Part Two
--Obsessed by the past, Lisa seeks answers wherever she can find them.
A/N: I knew Rebecca would have attitude as soon as I met her. 'Cause now we know she could totally beat Jack in a New York Minute. ;)
Sorry this took so long to update. I was in another country for four months, without access to the computer. Updates should be faster now.
She rolled her pen over her desk several times, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder. The young woman on the other end sounded overly confident, almost belligerent.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm the woman you met on the flight ten years ago. Well, not so much met as saw, I guess. Remember? I was waiting in line for the bathroom and you--"
Click.
"Dammit!" Lisa said, throwing her pen on the floor and slamming the phone back into its cradle. What had she been thinking? It had seemed unlikely that the girl would want to talk to her and now Lisa knew it had been a fleeting hope.
The door opened and Marie Townsend, her newest assistant, poked her head in the door. "You done for the night?"
"Yeah, I guess," Lisa said, grabbing her purse and pretending Marie had just interrupted her from something important. She didn't want to admit she'd spent the last several minutes on the payroll making phone calls she shouldn't have, just to feed her desire to know answers.
"You guess? Lisa Reisert, you are an unbelievable workaholic."
"You're just getting that now?" she said, walking out with Marie.
"No, I knew before. Hey, someone called for you earlier today. You were on break and I forgot to tell you. He said it was nothing important. I told him you were going to be busy all day and that you'd call him back. But then I got busy and forgot to tell you. I'll give you the number tomorrow."
"And what's our motto?" Lisa asked, hugging her purse tighter and stepping out into the cold night. "Nothing is 'not important.'"
"Yeah, I know. My mistake."
"You should have thought of that before."
"You gonna hang this over my head forever?"
"Probably." Lisa smiled to show her assistant that it was just banter and that she really didn't mean anything by it. This was how she was, and sometimes her drive scared people.
Marie got into her car and Lisa got into hers. She was slightly envious of Marie. It must be nice to be that carefree. To not have things you'd rather not deal with hanging over your head.
Her cell phone rang just as she took off. She sighed. "Yeah. Dad."
"Calling to check up on you."
"You know I'm thirty-five years old, right?"
"So? And your point is--"
"Dad, I'm fine."
"I don't think you are, but thanks for trying to reassure me anyway."
"What's it going to take to reassure you?"
"Dinner with your old dad this weekend?"
"Does Saturday work?"
"Yep."
She finished making arrangements with her father and finished the short commute back to her house.
XXXXX
"I thought you'd never get home," Mark said, placing a protective arm around her shoulder.
"I had some phone calls to make," Lisa said with a yawn. Her boyfriend was driving her crazy at the moment. If her father was overprotective, Mark was twice as bad. She just wanted people to leave her alone for two goddamn seconds together.
"Something's been bothering you lately."
"It really hasn't," Lisa said, shaking her head.
"I made dinner. You want some?"
"Not right now," Lisa said, faking a smile. This was rewarded by a kiss on her forehead.
"Well, let me know when you're hungry. I made tons of shrimp, and if you don't eat any of it it'll just go to waste."
"Don't worry," Lisa said, smiling again. She was eager to get into her room and try once again. In response, she flicked on the light to her room and shut the door behind her.
XXXXX
"Who was that?"
Rebecca's roommate, Tara, was fully awake now, gathering her material for her next exam. It would be the last exam of the day and thankfully Rebecca had the time to herself. She vowed to study and to think.
"No one. Prank call," Rebecca lied, staring at the portable phone, which had been put back into its place.
"I hate that. Well, I'm off. It's Professor Wilde's English exam. Apparently we get a huge essay question on The Importance of Being Earnest. And guess what? I could care less if it's important to be Earnest or not."
Rebecca gave a weak laugh and shut the door behind her roommate. She had a lot to think about. So Jackson had been lying. But why would he lie about whether or not he'd killed Lisa? It was all very strange. Well, it wasn't as if getting kidnapped on a plane wasn't strange enough.
Even more strange was the fact that Lisa had called. Why? Nothing made any sense.
Just then, the phone rang again.
She thought about not answering it. Her stomach lurched unpleasantly with each ring. Finally, the phone stopped ringing.
Chills crept up her neck. She didn't like being in a room alone for a long periods of time, and the phone call...
Rebecca felt that she was being watched.
With that feeling making its way through her spine, she grabbed her math textbook and left for the library. People were outside, huddled together against the wind and snow. Someone smoked a cigarette right in front of her and she coughed. Someone laughed loudly and then threw a snowball, which whizzed beside her before falling and smashing to bits right in front of her. The entire situation was eerie. Could no one tell she was panicking? Her mouth was dry and she wanted to scream.
And then, she ran right into a man wearing a suit, smoking a cigarette on the porch to the library.
XXXXX
No one responded. Lisa sighed in frustration. Now she'd probably freaked the kid out so bad she'd never answer the phone again.
"Lisa? I'm leaving!" Mike called from the living room.
"Okay, have a good night!" she called back. Her heart began to thump. It had been a long time since she'd been terrified of being by herself in her own house, but with the phone call and the news of another potential kidnapping on a plane...
He was still out there.
She heard the door slam. Lisa sank against the side of her bed, playing with the chord to her phone. She twirled it around her finger and sighed.
It took a second for her to realize how exhausted she was. Her eyes began to burn from keeping them open. Maybe if she just lay down on her bed for a moment or two... she didn't want to nap this late in the evening, but it was too early for bed.
An hour or so later, Lisa shot straight up in bed as the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Leese."
That was when Lisa tumbled out of bed, eyes open wide in terror.
XXXXX
Rebecca screamed.
"Woah, woah, woah," the man said, holding his arms out and dropping the cigarette on the ground. "Are you all right?"
Rebecca blushed and went about picking up her math textbook. "I am so sorry," she said. "Bad day. Exams and all."
He looked at her as if unsure whether she was telling the truth or not and smiled. "Well, hope the day gets better for you. Is there anything I can do?"
Rebecca shook her head, highly embarrassed. Was she going to scream every time she ran into a man wearing a suit? With that thought, she said good-bye, pulled open the door to the library, found an empty table, and sat down quickly.
She found she couldn't concentrate on linear equations, anyway. The day had just been so strange. First Lisa, then the man in the suit. What could possibly happen next? She stared at a poster with the illustration of the Irish countryside on it in the travel section of the library for a moment. After trying to work out a several-step problem with no success, she slammed the book shut and went back to her room.
By this point, it had grown dark and most of the other students were inside, studying or wreaking mayhem. On a whim, Rebecca picked up the phone and checked her voicemail.
"You have two new messages," the woman on the line said cheerfully. "To check, please put in your password."
Rebecca did as she was told and finally she heard:
"Hey, I'm sorry about being so abrupt on the phone before. I would really like to talk to you because... I'm trying to figure out what's going on. I know it sounds silly, but I heard on the news about your flight and I'd just like to see if what I experienced is what you experienced... I'm so sorry." There was a sniff and she heard the clicking noise that told her that the call was over. Lisa had called again, and she seemed to be unable to speak directly about what had happened. Rebecca wondered if that had been for her sake, or for Lisa's.
"Second new message," said the operator voice.
"Rebecca. You have to help me," came Lisa's voice, sounding frightened. "Please." The only other part of the message was Lisa's phone number.
"End of messages," said the operator voice, cheerfully.
Rebecca put the phone down in horror.
