Safe as Houses

by Evelyn Benton

After Jackson learns that the Red Eye assignment six years prior was only a small part of a much larger conspiracy that Lisa is the key to understanding, the two must work together from the sanctuary of their safe house to bring down his Company and survive.

10. Ch 9: Their Mothers' Eyes

Chapter 9: Their Mothers' Eyes

---

January, 2012

Jackson held Lisa for hours on the floor with their collapsed bodies half in his bedroom and half in the hallway. The location alone was figurative in many ways. He would have laughed at the symbolism of it if the circumstances had not been so dire, and that seemed to be his reaction to many of the situations he had encountered in the last few months. He had stopped stroking Lisa's hair and whispering soothing sounds of affection over an hour ago when she had essentially fallen unconscious. A restful sleep was not on the forecast for her in the foreseeable future, so passing out from exhaustion was a blessing. When he gazed down at her seemingly tranquil form lying helplessly in his arms, his blood boiled with the acidic fire of hatred and anger for those who dared to bring this war to their front door and into Lisa's heart. His hands throbbed with a need for violent release upon his former associates. It was a selfish, primitive reaction, but it came naturally and he didn't dismiss it.

His left leg had gone numb from its awkward position under Lisa's limp body. He gently elevated her just enough that he could slide his leg out from under her and straighten it so that the blood would once again flow through the pins-and-needles limb. She was in such a deep slumber that she hadn't even twitched in reaction to his miniscule movements. Confident that he could relocate her without disturbing her, Jackson lifted Lisa with him and carried her into her bedroom. He deposited her onto the bed as if she were made of crystal and covered her under her heavy winter blankets. For the first time, he cursed himself for not building a proper house. He had been more focused on the occupationally relevant aspects of the house and had forgotten things like a fireplace or furnace. The house stayed warm during the winter thanks to the central heating unit (and their high utility bills), but it wasn't nearly as cozy or energy efficient as it could or should be.

Jackson's analytical blue orbs lingered upon Lisa and basked in the uninterrupted pleasure of being able to exclusively observe her without the possibility of discovery. She was dead to the world after crying and shaking herself into sickly feebleness. He lightly brushed his fingers through her hair, smoothing it away from her face. She would no doubt resent him for taking advantage of her invalidity for his own warped purposes, but it was his priority, his reward for being such a supportive faux husband.

He switched off the lamp next to her bed and took her laptop with him as he left the room.

---

Jackson's mission was temporarily altered. It was no longer about figuring out what Lisa knew. His job was to determine how the Company got to her mother and if there were any weak links associated with Lisa or any other family member.

He flipped open the computer and the screen came to life. A website was already loaded. Tragedy Strikes Missing Woman's Family was the headline. The news clip from the Dallas television station's website included all of her family except her father in attendance at the house when the reporter was covering the story. Lisa's brothers did most of the talking and in the background, her mother's boyfriend Victor sat brooding in a dark corner of the room. His eyes were downcast and his complexion was ashen, making the gray in his dark hair stand out more noticeably. He looked sloppy, as if he hadn't taken the time to prepare his appearance for television, much less for a respectable day. Jackson noted every movement Victor made—how his eyes occasionally flickered upward for a quick glance at his surroundings, how his right fingers flexed against his resolutely gripped left fist, how his jaw remained locked and rigid. His breathing was even, not shallow and not labored.

Victor was Company.

Jackson did a quick online search for Victor and came up empty-handed save the expected false documentation that came with every Company job. He had been a Company plant in Lisa's family. Her mother had been the most vulnerable family member because she was weaker than Joe, less prominent than her two doctor sons, and more easily accessible than Lisa. If the Company wished to make a statement to Lisa, their best bet was to do so with her mother. Victor had been with Lisa's mother for several years and he had been more than a boyfriend. They were live-in lovers. Lisa said that they seemed normal and happy—not too over the top, not too fake or suspicious. From the looks of the pictures her mother had posted on Facebook, she and Victor were happy together. Then again, based on the appearance that Lisa and Jackson had given Anna and Frank, they were a happy couple as well.

Jackson viewed some of the home videos of the family that Lisa's brother had posted on his YouTube account. Victor was in them and he, like Joe, avoided the camera's attention in a typical older male sort of way. Victor had not only been a plant in her life, he had also been undercover on a single assignment for years and that certainly had to mess with his mind. It was impossible to tell just yet if Lisa's mother had died at the hands of a Manager doing his job or if she had died at the hands of a mentally unstable Manager who had been in the trenches far too long. Managerial training made them great at in-depth short-term assignments, but when it came time for long-term assignments, they tended to crack under the pressure. It was like making an Olympian who specialized in diving swim from Cuba to Florida or making a speed skater become a figure skater. It was the wrong skill applied in a high pressure setting and there was no way the Manager could exit the assignment in top form.

After several hours, Jackson shut down the computer and returned upstairs to Lisa's room. He cracked open the door to sneak a peek at Lisa and she was fast asleep. He let the door remain ajar so he could hear her if she needed him.

In the solitude of his own bedroom, Jackson crawled on top of his bed and fell asleep on his stomach, too tired to concern himself with things as insignificant as covering up his cold body.

---

Around 4:30 a.m., Jackson heard a faint sound drifting through the wall and their open bedroom doors. It was Lisa's hard tears quaking her already drained body. She was clearly trying to cry into her pillow for privacy or out of respect for his right to silence, but he didn't know which. Jackson longed to go to her, to hold her and promise her that everything would be alright, but they both knew that everything wasn't alright and it most assuredly wasn't going to be alright anytime soon. It was going to be worse, much worse. His dominant, logical side told him to stay away, far, far away from the broken creature next door. She was a Siren calling him to her rocky death trap and she would destroy him by letting him believe that he could be her savior. She was drawing him into her defenselessness and it would mutate his very nature, ultimately transforming him into her inoperable co-dependent.

Part of him, the component of his psyche that he tried to suppress, managed to work its way up to the surface in an attempt to lure him into savoring her agony. She was the heartless woman who had ruined his life and took pride in knocking him down at every chance she got. She lied to him, led him on, brought him to the point where he was starting to put her needs first, not out of obligation or convenience, but because he received emotional satisfaction from treating her better than he treated himself. She would betray him again, as all women inevitably betrayed men, and he would once more find himself a mutilated man on the floor, wheezing as he watched her celebrate over his dying carcass.

In the end, he wasn't sure which aspect of his personality won out. He found himself lying on his back listening to the tears wretch their way out of her eyes, the sounds choking from her locked throat, and the moans riding out on waves of exertion. He felt something when he secretly attended the symphony of her misery and it lured him back for more.

---

For the next several days, a routine was born. Jackson would far from accidentally overhear Lisa's secret indulgence of her pain at night, and during the day, the two would sit at the wall and look at it as if they were actually thinking constructive thoughts. He spent most of his time wondering about her while she blankly looked toward their scribbled notes, her eyes obviously unfocused and not seeing anything. They said very little in the course of a day. Jackson would make dinner and set a plate before her as if she were a sick child who had come home early from school, but she usually just raked her fork through whatever he cooked to give the illusion that she had eaten more than just a few polite bites. She did drink a lot of water, though, and he was pleased to see that she wasn't going to dehydrate before she died of starvation.

---

One morning, Jackson brought out the trash for curb-side pick-up. He usually sneaked it out before the sun came up as to avoid contact with anyone in their small neighborhood, but on this day, he was late because he had fallen asleep after listening to Lisa. He wanted to experience guilt over taking such wicked enjoyment from her pain, but her pain made him feel and anything that could make him feel held the same status and pull over him as a drug.

"Jack, long time no see!" Frank called out from across the street where he was taking out his own trash. Anna was backing her car out of the driveway and she honked the horn as a greeting to Jackson as she waved at him and then to Frank. Jackson automatically waved back, not taking the extra step to appear as if he actually meant anything by it.

"How's everything going? I haven't seen much of you guys since before the holidays." Jackson slammed shut the lid on the large black garbage can.

"We've been busy," he noncommittally stated, not bothering to slow his stride toward the house. Frank continued with him.

"How's Elise?"

Jackson stopped and face-to-face acknowledged Frank for the first time during their brief meeting. "She's sick. Her mother died last week. It hasn't been easy," he softly explained. He didn't have to put much acting into what he was saying because he was speaking the absolute truth.

"Oh, Jack, man, I'm so sorry to hear that," Frank responded empathetically. "It's always hard losing a parent. Even when you hate your parents, you still love your parents."

"I wouldn't go that far," Jackson muttered beneath his breath, but Frank didn't pick up on what he said.

"I can't imagine what Elise is going through right now. My parents were much older when they died and it makes it a little easier, but Elise's mom had to be what, fifty-something, early-sixties?"

Jackson nodded affirmatively. "I don't mean to be short with you, but I really need to get back to her. We just need some alone time until she can get herself together, you understand."

"Absolutely, yeah. I'm so sorry." Jackson started for the door. "Give Elise our regards and tell her we're praying for her." Jackson resisted the urge to give his own commentary about the nature of prayer, much less the casually-used, socially-expected vow to pray for someone when most people didn't pray or value prayer in the first place.

