"One day in order that they might be able to talk together in quiet they went for a walk in the forest. 'Take care,' said Joringel, 'that you do not go too near the castle.' "
-Jorinde and Joringel
As he slipped his sunglasses down over his nose, she caught him looking down at her black coffee with under hooded eyes and a twisted lip.
"Well that's...practical," Red said. It was probably the kindest thing he could think to say of her beverage choice.
Hushed conversations hummed around the outdoor table they sat at as coffeehouse patrons soaked up the bright, cool morning, their frothy scarves shoved up below their chins and knit caps crammed over their pink ears. It didn't seem like his typical sort of scene-the place was overrun by twenty-something hipsters decked out in flannel as they clacked out what were probably philosophical treatises on their laptops. But he probably knew the owner one way or another (probably involving some elaborate story involving theft and money laundering).
She just shrugged at his barely veiled derision for her drink. "I've always been no-frills when it comes to my coffee. I don't need some fancy combination like 'grande vanilla pumpkin spice espresso with two shots of creamer'. I just need to function, and black coffee does that just fine." Liz saluted him with her cup and lifted it to her mouth and took a long swallow, her eyes trained on him the whole time. The twist in his lip only deepened as she savored her cheap, "practical" coffee.
She knew they were both slowly approaching the point at hand, delaying the inevitable discussion that they needed to have about the kidnappings. But this morning she had woken up for the first time in weeks without feeling the heavy dread behind her eyes of facing yet another day of having her base evolutionary instincts screaming at her that there was a threat in every shadow. If she could keep her mood light a few minutes longer by indulging in Red's penchant for palate snobbery and acerbic banter, it was worth it.
His hand reached out to pull his own drink closer to himself, which was no doubt the sort of thing she had just disparaged.
"I think you just make it black because you'd boil or burn anything else." He gave her a thin, crooked smile. She narrowed her eyes above the cup, even though his assessment was true. She gave another deep gulp of her coffee in an attempt counter his point.
So there they sat for a moment, competitively drinking coffee at each other. The absurdity of it all almost made Liz choke on her drink.
"And that's why I don't drink it black," he said as she sputtered, wrinkling his forehead and pursing his lips.
"Why don't we set the topic of gourmet coffee aside for a moment and get to the reason we met here." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set her mug on the corner of the table, careful to keep it away from the edge, lest she knock it over as she had done several days ago at home when the slam of a door made her jump and smack the cup off the counter. She'd narrowly avoided getting a shard of a mug in her palm while she'd carelessly cleaned up the mess and swore under her breath.
"I don't expect you found much." He set his own mug down with a certain amount of delicacy, turning it so that the side with the handle faced him.
Her chest grew tight and she frowned. Was he making a jab at how distracted she had been recently, or was he commenting on the fact that the helpful details of the case were sparse? Knowing him, he might have meant both, but the idea that he might have been needling her for being distracted dampened the somewhat decent mood she had. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
He folded his hands over his stomach and waggled his head with a shrug. "Oh, just that-as much as I hate to admit it-since I haven't found much thus far, I very much doubt that the FBI has been able to either."
Her irritation dissipated a bit, especially at the fact that he had admitted that even with the skills he so loved to boast about, even he hadn't been able to dig up much.
"Well, you're not wrong." She wrapped her hands around her mug and rubbed it between her hands. "So far, we haven't been able to find any strong connections between the women. They don't seem to run in the same social circles at all. The best thing we could find is that Allison and Jenna would sometimes shop at the same supermarket, but they never seemed to run into each other as far as we could tell. We analyzed the reports of the scenes of the disappearances and weren't able to find many significant details. The last person they spoke to was always their significant other, and the same sort of shoe treads were found at three of the six crime scenes, but they haven't been able to match it to anyone."
The dredges of her coffee trembled as she continued to rub the cup between her hands, her palms now warm from the friction of the repetitive movement. "I just-" she leaned the cup on its side, tilting the grounds so they made a small, crumbling hill at the bottom of the cup. Her shoulders slumped a bit as she leaned her arms against the table. "I hope we can find them. I hate cases like this. The ones that barely have anything. I didn't visit the families, but I can imagine what their faces look like-still holding out hope that their daughter or sister is still alive."
