Regrets Only (27 page)

Misty
hoisted herself onto his hips, crossing her legs behind him. He instinctively
grabbed hold to keep her from falling. “Take me to bed, baby,” she commanded in
his ear. Whatever his better judgment might be saying, whatever confusion he
was feeling, even the faint sound of his phone buzzing softly on the table—it was
all left behind as he staggered through the bedroom door and kicked it closed.

The
face glaring at Suzanne when she awoke was not Rick’s, or anyone else from her
list. It was a familiar face, she thought, but not one she could place. Round,
cherubic, surrounded by inky black tendrils of hair pulled into pigtails.
Pretty, except for, perhaps, wearing too much makeup. Suzanne’s vision was
blurry, but behind the girl she could see the familiar, if sideways, cabinets
of her own kitchen. She was lying on her side in the carpeted intersection
space of her apartment, where the kitchen and living room merged with the
bedrooms and bath.

Her
head ached and her face felt raw, as though she had been dragged across the
carpet on her side. She started to reach up and touch her face, to inspect the
damage with her fingers, and found she could not move her arms. A rough rope
bound her wrists behind her back. The chubby girl, dressed all in black except
for striped knee socks, sat a few feet from her with her legs crossed. As Suzanne
tried to wriggle free, the girl spoke in a chirpy sing-song voice that reminded
her absurdly of Snow White, and was in complete contrast with the content of
her words. “Ah, ah, ah—no moving, please. I would hate to kill you, but I
will.”

At
the girl’s words, she saw the gun. Small and silver, the girl twirled it
carelessly around one finger. Suzanne knew nothing about guns, but she felt
sure it was dangerous despite the small size. As awareness returned to her
confused brain, terror came with it. She looked at the girl again, and a name
floated back to her as though from a dream.
Patty? Penny?

“I’ll
bet you don’t even remember me, do you, you self-absorbed bitch?” the girl
said.

Suzanne
frantically searched her mental files. The stalker was a
woman
. She’d
been making all the wrong lists. “I remember you,” she said slowly, trying to
keep her voice neutral while she worked to place the familiar face in front of
her.

A
memory floated up through the muck of her aching brain. “I saw you…at the bar
the other night.” She remembered now, this girl, in striped knee-high socks,
standing next to a tall man whose face Suzanne hadn’t seen. Maybe
he
was
the key? “You were with…um, I can’t remember…” she fished, hoping for more
information.

“You
don’t know him,” the girl snapped. “But I think maybe he’d like to get to know
you.”

This
sent a chill down Suzanne’s spine. She tried to look around to see whether anyone
else was with them, but they seemed to be alone. “We’ll get to him in a
minute,” the girl said. “I told him I’d call when you woke up. I can’t believe
you don’t remember me. You really are as narcissistic as I thought. That
actually makes me feel better.”

“I’m
sorry,” Suzanne said. “My head hurts, but maybe if you give me a minute…”

“I’ve
given you years!” the girl shrieked. “We met at UGA, remember? You came back
for that alumni luncheon three years ago, and I was your ambassador?”

Suzanne
did remember, now. It had been one of those things she’d said yes to doing
months in advance and then regretted as the actual date approached because she
didn’t really have time to do it. At the height of her success, right after she
had planned an absolutely stunning rooftop party for a new hip-hop label and
helped organize a huge charity event for Elton John, the university had invited
her back to be a keynote speaker at a humanities alumni luncheon.

She’d
been super-stressed about it and almost canceled, until Chad reminded her that
would not be good for her image. This girl—the name was Penny, she decided—had
been an undergraduate art history student assigned to give her a tour of campus
and to introduce her to key faculty before the luncheon. Later, she had been
invited to make a substantial gift to the university as well, and she realized
that having spent the morning with one of its hopeful future graduates was
supposed to remind her of her happy days in Athens and grease the wheels for a
donation.