"Thanks," was Jackson's clipped response as he slipped inside the house and locked the door.

When he made it to the kitchen, he saw Lisa standing in front of the ever-looming dining room wall. He walked up behind her and put his arm around her back supportively. "It's good to see you up," he told her. She rolled her eyes at him, doubt sparking distantly behind the sorrow shrouding her face. "I don't lie, remember?"

She reluctantly accepted it. "Thanks."

"Are you better…at all?"

She nodded. "Yeah. We need to get back to work," she insisted, standing tall by sheer force of will alone.

It was Jackson's turn to nod. He patted her back in a friendly gesture before he released her and took his place atop the table.

---

After several nights of listening to Lisa's suffering from the comfort of his bed, Jackson found himself eavesdropping at the wall that separated their bedrooms. His ear was touching the white painted surface and his arms held his knees tightly to his chest. If the room had padded walls, the slightly irregular gleam in his eye would have made the picture complete as he sat there like a lunatic taking in the wails of another human being's torment. Every night without fail, Lisa would crumble, and every night without fail, Jackson would listen. She maintained appearances during the day, giving the illusion that she was able to compartmentalize like the expert robot she lived with, but at night, she shoved her face into her arms or her pillow and let the waterworks erupt like a geyser.

---

For the first few nights, he listened in bed, but for the following several nights, he attended the vile show at the wall. The next place in his progression closer to the source of the sobbing was against Lisa's door. He sat there with his ear strategically placed in a desperate endeavor to absorb every ounce of despair that dripped out of her soul and use it as fuel in his own body.

He had originally thought that he was perverse in taking gratification from her distress, but when he moved to his bedroom wall for his snooping parties, he realized it was instead an interest in discovering the nature of humanity. Tears were foreign to him. They were a physiological reaction caused by stimuli. For example, when the stimuli called Lisa shot him, the physiological reaction was pain that resulted in moisture in his eyes (which, he was proud to say, never left his eyes). He couldn't recall ever crying for the purpose of emotions. All of his tears, what few there had been in the course of his life, were the product of some physical ailment that had tricked his body into reacting in its own way without the consent of his higher thought processes. His acute auditory observation of Lisa from their shared wall permitted him the opportunity to notice the nuances of human behavior without the uncomfortable inclusion of himself in the process.

From her door, however, Jackson became conscious of how his once aberrant satisfaction from her anguish had turned into inquisitiveness and had then grown into the desire to comprehend the origin of her reaction for the purpose of designing and implementing a counteractive technique that could cure her. Emotions were body parts no different than lungs or a throat, and when—for a random, hypothetical example—a lung took a bullet or a throat was stabbed with a cartoonish ink pen, the body received treatment and began the healing process. There was a healing process with emotions and if he could understand how her mother's death had destroyed her, how it communicated something to her other than the fact that she no longer had a mother who was alive, then he could cure her. He could save her. He could be her hero.

Bereavement was beyond his comprehension. Life and death were not unlike a video game to him. It was an odd comparison, but it wasn't entirely inaccurate. Like a game, players in life must go through a series of obstacles and they can obtain rewards, treasures, and even relationships along the way, but in the end, they were either victorious and lived to see another day or they died, and those who were victorious died later anyway. How losing a relative, particularly an older one, served as a traumatic experience was too psychologically and spiritually taxing for him to solve. He would rather look at death as an end to life, something to be respected when the death came in a positive way (such as Lisa's grandmother), or to be pitied or ignored when it was dishonorable (such as those he had to kill to save his own life).

Besides, it wasn't like anyone would ever mourn his own death.

---

February, 2012

The grieving process had evolved from a two week experience into a three week drama. By day, Lisa quietly went about life as usual, speaking enough to give off the appearance of normalcy, but avoiding that unique level of interactivity that she shared with Jackson because it was too hard to be so "happy" again just yet. Jackson wanted to scream at her, to rant and rave in her face until she cried tears of fear and humiliation, and then forced herself to toughen-up and return to normal, but he didn't. He wanted to shake her, hit her, make her feel alive again, but he didn't. He wanted to hug her and hold her in his arms, sheltering her from the world and swearing to destroy everyone on the planet who dared to inflict even a moment's worth of discomfort in her, but he couldn't.

He didn't know how to react or what to do. He had never been around another person for so long a period of time. After being trapped with her in confined quarters for over seven months, he wasn't able to see clearly anymore. This was why Managers became self-destructive during long-term missions. He wasn't prepared mentally or emotionally for the stress. The master strategist he had been would have been able to solve this puzzle and defuse this situation in a matter of minutes, but the man she was turning him into could do nothing but breathe in deeply the smell of her salty tears in the air.

---

She had cried herself into a coughing fit and then a long silence followed. Jackson felt his eyelids growing heavy as the weighty silence in the house lulled him to sleep. He slept very little these days because of his desire to attend to Lisa from afar. As he sat by the door, he did the math on his reaction to her. His abnormal pleasure from her pain had turned into curiosity at the nature of her pain and grew into a desire to cure her pain, but now as his mind downshifted toward sleep mode, he acknowledged that his current reaction was a longing to cure Lisa's pain by making it his own, to heal her and save her, to keep her pure and untouched by the evils of the world, including his own evil. All of the pain he was in over her pain was all such a pain in the—

The door abruptly opened and Jackson fell into her bedroom. He peered up at her as she stared down at him, upside-down in his vision. "You're like a psychic vampire feeding off of my energy. And here I thought you were fairly balanced in your emotions."

Jackson shuffled to his feet. "Excuse me?" he replied, feigning nonchalant ignorance.

Lisa skipped the pretenses this time. "You've been spying for weeks," she told him bluntly. She pawed at the moisture on her cheeks with the palm of her hand and then again with the back of her hand. "I didn't realize it until you moved to your bedroom wall. You're not as stealthy as you think you are."

He was stealthy. She was just getting better at fine-tuning her senses. "I was…concerned," he said, not sure if he liked using that word. He didn't want to give any impressions one way or another.

"Wondering if I would be destroyed by my feminine weaknesses?"

"Something like that."

"I know you mean well, in your own way," she commented, and he seemed complimented by her acknowledgement. "Truth be told, I think it was comforting enough just knowing another person was there…knowing you were there." She sighed. "I don't know if I should have opened up to you or not…"

"I probably wouldn't have been of any use to you," he declared honestly and almost apologetically.

She nodded. "I didn't want to drop any of this on you." She wiped at her right eye, apparently sensing an escaping puddle of moisture on the brink of her lashes. "I can't handle this sort of thing like you can and I didn't want to totally fall apart on you and make you have to deal with another one of my breakdowns. That's why I hid it, or tried to anyway." She bit her lower lip as she waited for his response, one that she believed would be in the vein of anger.

The anger never came. "I figured as much. I didn't want you to be alone. Even if that meant stalking you through the wall."

"We should all stick to doing what we're best at," she joked, her lip curling just a little in a small smile.

"Again, I figured as much," he returned, copying her small smile with his own. "Are you okay, Leese, really?" It disturbed her sometimes how much Jackson was not only an extension of herself, but also a direct mirror of her father and all those who had surrounded her. It was as if traits had been collected from all those she knew and they were put into Jackson under the program label "L.I.S.A.: Lisa Interaction Skills Acquired."

She crossed her arms and looked around her room contemplatively. Her bedroom was as Spartan as his own, with only the bare essentials in furniture and accessories, and nothing to signify it as a place inhabited by a regular resident. "I will be. Losing my mom hurts a lot, but selfishly enough, the thing that bothers me most is that I have to carry the burden of knowing that I killed her."

"No!" Jackson corrected, closing the space between them. He pulled her to him without thinking about it. Her arms automatically wrapped around his neck. "No," he whispered forcefully in her ear. He could feel cold moisture soaking the shoulder of his t-shirt as she silently cried on him. "You didn't kill your mother. They did. Your mother loved you and any loving mother would not think twice about dying in place of her child." That was an unexpected insight. "You're not a killer." They both knew that she had killed before and she was capable of killing, but Jackson saw it only as self-defense; therefore, it did not count. For tonight only, she accepted that interpretation.

They stood together for a few minutes. Jackson swayed ever so slightly to rock her in his arms soothingly as he rubbed her back to calm and comfort her. When Lisa pulled away, Jackson assumed she was ready to be alone again and he stepped back to leave. She grabbed his hand and held him there, her eyes silently speaking to him. Her instructions were clear: stay.

With Lisa leading him, Jackson joined her in bed. He spooned around her, burying her under the protective shielding of his arms and leg, blocking her from the sight of all the scary monsters that lurked under her bed and in her mind. She looped her arm around his, holding him to her with a firm grip that left no room for misinterpretation. She required his companionship.

He angled his head to rest on hers, his jaw reclining within the curve of her neck so that his lips were only a slight movement from her ear. They stayed together like that for about ten minutes before Jackson spoke.

