Chapter 11
Seb
Seb ignored the phone buzzing in his pocket like a swarm of enraged wasps. Maddie would be mad at him but honestly, he couldn’t summon the energy for another argument.
Daniel was napping on a rainbow beanbag in the living room. Sleeping Daniel was deactivated but not for long. Like Terminator, she would rise and continue her mission; driving them all insane.
When he first saw Daniel, Seb couldn’t stop staring at her eyes. They were the color of storm clouds and just like storm clouds there was lightning in them. A promise of destruction he knew he could do nothing to prevent.
The night she arrived, she started a fire in the kitchen. They weren’t quite sure how—she was nowhere near it when the flames went up but spontaneous combustion seemed unlikely. Then, as Colt doused the oven with foam Daniel stole the keys for their SUV right out of his pocket. They hadn’t noticed until Colt wanted to go get dinner six hours later.
“I chucked them out,” Daniel said when John stormed down to confront her about it. “I didn’t think you needed them anymore!”
She had, in fact, put them down the garbage disposal.
That was only the beginning. She started an electrical fire in the dining room, she flooded three of the bathrooms, and she somehow managed to get a Wi-Fi signal on the state of the art washing machine and fry half the monitors in the surveillance quarters.
Among a lot of other things, Elkin had failed to mention that Daniel was some kind of genetically modified superhuman. She slept less than three hours a night, she could read full novels in eighty minutes and she had an engineer’s knowledge of electricity, thermodynamics and machinery.
“She has to be some kind of genius,” Colt growled after she somehow managed to blackout all of Castle by the Sea with a wire hanger. “You know, a Rain Man type. Nice if they’d fucking told us beforehand, huh?”
Seb had a feeling Elkin didn’t know, that possibly no one knew what Daniel Schwartz was capable of, not even Daniel Schwartz. She seemed as surprised by her capacity to create havoc as they were. Except that messing with them was a game to her, a game she had all the time in the world to play while they were slowly being sapped of time, energy and patience.
“It’s not personal,” she told Colt when he begged her not to play her Christina Aguilera A Decade of Hits CD for the twenty-third time in a row. “It’s just I have to get out of here, and since you’re the ones stopping me I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer.”
They were getting almost no help from Middlebend. John rang Elkin demanding to remove all electronic devices from the house and tear out the intercoms and she told him to do his job better.
She also suggested Daniel had too much pent-up energy and, like a Labrador, needed exercise. She recommended Colt accompany her to the house’s gym and train her. Colt, full of rage about his constant exposure to early 2000’s pop music, refused. Seb thought about volunteering to go in his place but he knew he wouldn’t be offering for the right reasons.
He was attracted to her, the girl who turned his days and nights into chaos and who didn’t know him from a bar of soap. To be fair he didn’t know her either, but he spent hours watching her every day and it made him feel like he did. He also constantly saw her naked, which didn’t help. His face burned at the thought of Maddie finding out about that. She didn’t like him watching porn. If she knew he’d jacked off to his female prisoner she’d probably slit his carotid artery and watch him bleed to death.
Seb’s phone buzzed again, delivering what was no doubt more angry messages from his girlfriend. They’d been having a slow train wreck of a fight ever since he touched down in California. Love battles his mom called them, as though bitter rows were a sign of how much a couple cared about one another. He’d always vowed to never end up like that and yet here he was, spending all day and night fighting with someone who was meant to make him happy. He’d tried to end things last summer but she’d begged him to reconsider. Things had been good for a while but now the familiar patterns were creeping back in, her jealousy, his irritation, the endless roundabout talks about getting married…
“Ermghh.”
Seb’s eyes snapped to the monitors. Daniel was undoubtedly waking up.
“Mornin’, Ms. Schwartz,” he whispered and marked the time on the chart taped next to the desk. John was trying to establish her living patterns, not that it was working. Daniel didn’t eat meals, sleep or do anything according to a standard schedule. Colt had drawn his own column in the chart keeping track of how many times Daniel said the c-word. So far she’d said it sixteen times.
