Not Dead Yet (12 page)

“Okay, so what’s step two?” 

“Once we gather information, we find the bastard and go bust his ass,” Lu said simply.

Jack leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers and nodded his head.

“Sounds good.  How can I help?” he asked.

“When I get the names of Rose and Donald’s relatives, we can go talk to them,” Lu suggested.  “And maybe you can help me keep an eye on Miss Stubborn over there.”

When he did not respond, Lu noticed he was gazing at Theia with compassion, with anger over her being beaten up, and with something else.  She decided to keep a close watch over both Jack and Theia.  She loved her brother, but she worried about Theia when it came to men.

“I’m going to stay with her tonight,” Lu announced, “so I need you to stay here for about an hour while I go to my place and pack a bag.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.  And watch out for the calico – she’s a vicious bitch.”

“There are cats here?” Jack looked around, alarmed. 

“What, is my widdo brother scared of a putty-tat?”  Lu teased.  “Relax, big guy.  She’s a house cat, not a tiger. Just don’t touch her, look at her or breathe her air, and you’ll probably live through the hour.  The little brown and white cat, on the other hand, is a sweetie.  She’ll sit in your lap for hours if you let her.”

“How many cats does she have?” he asked, looking around the room.

“Just two.  See you in about an hour,” she wiggled her fingers at him and strolled out of the apartment.

When Lu returned, she found Theia tucked into her bed, sleeping. 

“She better have clothes on, Jack,” Lu teased.

“Of course she does!  What do you take me for, some kind of pervert who’d take advantage of a woman in her condition?  Jeez, try to help someone and look at the thanks you get.”

“Aww, when you talk like that, you bring back such fond memories of seventh grade,” she retorted.

“Shut up!” he said.  “This isn’t the first time I’ve carried a woman to bed.”

“True,” Lu agreed.  “But this is the first time you carried this woman to bed.” 

“I took off her shoes and slipped off her jacket, that’s all.  You might want to help her with some other stuff, you know, unbutton some things, unzip some things, unhook her bra.  I figured you’d slug me if I did.”

“You’re damn right I would,” she replied. “Now get out of here before I slug you just for fun.”

“She’s gonna be miserable tomorrow,” Jack said. 

“Yeah, I know.  I brought a nice big bottle of Vicodin from when I broke my foot.  I only took two of them, so these ought to float her through the next few days.  And I grabbed a box of Epsom salts for her to soak in the tub tomorrow.”

“Good thinking, sis.”

“Hey, I had a lot of practice bandaging you after all the fights you got into.”

“And I love ya for it,” Jack kissed the top of her head, then whirled away before she could smack him.  “She’s all yours! Call me tomorrow when you want me to come over.”

Lu walked Jack to the door, then checked on Theia as she slept.  She hadn’t moved an inch. Lu unfastened Theia’s clothes so she would be more comfortable through the night.

Lu got things ready for the morning, knowing they would both feel like hell when they awoke.  Acetaminophen, ibuprofen and Vicodin were lined up like little soldiers on the kitchen counter.  She set the Epsom salts and a stack of bath towels next to the bathtub.  She made more ice packs and got coffee and breakfast food ready to go for the morning.

Lu walked down the hall to the second bedroom. Flipping on the light, she chuckled.  Of course, someone like Theia would have a guest bedroom always made up and ready, even though she was a bit of a hermit.  Lu got ready for bed, then slipped between the cool, clean sheets.  Her cocktail hit her the moment she closed her eyes.

The next thing Lu knew, morning had arrived.  Lu padded over to Theia’s room and looked in.  Theia’s face was a mass of swollen purple fist marks.  Morning light was so unforgiving.  Lu got herself ready for the day, then helped Theia. 

Sprawled on the sofa and picking at her breakfast, Theia asked Lu, “How do professional fighters handle this? How can they get in the ring, knowing they’re going to feel like this afterward?”

“Beats me.  I’ve never understood people who willingly subject themselves to pain.”

“Yeah, right. Don’t you have a tattoo?”

“Yes, but I was drunk,” Lu replied.

“That’s what everyone says when they get a tattoo.”

“So you don’t have any tats?” Lu asked.

The calico chose that moment to streak across the room toward the kitchen, hissing as she did.

