Eighteen Years Later

 

This was all Owen’s fault. She had no idea how, exactly. But there were only so many reasons why Iris Stanton would be handcuffed to a chair in a freezing cold basement. And she knew, without a doubt, she wasn’t responsible for any of those reasons.

She could only imagine what mess her brother had gotten them into now. She was sure that whatever he’d done, he’d convinced himself that it was only his own head on the chopping block. Iris tested the handcuffs at her wrists, felt the bite of cold steel. Hadn’t he realized at this point that they came as a freaking package? That if he was in trouble then so was she?
She hadn’t seen him in weeks, which wasn’t altogether unusual. He was in-between albums and in-between tours. He was often known for disappearing from the face of the planet during those dead times. While Iris was hard at work writing his next hits.

But she’d been rudely jarred from that routine she’d grown accustomed to when four men in suits had shown up at her door that morning. They’d shown her the proper identification that proved they were FBI agents, and then they’d escorted her from her house. She scoffed to herself as she reflected on the word escorted. That wasn’t barely what had happened. Bullied was more like it. She’d barely had a chance to get her tennis shoes laced up before one of them had taken her by the elbow and led her directly into the gigantic black gas guzzler they’d strapped her into the back of.

Seven silent hours later, none of them had explained a word of what was going on. Not why she was being sped away from her life as she knew it or what was going to happen next.

All she’d gotten was a simple, “The bureau has cause to protect you, Ms. Stanton. You might be in possession of valuable information regarding a recent case.”

Well. Fine. Whatever that meant. Iris had already figured that it had something to do with her brother. And then, when three cars had flanked the SUV and she’d been dragged out of that vehicle by a group of masked men, Iris was absolutely positive that Owen was involved.

How many back room poker games had she dragged him out of? How many debts had she paid off? How many times had she called hospitals looking for him when he didn’t come home?

Even when one of the masked men had smacked her across the face hard enough for her to see stars, to feel like a child who’d fallen out of a tree again, Iris didn’t absolutely panic. She was scared for herself, of course, but she knew that Owen was alive. She knew it in her bones. Call it a twin thing, but she could feel that Owen was somewhere, alright.

She, on the other hand, was locked in a basement, masked men right outside of the single door. And her left eye was throbbing in pain. She hoped that it was just a hell of a shiner, that there weren’t any broken bones.

Iris knew that fear and confusion, panic and disbelief, were making her cloudy. She knew that anyone in their right mind would be crying and shaking, calling out for help, attempting to bargain with her captors. But she just sat there. Quiet as a cucumber, waiting. What she was waiting for, she had no idea. But she knew that she was starving, thirsty as hell and so tired she could barely focus her eyes. It wouldn’t make any logical sense to exhaust herself doing something as dumb as struggling against the handcuffs that were never going to budge.

Iris let her head fall back on the chair and closed her eyes, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep right now, but she did her best to gather up some strength for whatever was coming next.

Moments later, her eyes snapped right open as she heard a muffled thump from outside the steel door in front of her. Iris froze, every muscle in her small body tense and tight.

Long minutes passed while she waited. No other sounds came. Until she heard it. Two more quick thumps and a long dragging sound.

Iris held her breath as her eyes zeroed in on the doorknob of the steel door. She could have sworn she saw it turn. The next second, the door banged open and Iris flinched as if she’d been shot.

Her hands cuffed to the chair behind her, all Iris could do was to fling her head to one side, exposing just her cheek to whatever horror was slamming through the door.

It was two long seconds before she realized that she wasn’t in any more pain than she had been before the door had exploded open. She was still sitting in the chair. She hadn’t been shot or stabbed or even smacked.

Taking a jagged breath, Iris looked up to see a shadow darkening the door. The shadow was in the shape of a man. A very large man. She could only see him in silhouette as light poured into the darkened room from the hallway. She couldn’t see any of his features, but she could tell he was built like a tank. He had shoulders like bowling balls. The man practically filled the doorway, and Iris couldn’t help but shrink backwards when he stepped into the room. He held something in his hand, and though she was having trouble focusing, she was almost a hundred percent sure it was a gun.

Owen! Iris couldn’t help but scream his name in her head. Half in rage and half in fear. She was furious with her brother for putting her in this situation. But she was also calling out for him. For help. As much of a screw-up as he often was, he’d never before left her in such danger on her own. For as long as she could remember, he’d always been there for her in the crucial moment. She knew that he’d put his life on the line for her.

But here she was, cuffed to a chair in a freezing cold basement, staring down a man with a gun.

