It was going incredibly well because the Caracals were massive idiots. Hanna didn’t even need to pretend to drop a lipstick or pen and take the slow bend to pick it up before coming up to look at them. They were already salivating just from standing outside with her, talking to her.
“I’m from New Mexico,” she said, pulling the story out of her brain just as quickly as she opened her mouth, hoping she could keep the consistency of it up as she went. “I was driving to visit my grandmother in Fort Lauderdale. I’ve never driven across the country by myself before. My boyfriend was supposed to be with me--ex-boyfriend. Sorry, I forget still.”
They were listening to her better than any man had listened to her before. Their wide eyes were bouncing between the skin exposed on her chest and her sad, big eyes as she told her sob story, thinking of every porno film she ever watched and recalling the clichés from them all. She pushed her arms together a little bit more, she rubbed her arm absently, she fidgeted her legs to draw their attention below as well. She needed their sleazy eyes all over her while Roarke moved in on the house.
“I’ve been trying to find help for a while now and I saw you guys with your bikes and I figured you must know a lot about cars and are strong enough to help me push it off the road in neutral,” she said, letting her own eyes rake over them.
In all honesty, they were not that impressive to look at. They had the definition of boys who were naturally skinny, body fat missing from their form not because they worked out but because their metabolisms were on their side. It was the exact type of guy who liked to flex in the mirror, take a picture, and put it up on the internet with whatever iPhone filter made the shadows of their miniscule muscles stand out more. They probably also believed every time a girl said they were the best she ever had or the biggest she’d ever seen. Men didn’t seem to realize women knew all the tricks and shared them with each other.
They were on her like the proverbial dog and the bone. Now she just had to figure out where best to lead them. Roarke was out of her sight and, with any luck, inside the house already. She needed to get them out of the front yard; they needed to get out of any sightlines from the street, that much was clear. She didn’t need someone walking by and seeing them, or a Caracal riding by and bringing more of his friends. They clearly expected at least a little bit of this move, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent out the majority of their gang to meet their own. She needed to get out of sight and bring the idiots with her. She had no way to know where Roarke was in the house, but she hoped he was smart enough to get somewhere he wouldn’t be seen.
“Before we do that though,” she said. “Is there any way I can get your help to make a call to my grandmother that I’m going to be late? I should also call around to see if there’s a motel that will let me stay for the night.”
Motels were a cesspool of disgusting, white trash sex. She’d said some magic words to them because their eyes lit up at the possibility of fucking some random, helpless, emotionally vulnerable woman in an anonymous hotel room and then riding off into the night to have a victory beer. Men were deplorable sometimes, but it worked in her favor to get them where she needed them.
“There’s a phone inside,” one said, jerking his thumb behind him to point at the house.
“You guys won’t mind me in your house? It’s so nice and big, I swear I’m not a thief or anything,” she said.
“Oh no, ma’am. We’d love to have you,” the other said.
She fought an eye roll. They were idiots. But she nodded, smiling gratefully, giving them the biggest doe eyes she could as she watched them clean the grease of their hands and fix their clothes before nodding back and leading her towards the front door. This, looking back, is where Hanna’s mistake was. She was too impressed with her own ability to pull their puppet strings, too focused on getting in the house that she didn’t notice the gate behind them opening to let a car in and they were too engrossed with the idea of fucking a girl in their boss’s expensive house to notice as well.
The door closed behind her.
“If I could just use a phone, if you have one. That’d be very helpful,” she said loudly, trying to give Roarke a warning if he was inside, if he could hear her.
“Right this way,” one said, walking her into the kitchen.
This is where things truly fell apart. The front door opened behind them and all three of them turned like deer in headlights to see Isabelle standing there. At first her hands were on her hips and she was giving them a look of confusion and annoyance before her eyes fell on Hanna and recognition replaced the irritation, her hands falling from her hips.
“What the hell is she doing here?” she asked, dangerously. It was the most unhinged that Hanna had ever seen Hanna. This was not the calm, controlled woman who moved the puzzle pieces around, this was a woman finally caught off guard, and scared because of it.
“Ma’am--”
“You two are fucking morons,” she said. “That’s Roarke’s newest bed bitch.”
It took the two men a few minutes to understand what she was saying. They were dumb even then, probably trying to work through it with all their blood rushing to their penises. Then suddenly, they seemed to realize, or at least understand that something was wrong. Hanna should have used the time they took to think through their situation to break free, to throw an elbow or kick someone between the legs, to make a break for it. But she paused too long and they moved in.