"Margaret Dillon was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi," he began casually. "She loved it there. When she was fourteen, she went to Biloxi with some friends and met Bill Ritter. He was a twenty-nine-year-old officer stationed at Keesler Air Force Base. In a few weeks, they were married. They lied to everyone, even on the marriage certificate, and said she was nineteen. Just under a year later, I was born."

Lisa's heart skipped a beat. For months, she and Jackson had lived under an umbrella that concealed so many things about his life—his past, his mysteriously murdered father, his contradictorily misogynistic yet pseudo-feminist perspective on women, the definition of his ever-present storm cloud of shame. He had promised to share his story with her when she was ready and not a moment before, and apparently she had progressed to the appropriate stage of readiness. A knot of apprehension formed in her stomach as she realized that she was troubled by what she might learn about him.

Jackson's thumb stretched out from his hand to rub the soft skin of her upper arm. "My mother wanted us to move to Jackson so she could be with her family and friends, but my father wouldn't let her. She tried to get him to agree to at least let her take me to visit her family, but that didn't happen either. She finally managed to contact her family, but they had disowned her. They considered her a slut and told her that she would burn for her sins. My father found out that she had reached out to her family and he claimed it had been behind his back and against him. As punishment, he put in for a transfer as often as possible, sometimes even through the illegal and unofficial Good Ole Boys club, so we ended up moving from base to base across the country. I never had a home longer than a few months. Honestly, I don't even remember nearly half of the cities we were in or how long we were there."

Lisa sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with her free hand, and Jackson hoped it was for her own problems rather than the secret he was about to share with her. His statements were unburdened by emotion, but there was an impending sense of doom and dread in his inflections.

He continued, his voice indifferent and disconnected as if he were reading her the selections from a take-out menu. "My father wanted a son and he was disappointed when he got me instead. I was worse than a daughter. I was a wuss and a wuss can't grow into a man. When I was young, he took me hunting with him, but I cried because I didn't like seeing the animals get killed. He tried taking me fishing, but I refused to participate after he caught a fish and I saw how painful it looked for the fish to have a metal hook through its mouth. I hated cruelty." Lisa's dried-out eyes filled up with tears that burned her raw eye sockets. The notion of Jackson, who was once a boy so loving and wholesome, being forced to endure something that his soul protested as wrong made her sick. It would seem his destiny was to become a monster, if he wanted it or not.

"He put me in sports, but that was just as big a disaster. I couldn't run. I had horrible coordination. I was better at math class and I usually preferred doing my homework instead of having father-son male bonding time." Lisa had tried to picture little Jackson a few months ago, imagining him dancing with a faceless figure who was his mother. She transposed that same image onto a large dinner table filled with books and notebooks, and she momentarily felt lighter at the idea of seeing him so small yet intensely devoted to his…"job."

"Every single time I failed at being a man, he would smack my mother since it was obviously her fault."

Lisa inhaled sharply and bit down on her lip, hoping that Jackson hadn't heard her reaction. A story like this was terrible to hear at any time, but to hear it after the death of her own mother—it was all too soon. She tried to force herself into being stoic so she wouldn't make any additional sounds that might suggest she pitied him. Pity was the last thing he would want from her or anyone else.

"I wouldn't hunt, so he hit her for making me a loser. I wouldn't fish, so he hit her for babying me from my obligation as a man. When I fell down at soccer or never even kicked the ball, he beat her up for making me 'girly.' Every failure I had as a man, he took it out on her. And she ate it up," Jackson lamented bitterly. He paused for a moment before continuing so he could either gather his thoughts or compose himself. "She apologized profusely and gave me a stern talk about the importance of a man-to-man relationship with my father. He'd beat her some more and she'd go on smiling, covering the damage and acting like the perfect housewife. She'd go to church on Sunday, dragging me behind her in one hand and hanging onto my father with the other. She praised Jesus and went home to get the shit beat out of her for whatever reason." He laughed and it made the story sadder.

"I liked my mother," Jackson admitted, his voice as emotional as someone who had just said he preferred the color red over blue. He liked her, but he didn't love her. "She was always there for me. She nurtured me and supported me no matter what. She didn't care if I succeeded—only that I tried. I was starting to resent this about her as I got older because I realized that the world was only concerned about what actions I could accomplish, not what actions I could merely try. My father more than proved that every day." Silent hot tears streamed down Lisa's cheeks and landed on her pillow.

"My father gave up on athletics and decided to go back to hunting. Instead of animals, we shot targets. I was good with a bow and arrow. I was great with a knife. I was better with a gun. We started out with a classic BB gun rifle. He moved me up to a BB gun pistol. I eventually advanced to a shotgun. It was actually fun because it was more of a mental challenge than a physical one. I had to concentrate on my target and focus on reaching it. It suited my skillset and interests perfectly. It got to the point where I never missed. I could even make my targets blindfolded. My father got a kick out of that one. He liked to show his friends my little circus act on his drunken boys-night-in on Friday nights. He instructed me that using a gun was about following instincts, but I only ever used math and science to do it. I had no instinct or feeling to follow then or now. I was a prodigy with a gun and my father couldn't have been prouder. My mother was not pleased with that, but she never complained about it, of course. I guess she knew somehow that someone in our situation…someone like me, if I had a gun in one hand, I didn't stand a chance of making it through life without blood on the other hand."

"Jackson," Lisa gasped. She was compelled to say something more, but she was rendered mute.

"Shh, or you'll miss the best part," he warned her with cold humor. "Baseball season came around and my father figured that since I was good at shooting, I would be good at baseball because I had apparently manned-up and could handle masculine stuff like sports. One Saturday, I had a game. I hadn't actually made the team, but I had a uniform and I attended anyway as a back-up because everyone's a winner and no one has to ever hear the word 'no' at these confidence-building activities. But, as chance would have it, I ended up having to go to bat that day. Let's just say that ended with the ball going past me while the bat flew halfway to third base. My father was pissed." Jackson stopped again and Lisa could feel his body growing tense. His arms constricted ever so slightly around her. He buried his face into her neck for a moment, a lipless kiss of sorts, before he returned to his previous posture and continued speaking.

"On Sunday after church, my father told me to go outside and wait for him, that we were going to practice until I got it right. I went outside through the front door and I heard screaming a few seconds later. I think I knew what was happening without seeing it, so I went back into the house through the backdoor and I ran down the hall to my parents' room. I got my father's handgun out of the drawer next to his bed. In the living room, my mother was lying on the sofa covered in blood. The expression frozen on her corpse was contentment, like she was pleased that my father had given her what she deserved. She didn't even look like she had attempted to fight him or defend herself," he noted with revulsion. The images he painted for her with his words were as fresh in his mind as if they had happened just yesterday.

"My father, meanwhile, had just come in from the kitchen and was still wiping his hands on the dishtowel. He then started to clean the blood off the bat, so casually, like he did it every day. No big deal. He realized I was there and when he turned around, I pulled the trigger once. Then again. And again until the little revolver was empty. I was eight-years-old. Most second graders are learning how to write in cursive and are looking forward to being in the third grade, but I had to become a man and I never again looked back on my abbreviated childhood and wondered why it had been cut short. I'm glad it was short because my mother earned freedom and I found my identity. If my father had lived, I think he would have been proud of me. I'm a man of his standards." Lisa was still crying. She pulled Jackson's hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles. She held his hand to her wet cheek. He tightened his embrace just a little.

"The police from damn near every agency showed up. They took me away, but I didn't leave the house until I had one last look at my mother's face. That weak, spineless, emotional way she went through life, it was something I swore that I would never tolerate and I knew I wanted nothing to do with it. She was everything that makes a woman weak and it disgusted me. Men can be monsters, but at least you have to respect them for having the drive to survive. Women don't have that, at least for the most part. You were the first woman I ever met who had more than a little fight in her." Lisa appreciated the compliment, but she mentally filed it for a later time so she could enjoy it properly.

Jackson stopped talking now that his story was complete and the air in the room seemed sour, tainted by the horrors that he had disclosed. She had told him he was pathetic. She had called him a freak. She had considered him to be inhuman and obsessive, robotic and psychotic. That man was perhaps the most human of all because he knew what it was like to be the boot as well as to be under the boot, to choke someone with the belt as well as to be whipped by the belt. He could only inflict that which he had acquired out of necessity and it explained why his emotions were unplugged from his occupational functions. He had learned long ago the value of removing the human condition from the body so that the body could survive. Emotions were gangrenous.

"You know," Jackson began, his voice oddly both sorrowful and jovial, "the most pathetic part about all of this is that my mother's side thought she was a slut and she would burn in hell. If only they had met me, they would have seen an eight-year-old who managed to put X's next to two major sins in a single instant: Thou Shall Not Kill and Thou Shall Honor Thy Father. I think we can even put an X next to Keep Holy the Sabbath since murder is probably just an itty bit worse on Sunday. Go big or go home, right?" he grimly joked. She squeezed his hand again. She figured it would be inappropriate to jokingly contribute that he had also broken Thou Shall Not Steal when he stole her as promised.