Iris wasn’t scared of dying. She never had been. It was a fact of life that she’d never had trouble swallowing. Death and taxes. But she had to admit, she hadn’t thought it was going to be this way. Slaughtered like an animal and completely alone except for her killer.

Well. If this was it, this was it. She took a deep breath, blew it out in a shaky string and flicked her eyes up to the huge man who was now stalking toward her, gun held down at his side.

She still couldn’t make out his features, but she could feel him staring at her. She squinted against the shock of light that was falling across her face from the hallway. She wanted so badly to see his face. She couldn’t explain the urge, the need. But she needed to see the eyes of the man who was about to take her life.              

Just as he got close enough for her to make out a wide nose and mouth, a dark, shadowed brow, the man ducked to her side and he was out of her line of vision, behind her. Iris yelped and jumped about a foot in the air when she felt his roughened hands at her wrists. Pain shot up from where the cuffs dug into her.

“Easy,” a deep voice growled into her ear and Iris stiffened and pulled away from him as hard as she could. The move had pain rocketing up her arms and seemed to echo and pool in her throbbing eye.

The man froze behind her. “I won’t hurt you, Ms. Stanton.”

Ms. Stanton? Who the hell was this guy? Iris sincerely doubted that an assassin or mobster would bother referring to her so politely if he was about to slit her neck.

“Who are you?” she asked in a voice she barely recognized as her own. It was husky and trembled like a drop of water at the jagged edge of a leaf.

“I’m FBI. Stay quiet and do everything I say and we’ll be leaving this building in less than three minutes.”

Great. More FBI. Allegedly. Iris had no idea what the hell was going on and even less of an idea about who to trust. She was marginally certain that the four men who’d originally picked her up from her house all those hours ago had, in fact, been FBI. But she’d been taken from them so easily that she wondered if they’d been lying all along. And now this lone man with a gun was telling her that he was someone else she should just willingly go with?

Iris gasped as her body jolted, not harshly, but intensely. She heard, rather than felt, the back of the chair she sat on break off. The jagged edge of a piece of the broken wood brushed lightly against the delicate skin of her inner wrist, but it didn’t puncture her. She moved her bound wrists from one side to the other tentatively. She realized that the chair had been broken so that she was no longer lashed through the slats.

It was a relief, but a small one, considering she was still cuffed.

“Here,” the gruff voice said in her ear again and Iris felt herself being brought to her feet. The man’s hands were gentle and firm and for the first time since she’d been escorted from her house all those hours ago, Iris felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes.

Hold it together! she commanded herself internally. Either this guy was actually gonna help her, or he was leading her to a different situation. And she wasn’t gonna be able to escape from the basement on her own. So she needed to keep herself together and look for opportunities for escape.

She came to stand on aching, unsteady feet and she said a silent prayer to whatever god was listening that she’d put on tennis shoes that morning instead of her flip flops.

“Here,” he said again, and this time he banded a hand around her waist as he bent her down so that she could step over her bound hands and bring her wrists to the front of her body instead of the back. When he helped her to straighten again, Iris looked up and realized how much taller he was than her. At least a foot taller, his face still in shadow, Iris had the strange impulse to lean into the heat that his wide, muscular chest was kicking off. Chalking it up to temporary insanity, Iris held perfectly still.

“Listen to me. We’re going out through the hallway and through a back door. Stay behind me. And keep up.” He took her hand, cocked the gun in his free hand and led her from the room.

Iris’s feet were stiff and aching but she didn’t stumble. She kept up with him and found she didn’t have any trouble following his instruction to stay behind him. For one, he was so huge that he practically blocked her from the entire world. But also, Iris had no desire to step out into the open on her own. She was just fine letting this grizzly bear of a man guard her. For now.

When they stepped into the hallway, Iris saw three slumped shadows on the floor. Three men with masks who lay inert on the floor, their unconscious bodies making unnatural shapes on the floor. They stepped over the men and Iris purposely didn’t look down. If they were bloody, she was sure she’d pass out.

Instead she concentrated on the back of the FBI-grizzly-bear man’s head. She wanted him to turn around so that she could see his face in the dimly lit hallway, but he didn’t. So she stared at the line of his tan neck over top of dark green button-down shirt. Would an FBI agent be dressed that way? He wore dark jeans and midnight blue Nikes. Her eyes darted back up to the back of his head and she saw that his haircut was very severe. His black hair was ruthlessly trimmed into perfect lines, each line straight as an arrow. 

For some reason this calmed her. Whoever this guy was who was dragging her out of this warehouse, he at least was together enough to practice some really exacting hygiene. She could smell the scent of his cologne as well. Something light and mannish. And that calmed her as well. This guy didn’t seem like a gangster. He almost looked like he was picking her up for a date.

