Uncovering You 10: The Finale (10 page)

Nothing Stonehart had ever done to me could compare to what I experienced next. This man made Jeremy seem like an angel by comparison.

Afterward, when I’m left trembling, weak, broken, and forgotten on the floor, he spits in my face and promises that he will do it again.

I crawl to the bed, dragging my limbs through the puddles of water, through my blood. Somehow, I find enough strength to climb up. I pull the tiny sheet over my shoulders, curl up into a ball, and sob myself to sleep.

The next time the door opens, I don’t move. Let them think I’m dead. I feel dead, anyway.

The sheet is flung off me and something soft, white, is thrown over my body.

“Dress,” a ragged voice commands.

I open my eyes, shaking, trembling, and utterly deflated. Twelve days I’ve been prisoner, already, and Jeremy hasn’t come.

I’m starting to think he never will.

I clutch the soft fabric to my chest. I look at it. It’s a robe.

“Put it on.” The leader—the rapist—tells me. “Quickly. Hurry, hurry.”

He says something in his foreign tongue. Snickers surround me.

I sit up slowly, dazed, numb, already broken. Stonehart, I could withstand. At least there, I had a purpose. There,
he
had a purpose.

Right now? This is all meaningless cruelty, with no escape, no solace for me. It’s not just one man, It’s three.

Four, counting Esteban.

Mechanically, I put my arms through the sleeves. I stand and wrap the robe around my body, then stare, blankly, at the three of them.

Big Man comes forward and throws something at my feet. I look down. It’s a newspaper.

“You are being searched for,” he says, thickly, nudging it with his foot. “Look.”

I bend over, pick up the newspaper up and unfold it.

It’s the
San Jose Mercury News
. On the front page, taking up the entirety of the sheet, is my picture. A bold headline at the top:

MISSING WOMAN.

Below it:

$10 Million reward for information of whereabouts.

A miniscule seed of hope comes to life inside me. Jeremy’s offering ten million dollars as a reward!

“Too bad,” the Big Man says, “that nobody will ever claim the prize.”

The three of them laugh at me.

Their leader steps forward. “Ten million dollars for her pussy,” he jeers. He touches my chin. I’m too exhausted to jerk away.

He shakes his head. “Some men are insane. I sampled it last night. It’s worth no more than the pussy of my bitch dog!”

More laughter. Callous. Loud. Crude.

“I want to see this,” Big Man says. He lifts up the bottoms of my robe.

I’m too spent to defend myself.

“Ten million dollars! The man must think there are diamonds hidden there, eh?”

Laughter. Mocking, cruel, hard laughter.

The leader snaps a command in his mother tongue. Big Man grins at me and steps back. “Time to put on a show,” he says.

I’m taken by both arms and led out of the room back through the hall, and into the stark, white sterility of the operating room.

In place of the table I was strapped to last is a single high stool. Also white, also sterile. The camera and the tripod are in front of it.

I’m shoved down. I blink, not knowing what to do, what to think.

I am entirely at the mercy of these men.

Esteban enters the room. He looks at me and smiles. His eyes still have that insane glint.

“Hold her,” he says simply.

I jerk as my arms are twisted painfully behind my back. Esteban turns the camera on.

The flashing red light stares me straight in the face.

Esteban comes beside me. He walks a circle around me, tapping his lips in thought.

My breathing is loud and desperate. It is the only thing that breaks the cold silence.

All of a sudden, without warning, Esteban jumps at me. He presses his cheek to mine and addresses the camera with a hysterical intensity.

“Hello, Mr. Stonehart,” he says. “Do you see who I have here?” He turns to me and grins. “It is your precious Lilly. Is it not? At least, that is who I think she still is. All of California knows her face, knows her name, thanks to your
advertisements
.” He holds the newspaper to the lens. “But,” he sighs very deeply. “Only I know
where
she is.”

He breaks off, picks the camera up, and starts walking around the room. He aims it at his face and continues to talk.

“You might wonder how you can get her back. You might wonder what it will take for you to claim her. Keep thinking. In time—
if
she’s good—you will have the chance. But for now, Mr. Stonehart, I advise you: Consider your sins.”

Esteban starts to giggle. The sound transforms into maniac tittering.

He puts the camera back on the tripod pointing it at me. He comes to my side and strokes my hair. “Such a fragile thing. Such a precious thing. Such an…” He grabs my roots and pulls tight.”…unexpectedly valuable thing.”

He holds up the newspaper again and consults the front page. He looks at the picture, then at me, and then back at the camera.

He taps his lips. “Yes,” he says, “this woman…is definitely one and the same. And ten million dollars?” He whistles. “That is quite the sum for her safe return. It’s enough,” He begins to sound thoughtful now. “Enough, perhaps, to even tempt one of my men.”

A buzzing sound starts up behind me. I try to jerk back to see what it is.

Immoveable arms lock me in place, confining my movements.