Lisa could never see him in the same way again, not ever. She did not feel sympathy for him because it would be an insult that would devalue and degrade everything he had overcome. He was not a victim and he would not permit her to consider him as such. No, he was not a monster that she pitied. No. He was the man she knew. The shame, the ever-elusive torment that shadowed his every waking moment, the shame that she understood but could never define for his particular situation was now clear: he was ashamed of what he had allowed himself to become in his desperate attempt to avoid being a victim of his father's insanity and violence. He had paid the price of freedom by losing his mother's life, his innocence, his potential, and his soul, all in one round of bullets. Lisa's shame had originated with her rape, but it had turned into shame over her own personal self-loathing and disappointment, her inability to be anything other than a lost girl who could only look out the window and wish for companionship. Her shame had been simple. His shame was much greater. Nevertheless, they understood each other and no one else could.

"Say something, Lisa," he pleaded, his voice small and exposed.

"I thought you were a lousy shot?" she exhaled between tears, adding an uncomfortable chuckle to it.

Jackson huffed a short laugh of mutual awkwardness and sniffed. She assumed that he must have been crying, but she didn't move to confirm that. She didn't feel any drops fall down upon her cheek or neck, so his tears must have remained imprisoned with the rest of the dark secrets he concealed in Pandora's Box. The thing about Pandora's Box, though, was that when it was opened and all the horrors of the world had escaped, only one thing remained: hope.

"I am a lousy shot," he exclaimed with a chuckle. "When the media reported the incident, it was about a husband and a housewife killed in a car accident. The Company found out about the lunatic eight-year-old who went berserk and killed his father, so they sent someone to check on me and keep things handled."

"Samuel?"

"Samuel," he confirmed. "He was a bright up and coming kid at the Company and they were giving him the easy jobs. He was to verify the report that I was a prodigy. When he gave me a shooting test, I couldn't land a single shot. The entire paper target at the range was completely intact when I was done. He told the Company that the reports were exaggerated and that I didn't have what they wanted."

"Obviously you did," she supplied.

"I did. I always suspected that the foster care system I was in was actually a Company system because they left me alone and I had a decent life until I went off on my own. They gave me what I needed and left me to my own devices, exactly as I wanted it to be. When I was eighteen and had just graduated from high school, the Company approached me and conducted an interview. I was emotionally separated from my identity, I had no ties, I acted on logic and fact rather than reacting on feelings and instincts. And I could use a knife in ways most people only have nightmares about."

Lisa felt cold as Jackson told her his employment qualifications. It wasn't anything new to her, but it was definitely a rehash of previously acquired knowledge that she could do without hearing or thinking about again.

"I still couldn't shoot worth a shit and I still can't today," he laughed. "Maybe the old bastard was right, that shooting took instinct and intuition, not math and calculations," he briefly considered. "The Company came up with a theory that I could shoot, but I had somehow amputated that ability when I cut off my soul." It was a cruel turn of phrase, Lisa thought, as her mind echoed the claim repeatedly. "Regardless, I was a prodigy in many ways. Long story short, I went to college while simultaneously studying at the Company. I shot up the ranks and quickly joined Samuel and many others as a top-level Manager. I was one of the youngest people to ever earn the rank of Manager…maybe even the youngest. We were the ones entrusted with the big jobs, the international work that ranged in the multi-millions."

"That's…nice," Lisa hesitantly complimented, not really knowing what she could say in response to any of that.

Jackson grinned to himself. "Thanks," he politely responded to her dilemma, and the fact that she could hear the smile in his words made her feel better.

"So you really don't hate women?" she deduced, bringing the conversation to a new place.

"No." She had theorized some time ago that Jackson was secretly aware of the need for equality and balance, but his arguments and contempt always seemed to contradict that. "I have no respect for feminine weakness and whininess. I don't care about all of those emotional problems that women concoct and then battle. I don't want to hear about a woman's hormones or mood swings as an excuse."

He wanted to see a woman who was strong, unlike how he viewed his mother. He saw his mother as a fragile, reluctant pushover who let her husband control her. While that may be true, Lisa could only see the female side of the equation. His mother had to keep the peace in order to attempt the semblance of normalcy in their household. She nurtured Jackson, supported him, and danced with him. She let him be himself, even if that person wasn't the macho man his father demanded. She tried to give him a typical American boy childhood at the cost of her own life. The pity that Lisa felt wasn't to be wasted on Jackson. It was to be directed where it was valued: his mother. She had earned Lisa's sympathy for being the unspoken hero who would never receive credit for every punch she had to endure. She may have been too stupid to fight back or realize that she had a bad deal—that was impossible for Lisa to determine—but she had been smart enough to love her son unconditionally and never falter in that love. That love was the momentary hesitation Lisa had seen in Jackson's eyes when he spotted the brutal scar across her chest. That love was the attentiveness in which he listened to her recount her rape. That love was the compulsion he had to confess that he would never sexually assault her. That love was the man who had no clue what to do with a grieving woman and now was protectively wrapped around her in bed, trusting her as he relinquished his deepest secrets into her hands.

"I want to see a woman who respects herself enough to do the job and do it well," he concluded.

"So act like a lady, but think like a man?"

"Not so chauvinistic," he responded. "More like, think like a man, act like a man, be a lady."

"That's not chauvinistic at all," she retorted. "You're still a pig."

"You're still an annoying question-asking nag of a woman."

"Thank you, Jackson," she said somberly.

"For calling you a nag? Anytime."

"No, I mean…"

"I know."

She said it anyway. "Thank you for sharing that with me."

"Thank you for listening…and for not pitying me" he added timidly.

A heavy silence filled the room. "I could never pity you." He could hear the "but," the unsaid words that protested at the threshold of her lips, begging to be freed.

Lisa closed her eyes and pushed herself toward sleep, intentionally avoiding what she wanted to say. The undeclared words remained unspoken aloud, but they sounded out through the empty hallways of her mind as sleep grew larger and began to engulf her: I could never pity you…but I could love you.

Jackson stretched just a little so his lips could connect with her wet cheek in the softest of chaste kisses. If she could hear his thoughts, she would have heard something not unlike her own: Of course you don't pity me…and that's why I love you.

---

Lisa woke up several hours later, but she didn't move. She was entangled in Jackson's relentless grip, but she was grateful for it because it made her feel safe. Six years ago, or even seven months ago, the idea of being safe in Jackson's arms would have turned her stomach upside down. Now, it seemed unnatural for it to be any other way.

He had mentioned at the start of his story that his father's name was Ritter…that his family name was Ritter. Rippner was clearly a tribute to his ultimate creator, the lesser god who damned him for all eternity. For some reason, Lisa was just a little surprised that most of Jackson's aliases—not all, but most—were variations on R names when it made logical sense that he would want to avoid that connection. Little Jack Ritter had killed his father in an understandable moment of vengeance and had become Jackson Rippner, the cold Manager with ice for eyes.

There was a question that had hovered over her mind for months since she learned that Jackson had killed his father. It was a silly, childish question, but the answer would impact how she connected with him on the most fundamental level. "Jackson?" she whispered.

"Hmm?" he groaned from his place of rare tranquility, the zone between the escape of the unconscious world and the harshness of the conscious world.

"Whose eyes do you have?" she dared to ask, her voice never louder than a light breeze outside the window.

"Mmm mother's," he automatically replied in a rather garbled mumble, not awake enough to protest this line of questioning or to come up with a snide retort while avoiding the topic.

Lisa closed her eyes and began to dream for the day that she could stop imagining Bill Ritter in command of Jackson's blue eyes and start seeing Margaret Dillon warmly looking out at her.

---

Lisa awoke bright and early Saturday morning, feeling as if she had experienced the best night's sleep in weeks, which was odd considering how few hours she had actually rested. That sliver of time apparently had been enough. The pain of her mother's death still resounded throughout her being, but after hearing Jackson's tale of woe, Lisa flipped the proverbial switch and rationalized a remedy: she would not miss her mother, but instead would celebrate that she had one present for this long in her life. Grieving was over. Healing could at last begin.

Jackson was still coiled around her, a harmless hibernating snake in this state, but she didn't know what she was in for if she disturbed him. He had shared everything with her only a short time ago and he had to recognize that the revelation would alter their relationship forever. Lisa was unsure of the man lying next to her, if he would awaken with resentment and regret in his heart, or if he would join her in viewing the world in Technicolor after the tornado had carried them from Kansas to Oz.

Since moving into the house, Lisa and Jackson had shared household chores and responsibilities. Saturdays were their outside maintenance days while Sundays were their inside cleaning days. Because it was the middle of winter, lawn mowing had become a thing of the past (much to Jackson's immense satisfaction), and occasionally scraping and salting the sidewalks had become a thing of the present (much to Jackson's immense disappointment). Lisa, however, usually occupied herself with the garden in the climate-controlled year-round greenhouse that Frank and Jackson had built for her.

Lisa barely moved so that she might loosen her way out of Jackson's arms, but that feather-light motion was enough. "Morning already?" he inquired groggily.

