Hugs to all those kind readers who have taken the time and trouble to review!
I hope this chapter won´t disappoint. It was difficult to write, and I´m afraid Erik does not appear in it. He will not remain absent much longer, though!
I do not own POTO, or its characters.
Why did you do this to us? How could you do this to us? Why? Why? Why...?
Christine felt a dull type of satisfaction at filling out an entire sheet of notebook paper with the word. It repeated itself over and over again in her head, and she had the vague notion that by setting it onto paper, she might exorcise it from her thoughts. Sleep was impossible, after all, in spite of how tired she felt.
She had not had time to shower before she had collected her overnight bag and fled the house. She still could smell Erik on her skin, and she could nearly feel his fingers upon her. The baby moved within her, delivering a particularly spirited kick, and she shook her head in an effort to clear her thoughts.
A shower. That´s what I need. Christine moved slowly up from the bed, leaving her stationery on the pillow. It was a little girl´s bed, with white wooden posts supporting a pink canopy. The canopy unnerved her and made her feel as though something was hovering over her; the mattress was too soft, and lying on it left her with the impression that something was trying to swallow her and not succeeding very well. A white princess style dresser and white bedside tables completed the furniture ensemble. Christine sensed the ridiculousness of her surroundings as she looked at herself in the mirror. On a sticker someone had left on the mirror, Daisy Duck simpered, her eyes peeking out in virginal coquetry from under her long lashes. Christine followed her gaze to the reflection of her own pregnant belly in the mirror.
No cell phone. Nothing to tip Erik off. In her bag there was little indeed – money, several changes of clothes, and credit cards she would never use again. As she rummaged through her overnight bag, Christine wondered idly where Erik had gone after leaving Nadir´s body in the lab. She was certain that he had not expected her to awaken.
She was also certain that he had lied to her – he had killed Nadir, then he had told her that he had dismissed him. So simple. Nadir´s sudden absence would have been ascribed to his having been fired by Erik, and life would have continued. So would the lie.
She finished showering – pink towels, tears, incoherent pleas, scrubbing, retching, and a pounding headache -- and she moved sluggishly out of the bathroom after about an hour. Her eyes were puffy, but she had calmed. There was lead in her stomach and lead in her limbs.
There was a knock at her door.
"Christine? Come out and see who´s here!" It was Ashley.
Christine checked herself in the mirror – I look like the dog´s dinner, but it can´t be helped – duly gave up on her appearance, and left the bedroom.
She paused as she heard a familiar voice in the living room. Raoul! She hurried in to see him seated on the sofa with Angela.
"We have jobs, you know. How long will we have to stay here?" Angela was saying, looking at the furnishings with patent distaste.
"You don´t have to stay here at all, honey," Ashley told her. "It´s your boyfriend´s neck on the line now that Christine´s left him."
"Raoul…I´m so sorry," interrupted Christine, and Raoul and Angela looked up at her ruefully. "I´m so glad you´re safe! