The Woman Trapped in the Dark Read online

  “I’m a niggah who’s got you dangling by your balls over a fire, Lars. I’m a niggah with no fear. I’m a niggah with money. And I want you out of my sight. I don’t want you on my board or owning my stocks. I don’t want your fucking name on none of my business cards, and if you take so much as a pencil, I’ll spend my last dime personally pile driving your ass into the ground. I will ruin you. I will humiliate you and your family. I will tear down the walls of your reputation until there’s nothing left but ash and shit.”

  “You’ve got nothing on me, son.”

  Jordan glared at him. “That you know of,” he said coldly.

  He was bullshitting.

  “Call it, Lars,” he threatened. “Call my bluff. Force me to show my hand. Please.”

  “I was tempted, but that look in his eyes—” Lars shook his head. “I was almost proud of him,” Lars continued somberly. “I was certainly afraid of what he’d become. Jordan’s successes began to pile up one on top of the other. Even his failures had a way of working out in the best interest of Gatewood Industries.” Lars looked at his son. “You see, it’s not his skin color that I hate so much. This kind of loathing doesn’t just happen overnight. It grows. Festers. It’s like a cancer, spreading and gnawing at a man. Maybe it’s because I know I’m running out of time, Brandon,” he said, his voice tinged with melancholy. “There’s a sense of urgency to finish what I started, to see him ruined.”

  A long silence hovered between the two of them before his son finally said something that caught Lars by surprise.

  “If you hate him so much,” Brandon began cautiously, “why not just have him killed?”

  Lars shook his head in dismay at such a question. “Killed? No.” He sighed. “No, Son. It’s not his life I want. It’s something much more valuable and lasting. It’s his legacy. There’s no real gratification in taking your enemy’s life. If there is, it’s short-lived. But to see him suffer, to watch him suffocate in regret and sink into the muddy despair of his failures and losses. To humiliate him.” Lars smiled. “Dignity. It’s the one thing a real man values more than his own life.” He nodded, sighed, and closed his eyes. “You take that from him, that thing he loves most, that he’d die for, and leave him stripped of respect, honor, and hope.” Lars smiled. “That’s the sweetest kind of victory. That’s the kind that lasts forever.”

  Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

  —James Baldwin

  Go My Severed Way

  A CREAKING FLOOR.

  Subtle vibrations shifting air, filling space.

  Hushed voices and soft sounds of shoes shuffling along the corridor outside her bedroom.

  Who’s to say for sure what combination of these things caused her to stir awake suddenly from a deep sleep? Abby blinked her eyes open in time to see a shadow fill the doorway to her room.

  Panic, fear, ballooned in her chest. Was she awake or still asleep—dreaming?

  As the shadowed person crept into her room horror gripped her.

  “Who? W … what—?”

  She pushed up on the bed, still half asleep—still desperately trying to will herself awake. The soles of her feet touched the floor as Abby started to run, but not before seeing another shadowed figure appear behind the first, both reaching for her.

  She screamed! She fought! Wake up, Abby! Jesus! Jesus, this was real!

  “Cover her mouth!” one of them yelled. “Cover her fuckin’ mouth before I smash her in it!”

  She couldn’t breathe—or see. Abby clawed at the hand covering her face until he was forced to let go. She kicked the other one, twisting in their grasp, fighting for her life, using every ounce of strength she had to get away until she broke free and landed on the floor. Abby crawled on all fours, struggling to get on her feet to run to the front door. Just as she crossed the threshold between her bedroom and the hallway, Abby was lifted off the floor by her waist from behind and spun around to the bedroom.

  Jarring pain shot through her jaw. Her body went limp. All of a sudden she felt as if she were floating. Struggling to force her eyes open, she managed to get a glimpse of the dark figure at her feet. They were carrying her.

  “We ain’t supposed to hurt her, man! What the fuck?”

  “What else was I supposed to do? This bitch wouldn’t be still. How the hell else were we supposed to get her…?”

  Voices faded. The space around her went completely black.

  Abby sat around the dinner table with her daddy and brothers, laughing so hard she nearly cried. She laughed at— What was so funny? It was—hilarious and ridiculous. Without thinking she raised her hand to her mouth and cringed when she felt it. She had a toothache? Was that why it hurt to laugh? Blood.

  Someone moaned. As her senses began to awaken Abby gradually became aware of the sound of the tires meeting the road. Someone moaned again. Was it her? Vinyl or leather pressed against her skin. Abby tried to move her hands but couldn’t because they were tied at the wrists. Her fear deepened when she realized that her legs were bound too, at her ankles. She couldn’t see anything and the sensation of something in her mouth, cloth, stretching around her jaw, caused it to ache even more.

  No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. A garbled sob escaped and the taste of blood on the material in her mouth, her blood, caused her to gag. Someone touched her leg and she jerked and cried out.

  “Keep your gotdamned hands off her!” a man shouted.

  “Shut the hell up!” another blurted out.

  She let loose with muffled and panicked screams.

  “Shut up before I knock yo’ ass out again!”