“Tats.  She said tats, not cats, stupid.”  Theia called at the fleeing cat.  “And no, I’ve never had a tattoo. The whole idea of people injecting me with ink creeps me out. My luck it’d give me cancer.”

“You’re a mess,” Lu shook her head.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“So what do you do when you’re not rescuing damsels in distress?” Theia asked Jack, while waiting at Theia’s apartment for Lu to arrive.

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that,” he replied evasively.

“Do you really think that answer’s going to satisfy me?”

“No,” he admitted. “All right, I was in the military. I did three tours of duty and then was recruited by a government contractor.”

“To do what?”

“Private security.”

“Private security? Is that a euphemism for saying you’re a spy?”

“No. I do pretty much the same stuff I did in the military, but technically I’m a civilian.”

“I don’t understand. They let you play with guns but you aren’t in the military?”

“Sort of.  You see, there aren’t enough volunteers for the military, so they hire civilian security forces through government contractors.  No president wants to be the one to reinstate the draft,” Jack explained.

“So why did you evade my question earlier?” Theia asked.  Against her judgment, she found herself interested in him.  Perhaps if she asked him enough questions she would find a reason to dislike him.

“I just don’t make my line of work a matter of common knowledge,” Jack replied.

“If it really is what you say it is, I don’t understand why it’s such a big secret.”

“It’s not a big secret, I just don’t advertise what I do.”

“I can’t decide if you’re a spy and trying to keep it a secret, or if you actually do something extremely boring and you’re trying to make people think you are a spy.  Oh well.  It’s not like you’ll tell me.  So, what are you doing in St. Louis now?  Are we at war here in the Midwest?  Because if we are, someone should’ve told me.”

“Funny.  I’m in town on a furlough. They think we need to take breaks so the stress doesn’t get to us.  They invest a great deal of money into training and they don’t want us to get burned out.  So when I come home to St. Louis, I usually just check into a hotel and catch up on my reading and my sleep.”

“That I understand.  I’m a homebody myself.  Here’s to hermits,” Theia said, clanking her coffee mug against his.  “I thought I was the only one left.”  This guy actually seemed normal.  Warning bells clanged in her head.  Don’t get involved, she reminded herself.  No one is really who they seem to be. 

“So, I’ve answered your questions, now tell me about yourself,” he asked, knowing he should broach this topic carefully.  “Who is Theia?”

“Oh, there’s really nothing to tell. I go to work, come home, read a book and play with the cat,” Theia answered.

“I thought you had two cats?” Jack asked.

“I do, but only a person with a death wish would try to play with the calico,” Theia admitted.

“Why do you keep her if she’s such a horrible cat?” he asked.

“What am I supposed to do, kill her?  If I send her to a shelter, that’s what will happen, since she’s not adoptable. I got both of them from a homeless animal rescue when they were about four weeks old.”

“You changed the subject. That was sneaky!” Jack pointed out.

She smirked at him.  It had been a long time since she had enjoyed casual conversation with a man.

“Look, I need to know what’s going on inside your head,” Jack explained.  “I know you’ve been through some bad stuff in your past. Lu told me a little, but I need to know more.”

“Why?” Theia asked.  Although she did not hesitate to interrogate people, she did not like being asked questions about herself.  “What happened in my past has nothing to do with what’s going on now. Let’s just leave all that where it belongs, in the past.”

“I’m sorry, but I need to know what you’re going to do if we get in a tight spot. The only way for me to know that is by knowing what happened to you. I don’t need to know everything, just hit the high points,” Jack clarified. “Or maybe I should say low points.”

Theia pressed her lips together and twitched her foot. “I really don’t want to talk about this.  I understand you feel justified in asking your questions, but I don’t think my past is any of your business.”

Jack just stared at her.

“So you want to know if I’m fucked up?” she asked, annoyed.

“I know this is difficult for you,” he began.

In a split second she went from annoyed to full-blown angry.  “Don’t you dare patronize me!”

“I’m not patronizing you. And if you fly off the handle like this when we’re out there in a critical situation, you could get Lu or me killed,” he snapped back at her. “Or yourself,” he added softly. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment, tapping her foot on the floor. “When I was in college I got married. He was the emergency room doctor at the hospital where I worked nights putting myself through school. I found out after we married that something wasn’t right with him. He refused to tell me the diagnosis, but he told me he had to self-medicate. If he sought treatment, they’d take away his medical license. I only found out years later that he was schizophrenic. I had a very sheltered upbringing, and I had no idea about schizophrenia.”