"We will," he said, voice firm with certainty.
She sucked at her bottom lip and shifted her gaze away from coffee sludge to his eyes. "But you can't know that."
His gaze was firm, like a lion whose sights had been set on quarry that would not escape. "Yes, I can. We've solved far more dire cases than this, Lizzie."
She flicked up an eyebrow and just tilted her head with a shake. "I guess you're right."
"You should talk about it, you know." Red picked up his mug and gave a slow sip, eyes lowered.
"The case? We were just talking about it." But Liz knew what he meant. She just hoped that if she evaded hard enough that he would take the hint and not keep prodding at her.
"I'm not talking about the case. I'm talking about what you're going through. I've seen it before-the flinching, the constant vigilance. The..." he lowered his gaze and flexed his jaw, firmness from the eyes fading away to be replaced by concern, "fear."
Her hand grew tight around the cup, tips of her fingers going white, anger flaring in her chest. Why couldn't he leave her to process this on her own? Couldn't he just respect the boundaries that she had obviously set up? "I don't need you to play therapist. I studied these sorts of cases enough to know how to deal with it by myself."
"Can you really, Lizzie? You don't think that if counselors are dealing with some sort of mental distress that they won't seek help? They, most of all, know seeking support is necessary." He scooted in closer to the table, shifting his mug aside. "We are a social species. It's in our DNA. It is essentialthat we seek support from our social networks in times of disaster and distress."
"And what social network do I have?" she snapped. "I tried to go to a support group, but that was a waste of time. I can't go to anyone at the task force to talk about this, and don't have friends outside of them."
Red swallowed, the skin beneath his eyes tightening. "You have me. You know that."
She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her cheek, rubbing her fingers against her eyebrow. The moment before he'd spoken, she wished she could've snatched her words out of the air and crammed them back into her mouth. But her emotions were tumbling within her, flickering from angry to somber to frightened and back again, and they'd shifted to angry just at the wrong moment when she had been about to speak. "Red, I...that's not what I meant. When I said the task force, I meant-I included you in that group."
"Don't keep bottling it up, Lizzie. If you do, it will fester inside of you and will rot you. I never want that to happen," he said, voice almost pleading.
Sometimes she didn't know what to do when he showed so much raw concern for her. She still didn't fully understand why he cared so deeply about what did or didn't happen to her. But-maybe there was some truth in what he was saying. The last time she'd refused to speak about anything or take help, she'd ruined a family's life because she'd locked Tom up in the bottom of a rusting ship.
"Okay," she said to the mucky bottom of her coffee cup. And then, to Red, whose eyes were unshuttered and full of intensity, "Okay. I just-it's so much to process, you know? The whole time we were on the run, there was no time for all of it to completely settle in, and so much happened to me. An entire country was hunting me down, an entire shadow government wanted me dead and was working their damned hardest to make sure that happened. So coming back to this," she waved her hand at the bright, shining world around them. The oblivious, stupid, beautiful world that was ignorant to the storm that was raging inside the gray matter of her brain. "-is a lot to take in. I think what I went through just suddenly came down on me all at once, and it's not easy to process."
There it was-the truth. Or at least, part of the truth. She hadn't exposed the most twisted, broken parts of herself to him. She had settled on a summarized, sanitized version of the truth for him. It was informative enough to give him what he wanted, but not so detailed that she had exposed the most ugly parts of the wound to him. He'd seen a glimpse of the scab, and that was enough for now.
"What you feel is entirely natural. There is no shame in feeling the way you do, especially considering the fact that you have weathered much worse than this. It isn't easy now, but trust me-you will learn how to turn the paranoia into tempered caution," he said.
Liz didn't need to ask to know that he was speaking from personal experience. It was easy for her to imagine a younger version of him had been thrust into a roiling criminal world that was unfettered by any sense of society's morality. In that kind of environment, you wouldn't survive long if you let your anxiety always get the best of you. Adaptation had to come quickly.
"I know. And-thank you." She sat her hands in her lap and lowered her head. She wasn't quite ready to look back up at him and see that undisguised concern again. Somehow knowing that someone cared that much occasionally made her uncomfortable.
