What He Promises (11 page)

“Because I myself didn’t know I was coming
until just a few minutes ago.”

He shook his head.
 
“You were always going to come.
 
Even before you got my letters, you were
going to come.”

My hands balled in fists at my side, and I
reminded myself I wasn’t here to get into a discussion about my motives for
coming to see him, or about whether or not he had some sixth sense about what I
was going to do.

“Where is she?” I asked, making sure to keep my
voice calm.

“Where is who?”

“Mikayla.”

He sat back in his chair as far as he
could.
 
“She’s where all good girls
go.”

“And where is that?”

“
Charlooootttee
,” he
said, his voice sing-
songy
.
 
“Why should I tell you anything?
 
Why are you wasting time thinking about
her?
 
She is nothing.
 
She is less than nothing.
 
Don’t you understand that no one is even
looking for her?
 
No one even cares
that she disappeared.”

“I care.”

He grinned.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“Yes, I suppose you do.
 
You care enough to be here.
 
How did you get away from Cutler?”

I tried not to show any reaction, but he picked
up on it anyway.

“Noah doesn’t know you’re here?”
 
He laughed and laughed, so hard he doubled
over in his chair.
 
“That is
wonderful.
 
You saucy little minx,
you.”
  

“Where.
 
Is.
 
She.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie about something like
that?
 
I have no idea what they’ve
done with her.
 
According to my
sources, Force has been shut down.
 
The girls have been taken away.”

“To where?”

He leaned forward again, his eyes boring into
mine as he teeth worked at his bottom lip.
 
“You’re a very special woman, Charlotte.
 
You came all this way, and yet all you
want to talk about is Mikayla.”

“What else would I want to talk about?”

He raised his eyebrows.
 
“I just assumed that when you came to
see me you’d have all kind of questions, all kinds of queries about why I did
what I did.”

My stomach clenched and I gripped the bottom of
my chair to keep from screaming.
 
I
did have questions for him.
 
I did
want to know more about why he did what he did.
 
But I also didn’t want him to think he
knew me.

“Noah already told me,” I said.

“Noah doesn’t know.”

“He said it was because of a case.”

“And you believed him?”

“It’s not the truth?”

“No, it is.”
 
He reached his hand up and began gently
pulling up the bottom of the tape that held the gauze over his eye.
 
Once it had been separated from his
skin, he began to rub the skin underneath it slowly.
 
“You’ll have to forgive me for being so
crass,” he said.
 
“It’s just that
losing one’s eye can be a rather itchy business, especially as it heals.”

I caught a glimpse of flesh underneath,
puckered and raw.
 
But I forced
myself not to look away.
 
I didn’t
want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten under my skin, that
he’d had any effect on me whatsoever.

“So if it’s the truth, if you did this to Noah
because of a case, then what else would I need to know?”
 
I pressed.

“Charlotte,” Professor Worthington said,
sighing.
 
“You know that any normal
person wouldn’t kill and torture women just because of losing a court case.”

“So you’re saying there’s something wrong with
you psychologically?”

“Ding
ding
ding
!” Professor Worthington said, delighted.

“So what is it?”

“You think I’m just going to tell you
that?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“You are my student, Charlotte.
 
And I will teach you.
 
But you will need to do some of the work
yourself.”

I shook my head.
 
I’d allowed myself to get caught up in
his vortex of craziness.
 
I’d come
here to find out about Mikayla, not to get into some crazy conversation with
Professor Worthington about his real or imagined psychological problems.
 
It was for doctors and a jury to decide
if he was crazy, not me.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“She’s been taken to a safe place.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“She’ll be killed, Charlotte.”

“What?”

“Yes.
 
They will kill her.
 
She’ll
be put out of her misery.”

“Where is she?” I yelled.

“I don’t know.”

“You just said she was in a safe place!”
 

“Charlotte, please, you’re making my head
hurt.”

“Tell me,” I said.
 
“Or I’ll leave.”

“If you leave, you’ll come back.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”
 
The side of his mouth slid up into a
knowing grin, and his fingers returned to his eye.

I turned away in disgust.
 
“Guard,” I said.
 
“I’m done.”

“I’ll see you soon, my darling,” Professor
Worthington said as they led him out of the room.
 
“I love you so much.”

He blew me a kiss.

I shook my head and blinked back tears of
frustration.

Noah had been right, as always.

I should never have come here.

***

But my frustration was short-lived.
 
By the time I got outside of the jail, I
was already thinking of ways I could get Professor Worthington to talk, was
already planning on calling the police station and following up on the report
I’d given them, telling them everything I could about Mikayla and what I knew
about those other girls at Force.
 