"Yeah."

He pulled his arms off of her, and rubbed his face and eyes roughly. He was a sad little creature on his lazy mornings, and lazy mornings had been few and far between for them. He had savored a couple when they were on the road, so Lisa knew how to turn on her "poor you" voice just enough to annoy him. She opted for giving him a free pass on the mockery this time.

He let himself detach from her and fall flat onto his back on her side of the bed. She rolled over and only then appreciated how much her side ached from being completely stationary for so long. It was a pleasant ache when she compared its worth to the value of the information he had chosen to share with her. She turned around so that she was now on her right side, the front of her body squished against his side. Her head was on her pillow, but a sudden burst of bravery empowered her and she allowed her head to rest on his shoulder. She chased out the individual wrinkles on his navy blue t-shirt with her fingers and smoothed the material to fit his defined chest.

"Everything has changed," he proclaimed as if he were an outside commentator on their lives.

Their mothers were dead. They were partially to blame. They were now intertwined in a way beyond their wildest speculation, a connection that Lisa could have never assumed she would share with the guy in line behind her at the airport. "Things have been changing for months," she brushed it off. "The only difference is that I don't have to use assumptions anymore. I know who you are now."

"You only know what I told you."

"I know what I know firsthand, and now I know what you consider to be the origin story of your Super Villain existence. I think I'm doing alright in the 'Who is Jackson?' department."

He snatched her hand into his own with the speed of an uncoiled snake awakened from its long slumber. He brought it to his lips and kissed it before returning it to his chest. He gazed down at her, his dark lashes concealing his blue eyes and making them appear black. "And you're still here."

"You know just as much bad stuff about me. And you're still here."

---

Their Saturday finally began. Jackson shoveled the sidewalk, cursing under his breath about hating snow with every shovelful he moved. He was grateful that it hadn't snowed any more than what Frank called "just a little bit" because "we don't get much around here." If this was "just a little bit," Jackson dreaded what a lot would look like. As he worked, sprinkles of white fell from the sky in fine, barely visible particles that were felt more than seen. He would certainly see it the next time he cleaned up outside.

In the greenhouse, Lisa pushed up the sleeves of her thick turtleneck sweater so she could trim her little pink roses without damaging them. Anna had been persistent in the necessity of a greenhouse that offered year-round produce. Lisa ended up being startled out of bed one Saturday by the sound of sawing, drilling, and hammering in the backyard. A week later, Anna was giving her specific instructions on how to keep the roses in bloom, how to make sure the tomatoes were large and not too soft, and how to pick the cucumbers at just the right time. They had set up a fairly decent supply of almost every herb and vegetable they knew of and some they hadn't even known existed. The fruit was in low supply because Anna assured her that she wasn't ready for the big leagues just yet.

The greenhouse door opened and Jackson rushed in. "Feels good in here," he commented as Lisa tipped over just the right amount of water from her watering pot onto her thirsty roses. "Everything's looking good." He gently pushed aside some bright green leaves so he could see the ripeness of one of the tomatoes. He wasn't particularly fond of tomatoes, but even he had to admit that it looked rather appetizing. "The peppers?"

Lisa smiled broadly, especially pleased with herself. "They're coming along nicely," she bragged. "I can't wait for the bell peppers."

"Good. Oh, I have a surprise for you!"

"Hmm?" she asked, not looking away from her work. He sneaked up behind her and slid his freezing cold hands under the back of her sweater, warming them on the angular shape of her lower waist. She squealed and started jerking around, but he held her in place.

"You asshole!" she screamed, unable to keep from giggling despite absolutely hating him for putting his cold hands on her.

He laughed and removed his hands, holding them up in surrender. She wheeled around and slapped at his chest and arms. "You." Slap. "Are." Slap. "A." Slap. "Total." Slap. "Ass!" Slap, slap, slap.

The more she hit him, the more manically he laughed. It felt good to have freedom for the first time in his life. There was no one there to tell him how wrong he was or to be disappointed in him for not being good enough. There was no one there to tell him to be worse, to measure up to the cold-bloodedness required for his occupation. There was no one there to resent him as an outsider, an unwelcomed predator that most people could sense in their presence. There was just the two of them, Jackson and Lisa, mistakes of nature who had found one another once to bad results, twice to better results, and thrice to honest results. They were real people and no longer just fictional characters that they had devised for their own outward appearances and survival.

---

Jackson was already hard at work on the computer when Lisa came inside. She heard the washing machine running in the background and laundry was part of their Sunday routine—and this was Saturday. Jackson never broke his routine.

"You might want to see this," he said, summoning her to the dining room table. He vacated his chair and gestured for her to take it. He reached around her and clicked play on the video. She watched the screen as he prepared hot chocolate in the kitchen.

"Oh my god," she gasped. He barely heard her over the boiling milk. He filled both mugs, adding marshmallows in abundance to Lisa's mug and sparsely to his own. "Victor's dead," she summed-up when Jackson set her cup down in front of her. She picked it up by the handle and downed a burning sip. "Is it real or did the Company do it?"

Jackson exhaled. He pulled the other chair close to hers and sat down. He placed his mug on the table away from the computer. "Your mother was killed by the Company," he confirmed for her. "And Victor was the Manager who did it."

Lisa grew pale and felt flashes of hot and cold rush through her body as the shock reverberated in her nerves. "Victor killed…" was all she could manage. The theories were one thing, but hearing it now as a fact from the expert, that was something else entirely.

"I think that Victor actually cared for your mother," Jackson hypothesized. Lisa gave him a wide-eyed look of disbelief. "Hear me out," he requested with his palm flat out as a sign of neutrality. "You know I don't sentimentalize things, but I really think he cared for her. He was most likely forced into finishing the job and when it was done, he killed himself, I dare say out of guilt."

"The Company wouldn't have ordered him to kill himself? Wouldn't they have killed him before he had the chance to even consider it?"

"No—too much attention. They would have called him back in and prepared him for his next job, whenever that may be. He obviously didn't go back in and he opted for taking the noble way out." Lisa could swear that she heard respect in Jackson's voice as he looked to the picture of Victor with the article entitled "Man Commits Suicide After Girlfriend's Death in Car Accident."

"What does this mean? For us?"

"It means the Company isn't likely to invest too many more Managers on the Reisert family," Jackson surmised confidently. "I was one of the top and I'm now—how shall I put it—on inactive duty for the foreseeable future. Victor must have been good too if they put him in for a long-term assignment, but that obviously didn't go over very well. And of course there's Samuel," Jackson began, but trailed off without further comment. He settled for offering an analogy instead. "We've ticked off enough customer service representatives at the call center that we're now going to get a district supervisor on the line to deal with our problem directly."

Lisa sucked in a sharp breath. "I don't think I like the sound of that."

"I know I don't like the sound of that." He took a swig of hot chocolate as if it were straight vodka.

---

When Monday night came, Lisa retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. She wanted Jackson with her, but she was not going to beg him to join her like a needy, emotional woman because he would surely scorn and ridicule her for such weakness. Instead, she took a long bath in plain hot water while wishing she had scented oils or bubbles to help her relax. When she stepped out of the bath, her long hair caught her attention.

Jackson had told her long hair was either a fashion statement or an embodiment of one's issues, the angst-filled burden one chose to wear in a physical incarnation. It was time for a transformation. She was ready to move on. Her life had changed. Her family had changed. Her friends had changed. Her perspective of herself as well as Jackson had changed. It was time for her to remove the weight she had accumulated over six years and go forward.

She toweled off and put on her flannel pajama bottoms and the white tank top she wore underneath her matching button-up flannel top. She would put on the flannel top later. She pulled out the scissors from her bathroom drawer and set them on the countertop as she combed through her still wet hair. She had changed so much that she seriously considered looking in the mirror to meet this new person, to see who had replaced the Lisa of old that everyone consistently kept down in the mud.

It was time. She had to look in the mirror.

Lisa slowly looked upward and commenced analyzing the reflection, starting at the bottom. Her waist was the first part she could see in the mirror over the counter and it was slender, but it lacked the curves of her former self. She could see the faint outline of her ribs protruding from her white tank. Her breasts, once plump and perky, were now hollow and shrunken, as if they had realized the odds of being used for the purpose of fun or food had dwindled drastically. The strangely shaped bones and cartilage that composed the rest of her upper chest above her shirt were far more evident than she had ever recalled seeing before. The last time she had looked into a mirror, that area had been covered with smooth, thick skin that made her look solid and healthy. Her shoulders were caved in and her arms were nothing but several mounds of muscle mass attached to bone with skin draped over them like a dress a size too big. Her neck was tight and a little too taunt, and this did nothing but draw more negative attention to her anemic, pale, bony body. Her jaw was long and angular; the baby fat of her twenties was now completely gone. Her face didn't have any wrinkles or crevices, but where there should have been texture and plumpness, there was more skin hanging on to bone for dear life. Her eyes, once not unlike Disney Princess eyes, were now bugged-out due to a lack of fat and natural collagen around her eyes. The dark purple circles that surrounded her red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes made her look like she had been beaten daily by her cocaine dealer.

