Repressed Read online

  The floor. Cold, hard. Cement? No, it was smoother than that, but she couldn’t tell much more through the coat she had on. Wood floors? Was she inside a house? And … she hadn’t had a jacket on when she left the house, but she was certain she did now.

  And Evie. She’d had Evie. Her breath quickened to a frenzied panting in the dark. She flexed her legs, and pain shot from her knee to her hip, white and hot, but nothing moved. Her ankles and shins were bound together, her toes numb. How had she gotten here? She gritted her teeth until the pain settled, but the thick numbness in her limbs remained.

  She had tried to kick him, she remembered that. She’d stopped to feed Evie, parked in the back of the gas station lot, and he’d come down fast and hard with something, maybe brass knuckles, against her temple. She winked tentatively—felt the tightness of what was probably dried blood on her cheek. At least the gash had stopped oozing.

  Would Morrison know she was gone yet? If he didn’t, he’d know soon when she didn’t call. Though she had specifically told him she was going to avoid him—to prove she was fucking strong, as if you could prove such a thing by ignoring the people you loved. The panic rose and she let it in, let it build into a fire stoked by fury and indignation. This motherfucker would pay. But then fear wrapped around her throat like a noose. She didn’t believe in God, didn’t believe in much of anything outside of hard work and grit, but she prayed now:

  God, please don’t let him hurt Evie.

  She tried to move her arms, but they were also bound, or rather, stuck in front of her in the coat. Not a coat—a straitjacket, and stiff, much harder than cotton. The rough stitches rubbed her arms raw as she struggled. Leather? She flexed her wrists but her bonds stuck fast and her fingers cramped from the position of her palms, each held flat against the opposite hip.

  She heard her then, a tiny whimper. Evie. The noise wasn’t a cry, yet it sounded more ominous, more urgent, than the subtle giggles or mewls that trickled through the baby monitor every night. And even the grainy black and white of the monitor was less distorted than the profound darkness around her now.

  Where are you, baby? Shannon held her breath, trying to locate her daughter, but her right ear was muffled, probably thick with her own blood unless he’d hit her hard enough to deafen her. Come on, sweetheart, just a little louder. Her abdominals cried out as she heaved her head off the floor, wrenching her neck and—

  Electricity zapped through her, from one ear to the other, and she caught herself on her elbow. Concussion? But the stinging sensation wasn’t coming from the side where she’d been struck. And she wasn’t lying on a power grid … she didn’t think.

  More muffled whimpering came to her through the gloom, and she tried again, throwing herself forward, ignoring the rigidity in her neck, her stomach, her wrists. And saw her. To her right, about six feet from the bottom of Shannon’s toes, Evie lay on the floor, her legs already kicking air, her fists balled and working in the manufactured dusk. Evie—healthy and vibrant and furious. But deep within Shannon’s chest, dread blossomed and grew teeth and gnashed at her lungs.

  Shh, honey, shh. She didn’t dare say it aloud. She wormed her way toward the sound of Evie’s breath, the sound crescendoing with each passing second—here another whimper, there a whine. She squirmed more quickly, the floor bruising her elbows, her hips. Then Evie cried out, long and high, and Shannon’s heart skipped a beat. Her breasts tingled, heavy with milk.

  Please, baby, hush.

  Her abdominals trembled in the half-sit-up position, every muscle screaming with exertion until she collapsed against the floor. Evie could not understand the danger, could not feel the horror in the room around them. Or perhaps she did and knew only to beg her mother to save her.

  But Shannon couldn’t save her. She was failing. Her worst fear, that she’d hurt Evie, that she’d leave Evie to be hurt, all coming to fruition and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  Don’t think about that. It isn’t true. I’m going to get her and get the fuck out of here.

  Evie squalled, but softly, the way she sometimes did when she was putting herself back to sleep, and Shannon wrenched her body toward the sound of Evie’s shuffling, toward the soft whisper of her cotton footie pajamas, until she could see her daughter, face to face. Four feet away but it might have been light years. An impassable void. Shannon whispered across the expanse: “Shh, honey, it’s okay.” Shannon strained against the shirt, yanking one way, then the other. She’d be out of this contraption before Evie fully awoke.

  Then footsteps—heavy and slow, deliberate, somewhere behind her. No squeal of door hinges or clack of a latch. He’d been there the whole time, watching her struggle. Oh fuck. Her heart shuddered, then froze.

  Shannon moved faster away from him, her ribs aching, her wrists and knuckles grinding painfully against the floor. She couldn’t roll toward the intruder—it would be like leaving Evie alone.

  “Now, now, girl, that won’t do at all.” His voice cracked on the “girl” but the tone was low and hollow, reverberating in her ears like the heady thrum of a plucked cello string though there was nothing melodic about it: each syllable drove icicles of fear into her throat until she feared she’d faint, leaving her limp and powerless to help Evie. Or herself.

  Another thunk of foot on floor, then a shuffle, then a stomp as he stepped over her body, his foot next to her ear. The clank of something metal rang from his shoe, which was strange—unless her hearing was off. Her head throbbed. He took one more step over to Evie. Definitely metal. And close, too close to her daughter’s face like he was moments from smashing her head with his boot. Then he was at the wall, but not far enough from Evie—one step backward and he’d crush her. He flicked on the light, reducing the room to him, only him, and the contrast of his back against the sudden blinding glare.

  Adjust. See. I need to use this shit.

  As he retreated she rolled onto her back to track his movement. In front of her, a wall. White paint, but not clean—scuffed and dirty, and a single window, or what used to be a window if the unused curtain hooks on the ceiling were any indication. The rest of the wall was covered by insulation and thick black plastic—an exterior wall, then. Escape. And the plastic itself could be a weapon if she could get a piece over this asshole’s face. Above them, metal spines from a small, iron chandelier cast agitated shadows on the walls. Actual metal or just painted to look like iron? Either way, it would hurt if it connected with his fucking skull.

  Evie whined again, softly as if she were still dreaming, and the tightness in Shannon’s breasts intensified as her milk let down. She turned her head toward Evie, and it hurt—God, my head—and her temple felt damp like it might be bleeding again. Evie, so close, on her back. One arm moved, reaching, looking for her momma. “It’s okay, baby, Mommy’s here. It’s okay.” Evie’s legs kicked the air futilely, then stopped.

  Shannon’s chest tingled with fear and rage and oily hatred. Milk soaked her shirt. She wrested her face to where he stood hidden in shadow in a corner where the light of the barbed chandelier did not reach. Average-sized, even smaller than, judging from the position of the ceiling, but he seemed huge, and she had to force breath into her lungs. Fix this, Mommy. Get yourself together.

  Evie fussed again, not yet fully awake, but getting there. Soon she’d be wailing.

  “Let me feed her.” Be nice to the big bad asshole, Shannon. “Please let me feed her, sir.” Give him what he wants. But what was that? “I don’t know what you want, but if it’s money, I’ll get it.”

  He stepped forward, the overhead light glinting against something in his hand—a long and pointed thing, metal, with a spear at the top covered with spiky protrusions like thorns and a thick hook glinting on one side. An axe on the other side. Shannon’s heart stopped. Evie squalled again and Shannon’s brain, her nerves, her heart, everything went into hyperdrive, panic racing like electrical currents over her chest and into her legs. Her baby’s front was exposed, her soft underbelly
vulnerable to the hooked blade, but on her side Shannon couldn’t see them both at once and his face…

  The whole front of his head was covered by a mask, leathery like the straitjacket she wore and with heavy stitching on either side of an enormous beak-like nose, as thick as a toucan’s. The eyes were covered with what looked like round aviator glasses. From the top of the mask, additional triangles of red metal protruded in different directions, like a bloody porcupine. The entire thing was painted: large red joker’s lips, smiling and sinister, and a firework of black around each aviator eye. A circle of garish red stained each cheekbone.