She was hit behind the knees and she covered her stomach with her hands on instinct, keeping them away from the baby they didn’t know was nestled there. She heard a metallic click behind her, she knew that sound, the safety coming off a gun. She felt the cold metal press against the back of her head and all she could think of was how sorry she was to her child who may never see the light of day.
***
Roarke stood on his perch from the stairs, trying to watch and felt his blood run cold at the sight of the gun against her head. His first reaction was to spring forward, try and help her. He wanted to rush down the stairs and tackle the men holding her to the ground, putting her in danger. He wanted to strangle Isabell who was watching, for once without a smirk. She still didn’t know he was there. She thought Hanna came alone. He had the advantage for once, he knew something Isabelle didn’t.
This was an advantage he couldn’t give up. He moved back, slowly, careful not to give himself away with a careless slip. He stepped back up towards the child’s room. He could do it. He could take the boy, put a gun to his head, and bargain for Hanna’s freedom, Isabelle’s fear showed him she cared about the child, she would yield for him. He was sure of it. He could take that boy and get his way, get his revenge, tell her everything he knew, everything he understood, how much he would be willing to do to bring her to justice.
But Hanna would be devastated. That boy was innocent, except for his own bloodlines that he could not control. He did not ask to be born, he didn’t ask to a part of something so much bigger than only one person. If Roarke took him, if he shoved a gun to his head, traumatized him for the rest of his life, he’d be creating another Isabelle. The boy would grow to resent the life he was in, his parents, his upbringing. He would lash out, he would turn against his family and his friends. He would become something unrecognizable.
Hanna would never un-see that in Roarke, and if he was willing to do that, how could he claim to be a father to his own child? This boy was his nephew, his own blood, he even looked a bit like Roarke’s mother. He couldn’t do it.
But he was running out of time to figure out what to do before Isabelle had Hanna’s head blown off right in front of him. So he did the only thing his panicked brain could think to do, he knocked over a vase and hoped to pull her attention.
***
Hanna did not account for the possibility of Isabelle walking through that door. She should have budgeted for that, not that any plan would really give her a way to react to it. Isabelle was a wild card, even if they had a contingency plan it would have gone out the window. But this version of Isabelle was young, the true child beneath the twenty-one year old coming through. There was a real, primal fear in her eyes and it gave Hanna hope that she could get out of this.
Isabelle was caught off guard, which meant she could bleed, she was vulnerable. She wasn’t some omnipotent super villain. She was a girl who orchestrated the actions so far and got lucky everywhere else. But Hanna would have preferred this moment of the mental and emotional upper hand if she didn’t have a gun pressed into her head and her knees on the ground. The physical upper hand was all that mattered right now, and she had no leverage. Roarke may be nearby, or he could be not in the house at all. He’d enter to find her with a massive hole in her head, her brains scattered all over the floor.
The door opened again, and the situation got worse.
Isaiah Clark was standing there, leather jacket, heavy boots, and a gun on his hip. He took one look at the scene with a dangerous, steady gaze.
“What in the hell?” he asked, calmly stepping forward.
“These two are idiots,” Isabelle said. “Shoot her; we can throw her body at my brother’s bar.”
This was it, oblivion. She knew she would die one day, no one got through life without that inescapable ending. She also knew there was a very real chance it would be a violent death. She took her job knowing that may come to pass, that her death would not be quick or comfortable, that it may be painful and it may be brutal on her body. Pain never scared her. Death was a looming, fearful unknown, but she never shied away from that truth. Now she was sitting there with a real fear for what was going to happen to those she left behind. Roarke would be devastated, her uncle would blame himself, her child would never live.
She had a strange sort of peace with it. She wasn’t going to fight back, she wasn’t going to make it worse. She would move gently into that goodnight. She would not rage. She would not try to take on the universe and all its plans. She would let it happen. She was ready, she could take it.
And then there was a crash upstairs.
Isabelle and Isaiah drew their eyes up the stairs like sling shots or snipers searching for the enemy. They looked up with the snap of their necks and Hanna jumped at the sound, feeling her heart rate spike. She might die of a heart attack before the bullet ever got close to entering her brain.
Without a word, both Isabelle and Isaiah rushed up the stairs. Nothing was more powerful than the fear for one’s child, even in the most disgusting human beings.
***
Roarke hung back after he knocked the vase over, stepping behind the closet door as the sound would likely bring out both the boy and his parents below. He needed a vantage point on both. The child was young, but that didn’t mean Roarke trusted him at all. For all he knew, the kid could be a natural shot, raised on a hatred of his other family. He had to think in all corners, from all angles, just like Isabelle.