She didn't look old, but she definitely looked mature and worn.

Her eyes made her gulp in horror. She saw their color and couldn't identify it, nor could she remember what color they had been before she had cut off communication with her body. Had they been green? Brown? Hazel? Blue? She wasn't even sure what hue they were now. It was as if the shade evaded her, changing right before her intense scrutiny as if to keep her guessing. Panic overwhelmed her and she clutched at the counter as she gasped for air. She made direct eye contact with herself and years of silence on both their parts left them with plenty to say to each other.

Her body was angry that it had been mistreated by her rapist and then by herself. It had done nothing to deserve her skipping meals and working out more than was healthy. She had not been touched in years by affectionate people. Sincere or not, people needed that human touch. Even babies required contact for their first few months in order for their bodies to form correctly or else they would bruise from a lack of touching. Her eyes chastised her for her insolence, for being such a monster on the inside that it had no choice but to personify itself outwardly like a demon altering the appearance of the possessed.

Those same eyes that glared at her relentlessly were bitter and utterly livid at her for not doing everything she should be doing in a regularly scheduled way. There had been little genuine laughter, the kind of laughter that would bring a person to tears and cleanse the soul of negativity. There had been no touching. There had been no special treatment, no special spa days or relaxing moments here and there. There had been no sex, no arousal to put a skip in her heart and an adrenaline rush of hormones and endorphins in her system.

Her body was ashamed of her, her eyes asserted, because she had disrespected it in every way she could think of doing. She made her form pay the ultimate price for her love of darkness. A body left in darkness would go blind. A body left in silence would go deaf. A body left untouched would decay and blow away on the first light wind to swoop through the area.

Lisa clutched a handful of hair and sawed through the wide clump with the scissors.

"What the hell—" Jackson quickly evaluated the scene before him. In rapid reaction time, he wrestled the scissors from her and jerked her out of the bathroom by the arm. In her bedroom, he shoved her down on the bed and put the scissors on the dresser behind him. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

"I'm cutting my hair."

"You looked like…" Jackson struggled for words and he was never one to do so. "You looked like you were a million miles away. You don't need to be playing with sharp objects right now, Leese," he condescendingly explained. Lisa ignored the patronizing tone and accepted that he was right. She had freaked out at seeing and being berated by her old friend in the mirror, and in her panic, she had started hacking at her hair. Oddly enough, the knee-jerk reaction to cut her hair had been exactly what her mirror self was irate about her doing.

"I looked in the mirror," she softly told him. Jackson closed the space between them and he knelt down on the floor in front of where she sat on the edge of the bed. "I saw her. She scared me," she whispered, hot tears burning in her sensitive eyes.

"What did you see?" he questioned, wondering what she could have seen after six years of avoidance.

"I saw how ugly I am inside, but it made its way outside." Lisa sniffed and sobbed, and then the dam broke. Jackson reached up to hug her just as she let herself fall into his arms.

He wasn't going to comfort her. That was not his area of expertise at all. He just rubbed her back and let her cry it out. A few minutes later, she regained her composure and sat up straight again. Jackson toyed with the hair she had chopped off from the rest of the long mass of golden brunette. "Let's fix that," he said as he stood and retrieved her scissors.

He crawled onto the bed behind her and put his legs on either side of her. She was acutely aware of his manhood as it pressed against her, more firm and attuned to her than it had been for all the weeks they had shared a bed on the road. He ran his fingers through her hair, smoothing it out the best he could. He made a straight cut a little above her shoulders so that her hair's baseline across the bottom would be more or less equal with the section she had already cut. He then took it in sections, pulling it together and flattening it out with his fingers to the point of perfection, and then trimming it for evenness. Lisa felt transfixed by his nurturing way, a conversion that was out of character but not disagreeable. She had been cutting his hair for months and he had always seemed to enjoy it (though he would never admit such a thing). Now, as he returned the favor, she believed he was trying to help her feel the same relaxation he felt when she combed her fingers through his hair.

When he was done, her hair was barely to her shoulders when wet and straight. He put the towel around her head and gently moved it, careful not to rub too hard. He finally finished and it took her a few seconds of delayed reaction time to notice he had completed his latest job. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to figure out what she could possibly say to the man who was now to the point of surprising her on a daily basis. His fingers trailed through her hair, twirling and playing with the locks. He quickly grew bored and moved to the back of her neck. Jackson kneaded the muscles there for a few seconds before his hands came to rest completely upon her shoulders, massaging the tension she carried there like Atlas's world. As he worked to loosen the tight muscles, he made sure he pushed the spaghetti straps of her tank top off her shoulders, dropping them limply alongside her upper arms.

Jackson wasn't sure what had taken control of his body, but it indubitably wasn't his fact based logic. The male driven part, well, that was absolutely true. After seeing her with scissors while a vacant stare emanated from her, Jackson knew he couldn't leave her alone. Helping repair her hair disaster was an act of kindness to repay all the times she had cut his hair (not that he didn't enjoy the act as much as the result, if not more so). Running his hands through her hair once he was finished was a friendly gesture. Massaging her neck was a harmless demonstration of camaraderie.

However, molesting the tender flesh that was out of her sight with his vile mouth was an inexcusable act of aggression and horror. The more he commanded himself to release her, to return to his beastly cage and not distress his captive Beauty, the more he refused to surrender the prey he had captured. Sensations that he had avoided, stirrings he had not experienced in years, absconded from his mind and memory, and took charge of his body after locking his precious logic in a coffin.

Her lips parted to speak and a moan came out when she felt the impact of his large open kisses on the back of her neck. It was an unexpected shock, but it was not entirely unwelcomed. He could feel her shiver and when she didn't protest, he took it as an invitation to continue, and monsters such as Jackson required an invitation.

He tossed the scissors and the towel holding the remains of her hair to the floor before he caressed her bare shoulders. His tongue licked just under her ear, making her cringe and giggle in a way she had forgotten she could. His hands danced over her arms, silently instructing them to lift and move about gracefully as to permit him access to all sides and angles. He even traced imaginary lines on her hands, his fingers travelling through her spread-open fingers. His mouth moved down to her right shoulder and then to her arm, where he pecked chaste kisses at random intervals.

Perhaps it was seduction. Perhaps it was worship. For Jackson, the line between the two was almost imaginary.

"I don't know who you saw in the mirror," he began as he abandoned her arms and slipped his hands under the front of her tank top. She flinched at the sudden contact and clutched at her shirt, holding his hands on her stomach through the fabric so he could venture no farther in either direction. "But whoever you saw is nothing compared to the woman I've seen in my memory and in my house all this time."

She turned her head over her shoulder to see his expression, and a creature possessed by lust and blinded by—dare she assume—love met her gaze. She could feel his member growing more dominant behind her and she was having trouble catching her breath as she acknowledged the repercussions of this, all of this, and everything leading up to this. Jackson was not a sexually charged man. His logic ruled everything. If he had wanted sex, he could have gotten it in any number of rational, cerebral ways that didn't involve her. Yet here he was. He wanted her and there was no logical reason in the world to explain it. She couldn't see it, not even after all these years.

"Say the word and this ends immediately," he assured her. He was not willing to stop, but he knew he would stop without hesitation, visible disappointment, or guilt if Lisa said the word. He would free his captive logic, lead a rebellion in opposition to the immorality that occupied his shell of a body, and cease his soiling of the innocent before him.

Lisa's head was directed toward him over her shoulder, but her eyes had closed as she internally scanned her body in search of the knowledge for how to be with another human being. Jackson's body had risen to the occasion…in more ways than one. But with her body, she wasn't even sure if there was a sex drive still in her somewhere. She felt like she was a virgin all over again and in many ways, she was.

Lisa opened her heavy eyelids and peered into the blue orbs that were so close to her own colorless, identity-less eyes that were foreign to her. The cold and calculating eyes that had made her afraid in the episode of violence on an airplane now felt as hot as white flame in the heat of this tension. "I trust you," she breathed.

"Don't trust me," he once more pleaded with her. "Just know that I will never hurt you. That's all I want from you." Lisa released her hold on his hands, the blockade that prevented him from exploring her chest now eliminated. Instead of feeling his way through the situation, he opted for directing her to her feet to stand with him. "Lead the way," he commanded, giving her total control of an affair that would most likely feel overwhelming to her. He did not like being a subordinate. He enjoyed the freedom and power of being in charge of a job, but this was not a job. This was…a company retreat, perhaps. He could reconcile his feelings of helplessness by reminding himself that Lisa would surely act in both their best interests.

Lisa was reluctant to take charge because she was afraid to do so and having the burden of responsibility for their first union was too much on her. She had too many sexual demons haunting her at this very moment for her to take action, any action, without shaking in fear and anxiety. "We're partners," she reminded him. "We work together."