My mind was racing so fast and so hard that at
first I didn’t see him.

Noah.

Standing outside the prison, leaning against
his car.
 
He was dressed in a pair
of dark jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket.
 
Docket was with him, attached to a candy
apple red leash, sitting primly next to Noah like he was some kind of show dog
and not a mutt with a propensity for bird chasing.
 
The two of them looked like they’d
stepped out of a magazine ad.

“Hi,” I said, resisting the urge to run to him,
to bury my head in his chest until he wrapped his arms around me.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Noah said, sighing and shaking his
head.
 
“Docket wanted to go for a
walk.”

“He did, huh?”

“Yes.
 
And he would not take no for an answer.”

“If he wanted to go for a walk, then why do you
have your car?”

Noah shrugged.
 
“He wanted to pick you up first.”
 
He reached out and touched my cheek, his
eyes searching mine.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked softly.

He tilted his head.
 
“Really, Charlotte?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“You were going to come here from the
second he sent you that first letter.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Shall we walk?”

I nodded, falling into step beside him.
 
Docket was use to being on his leash,
and he pranced along beside us.
 

We walked.

And walked.

And walked.

We walked so far that before I knew it, we were
in Times Square.
 
The sun had begun
to dip below the horizon, and the huge billboards the lined the street and rose
high into the sky blinked and buzzed, their light becoming more intense as the
sky around them began to darken.

“We should sit,” Noah said.
 
“Docket needs a break.”

The street in the middle of Times Square was
cordoned off, with wrought iron tables and chairs set up for people to sit and
enjoy the view.
 
But Noah bypassed
all of those, weaving through the tourists and the people dressed up as cartoon
characters
who
you could get your picture taken with
for a small donation.

He led me to the bleachers that rose into the
sky in the middle of Times Square, took my hand and led me to the very top.

We sat down and stared down over the Square,
the billboards and stores and lights seemingly larger than life, while the
people down below seemed so small.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the letters,
Charlotte?”
 
Noah asked, finally,
staring straight ahead, his jaw set in a determined line.
 
Even now, with everything we’d been
through, with the fight we’d just had and the visit to see Professor
Worthington, I couldn’t help but admire his profile, the strong lines of his
face, the curve of his jaw, the fullness of his lips.

“I wanted to,” I said, swallowing. It would
have been easy to tell Noah a half-truth --
that
I figured
if he knew about the letters he would have forbid me from seeing Professor
Worthington.
 
But that wasn’t all of
it.
 
And if this was ever going to
work, I needed to be honest.
 
“But I
guess… I guess I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“
Of
upsetting you, of
you shutting down right when you were about to let me in.”

“I need to keep you safe, Charlotte.”

“I know, but you… you can’t always keep me
safe, Noah, it doesn’t… it’s impossible.”

He pulled me toward him, sliding me across the
long bench we were sitting on, and I slipped my hands inside his jacket and
around to his back, feeling the striations of his muscles through his thin
t-shirt.

I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent.
 
I loved him so much.
 
I wanted to spend my life with him, to
be with him forever.
 

“If this is going to work, we have to be able
to talk about things,” I said.

“I’m trying.”

“I know you are.”
 
I swallowed.
 
There was one more thing that was
bothering me, one more thing that tugged at the back of my mind.
 
“Noah, what about Clementine?”

“What about her?”

“I saw her.”

“Yes, earlier, at my office.
 
I told you, Charlotte, that was –
”

“No,” I said, cutting him off.
 
“I saw her the night she came to your
apartment.
 
You were out on the
terrace, and she…she handed you a green scarf.”

He opened his mouth to protest, to ask me why I
was spying on him, to tell me it was none of my business.
 
But then he changed his mind, his face
softening.

“That scarf was my mother’s,” he said.
 
“It reminded me of her, of my childhood,
as fucked up as it was.
 
Audi had it,
and Clementine was able to get it from him.”

“Is she still following Audi?”

“Yes.”

I nodded.
 
Of course she was.
 
Noah
wanted to make sure Audi wouldn’t do anything else, that he wouldn’t hurt
anyone again.
 
Noah needed to keep
tabs on him.
 
And he trusted
Clementine to do it.
 
Which meant
she would always be a part of his life, at least in some capacity.

“Charlotte,” Noah said, gently pulling back so
he could look me in the eye.
 
“You
know that I love you.
 
Not
Clementine.”

“Even though I didn’t tell you about those
letters?”
 
I looked away.

“Look at me.”

I looked at him, at this beautiful man that I
loved more than anything.
 
“I love
you more because of it.”

“How is that possible?”