Their prisoner sat up and stretched her arms high over her head. She didn’t wear a bra; that was one of the too-intimate things Seb knew about her. She yawned and reached for the remote.
Seb felt his stomach twist with excitement and dread. In the past four days Daniel hadn’t watched a single thing on TV, except…
“Oh god, give it to me! Harder! Harder!”
Porn.
John had explained Daniel’s chemical imbalance and how it stopped her from feeling pain or embarrassment. It explained a lot. Like how she could pee in the shower and pick her nose, do a million other things he was sure Maddie would rather set herself on fire than do in front of men. But until he’d met Daniel, Seb hadn’t realized any women watched porn and he’d definitely never watched any women watch porn while she did things. To herself.
He didn’t want to watch, at least not in that way, but it was his job. If he closed his eyes or turned away and she escaped John would skin him alive and yet watching her pleasure herself was only deepening his stupid, stomach-knotting crush. He’d developed feelings for other girls in the past, waitresses and cute privates but this was something different. His hands started shaking every time he thought about Daniel, he wanted to touch her sure, but he also just wanted to talk to her. She was really nice. Happy. Funny. Pretty. Smart as heck. A terrorist.
“Lord,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.
Unaware of his internal dilemma Daniel turned off the movie she’d been watching earlier; a beefy plumber with a face like a side of steak who thought it acceptable to hit on, then anally violate his customer and flipped back to the menu. She wasn’t allowed internet access, but Middlebend had set up a closed circuit network for her, the kind they had on airplanes. Only with porn.
After scanning the menu for a few moments, Daniel made her selection and settled back into her beanbag. The movie was a parody of a superhero film. A man in an armored boiler suit faced off against a woman in a leather jumpsuit.
“Hello Commander,” the woman said, toying with the zipper in the front of her costume. “We meet again.”
The Commander, or whoever he was, looked uneasy. “You know I’m married Kasandra. We can’t keep doing this.”
Seb swallowed, his throat scratchy and dry.
“Oh, can’t we?” Kasandra slid the jumpsuit from her shoulders, exposing her breasts. They were big and high like Daniel’s but with a swollen tautness that said they weren’t real.
“Please,” the guy begged. “Can’t we just talk about this?”
“I think we’re past talking.” Kasandra pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Come to me.”
Apparently, she had some kind of bad porn hypnosis because the Commander stumbled toward her, tearing off his clothes as he went. Seb watched Kasandra suck the guy’s cock with sloppy, moaning enthusiasm and while he was turned on, his face could have been used to fry fatback. Daniel had no such qualms, her eyes were locked on the TV, and both her hands, were inside her sweatpants, working with slow, almost imperceptible motions. Unlike Kasandra, she was barely making any noise. If it wasn’t for the position of her hands, he might have thought she was watching TV. Then Kasandra used more of her inexplicable hypnosis on the Commander and the guy, who was a pretty terrible actor but Seb guessed that wasn’t really the point, knelt down and began kissing between her legs. When that happened Daniel’s whole demeanor changed, her breathing grew sharp, and her teeth started worrying at her swollen lower lip. Seb watched, completely fascinated as her cheeks and mouth grew pinker, her nipples hardening beneath her tank top. She liked watching men do this to women.
A great terrible ache cramped his lower stomach and Seb found himself wishing Daniel had inexplicable hypnosis so she could make him kneel down in front of her, part her with his tongue and slowly lick her to whatever orgasms she wanted. His hand closed over his cock.
“Nope,” he groaned, removing it. “Can’t do this.”
Colt made no bones about the fact that he’d love to sleep with Daniel and even John could be caught staring at her behind, but he was the one with a girlfriend, and he would be scum if he went ahead and masturbated at work to a girl who should probably have been in jail.
He pulled out his phone, needing a distraction. The messages were exactly what he expected. Rows of angry emojis followed by things like “why are you always ignoring me? What the H is going on down there?”