  Below the mask, his neck was white, as if he hadn’t seen the sun all year, and his collarbone, visible at the neck of his black tunic, was sunken, everything sunken, wasting but in a sharp-featured way. He was skinny, gangly, too awkward like a child trying to get used to his growing limbs. Was he very young? Or maybe sick? He had a sore on his neck, no … several of them, but the shadow under the mask made them hard to see. Measles? Lesions? AIDS? Her eyes flicked to the weapon again. Please not that. Focus, find something I can use. Maybe the marks were burns. Or abscesses from drug use. She never could tell that kind of stuff the way Morrison could—he had a sixth sense from working with the Ash Park PD. She had never missed him so much as in this moment. Hell, it was probably just a shaving cut or an infected fucking pimple. Stop looking at it and think, Shannon!

  Tears burned behind her lids but she blinked before they could fill her eyes. Don’t give him the satisfaction. One thing at a time. “Please.” Shannon glanced at the bed against one wall, black sheets shimmering like they were wet. On the end table sat a heavy-looking lamp, cord severed halfway to the plug. “Just let me take care of her before we draw attention to you. Then you can tell me what it is you want and I’ll—”

  The rap of his boots silenced her as the sound echoed through her head: the thunk of rubber soles but something else, a click of … it was metal. Orange tinged with green, copper formed in spiked ridges along the back of his shoe, longer than the actual boot treads, making him taller—high heels on crack. But he wasn’t stomping … his steps were tentative. Quiet. Almost … secretive. He took a step over to Evie and the metal tool seemed to shudder in his hand, though it might have been her vision blurring. Every cell in her body vibrated with the desire to tear her child away from the weapon, from this maniac.

  “We already have what I want,” he said. “Happy, happy, happy.”

  We, who’s we? Her gaze darted around the room again, but there were only walls, yellowed by the light. Then he was moving away from Evie—thank you, God—but instead of retreating to his shadowed corner he marched toward Shannon again. The scrape of metal on wood ground through her eardrums until he stopped just beyond her toes. A breath of air whooshed by her legs as a sound like the squeal of hinges cut the silence—but she would have noticed an exterior door. A closet?

  She couldn’t breathe, every beat of her heart forcing the oxygen from her lungs. Sweat-soaked hair matted itself to her cheek as she craned her neck toward her feet, toward the man in the mask, but she could only make out the top of the door: thickly padded. Soundproofed. Oh, Jesus, he’s going to lock me in the closet … Though it wasn’t a closet, but a bleak, black room, an enormous beam across the middle. A dungeon. She coughed, choked, as vomit rose in her throat and cut off her air with acid.

  He turned back to her. Get out, run! Run! She strained again and finally looked down at her own body, at her jacket: mismatched cowhide pieces roughly sewn with upholstery thread. And at the base of one of her wrists, an evil-looking metal lock, rusty and thick, attached to a metal hook sewn into the leather jacket itself. No escape.

  Get him talking. Or she was dead, Evie was dead.

  “Do we know each other?”

  He snorted in response. “You’d never know someone like me.” No cracking in his baritone this time, just rage. Had he been snubbed? Humiliated?

  “I’m sure I would.” She hated that her voice was shaking but it felt like her bones were trying to vibrate their way out of her body. “You don’t need the mask.”

  “I don’t want to smell your stink.” As she watched, the air from each breath he took broadened his back, inflating him, steadying him until he was tall, straight—emboldened. He was composing himself. But for what?

  Evie screamed, and his shoulders tensed. The tip of the beaked nose caught the light—metal too. Everything so sharp. Shannon’s chest dampened her shirt to her belly, still soft from childbirth.

  Shh, Evie. She heaved herself over, floundering like a beached whale.

  She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck but she lay still, staring at Evie, wanting to pick her up, desperate to pick her up. She was failing. No, I am not. “Please,” she whispered, aiming for hopeless, helpless, but in that moment, the fire in her belly burned stronger than her terror, flaming into her face, blistering her insides with incredulous fury. Just let my arms go. Give me an inch, motherfucker, and I will destroy you.

  He stepped in front of her, away from the padded closet, one heavy boot so close to her face that she could see the mud on the copper spines on the bottom. But no—the hue was far too crimson, not nearly the right shade of brown to be dirt. And the smell: not only the copper of the metal, but the cloying wet of a wound not yet healed. Blood? On his boots? She squinted at his feet, at the spikes that could only be weapons—sharp enough to kill.