“But we can’t have that. Can we?” Esteban ask the camera. “No. No, no, no, no, no. Good thing,” he says, holding up one finger,” that I know how to stop that temptation”

The buzzing gets louder. I see what it’s from out of the corner of my eye.

A beard trimmer.

“No,” I begin to tremble. “No, please don’t…”

Esteban ignores me. He holds up the photograph of me in the paper. “Pretty girl,” he says. “Such lush, beautiful hair.” He motions to one of his men. “Cut it off.”

“No, no, no. NO!” I scream. The blades cut into my skull. I begin to cry, to sob, as long locks of hair fall around me.

Esteban forces the camera into my face. “You see?” he screams. “You see what you made me do?”

I’m shaking when it’s all over. Tears blur my vision and stain my cheeks.

Esteban grabs hold of my head. He twists me toward the camera. Then he leans in beside me and smiles.

“Not so pretty anymore, is she, Mr. Stonehart?” he asks. He regards me for a few moments. “No,” he says, almost to himself. “Something’s still off. Oh!” He snaps his fingers.

“Her eyebrows. Shave those too.”

Chapter Fifteen

I’m thrown in my little white dungeon. Once the door shuts, I collapse on the floor.

At least they didn’t rape me again. At least—

No. I can’t. As my shaking hands explore my shaven scalp, I succumb to a torrent of sobs. I know, deep down, that there is no saving grace in my situation. No positive. No tiny shred of hope I can cling to.

My hair. My hair is gone. It was such a vital part of me, of my identity.

I rub my hands, over and over and over my bare scalp.

My eyebrows, too. I crawl to a corner and trace the spot where they had been with a finger.

There’s nothing there but smooth skin.

A pitiful sob full of longing and despair surfaces from the depths of my chest.

Day twenty
.

Almost three weeks. I’ve been here three weeks, and nothing’s yet changed.

After making me bald and hideous, it’s almost as if they all forgot about me. The door opens only when someone brings me my meals. Nobody speaks a word to me.

I have no idea of their intentions. I have no idea of what’s going on in the outside world. My pleas for information are met with silence.

I want to know where Jeremy is. I want to know if he’s seen the video. I want to know what he’s doing. What he thinks. That he’s trying to rescue me…

Is
he trying to rescue me? Gripped by the depths of despair, I can’t even find certainty in that knowledge.

One month into my stay, Esteban enters the room.

“It seems your Jeremy Stonehart is an unyielding negotiator,” he tells me. Then he shrugs. “Ah, well. We will make him see the light.” He holds the door open and beckons me forth. “Come. Please.”

I comply.

I follow Esteban out of the room.

“Whatever you want,” I say, desperation taking hold. “Jeremy can give it. I know. Please. I know. Just let me speak to him. Tell me what you want. I’ll ask him and you’ll get it. You’ll see.”

“Little girl,” Esteban laughs. “Why are you so certain that
Jeremy
has what I want?”

That comment stops me dead in my tracks.

Esteban glances back. “Come on,” he tells me. “It’s bad manners to be late.”

Late?
I wonder.
Late for what
?

I pick up my step and follow Esteban past the entrance to the operating room, farther down the hall to a place I’ve never been before.

It’s a long, oak dining room. An enormous table stands in the middle. Everything is dark, stained wood, like the dining halls at Yale or Annenberg at Harvard.

There are only two chairs, situated across from each other. A man sits in one. He wears a wide-brimmed, brown top hat that shields most of his face.

Esteban gestures to the empty chair. “Please.” He motions. “For you.”

Apprehension gnaws at my insides as I plod around the table to my seat. The other man in the room has his full attention on the plate of food before him. He does not glance at me, or reveal his face from under the broad-rimmed edge of his hat.

I sit down. Then he looks at me, and I nearly faint.

“Hello, Lilly,” he says.

It’s Hugh
.

Esteban laughs out loud. I swallow air like a pucker fish, completely in shock.

“That’ll be good enough, my boy,” Hugh says. He flicks his finger dismissing Esteban. “Make sure to bring some food for our distinguished guest. She looks absolutely famished.”

Esteban grins, blows a big, pink bubble with his gum, and walks away.

“Y…you” I stutter.

Hugh smiles politely at me. “Yes, Lilly,” he says. “Here I am. You didn’t think retirement would hold me back now. Did you?”

“What do you want?” I hiss. “How—how could you?”

“In due time,” Hugh says. “All will be revealed in due time. For now, I have a question for you. Would you like chicken, or pork?”

I stare at him. “What?”

“Chicken, or pork,” he repeats calmly. “Your choice of meat. Which would you prefer?”

I don’t answer. He sighs and lays his hat down on the table. “It’s a simple question, Lilly,” he tells me. “I would think that someone who took over my position within my son’s company would have the intellectual capacity to answer.”

“That’s what this is about?” I whisper. “You brought me here because you were…unfairly removed?”

“Oh, no,” Hugh shakes his head. “This goes much, much further back than that. The truth is,” he says, “I am sorry that you had to get caught up in all of this.”