
sing,” Rachel said.

A wistful smile crossed Paul’s
face. “She had an angel’s voice, like God Himself sang through her. We taught
Bible studies to the younger kids after church every Sunday. We even read the
Bible and prayed together every night. I don’t suppose your dad ever took you
to church after I left, did he?”