Iris had to swallow back a hysterical giggle at that thought. She looked down at his wide, tan fingers grasping her hand. She imagined him holding a bouquet of pink carnations for her. Another giggle swallowed down. Worst date ever. Hostage in the basement, handcuffs, knocked out bad guys, sneaking out of a warehouse. Tears sprang to her eyes and she bit back her panic. She wanted to laugh again and the see-sawing of her feelings was unhinging her. She both wanted to jump into this green-shirted, perfect-haired man’s arms and she wanted to tear her hand out of his grasp and sprint in the other direction.

She was about to do just that when they came to the end of the hallway. The man slid out of the door first and then tugged her after him. They were out into the clear, chilly night. Iris concentrated on the perfect, painted lines of the parking lot they’d just stepped into.

The man slid them, in the shadows, along the edge of the building toward a stand of trees on one side. The earthy scent of dirt and pine mixed in Iris’s nose and almost covered the scent of the man’s cologne. But not quite. She could smell him better than she could see him as they half jogged through the trees. She saw the woods lightening in front of them, and Iris wanted to sob with relief as two minutes later, they stepped out of the trees into a residential neighborhood.

Never once had she looked back to see the building where she’d been kept. She’d followed this man into the woods. God. Where were her self-preservation instincts? Iris knew that she should be screaming and clawing to get away. Pounding on the front door of one of these darkened, suburban houses. Instead, she let this man shove her into the passenger seat of a dark blue pickup truck.

Yeah. This was not what an FBI agent would drive. This was a civilian car.

Suddenly, Iris was certain that she’d just gone from the frying pan into the fire. She’d completely allowed herself to get dragged from one hostage situation into another. At least in the last one she’d been in one place. Now she was in a car with a strange man and she’d just turned into a moving target. Great.

She sat inert, unmoving, completely overwhelmed as he slammed his way into the driver’s side, flicked the car on and pulled out into the street without turning on his headlights. Iris’s body refused to turn and look at this man. Her brain was curious at who he was, what he really looked like, but she was frozen. Her hands bound in her lap, her eyes out the front windshield. She finally understood the whole deer in the headlights thing. She’d never been in more danger in her entire life and every single muscle in her body completely locked up.

Out of the corner of her eye, Iris saw the man lift up from the seat and pull something from his pocket. Another weapon of some kind? Maybe. Iris could barely bring herself to care. What was one more weapon on a night when she’d practically been skinned alive and left for dead?

“Marinos,” the man barked in a deep voice that had Iris jumping six inches off the passenger seat. She still couldn’t look over at him but as she sat, her body started a low, humming tremble, from her nose to her toes.

The car was pulling up to a red light as the man listened to whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying.

Iris could feel the man’s eyes on the side of her face but she still couldn’t look over. She still couldn’t move.

“No shit,” the man said. “That means all the safe houses are out. I’m not risking that. Not until we know who it was. Fine. Fine. Tomorrow 0800. Fine. Copy.” Without warning, his phone pressed in between his shoulder and his ear, the man leaned all the way over Iris, his scent swamping her, as he grabbed her unbuckled seat belt and wrapped it around her, belting her in.

Still, Iris didn’t move. Not even to adjust the belt that cut across her collar bones. He hit the gas as the light turned green. And Iris slid listlessly across the seat with the momentum of the vehicle. Her head lolled to one side.

“Copy,” the man said again. “I’ll report regularly. Fine.” And then he was sliding his phone back in his pocket, and she could feel his eyes on the side of her face again. She wasn’t even sure what he looked like but his gaze was searing her. It felt like noontime sun on a sunburn. She didn’t want to be looked at, she wanted to crawl into a gigantic bed and pull the comforter over the top of her head for three or four days. But she didn’t have the strength to even put a hand up to cover her eyes.

Her head was still lolled to one side, a dead weight on her neck, when she felt the back of a warm hand at her forehead. She felt a thumb gently pull the skin at the bottom of her good eye down, trying to get a glimpse at her pupils.

“Ms. Stanton,” that deep voice said. Iris didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her tongue was like a stone in her mouth. Her eyes were neither open nor closed. She was caught in a state of half awareness.

“Ms. Stanton,” he tried again. “I need you to stay with me for about twenty more minutes. You’re safe right now. And you’re about to be even safer once I get you to where we’re staying tonight, okay? Just stay with me. Here.” He leaned forward, his soft, spiky hair brushing against her chin as he dug through the glove compartment of the big truck. “Eat this.” He tucked a candy bar into her hand.