"Do something for yourself, it will make you feel better. Maybe get something for that apartment of yours-it's dreadfully bland. Maybe something colorful. The beige walls would act as a wonderful back drop for that little special pop," he paused to snap his fingers for emphasis, "of color."
He was the sort of man that would slap down a pretty penny to buy something for himself in order to soothe a problem, so it didn't surprise her that he was encouraging her to splurge. Typically, she might just pour herself a glass of cheap wine while watching a trashy movie and call it a treat, but maybe he was right. At the very least, it was true that she needed to do something so she didn't feel like her apartment was so dull and dismal.
"I'll consider it." She didn't want to fully commit to his suggestion lest he invite himself along with her to act as a consultant when it came to what color palettes matched the carpets and walls. She preferred to get in and out of stores without quibbling over those sorts of details.
"Good. Well, I presume I'll see you soon. Don't hesitate to call if you have any new details, but I would advise that you be careful when you contact me next time considering your little mix up from last night. We don't want you spilling classified information to your take-out boy, do we?" he grinned at her as he stood up and picked up his sunglasses, the bottom of his jacket fluttering as a small breeze kicked up.
With a roll of her eyes, she crumpled up a napkin and chucked it at him, which he easily stepped out of the way from. A smile twitched at the edge of her mouth. "Go on, get outta here."
He raised his hands in surrender and took a step backwards, lowering his head in mock defeat. "As you wish."
That evening Liz had gnawed over his advice a bit longer and had decided to pick up flowers at a flower shop a few miles away from her apartment. Flowers were a basic decorative item that required no special commitment or talent in choosing complimentary colors. They could just sit on her counter looking nice for a while, and then she could toss them out once she inevitably forgot to water them properly.
But once she arrived at the flower shop, she was overwhelmed by the options. Trembling leaves and petals of any hue exploded from every corner of the shop. There were jagged, sharp pink flowers that looked delicate and vicious all at once, there were roses dyed artificial blue, there were strange, exotic plants that smelled strangely. As she shifted away from the overwhelming options, she was met with little succulents tucked back on a shelf near the window, their stock sparse, likely due to the fact that she'd recently heard people raving over how little care they took to keep alive. That was probably the sort of thing she should've considered buying, but they had little color to them, and she'd come to the shop with the specific purpose in mind of adding a splash of warmth to her bleak dwelling space.
She shuffled to the next shelf and considered what seemed to be a single purple daisy growing in a plain brown pot. It looked like something that someone would set out on there window sill or on a front porch and forget about it.
It was perfect.
As she reached out to take it and look at the price, but someone shifted beside her and shoved her into a small figure to her right. There was a scrape of shoes against the slick tile, and a shower of clattering coins as the person's purse smacked to the floor. Liz whirled and bent down, insides twinging at the fact she could suddenly feel several pairs of eyes stabbing into the back of her neck.
They were just looking at what had happened, that was all. They didn't care about who she was, they just cared about the entire scene itself.
She tried to keep her attention focused on scooping up a handful of coins. The person she'd knocked into was an older woman with thick, round glasses that were slipping down the edge of her nose as she slid a thin hand across the floor to plow her change back into her expansive purse. Her other hand clutched a small bouquet of white, frilly flowers. She reminded Liz of a frail, delicate bird.
Liz scrubbed a hand through her hair as she deposited a handful of change and bills into the leather opening of the woman's purse. "I'm so sorry. I was bumped into and-" she waved her hand at the smattering of money that was left on the ground.
The woman looked up at her, the fluorescent lights flashing thick diagonals of light against her large frames. "Oh, it's no bother, you needn't worry about it. I'm not hurt, dear. I've dealt with much worse things, I assure you." Her smile emphasized the map of lines that ran down her cheeks.
Liz grabbed another fistful of change and bills, grit from the floor scraping her fingers. She dumped them in the purse. "I still feel bad, though."
"Well, if you really want to make it up to me, do you mind helping me bring my bouquet to my car?" The old woman shifted her purse back over her shoulder and stood.
Rising from her kneeling position, she nodded. If she could do at least one decent thing today, she'd chalk that up as a success. She still wanted to buy that daisy, though, so she picked it up and held it protectively against her chest as she walked to the cashier, aware of the old woman hovering near her as Liz pressed the potted plant to her side while she dug through her pocket for money.