To be fair, Maddie had a point. What the H was going on down here?
“Oh fuck,” Daniel moaned, her head was tilted back, her lips wide. “Oh my God.”
Seb forced himself to watch without seeing, counting Fibonacci numbers in his head until it was over.
When she was done, Daniel wiped her hands on her sweatpants and stood up. Seb exhaled with relief. Sometimes she did it twice, the second time louder and squirmier than before and it was torture.
Today she meandered her way to the kitchen, her bottom shifting in a way made his miserable cock throb beneath the desk. “Enough,” he muttered. “Concentrate. Think about your girlfriend.”
“Hey! Is that Seb up there or Dead Eyes?”
Daniel was leaning against the kitchen wall, a sleeve of Oreos in one hand and a finger pressed to the intercom button. Seb pushed his chair away from the desk. He’d just watched her masturbate. He was still semi-hard; they couldn’t have a conversation.
“Come on,” she urged, her mouth full of cookies. “I know you’re not Dead Eyes. He’s a mouth breather.”
Dead Eyes was Daniel’s new and very unwelcome nickname for John. Colt was Tarzan. He didn’t have one. Yet. Seb sighed. “Ms. Schwartz you really shouldn’t be talkin’ to me.”
Daniel beamed up at the camera. “Hey Sebastian.”
She was always using his full name. Seb wished she wouldn’t. It made him feel very…He just wished she wouldn’t. “Ma’am, please stop. If John comes back we’ll both get in trouble.”
“Hmm…I wonder what it would be like to be in trouble with John?” Her voice was mischievous and suddenly all Seb could think about was the movie she’d watched yesterday, in which a man had spanked a ballerina until her ass was red then took her roughly from behind. His cock swelled even harder in his lap.
“Really, ma’am, I mean it.”
Daniel sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll move along, officer.”
She pushed off the wall and walked back towards the pantry.
That’s what I wanted, Seb told himself firmly. I can’t be talking to her.
Daniel walked back over the pantry, threw in the Oreos and pulled out a jar of peanut butter. She scooped out a fingerful and then threw that back in as well. Seb looked down at the chart, she hadn’t eaten for six hours and she was making a meal out of cookies and peanut butter. It just wasn’t right.
He pressed the intercom button. “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude but you haven’t eaten a decent meal since you arrived.”
“I hate cooking,” Daniel said, her voice thick with peanut butter.
“There’s a lot of good places around. You could order your food?”
She snorted. “And have Dead Eyes spit in my tacos? No thanks.”
“Well, you could make eggs, or-or a salad even?”
She made a face like he’d proposed a ten-mile run followed by a thousand push-ups. “Honestly the thought of having to get everything out…then make the food…then clean up afterward…” She shuddered.
“I understand,” Seb lied. “It’s just, yesterday you made a ten-foot loom band…”
“Yeah but I care about loom bands. I don’t care about food.”
Seb stared at the monitors in shock. He was from a family, and a place, where everything revolved around the preparation and eating of food. If he’d said something like that to his Mamaw there was every chance she’d have cuffed him around the ears. And besides, who didn’t like food? It was like saying you didn’t like air or music. Hell, the worst part of deployment had been the MRE’s. “How can you not care about food?”
She shrugged, her t-shirt slipping off one shoulder, exposing the golden jut of her clavicle. “I just don’t. I don’t have much of an appetite. It’s a chemical thing.”
“Oh,” Seb said, his righteous indignation melting away. “Sorry for bein’ rude ma’am.”
Daniel winced. “Listen, I’ll make you a deal; stop calling me ma’am and I will cook…” she glanced around the kitchen as though searching for inspiration. “A sandwich. Deal?”
“Sounds good…” Seb held onto the ‘ma’am’ by the skin of his teeth.
Turned out Daniel was bad at cooking. She used stale bread and only buttered half of it, she forgot to peel the plastic off her Kraft cheese before putting it on the bread but it was when she pulled a cured leg of ham out of the kitchen Seb realized something he couldn’t help but point out. “Ma’am…I mean Daniel?”
She looked up at the camera. “What’s up?”
“Should you maybe wash your hands? Because of…earlier?”
Her storm-cloud eyes went wide and for a second Seb feared he’d gone too far then she dumped the leg of ham on the counter and began to laugh. “Oh my god, you saw that! Of course you saw that. Oh, Jesus, that is so weird.”
“I-I promise it isn’t. I wasn’t watching. I mean I was but I wasn’t…watching-watching.”
“That’s like…visual sexual harassment or something. You should have told me to stop.”
“You have every right to…do that, ma’am. I’m sorry for bringing it up, it’s inappropriate.”
Daniel moved over to the sink and turned on the tap. “Oh I don’t care about you watching, I just remember hearing…. Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
The phrase rang in his head like a gong. Don’t you have a girlfriend? Don’t you have a girlfriend? Seb licked his lower lip. “Yeah, yeah I do.”
“Then you see my dilemma in inadvertently including you in my sex life.” She grinned, running her hands under the hot water. “Tell you what, from now on I’ll only do it in bed, under the covers, boarding school style.”
“That’s really not necessary…”
“Yeah I’ll be doing it anyway.” Daniel wiped her hands on a tea towel, re-opened the ham bag and pulled the meat onto a cutting board. “So, how long have you and your girlfriend been together?”
Seb’s stomach writhed. For reasons he didn’t want to examine he really didn’t like Daniel talking about Maddie but not answering was hardly an option. “Since uh sophomore year, eight years total.”
She made an impressed face. “Holy shit. That’s like…long enough for every cell in your body to have replaced itself. Congratulations Boy Scout.”
Boy Scout. Surely that wasn’t his nickname? “Uh, Daniel—”
“And what’s your girlfriend like?”
Rows of angry emojis flashed in front of Seb’s eyes. “Ah she’s really…nice?”
“That’s good.” Daniel began cutting into the ham. “It’s nice to be nice—Motherfucking cunt fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Seb asked but he could already see what was wrong. Daniel had sliced into her palm, quite deeply it seemed, blood was dripping onto her sandwich like thin red ketchup.
“Are you okay?”
Daniel grinned, a strange hollow grin, like a Halloween mask. “Yeah, it doesn’t hurt, although…” All the color drained from her face. “I’m not a huge fan of blood.”
She crumpled backward on the floor.
Seb was on his feet before she hit the marble. Without thinking about locking the surveillance quarters he began to sprint towards the front door, yanking his lanyard from his neck, so it was ready to press against the identification pad. The seconds he waited for the door to open felt like fifty years. This was all his fault, if he hadn’t told her to make something to eat she’d be okay. He barreled up the hall and into the huge modern kitchen. “Daniel? Are you okay?”
“Kind of…” came a faint reply.
She was lying on the kitchen floor surrounded by splashes of blood and ham, like bizarre modern art. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow. She was even prettier in person, a stupid thing to say about someone you lived ten feet away from but it was true. Her hair was shinier, her skin smoother and he swore he could almost sense the sweet frenzied energy he found so attractive about her in the first place.
“Hey Boy Scout,” she said, holding up her bloody hand. “I shanked myself.”
Seb chest squeezed tight at the thought of touching her but he forced himself to kneel down beside her, despite the dirty fantasies he’d had about doing this in a very different context.
Think like a doctor, he told himself as he seized her palm. Treat her like a patient.
It worked, he managed to ignore the thump-thump-thump of his heart long enough to examine the cut. “It’s not too deep,” he said with relief. It won’t need stitches.”
“Yeah sweet as,” she said weakly, her eyes still closed. “Can you please get rid of the blood?”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I’m just gonna get some bandages first, stay right where you are.”
“Okay,” she croaked. “I was probably gonna do that anyway.”