  A hand gripped her by the throat, digging fingers into the sides of her neck. The car swerved. He let her go.

  “The fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Keep your hands off of her or we don’t get paid, motha fucka! That’s what’s wrong with me.”

  “She needs to shut the fuck up. If we get pulled over and she’s doing all that screaming, bruh, it’s our asses.”

  She had to get out of this car. Abby started kicking at the door. If she could kick it open and manage to get out before they could stop that car, maybe someone in another car would see her. She kicked and yelled at the top of her lungs until one of the men grabbed hold of the binding on her ankles.

  “I’ll bust you in your fuckin’ jaw again, bitch! I swear to God!”

  “We’re almost there,” the other man said. “Here. Get the picture.”

  “Got it.”

  Pay attention, Abby! Some small part of her challenged her to calm down, to pay attention, to be smart. She was smart. Two—two of them. There were two. Abby could feel the car turning. How long had they been driving? She didn’t know. She had been knocked out—she didn’t know. Straight. They’d mostly driven straight. The highway? Abby ran through a mental list of all the cities surrounding Blink. Maybe they hadn’t left Blink at all. But if they did … if they did then where could they be taking her? Clark City? Norvo? Tyler? No. Too far.

  “This is it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her heart pounded. A lump began to choke the breath from her. The car slowed, turned again onto what sounded like a gravel road, and then finally stopped. Thoughts raced through her mind. They were going to have to open the door to get her out. Not both doors, but one. Which one? The one at her head or at her feet? She wouldn’t be able to run, but she had to do something.

  She heard the sound of keys being taken out of the ignition. The front car doors opened and a rush of cool air washed over her. The door at her feet swung open. Good. Good. Abby had strong legs. She could do this. A pair of hands grabbed hold of her calves and started to pull her out of the seat. Instinct and desperation took over and Abby started to kick as hard as she could, to scream at the top of her lungs. She thrashed around in the backseat like a wild animal trying to free herself from a trap.

&n
bsp; The man pulling on her laughed. “Can’t nobody hear you out here, baby. Scream all you want. In fact, I’ma scream, too.”

  He started yelling and Abby was pulled from the backseat and carried away with one man holding her legs, the other holding her underneath her shoulders. The men stopped walking and it sounded like someone kicked a door.

  “Open up!” the one at her head shouted.

  “Pretty thighs,” the one at her feet muttered.

  “That’s her?” a woman asked as they carried Abby inside.

  “Nah. This is just some random chick we found laying on the side of the road like this,” the man holding her legs said sarcastically.

  “Is the room ready?” the one at her head asked.

  Abby still fought. She didn’t want to think about what they would do to her once they got her in that room. But hope was fading.

  What are they going to do? She cried. What are they going to do to me?

  They carried her a bit farther. Details! If by some chance she survived this ordeal, then she would need to remember details. Wooden floors? Definitely not carpeted. Their shoes made too much noise. Shoes? Boots? Voices and sounds echoed. Tall ceilings or just an empty space? Maybe both. Another door opened. It sounded heavy.

  “She ain’t going to stop,” the man at her feet said.

  “Stop fighting!” the other man said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “She ain’t trying ta hear that, D. I’m telling you.”

  “We’ll untie you if you stop fighting.”

  Why should she believe him? They’d broken into her home and abducted her in the middle of the night. Why would they have taken her if they hadn’t intended on hurting her? This was her life, and as far as she was concerned, Abby was facing her death, but she would fight until she couldn’t.

  The one at her feet let her go. “Move!”

  “No, J!” the one at her head shouted as the other one lowered her feet to the floor.

  Concrete!

  She struggled to keep her balance as the one who’d been holding her feet grabbed her around the shoulders as he pushed the other man out of the way, wrapped his other arm around her neck, and …

  The Woman Trapped in the Dark

  My World Crumbles

  JORDAN COULDN’T TAKE HIS EYES off the photo sent to him on his phone. It was a picture of Abby. How was it possible for a man to fall in love thousands of times with the same woman? He had no idea, but it had happened to him every time he laid eyes on her, every time he thought of her or heard her voice. She had this effect on him—call it supernatural, magical, or unnatural. Perplexing. That’s what it was and it had changed him, drilled down to his center and tapped into a part of him that he never knew was there. Jordan had just turned fifty, and for the first time in his life he was keenly connected to another human being in a way that was so addictive that even the thought of losing that connection terrified him.

  “You know better than anyone just how unfair and cruel the world can be, Mr. Gatewood.”

  The woman on the other end of the phone had a sultry, raspy voice.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  Sitting here now, an hour after hanging up from that conversation, Jordan recalled the unfamiliar tinge of panic rising in his own voice, a kind of fear and desperation that he could always identify in others, but coming from him, it sounded odd.

  “What have you done?” he demanded to know, his voice cracking as it pushed past the lump in his throat. “Where is she?”

  “I need for you to calm down,” she demanded. “I need for you to listen.”

  “I don’t give a damn about what you need! You tell me where she is.”

  If he could’ve reached his hand through that phone and wrapped it around that woman’s throat, he’d have crushed it.