Iris barely had the energy to look down at it, much less open the dang thing. A second later, she heard the wrapper crinkling and then felt something nudge at her lips. The smell of chocolate and peanut butter swamped her. Iris opened her mouth and took a bite. She expected it to taste like chalk in her mouth, but she was flooded with relief and comfort at the familiar flavor. She swallowed her bite and took another. A few seconds later, the entire thing was gone. It wouldn’t be until much later that Iris would realize that he had fed her the candy bar. She wouldn’t realize until much later just how sweet that actually was.              

Next she felt a water bottle press into her hand and this time Iris had the energy to lift it to her own lips, to swallow gratefully, gulp after gulp. She’d badly needed water the entire time she’d been lashed to the chair in the basement, but her hysteria had made her forget it in the drama of her rescue.

When her head lolled again, it was with exhaustion more than it was her body completely shutting down in fear and panic, and the man beside her let it happen. He let her slump across the seat. It wasn’t until her head found his shoulder that Iris realized that she was sitting in the middle of a bench seat. That she must have slid to the center of the car when she’d gotten in, and he’d let her.

But she couldn’t think of that for long, couldn’t barely think of anything, as her eyes fell heavily closed. Her cheek rasped against the soft wool of his green shirt, and she was grateful his shoulders were so big, because she needed so badly to rest.

Some time later, Iris felt him slide away from under her. She heard one of the car doors close and she knew she was alone in the cab of the truck. But she was so tired she found she simply couldn’t move. Couldn’t rise. And truly, she didn’t want to. This man in the green shirt, whoever he was, had buckled her seat belt. She didn’t think he was about to shoot her in the head. Or bring her to somebody who was going to.

She lifted her head when the door opened again and he darkened the space, silhouetted by the streetlight behind him.

“Ms. Stanton, we’re going inside.”

Iris blinked into the dark at the word inside. Inside where? Two strong hands gripped her shoulders and Iris was pushed to sitting. And then an arm like a tree branch was under her knees, lifting her out of the truck.

“Can you stand?” he asked her. “Otherwise we’re gonna be putting on a little bit more of a show than we should.”

Iris looked down at herself, clutched in the arms of this large, good-smelling man. Her head lolled to his shoulder again and she realized that she must look drugged. She understood what he meant by putting on a show. She didn’t understand what the hell was going on, but she knew that he was asking her to fly under the radar.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Iris stretched her feet out and stood next to him as he set her down. Her head leaned into his shoulder but her legs held her as he banded an arm around her shoulders and led her forward.

They crossed the parking lot, went up two flights of stairs and came to a door that he unlocked with jingling keys he pulled from his pants pocket.

“I’m sorry it’s not better,” he said in that deep, rumbling voice. “But we’re dark, so I had to pay with the cash I had on me and this is all it could get us.”

Iris blinked into the dark in front of her and couldn’t see a thing. And then she was wincing and pulling back from the aching light he’d just turned on. It was a hotel room. She blinked. A really small, slightly dingy hotel room. Iris wobbled to the bed and sat down on the scratchy, mauve duvet.

“I’m going to be right back,” that deep voice said. Dimly, she wondered if he even had a face, if he was just made up of that voice. “There’s a pharmacy across the street and I’m going to get some things we need. Okay? Just, I won’t be more than five minutes. Just stay there.”

Iris felt herself nod, she heard the door close and lock. That was when the shivering started again. Iris desperately wanted to pull herself together, to have a controlled, rational response the way she always did. But it seemed her body had different ideas. She simply couldn’t stop shaking. It started to intensify and pretty soon her teeth were clacking.

Time must have passed because she heard the door open again and she would have been terrified if she hadn’t smelled his scent immediately. She knew it was him. The man in the green shirt. The seat belt buckler.

“Alright,” he said, sitting next to her. “First things first.”

She watched those large, tan hands pull out a tub of Vaseline from a CVS bag. Kneeling in front of her, Iris watched as he used a tongue depressor to slather the Vaseline underneath the handcuffs on her hands. She lifted her wrists, trying to be as helpful as she could.

“Now, deep breath, Ms. Stanton.” He anchored his wide fingers on one of the cuffs and slowly started to slide it over her wrist. Iris gasped as the cuffs yanked against the thickest part of her hand. The pain was aching and constant, but not too sharp. Nonetheless, a wave of nausea rolled over her as he yanked a final time and one of the cuffs slid free. He did the same with the next one and suddenly, Iris was blinking tears of relief out of her eyes as she rolled her shoulders. Unfortunately, her hands and wrists were stiff and clumsy, a thin line of blood leaked from both of her wrists where the cuffs had been digging all day. Iris quickly averted eyes, not wanting to get any woozier than she already was.