Seb located the first aid kit in the nearest bathroom and tugged out antiseptic wipes and a couple of bandages. The prickling sensation on the back of his neck said they were being watched. He needed to keep this professional. No looking at her hair or body or face or inhaling her bourbon chocolate pie scent. Pure professionalism. He knelt beside her and rubbed at her palm with the antiseptic wipe. She didn’t bat an eyelid. “So you really can’t feel pain, huh?”
“Not really.” Daniel stared up at him like he’d grown two heads. “Although who gives a fuck about that? Is that seriously what you look like?”
“I…what do you mean?” Seb said, taken aback.
“Your face. Am I hallucinating or is that really your face?”
He laughed. “C’mon, Daniel, you know it is.”
“No, I don’t, I’ve never seen you before.”
Holy crow she was right. He’d seen her do everything and yet she’d never even laid eyes on him. “I’m sorry I forgot. It feels like…”
“We’ve known each other for ages.” She nodded violently. “Still I didn’t think you were so hot. You have a chin dimple and this hair.” She touched her scalp, her pupils so dilated her eyes looked almost black.
“You’re like the ‘as you wish’ guy from that movie. Before he grows a mustache and starts acting like a wanker.”
“Uh…thanks.”
“You have such a sexy voice I’d convinced myself you were actually gross, and instead you’re like…”
Daniel waved her uninjured palm over his face. “Perfect. What are you, six two?”
“Uh huh,” he said, wrapping the bandage around her wrist and securing it with tape.
“And you do you have like a six pack and one of those….” Daniel made an arrow gesture at her groin. “Things?”
“Ahh…I don’t…I don’t think I should answer that.”
“Shit.” Daniel clapped a hand to her mouth. “Urgh. Sorry. I swore I’d stop sexually harassing you in the workplace and now I’ve made it worse. Right when you were saving my life too.”
“I wasn’t saving your life. If you’d never made the sandwich you’d never have hurt yourself.”
“But then I’d never have seen your perfect face.”
Seb ducked his head unsure of what to say.
“Sorry.” Daniel tucked her knees into her chest. “I’m getting a little lonely down here. And weird. Weird-er.”
“I don’t think you’re weird,” he said honestly.
Daniel smiled like she didn’t believe him. “Thanks, you really are nice. Tell your girlfriend I said she’s really lucky.”
Seb nodded knowing he’d never, under pain of hell or torture, tell Maddie that. “Sorry to hear you’re lonely, Daniel. I wish there was somethin’ I could do.”
“It’s cool, I’ll probably just keep injuring myself with kitchen implements to see you again.”
Seb dumbly stared at her mouth. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself kissing her, holding her in his arms until she felt every ounce of the protectiveness blaring inside him…
The front door slammed open and John’s voice came echoing up the marble hallway. “Rhodes. Get your ass out here. Now.”
“Shit.” Daniel bit her lower lip. “Busted, ay?”
Seb leaped to his feet, the barriers between himself and Daniel, remerging so rapidly they might as well have been concrete walls. “There’s still a lot of blood around…”
“I’ll look at it like this,” Daniel said, squinting so her eyes were reduced to slits. “Thanks for coming to my rescue Boy Scout.”
That nickname again. Two words that denoted him as a square and a dork but he didn’t have the time to ask her to call him something else. He shouldn’t have cared enough to want her to call him something else. Besides, no matter what Daniel said John wouldn’t be letting him come anywhere near her ever again. He smiled and said goodbye, trying to take the sharpest mental photograph of Daniel’s smile possible before leaving the kitchen at a near run.
To his untold misery both John and Colt were waiting for him in the hallway, their arms folded across their chests. Colt was smirking but John’s expression was exactly like his old man’s when he’d decided for whatever arbitrary reason that his son was in need of an ass whooping.
They marched him back to the surveillance quarters in silence, John’s anger was so intense it practically had a flavor, Colt clearly planning insults in his head but Seb wasn’t thinking about the lecture he had coming or the endless torment he was going to endure. All he could think about was Daniel, saying she was lonely. Saying he was handsome. Saying his girlfriend was lucky.