Suzanne
remembered two main things from that day. One was that Penny had been
super-chatty and fairly annoying and that Suzanne had tried to ditch her at
several points in the morning but failed. The other was that after lunch she
had located her old art history professor, now divorced and head of the
department, and canceled the rest of her day to relive old times with him—this
time in his sad little apartment rather than behind the locked door of his
office. Their time together had been a somewhat disappointing encounter with
someone she’d once thought of as so powerful and sophisticated, but Suzanne had
supposed that was a good lesson, too. In the end, people were just people.

Now,
lying bound on the floor of her condo, she felt deeply ashamed of that day—how
she’d blown off Penny, how she’d refused to even stay for dinner with Dr.
Kimball, pretending she had a meeting to get back to in Atlanta. She’d never
asked him about his marriage or how he was doing, or until just this moment
considered that maybe the breakup of his marriage had something to do with the
fact that he’d been fucking Suzanne during his office hours all those years ago.
She hadn’t asked because she didn’t want to know.

“Of
course I remember you. Penny, right?” she ventured, praying like crazy that it
wasn’t Patty.

Penny
brightened and Suzanne breathed a sigh of relief. The girl pulled her off the
floor to a sitting position. “Well, I’m glad you remember that, at least. I
told
him you would know who I was.”

“Absolutely
I know who you are, sweetie.” Suzanne knew she was going out on a limb with “sweetie”
but figured she had a better shot with this girl while it was just the two of
them. She didn’t know who “he” was, and she didn’t care to find out. Then her
slowly-firing synapses put something together. “You’ve been calling us. About
being an intern.”

“Yes!”
Penny said. “I called for weeks, and I kept getting that awful Chad guy—he’s so
stuck up—and I knew if I could just get through to you, you’d remember what you
promised.”

“What
I promised,” Suzanne repeated, not having any idea what this meant.

“Yeah,
you know, after the luncheon, when you said I had potential because I was so
persistent and you’d be happy to teach me the ropes in event planning. You said
I’d be great in fundraising, especially.”

“Right,”
Suzanne said. She did not remember this at all. She met so many people in the
course of her work and at the Junior League, it often felt as though she were
an actress on stage, delivering lines. Surely she could not be expected to
remember every member of the audience? Maybe Suzanne had said those things, but
people said those kinds of things all the time. Surely this girl hadn’t thought
it was a job offer?

Penny
was tearful. “When you didn’t return my calls, it really hurt my feelings. I
thought we were friends, and I thought you were going to help me get a job. My
parents kicked me out and I waited tables for a while, and every week I’d call
you, looking for a way to work with you. I just admired you so much. I wanted
to be like you.”

“I’m
so sorry, Penny,” Suzanne said, and meant it. Of course, that didn’t excuse the
stalking or the kidnapping, and Suzanne was planning to hit her over the head
with something at her first opportunity, but still. She did feel a little sorry
for the girl all the same. “Maybe I can help you now?”

 The
girl seemed to go cold at this. She glared at Suzanne. “Oh, you’re going to help
me all right.”

Suzanne
scrambled to soften Penny again, to win her over. She had to find a way out of
this. “Of course I’ll help you. Maybe you can come work with me now. I’ve seen
that you can be persistent and creative, at, er, problem solving.”

Penny
laughed, a high unsettling sound. “You think you’re going to offer me a job
now
?”
she asked, incredulous. “And they say
I’m
crazy!”

I’d
say that’s an understatement
,
Suzanne thought. Not knowing what to say next, she was silent.

“Who
are you to offer anyone a job? I’ve destroyed your career. You’ll be lucky if
they let you plan kids’ birthday parties after how you’ve humiliated yourself.
How I’ve humiliated you. Just like you humiliated me. I told everyone I was
going to work with the great Suzanne Hamilton, and pretty soon I’d be on the Style
pages like you.”

“I
am really sorry, Penny. Please, just untie me and we’ll talk about it. Let’s
make this right before it gets worse.”