  “You tell me where she is, or I swear to God—”

  “God abandons men like you, Mr. Gatewood. But I’m sure you already know that. How does the saying go? It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

  “Choke on your philosophic bullshit and you tell me where she is!”

  “Safe,” she said, and paused. “She’s as safe as a kitten in a box for now. Safe as long as you listen to me and do what I say.”

  Jordan’s chest heaved with rage. He gripped the phone so tightly that it was a wonder the damn thing didn’t shatter in his palm.

  “If you put your gotdamned hands on her,” he threatened through clenched jaws, “if you hurt her, I’ll find your ass. That’s a promise, not a threat. I’ll find you and shred you with my bare hands.”

  “Of course you will,” she responded unemotionally. “So we will keep ourselves hidden. But if I were you, I’d stop wasting precious time threatening me, time which she has very little of. The clock’s ticking, Mr. Gatewood.”

  This wasn’t happening. Was this what helplessness felt like? For the first time in a very, very long time, he was at a loss for what he could do. Jordan couldn’t bellow out a command and suddenly have his wishes turned into reality. He couldn’t go after this woman because he had no idea who or where she was. The weight of this situation as it settled in suddenly made it difficult to stand.

  “Time is of the essence, Mr. Gatewood,” she told him as he sank into the sofa on his deck.

  “Time. Time? Time for what?” he eventually managed to say.

  “Time to pay your dues. To reassess your position on the Dakota Pipeline endeavor.”

  How in the hell did she know what his position was?

  “I don’t know what it is you’re getting at, but I don’t need to reassess a damn thing.”

  Jordan had been in on talks about the pipeline along with other oil and gas corporate leaders, but he’d decided against it once he discovered that the land was sacred to the Sioux. He was no saint, but he respected the passion that those people had for their lands and the passion they held to the promise made to them by the government.

  “Your recent successes are legendary, Mr. Gatewood. First, you manage to achieve the impossible, winning a multibillion-dollar research and development bid from the Department of Defense, and most recently an acquisition with one of the most promising alternative fuel producers in Tanzania, Batenga Enterprises.”

  “Get to the fucking point.”

  “You’ve got so many people fooled,” she said condescendingly. “People who believe in the halo you’ve worn so well lately. You, Jordan Gatewood, the golden boy. The one they’re starting to believe might actually be able to walk on water, perhaps? There are those of us, Mr. Gatewood, who, though we might not know where the bodies are buried, are very much aware that you have buried many on your rise to success.”

  “You tell me what the hell you want.”

  “On Friday an e-mail will be sent to you. A contract that you will sign, agreeing to invest one hundred million dollars into the pipeline endeavor.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You take her so that I’ll sign a gotdamn contract?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “You sign it. Invest the funds. And by Friday night, pretty little Abby Rhodes will curl up next to you in bed purring like a pretty kitten. Don’t sign it, and you’ll never see her again.”

  Jordan’s whole life had been filled with absurdities and moments that would seem impossible if it weren’t for the fact that he’d lived them. Meeting and falling in love with Abby Rhodes was one of the most unexpectedly peculiar things to ever happen to him.

  Jordan had unwittingly stumbled into that small town on a whim, because he was bloated with some overblown need for a sense of purpose and searching for the meaning to his life. He was chasing a ghost, his father’s, in the hopes of finding answers to a deeper question of who and why Jordan had become the man that he had become. He found her instead, and maybe she was all he was ever supposed to find.

  The photograph was disturbing. Abby sat in what looked like the backseat of a car, h
er wrists bound, her knees drawn to her chest with a zip tie securing her ankles. Blood splattered the front of her T-shirt. A dark bandana was tied around her head, covering her eyes, and another around her mouth. The blood on her lips, on the front of her shirt, were both alarming signs to him that that bitch on the phone had lied already and that they had actually hurt her.

  Time. She had said it was against Abby. According to the woman, the contract would be arriving in six days, soon to be five, and Jordan was wasting precious seconds sitting here, paralyzed by a sense of helplessness. Abby needed him. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine her confusion and fear. Did she blame him? He blamed himself.

  * * *

  “‘All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all.’” Half an hour after hanging up from the call with that woman, Jordan recited the line from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to the man on the other end of the phone.

  It was a silly ritual that this dude insisted on his potential employers following if they wanted to get in touch with him. A cloak-and-dagger and pomp-and-circumstance tryst that Jordan found tedious and ridiculous.

  “What can I do for you?” the man responded, sounding as if he had been asleep.

  What could he do for Jordan? Jordan felt absolutely at a loss for words to answer that question. So much was at stake—his world, his sanity. How do you sum something like that up in a simple answer? You don’t.

  “I need to see you,” Jordan said without thinking.

  He needed a face, not just a voice, not just a concept.

  “I don’t do face-to-face, man,” the man on the phone responded coolly. “You should know that.”

  Jordan looked at his phone, pushed a few buttons, and waited. “I just sent you a picture,” he said gravely. “Look at it. Study it. Commit it to memory.”

  After a lengthy pause, the man finally responded. “Yeah,” he said. “I got it.”