  Her breath caught again as the other boot fell heavy in front of her, close enough to her belly that it snagged the straitjacket. He pulled it free, cursing under his breath and bent to her, leaning his leather beak so close she could smell his sweat, setting the metal hook of his bladed tool hard against her shoulder, the coolness of it reaching her skin even through the leather straitjacket. This time, the blade did not shake. He leaned closer, closer, until his breath echoed in her ears louder than her own, amplified by the hollow mask and her own sheer terror.

  He peered at her through the mask, with eyes hard and dark and emotionless behind the strange bubble lenses. Looking for something. He wants to see my fear. She allowed her lower lip to tremble. Allowed the tears to spring into her eyes.

  Please let that be enough.

  He cocked his head.

  Evie was still wailing, but Shannon could barely hear—like he was sucking the sound waves from the room and swallowing them with his beaked mouth.

  Then he straightened, stepped heavily over her, and she hauled herself back to look toward Evie, following his steps. When one taloned boot narrowly missed Evie’s head, Shannon cried out, shrill and harsh against the hiss of his breath, jerking so hard against the straitjacket that he turned back to her. His sharp, metal beak was aimed right at her as if he might use it to impale her.

  “Please,” she whispered. He held the tool out in front of him, the points, the barbs, the hooked, spiked top glinting darkly, consuming her attention, every sliver of the instrument standing out in ominous detail.

  “Happy, happy, happy,” he growled. And still, he watched her. Showed the weapon to her. She bit her lip.

  He bent to one knee in front of Evie.

  Shannon screamed.

  The man in the mask tipped his face toward the ceiling and laughed.

  18

  She’d be angry, maybe. But by the next morning, Morrison didn’t care. He’d dialed Shannon’s number again—twice—and she still wasn’t answering. But she had surely hit the road early to take advantage of Evie’s happy time; she had to be somewhere with reception by now. So he’d run their credit cards. Last used yesterday near Toledo, only an hour from Ash Park, but she’d get a good six hours of drive time out of that one tank of gas. And she hadn’t needed to stop for food—she’d brought a cooler with her because eating out with an infant was a pain in the ass. He’d tried to check on the hotel, too, but she had planned to use their points to book it from the lot, and it would still be another day before it showed on the credit card statement—the company could tel
l him nothing. Nothing. He put a hold on their credit and debit cards. Regardless of her determination to make it to Alex’s without his support, she was being selfish and that fucking pissed him off. But the anger sat on his chest, on the surface, while deeper, more primal fears lurked in his gut, and if he breathed too hard he felt them swell up and try to consume him.

  I’ve lost them. They’re never coming home. The worst was that he was alone—if Morrison called on his fellow officers to look for his wife it made this … real. His girls might be gone. His life might be over. And if Shannon really was gone, Roger would wrongfully throw him in jail again and he’d be helpless to save his family.

  Goddammit, Shannon.

  He dialed again—no answer, not then, and not on the five more attempts on his way to work. And all the while his fears fought with the logical part of his brain, the one that reminded him that Shannon had flat out told him she was going to wait to call him. That she didn’t want him to be her crutch. That this was only the second day—she wouldn't even be at Alex’s yet, not when she had to stop to feed Evie every couple hours. And she had texted him. If he waited a little longer she might call.

  By the time lunch rolled around, his agitation had morphed into a relentless anxiety that seized his innards every time a new thought seared through his brain. He tried to tell himself it was the case. They’d spent the morning ascertaining that none of the prior occupants of the strip mall had seen the bike or Mr. Magoo.

  “Not even coffee today?” Petrosky asked him.

  Morrison shook his head, his stomach tying itself in knots at the mere scent of food.

  “Worried about Shannon?”

  “Yeah. But she did text me.” His voice was almost defensive. Forcing himself to believe it was okay. Morrison looked away, trying to avoid Petrosky’s piercing stare.

  “So what’s the problem?”