“Oh,
it might get worse for you,
sweetie
,” she spat back Suzanne’s endearment
as though it were poison. “But things are going to be fine for me and Gunnar.
Speaking of which, he’s waiting to hear from us.”

Silencing
Suzanne’s protests with a glare, Penny pulled out a phone and pressed a button.
“She’s awake,” she said simply, and then asked Suzanne, “What’s your ATM code?”

“What?”
Suzanne asked. Immediately, Penny reached back and slapped her hard across the
face.

“Next
time, sweetie, I use the hand with the gun in it. What’s your fucking ATM code?
If you tell us wrong, I’ll shoot you right now.” Her words were designed to
sound cold and aggressive, and they were, but Suzanne thought she sensed a
hesitation, like Penny was playing a role for the man on the phone. If that
were true, maybe she had a chance.

Suzanne
recited the numbers and waited. After a minute, Penny nodded in apparent
confirmation that the code had worked and hung up. Gunnar was going to be clearing
out her checking account. Well, it wouldn’t take as long as it once might have,
Suzanne thought grimly.

She
decided to try Penny again, feeling she had little to lose and that things
could only get worse when Gunnar got back. “So what happens when my money is
gone? I assume you have a plan.” She tried to sound calm, authoritative, like
the person Penny had once seen in her.

“Of
course we do. I’ve done my homework on you and your parents are well-off. I
think once we get you out of here they’ll pay big money to get their sweet,
perfect little girl back.” Suzanne’s first, shameful thought was that Penny
might be barking up the wrong tree. Given his background in law and connection
to politics, she could almost imagine a scenario in which her dad might say,
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

But
of course that wasn’t true. In her heart she knew her parents would have the
house mortgaged and the family silver sold in hours to save her if it got that
far. Something like this would absolutely devastate her parents. Her dad
especially. This wasn’t about the fact that she hadn’t gone to law school or
gotten married before thirty. No matter what had or hadn’t transpired between
them, Suzanne had a sudden clarity that her parents’ hearts would break if they
thought they might lose her. She wouldn’t put them through that. She wouldn’t
let that happen.

She
closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and allowed herself one brief moment of
absolute terror before she put her fear in a box in her mind and sealed it.
She’d allow herself to be scared later. Penny was pacing back and forth in the
kitchen, whispering to Gunnar on the phone again, something about which ATM he
was at now and how many more he would need to find, to get the bulk of
Suzanne’s money.

Suzanne
tried to mentally size up her captor the way she did an unhappy client or a
needling reporter.
Now you listen to me, you little overgrown mall rat. You
caught me off guard and knocked me down. You made me look at the worst of
myself, and live in fear. But now I am in this fight. I will defeat you. I will
make you damn sorry that you picked me.

She
sat up as straight as she could and forced herself to appear calm. When Penny
snapped shut the phone once more, Suzanne asked, “How did this happen to you,
Penny? You always seemed so sweet. This doesn’t seem like something you would
do on your own.”

“You
don’t know me,” Penny said, defiant. “I can think for myself.”

“Well,
obviously, you’re smart enough,” Suzanne said. “I mean, you’ve been following
me for weeks, and surely Gunnar hasn’t been with you that whole time.”

“No.
He hasn’t.”

“So
the ladder, that was your idea? Were you just trying to hurt me or hoping I’d
break my neck and die or something?”

“No,
I didn’t want you seriously hurt,” Penny said quickly. “I still hoped then,
that if you had an injury from the fall that you’d need extra help with the
gala at the High. It was supposed to happen a week earlier but you didn’t see
the ribbon for a while.”

“You
put the ribbon on the chandelier? So I’d have a reason to climb the ladder?
What if Chad had climbed instead?” As if remembering, her arm began to ache a
little. She fought off the rage building inside and tried for outward serenity.

“I
thought it might serve the same purpose. Either way, you’d be short staffed. I
called a few days before to see whether you needed help but Chad blew me off,
so I knew nothing had happened.” Penny said this without emotion, as though she
were talking about the weather.