“Okay, Ms. Stanton.”

“Iris,” she said, almost out of nowhere. She just knew that she was a breath away from losing it completely and this Ms. Stanton business wasn’t helping.

The man paused. “Alright. Iris. We need to do a few things before you go to sleep, okay? I need you to wash off. You’ve got some cuts and scrapes that we need to make sure are clean and a hot shower will do you good anyways. And then I need you to eat some more food, so you don’t go into shock. And then you’re gonna take some ibuprofen, ice your eye, and go to sleep, okay?”

Iris nodded, her eyes still on the floor. She wondered if she was ever going to be able to look this man in the eye. Somehow, he seemed safest as just a voice, just warm hands.

“Okay, Iris. Do you want a bath or a shower?”

She rose unsteadily to her feet, one of his hands clasped on her elbows, but her legs held her. “Shower.”

“Alright.” He led her to the bathroom, and she was very grateful that he kept the lights off. She leaned against the sink while he fiddled with the knobs of the shower and soon curls of steam filled the small bathroom. He ducked out and closed the door all but a few inches, leaving her to the dim bathroom, lit only by a night light beside the mirror.

Iris caught sight of her reflection and gaped. Her black eye was coming in nicely, and the darkness of it weirdly made her light blue eyes look even lighter. Her lips were smudged and chapped. Her heart-shaped face looked blank rather than fearful. Each of her delicate features just looked sort of…dead. Squinting, she leaned forward through the dim air. And her blonde hair was lank over one shoulder.

She could see a layer of filmy sweat over every bit of exposed skin and she grimaced. The man, whoever the hell he was, was right. She needed a shower. She needed to wash off every bit of this day. But when she lifted her hands to the bottom of her t-shirt, she found that she could barely make her fingers curl around the edges. It took her several stiff minutes to get the right grip on her shirt and then, when she attempted to lift it, her stiff, screaming shoulders could go no further. She looked, in horror, down at her jeans. There was no chance that she was gonna be able to drag those things off.

“Iris?” that deep voice rumbled again from out in the room and Iris jumped again, dropping the edge of her shirt and scowling. All that hard work she’d just done.

“I got you some travel-sized bathroom stuff. Because they don’t provide anything here.” One of those big hands reached through the crack in the door, holding a plastic CVS bag.

“Um. That’s okay,” Iris said, her voice starting to sound a bit more like hers. “I’m gonna skip it.”

She stepped forward and pushed open the door to stare down at those midnight blue Nikes that she’d noticed before, her hair fell in front of her face. The Nikes didn’t move.

“Why?”

She shrugged, but instantly winced at the movement in her shoulders. She wanted to lie, but didn’t understand why. She never lied. “I c-can’t move very well. And my clothes are…stuck.”

“Oh.” The Nikes still didn’t move. “Ah. Alright.” He paused. “Look, I can help you. But I just really want you to be comfortable. Whatever you want.”

She said nothing. Honestly, she could think of nothing to say.

He cleared his throat and the Nikes finally moved. “I’m just gonna wash your face and wrists with a washcloth.”

A few seconds later, she found herself being guided gently to the closed toilet where she sat right down. Iris tipped her face up, eyes closed, and a warm, wet washcloth gently swiped over her face. It was quick and efficient and she shivered when he scrubbed over and behind each ear, under her chin and quickly over the skin that was exposed at her neck.

And then he wetted it again as he scrubbed down one arm and then the other. He was gentle but thorough over the scrapes on her wrists. And when he ended at her hands, the scrap of cloth between their fingers, he pressed, almost too hard, on each finger, on her palm. He rubbed life back into her stiff joints.

Iris shivered as the warm water over her skin cooled and she felt a warm, dry towel lightly dragged over her. She shivered again, and she felt a warm jacket shrugged over her shoulders. And then she was guided back to the bed. She perched on the edge and sniffed at the air as she scented a burst of citrus. And then an orange slice was pressed to her lips. He fed her half of an orange, a cheese stick, two peanut butter crackers, the rest of the orange and a cup of tea that he’d made from the kettle in the corner.

At that point, he led her back into the bathroom, put toothpaste on a little travel-sized toothbrush. Iris watched his Nikes as she slowly, stiffly brushed her teeth. Then, over the sink, he put ointment on her wrists and lightly bandaged them with gauze. When he led her back to the bed again this time, he flipped the covers back and she gratefully crawled under them. Next, he had her take a few painkillers, a little more water and he cracked an ice pack to lay over her eye. She shivered against the cold of it, but relieved, deeply relieved, her eyes fell closed and she was asleep.