Jackson pulled his white t-shirt over his head and tossed it to the side. Lisa's hands immediately went to his chest, her fingers tracing over the eclectic scars that decorated his torso. Had she seen him six years ago in this state, she would have seen a skinny guy whose body was too weak to carry the weight of a muscle. His chest was just as pale then as it was now, but now he had dozens of scars that told the story of his prison ordeal and his fight for life amid the Company's endeavors to erase him from existence.

The scar that caught her attention was not any number of bullet holes that she and her father put into him. It wasn't any of the jagged prison scars. It was the scar on his throat, the lightly colored mark with the texture of tissue paper. She had seen little of it during their time together because it was usually invisible in certain lighting or his collar had obstructed it. Now, she sought it out, her finger outlining it as she looked upon it with possessive pride. Jackson confiscated her hands from his chest and throat and put them at the waistband of his black sweatpants. She gave the band a slight tug, a ceremonial breaking of a champagne bottle on a ship, but she let him remove his pants and boxers with her approval. She thought she would be able to look, to take in his full appearance, but she kept her eyes locked on his, unable to return to the world of healthy sexuality just yet.

She was scared. No, she was terrified.

Jackson cupped her cheeks in his hands, his thumbs padding across the pink color that was slowly illuminating her face. "It's okay," he promised her softly in acceptance of her jitters and avoidance. She was grateful that he wasn't offended by her lack of participation, but he seemed to genuinely comprehend the situation and was willing to be patient with her. He flipped on the lamp next to her bedside before he turned off the room's bright main light. She didn't watch him as he did so. She merely stood motionless, her arms by her sides as she tried not to shake or cry.

She wanted this, she truly did, but the closer they got to The Moment, the more terror gripped her heart and squeezed. She was suffocating and the walls of this glorified box of a bedroom were caving in on her.

Jackson came up behind her and planted kisses on her neck, brushing her short hair out of his way. His free hand navigated downward and sneaked into her pants, safely rubbing over her hip bone and her lower abdomen. All of his ministrations were cautious, careful not to touch in any way that would be considered alarming. It was all about taking baby steps, not just for Lisa, but for himself as well. Lisa turned, the twist putting herself more into his arms than when he had been behind her. She rid herself of her pants and inconspicuously slipped off her panties, stepping out of them in an innocent way. Jackson took hold of the bottom of her tank and was about to pull it up over her head when she stopped him. "We can stop," he reminded her instantly.

"This stays on," she ordered, her voice hard and leaving no room for misinterpretation. To further cement her point, she crossed her arms over her torso, blocking any attempts to take her shirt off. The straps of the tank top dangled wantonly down her arms.

He wasn't going to let Lisa continue down this path of unhealthy self-destruction and evasion. He roughly jerked her arms apart, startling a yelp from her, and peeled the sleeveless garment over her head in a flash. Her hand immediately went up to cover the scar on her breast. Tears threatened to fall, but she wasn't going to humiliate herself like that, not again. All she had done as of late was cry.

He pulled her hand away from the scar. "This," he said, touching the scar for himself. He stroked his finger up and down its uneven length, feeling the hard texture over such a soft area of her form. "He's gone. This isn't his, so stop letting him have it." His chauvinistic dominance didn't shock her, but the protective slant on his control of her somehow made her feel secure. Her eyes were closed and tears silently escaped through her lashes. He gently tilted her chin up. "Look at me, Leese." She obeyed and if he had a heart to break, it would have crumbled into a million pieces at the secrets her eyes shared with him in a single instant. "I see nothing in you that isn't pure perfection. That scar was your power six years ago. Make it your power now. Don't let him win. This is my moment…now let me steal you."

Lisa inched back onto the bed. Jackson eased onto the bed with her, his arms supporting him as he straddled her. He continued his mission to touch every part of her with his mouth, but he could feel her panicking. All she could see was a strange form shadowing over her in broad daylight as her backside burned on the pavement, her body was violently torn, and her will was threatened into submission. Jackson was here with her, in their house, and this was now, not then. Her brain yelled that repeatedly, yet her nerve center couldn't hear it. It was all about fight or flight.

He backed off and let himself fall onto the bed next to her. "I'm sorry," she said. "Jackson, I'm so sorry. I'm trying, I just—"

He leaned over and put his index finger over her lips to silence her. "No. We're not doing this, not until you're ready. If you're never ready, then we just won't."

"I want to—"

"This is just like my story," he reiterated, trying a new tactic for explanation. "You wanted it and wanted it, but you couldn't handle it until you were ready. You're not ready for this, Leese. Don't suffer because you think I want this or that you should be doing it. Don't, just don't."

"Jackson, I'm—"

"Don't apologize," he insisted. "I more than understand everything that's going on in your head right now. That's something I can understand, remember?" He was right. Facts, history, logic, reality were all things he specialized in interpreting, but emotions were incomprehensible. What was happening now, Lisa's fear, was all determined by simple facts. Lisa's desire was to be with him, but when he was there, memories that he was not responsible for rushed at her and left her stunned. On that same note, memories that he was in fact responsible for would return and remind her of why he continually insisted that she not trust him. What she needed was a partner, an equal who understood and could guide her—not lead her or make her lead him.

Lisa sat up straight in bed and looked down at Jackson's stretched out form as he lay naked atop her bed covers. He observed her, unmoving and calm, as to not startle her in her brittle state. She saw him, all of him, and she realized that this was the man she trusted her life with on a daily basis and he was not the savage who had violated her for no reason at all.

Lisa tugged at Jackson's arm, forcing him to sit up with her. "I want you as my partner," she declared. "My partner can't be on top and I can't be on top of my partner because we're equal." The thought of a man, even Jackson, being on top of her as she gave herself away horrified her. She could not do it.

Jackson nodded slowly, waiting for her to reach her point. She slid herself a few inches closer to him and climbed into his lap. He smiled proudly at her, amazed by how she had overcome yet another obstacle that had presented itself as a barrier between herself and normalcy. He arranged his legs so she could be more comfortable and she wrapped her legs around his waist, the stage set for the final performance.

That revelation was all they needed to start the next phase of their relationship. Sitting together, wrapped in one another's supportive arms, they released the tension that had been building beneath the surface. They weren't able to make love for many reasons, but they had sex and it was not raw or crude. It wasn't violent or aggressive. It was gentle and fluid as they rode the waves of feeling, both experiencing something they hadn't felt in ages and it had nothing to do with the sensations of sex. They felt something, period. They felt emotions. They felt the needs of the other before their own. They fled a universe that had no place for them and they created their own new kingdom, a realm within the world of their house. They were attentive and thorough, considerate of one another's idiosyncrasies while accommodating emotional and mental requirements that they were aware of but did not vocalize at that moment. They made sure both found pleasure amid all the pain they felt on a daily basis.

The sex was more than just fun or cold comfort: it was fulfillment. They had satisfied a level of necessity that they never knew they had until they accepted the inevitability of their union as partners in every way. It was a moment six years in the making and for both of them, it was the only moment where everything was right for once.

Their sex may have been unconventional, maybe even weird, but that was their relationship specialty. They weren't normal, and nobody did not normal better than Lisa and Jackson.

---

Lisa awoke to find herself not on her pillow, but on a scarred bare chest. She turned her head to look up at him, not bothering to remove herself from her human pillow. She smiled sleepily, contentedly. He returned the smile. This Jackson was completely harmless with his droopy morning eyes and his relaxed, stubble-covered jaw. He was so far from the Manager he had been that Lisa wasn't sure if he could ever again flip the switch and return to his evil ways, but he had always been one to rise to any challenge.

"I guess I don't have to get you a card now," he mused. Lisa squinted her eyes as she attempted to decipher that bizarre code. "Happy Valentine's Day, honey," he picked on her.

When Lisa recognized the date, she groaned and buried her face in his chest. His abdominal muscles tensed as the slight movement tickled him. Lisa faced him once more, a pretty blush spreading across her cheeks. Valentine's Day was the last thing on her mind and she couldn't believe that the two least traditional people in the world had inadvertently participated in a traditional holiday.

"We are such a cliché! I can't believe we did that in time for Valentine's. So embarrassing," she mumbled.

"Well, you know how we are. Boy stalks girl, girl meets boy, boy threatens girl and slams her into walls, girl beats and shoots boy, girl and boy have excellent sex in their suburban safe house. We're storybook lovers from start to finish." Jackson's fingers played with a crinkled lock of her auburn hair. He was taken aback by how short it was now that it was dry and her natural uneven wavy curl had reappeared. It looked like it barely came below her ears. He was fond of it when it was longer, but he understood why she had to alter it. She was a different person now and so was he.

"You definitely know how to seduce a girl," she contributed to his commentary.

"I wouldn't say that," he seriously answered. "I don't get around much."

"That surprises me and yet it doesn't surprise me." It was his turn to gaze blankly at her in confusion. "I mean, I figured you'd go out and take care of business, so to speak, however you needed to, but you also don't seem like someone who…has business to take care of."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"No! I mean…you just aren't very, I mean, you aren't a typical guy. You actually have thoughts that aren't about sex 24/7." He remained expressionless. "Right?" she added uncertainly, now doubting her conclusion.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded. "I usually have more important things. My previous experiences have been business related and when at all possible, I avoid that. It's a distraction I can't afford."

"How many?" Lisa brazenly questioned.

Jackson gaped at her in amusement and shock. "What?"

She bit her lip teasingly. "C'mon, how many?"

"I can count them on one hand," he vaguely responded. "And you, Sister Lisa?"

Lisa looked dark for a moment, but it quickly passed. "Aside from…" She didn't have to say it. It went without saying. "Two."

"Really? Let me guess: the dumb jock who seduced the naïve cheerleader junior year of high school and the love of your life who left after he got what he came for in the first place? No pun intended, of course."

"I hate it when you do that," she muttered irritably. She traced circles across his chest, connecting scars like she would connect the dots. "You researched that too. Pervert."

Jackson chuckled. "I swear," he stated, holding up his right hand. "I looked up no such thing. I just got lucky. Just like those two guys apparently," he added, earning a smack from Lisa. "I was right?" he asked with a cackle, not letting go of this line of questioning.

"More or less," she reluctantly admitted. "It was the dumb jock seducing the naïve cheerleader after senior prom and it was my first, and only, real boyfriend in college. After we broke up, I pretty much dove into my studies and my work and then…then I lost interest in that sort of thing." Again, it went without saying. "Until last night." Lisa scooted up closer to the head of the bed so she could still use Jackson's chest as a pillow, but she could play with his hair as well. It was looking a little shaggy as it hung sloppily in his face. "And you?"

"Nice try."

"I told you mine…"

Jackson shook his head and exhaled. "Four and a half."

Lisa's eyes bugged out at the incredible revelation. "Really? Do I even want to know what the half is?"

"One and two were for 'Company Training,' a professional development seminar, if you will. Three and four were business assignments. The half was the assignment who passed out from the drug I gave her before I had to go further."

"That's…" Lisa searched for the words. "Really disturbing."

"I wake up every morning and ask myself, 'What can I possibly do today to disturb Lisa's fragile sensibilities?'"

"I knew it." Lisa's fingers stopped their inspection of his scars. "Last night…" Jackson's poker face was on, not willing to give her any assumptions one way or another. "Was that a one-time deal?" She hated being on the instigator side of this conversation, but she knew that was the only way it would be addressed.

"Do you want it to be?"

"I asked you first." Now she was starting to think like Jackson.

"I wouldn't object to waking up in this bed for a long time to come." There was no other way he could say it and even that was a struggle to say. It wasn't that the sentiment was hard to vocalize or that the truth was difficult to admit. It was that the vulnerability associated with the truth and the sentiment would give her the power to destroy him if she so desired. He trusted her, but his trust had limits. It wasn't a pretty concept that he couldn't trust another living being, not even the late Samuel, but it was the best he could do.

This was not a fairy tale. His curse could not be broken. He would not transform into her prince. They would not live happily ever after. The best they could do was live and remember that they did.

"I wouldn't object either."

---

"And you were how old?"

"Fifteen. Wait, no, sixteen." At Jackson's eyebrow raise, she tried again. "Sixteen, I'm positive."

"And why did the family relocate to Miami from Dallas?"

"Dad's work transferred him to the Miami office."

"And what's the name of his company?"

"Marshall & Associates."

"And what you told me on the plane about when he retired—"

"—was accurate."

"Your mother after the transfer did…?"

"Corporate party planning with…hmm…" Lisa struggled to remember the company that first hired her mother in Miami. She snapped her fingers a few times. "I'm drawing a blank. She didn't stay with them long. Most of her work was in Dallas and after the move, she wasn't up to doing too much. She hated Miami and didn't want to be part of it. She despised the traffic, which is ironic coming from a native Texan."

Jackson scribbled on the wall, now reduced to using a ball-point pen as to fit the new content between the wide ink marks of the permanent markers they had been using until now. He clicked the pen several times, an oddity for someone who was usually so together. "Why did Joe retire when he did?"

Lisa shrugged. "Why not? He and mom were at a boiling point about a year before…my problem," Lisa sighed. "She was a mess. They were falling apart. He couldn't control any of it or make it better. They decided to get a divorce. He became obsessed with making sure I was okay at all times, and as we both know, that got worse after…my attack," she forced out. "After the divorce but before the attack, Mom couldn't get back to Dallas fast enough." Lisa studied Jackson's face for a clue to his thoughts. "What are you thinking?"

"Maybe your dad was accidentally exposed to a Company operation. We had several in Miami around the time of his retirement. Maybe he was scared and decided to drop off the radar?"

"So he's the one who knows something, not me?"

Jackson put his free hand in his pocket and continued to click the pen with his other hand. "Maybe he knows something and you're the only one who can fish it out of him. He's not in a situation where he could be the target of a job very easily. He would be suspicious of outsiders since he's not exactly a social guy, so infiltration would be difficult. If his daughter, however, is brought into the equation, then there's a bargaining chip that would jog his memory."

"Just like on the flight."

"Exactly like on the flight."

---

Lisa paid the pharmacy clerk in cash. When she turned around with her small paper bag, Anna was standing behind her. "Anna!" Lisa exclaimed a little too excitedly. She felt like the teenager who was caught sneaking out the window at night.

"Elise, sweetie, how are you?" Anna asked, hugging Lisa without hesitation.

Lisa patted her back gratefully. "I'm fine," she said, pulling out of the hug. "I just needed to sort out some things."

Anna nodded knowingly. "Your hair looks great," she praised, and Lisa wasn't sure if it was a polite acknowledgement of the makeover she had undergone or if it was a sincere compliment. Moments like these were always unpleasant for Lisa.

"Thanks," she shyly replied.

"You look different," Anna noted, observing Lisa carefully.

Lisa put on her best hotel manager's smile and shrugged. "Just the haircut, nothing else," she insisted, hoping this conversation would soon end.

"No, there's something different about you."

Lisa felt guilty and even a little dirty for the birth control pills in her bag. She and Jackson had a rational, adult conversation about how things should be and they came to the conclusion that it would be best for Lisa to return to the prescription she had been on since her rape. Before that, condoms had been her choice form of birth control since she had rarely been sexually active, but after her assault, the pill was the closest she could get to invincibility despite its lack of 100% guaranteed protection. Jackson had tweaked a few records at her old pharmacy and in no time flat, her old prescription had been transferred to the locally owned pharmacy in Stoneybrook under her current alias.

"I came to terms about a lot of stuff," Lisa admitted. "I think I'm finally going in a direction that's healthy for me."

---

March, 2012

Agent King pinned a picture of Lisa's mother and Victor to the theory board in his apartment. Papers were stacked up in all corners and boxes of files were strewn haphazardly across the floor. It was like an obstacle course in his living room and a more appropriate comparison could not have been made given all the obstacles he was currently facing in an attempt to crack the Rippner case wide open.

He looked at the stills from the security camera at Trump Tower and compared them to the photograph from the local fair in a town called Stoneybrook, Connecticut. It was them alright. Jackson Rippner was not a man to stand still, to wait patiently while people were out looking for him. He would take an active approach to secure the situation so he could return to his version of normalcy. With Lisa Reisert in tow, however, Rippner was a puzzle. He seemed to have a specific agenda when he took a plane with Reisert to Switzerland, and King was certain the agenda was to empty out his accounts. A man like Rippner would surely have a nest egg that was quite sufficient for several years on the run, but could he risk running with a hostage? Reisert seemed to be cooperating and there was a distinct lack of fear on her face—Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?

On top of all of this, there was the anonymous phone call warning King to back off. Someone else was watching. Rippner's people would want the authorities chasing him because that would force him to remain on the run and he would be more apt to make a mistake that way. Allowing the law to do their jobs would in essence do the Company's job for them. If it wasn't Rippner's people calling him, was it Rippner himself? The voice seemed supportive of Rippner's side, but he or she wasn't sympathetic to his cause.

King stared at the photo from the fair, hoping it would come to life and explain everything. Right now, the only explanation he had was that Rippner and Reisert were hiding somewhere near Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Even if all the evidence disproved that idea, his gut instinct was the only entity in the world that he could trust. Until he found solid evidence, he was at the mercy of his anonymous caller.

---

Lisa was restless, so she untangled herself from Jackson and slipped out of bed. She quickly dressed and quietly descended the stairs. Something had been nagging her for days and she couldn't put her finger on it. She stopped at the wall and gazed at it with reverence. The wall had essentially become a deity in its own right, somewhere between the commonality and usefulness of a Magic Eight Ball and the omnipotence of The All-Seeing Eye. They had done everything with it that they could think of and an answer seemed to tread farther away from them with each passing day.

Lisa touched her side of the wall, starting with her own picture and name. Her finger followed the lines that connected her mother, her brothers, and finally her father.

Her fingertips remained on her father's name before trailing upward to his picture. She traced the creases on his face, reminding herself of the man she hadn't seen in months and whose face was sadly becoming more blurred in her memory.

She gasped. "Oh my God." Her hand covered her mouth with a loud clap that echoed in the dark room.

Her father was with the Company.

---

TBC…