He watched the parents rush up and stand in the hallway, taking in stock of the broken vase. Roarke had another one in his hand, waiting for Clark to get in close enough. The boy stepped out of his room and Isabelle rushed over to him, shushing him and pushing him inside the room, closing the door behind him and standing in front of it, shielding the wood with her own body and looking around wildly.
He got a sick satisfaction from watching her look so off guard, so nervous. He liked having an upper hand on her, he liked seeing her squirm. He wanted to make it last forever, the image of her alone and scared and facing the unknown. He wanted her to have a taste of her own medicine, the torture she leveled on him and everyone he cared about. It let it last as long as possible before Clark got close enough. He was within arm’s reach now.
Roarke swung, without thinking about it or counting to three. He swung for all the anger he’d felt, everything he very nearly lost and did lose. He swung for all the pain he was enduring, for the danger Clark put Hanna in and the child he carried. He swung for the all the betrayal he felt. He leveled him right in the head, shattering the vase across the hardness of his skull. Clark crumbled to the ground, not even conscious enough to groan as he smacked the floor hard, smashing his nose.Blood began to seep out, likely it was already broken.
With the hand he had not used to break everything he was feeling against Isaiah Clark’s vulnerable head, he pointed a gun right at Isabelle’s head. She was caught off guard by that too. He smirked, a little too pleased with it all.
“You have something you want to share with the class, Isabelle?” he asked, nodding to the door behind her.
She pressed herself against it harder, gripping at the edges of the wood. She would be shot rather than let him into that room. Roarke had to give her that, she had a mother’ instinct. And it made it all the sweeter, knowing she had endangered his own child, now he was threatening hers.
“You look so pleased with yourself,” she sneered at him. “You finally were the smarter one.”
“Don’t try to turn this around,” he said in warning. “You’re in the deep end now and I’m the only goddamn life vest for miles. You do what I say and we take care of this now or I shoot you and put another bullet in that little shit’s head too.”
He was bluffing. He couldn’t hurt that boy. But Isabelle thought him a monster and hopefully that was enough to get her to relent. She need only believe there was a chance he would hurt her son, there was even the slightest possibility he meant what he said and she would give up. He watched the thoughts go through her head, perhaps imaging the mental image he gave her of her son, dead on the floor and bleeding all over the place.
She swallowed and put her hands in the air, taking one step forward.
“Okay,” she said, evenly. “Okay.”
“We go downstairs and you tell those two idiots to let Hanna go,” he said. “Then you come with me.”
“Okay.”
He nudged her with the gun, telling her to go first. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her. There was no safe way to handle her, there was no version of her that was not dangerous. The only way to deal with it permanently was to kill her or put her behind bars. He wouldn’t do the former. He couldn’t. He understood that now, pointing the gun at her and knowing he would never be able to fire.
Hanna had changed that in him. There was a time he would have turned on her, he would have done whatever he had to end it all, to laugh while watching her die. It was a dark time and he never wanted to go back to that, he never wanted his child to know what he’d almost become, who he’d almost been, the lengths to which he’d been willing to go. That time for him had not been about safety and protection; it had been about anger and the burning need for revenge. That was gone now. He was different, he wanted only safety for him and Hanna and all his friends. Shooting her while she was vulnerable would taint that freedom.
They stepped up to the two men who still had Hanna at gunpoint. It was a moment of silence in the standoff and Roarke knew what was coming before Isabelle did it. He expected one last play from her and he got his expectation fulfilled.
“Shoot her,” she snapped, but Hanna had been ready too.
Roarke fired a shot off, hitting one square in the shoulder while Hanna leveled her elbow right into the crotch of the other man, knocking him back in a whimper. She stood up and moved towards Isabelle who took steps to take her on but Roarke pressed his gun right against her neck, pushing her back until she was flush against the wall, trapped like a rat.
“I’ve got a lot of friends who will be happy to see you in their handcuffs,” he said, smiling.
She looked at him with so much hatred and he felt his heart break, just a little bit. Had she hated him the whole time? Had she been so angry at him, so resentful? How had he not seen it? He thought about all the ways he hadn’t been there for her. He would not be that way with his own child, he would not miss out on the warning signs, the cries for help. He would be there for Isabelle’s child as well. Both his parents would be going to jail and he wouldn’t let him fall in the hands of Caracals who would teach him nothing but hate and anger for his own family.
He looked at Hanna as she stepped forward, letting out a breath and subtly placing a hand on her stomach and nodding. Everyone was okay. Everyone was going to be fine.