“And?”

“You want more?  Fine.  Things got worse and worse,” she continued, wanting to get this over and done. “He was obsessed with death and all the different ways a person could be killed. He used to sit for hours watching illegal videotapes from South America of real people being tortured to death. I’d go into another part of the house, close the door and turn on the television loudly to drown out the sound. He tried to get me to watch them with him, but I refused. Eventually he only watched them when I was not at home.”

“I’ve heard of those videotapes,” Jack said. “I’m sorry you had to be around that.”

“They were hideous,” Theia agreed. “He became fixated on the news story of a model whose face and body were slashed by her ex-boyfriend or ex-husband or something. Foster—my ex—and I had a big age difference—seventeen years. When he turned forty, something just snapped. He became convinced that, due to our age difference, I was going to fool around on him or leave him. He said his first wife had an affair and left him for another man.”

“So when he looked at you, he might have been seeing her in his mind,” Jack suggested.

“Perhaps.  I started noticing little things, like the clothes in my closet had been moved around,” Theia continued. “The clothing in my dresser was also rumpled. When I questioned him, he told me he was looking for evidence of infidelity. He was convinced that all women commit adultery, and he told me that when he found evidence, he would do to me what had been done to that model. He said that in the South American videotapes, sometimes they use a chemical similar to curare, to paralyze the person so she or he could not move, but still feel everything.”

Jack frowned.  “Did you try to convince him you were innocent?”

“Of course. I told him I had no boyfriend, and had never broken my vows. He raged even louder, bellowing that all women are cheaters. At that moment I knew that he’d lost his grip on reality. I also knew that one day, in a delusional state, he would come across something completely innocent but that he’d see as the evidence he’d been looking for, and he’d kill me.”

“Do you know how lucky you are to be alive?” he asked.

“Yes,” Theia acknowledged, her voice shaking. “I went into hiding and filed for divorce. He didn’t contest the divorce, and it went through in three months. During that time, however, he followed me and attacked me repeatedly. He moved out of our condo and I couldn’t afford to keep moving from hotel to hotel, so after the police checked the condo, I moved back. I got a restraining order to keep him at least one mile away from the condo and from me at all times.”

“Lot of good that did you,” Jack commented.

“Well, at least it put the police on notice that there was a problem.  Over the next few months, he broke in seven times, injected poison into bottles of wine, trashed the place repeatedly and tried to run me down with a car when I was on foot.”

“I don’t know how you survived all that.  So what happened the day you were shot?”

“I was walking up to my front door when he put a gun to my back and told me to go inside,” Theia recited in monotone.  She had told this story so many times during the intervening years - to the police, to family, and to friends - but just the bare essentials.  She rarely delved into the utter terror she went through that day.  Just recite the facts and don’t let them touch where he really hurt you—your emotions, your ability to believe in someone.  Foster wasn’t the only death that day.  Her dreams for the future were also extinguished.  “I knew I’d die a horrible death if he got me inside, so I struggled with him and yelled to a neighbor to call the police.  The police came quickly and ordered him to drop the gun. Instead, he pushed me to the ground, stood over me and emptied his gun in and around me.”  She wouldn’t bare her pain that the man she had once wanted to spend the rest of her life with tried to murder her.  She couldn’t tell Jack the unspeakable fright of lying on the ground when the bullets stopped, not knowing if the police officer or Foster would be the one standing when she turned around.  She’d keep to herself how it had felt to realize she’d likely die that day.  She’d worked hard for five long years to build up the stone fortress that protected her emotions, and she wasn’t going to let herself get hurt again.  She honestly thought if she got into another bad relationship, the grief would kill her. “The policeman shot him in the thigh, then the temple.  He was pronounced dead at the hospital.” Theia leaned her head back. “So there is my glorious life story.  That was five years ago. I finished law school and moved back home to St. Louis. I wanted to get some distance between me and the memories. So what’s the verdict, James Bond, am I fucked up?” she asked him, carefully keeping all emotion out of her voice and raising her chin as if daring him to criticize her.