The woman hummed behind her as the money exchanged hands. It was a low, twining sound in her throat. It sounded like dust and decay, like creaking doors and squealing floorboards.
The change clattered in the cashier's till. The machine whined as it printed her receipt.
She snatched it up and shoved it into her pocket, arm looping around the base of the pot to press it close to her chest once again as she shuffled around the line that had formed behind her. She stayed close to the edge of the shop to avoid knocking anyone down again.
The woman fell behind in step her, her long stripe of a shadow sliding across the walls of shivering petals and leaves, shoes clattering against the dirt dusted black and white tile. Liz leaned the edge of her shoulder against the door to hold it open for the small woman who was still humming, the tune now picking up in rhythm.
"So, just take me to wherever your car is." She leaned away from the door once the woman was through it, scurrying away before it slammed closed on her. The swoosh sent a cool gust of air against her back that rippled her T-shirt and made goosebumps ghost across her arms.
"It is just over this way. I usually park in strange spots because I'm not terribly good at parking, you see." The woman sighed and looked down. She felt a bit of pity for the little woman. She seemed rather alone, and she'd come all the way out her just to get herself a bouquet. Maybe she was someone like Liz-someone tired of the emptiness of her home and just wanted to brighten it up a bit.
"Well, that's okay. As long as you ever get yourself to wherever you're going, that's what counts, right? I'm impressed you're so independent at your age." She screwed her eyes closed, her stomach knotting. Her fingers tightened around the pot. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude. I just really admire people your age that can do whatever they want."
The woman let out a gentle, whistling laugh. "Oh, don't worry, dear. I understood what you meant. You're right-it is unfortunately not common for women my age to be able to accomplish the things they want to, but I suppose I get along well enough."
"Well, it sure looks like it, er-" she paused, realizing she didn't know the woman's name.
"Miriam." She swiveled her head over her narrow shoulder to glance at Liz.
"I'm Elizabeth, but you can call me Liz if you want." She typically preferred strangers to simply call her by her full name, but when it came to someone that looked like Miriam, she felt that a more personable epithet felt more natural.
"Elizabeth," she said, quiet, rolling her name in her mouth. "It's a lovely name. You shouldn't let people call you anything else. It is dignified for a lovely lady such as yourself. Liz is so...sharp."
The woman's comment pricked her. In all honesty, that's why she saved "Liz" for the people that knew her. That's who she was, not "Elizabeth". Elizabeth was all dignity and soft edges, something gentle. An ancient name for a suppressed era. Liz was fire and hard edges, bite and bluntness. If anyone truly knew her, they knew that "Liz" was the essence of who she was.
"Well, you can call me what you want," Liz finally said, able to push down any irritation she felt.
"Elizabeth," Miriam said again. But the way she said it this time wasn't as quiet. She said it like she was clamping her teeth down on it, claiming it.
And that's when she felt a stab against the back of her neck. It cold and thin, pricking into her vein. Just like the jab of a needle.
No, not just like a needle. It was a needle. Her legs trembled, gray beginning to edge into her vision. Her fingers began to peel away from the bottom of the pot. As her vision swam, she saw that they were no longer in a parking lot. Somehow, without her noticing, Miriam had lead her into a narrow alley with brick walls stretching up to scrape at the thick, creamy underbellies of the clouds that had gathered in the night sky.
The buildings were so close together, she felt like she was clamped between them. Her legs kept shivering, going numb.
"What-" she tried to say, but her tongue felt like a lead weight in her mouth.
Her legs went out from under her and she slammed down onto her side, ceramic pot exploding across the pavement.
"Elizabeth." And this time the name had become a chant swimming around her as she tried to claw inside her brain and shred the fog that was seizing her mind.
Thick hands-male, some part of her mind guessed-hovered over her, ready to shove a black bag over her head. The hands grew blurred as if she was viewing them through thick, murky water.
But still, right as the canvas was shoved over her head, she clamped her jaws down on the hand and closed her teeth down through the bag. The iron tang of blood oozed through the canvas fibers, and she felt a flicker of satisfaction through the sea of terror that was beginning to swim through her body. Someone gave a muffled grunt and jerked their hand out of the vice of her jaws.
And then, her vision went black, her head plunged beneath heaving waves.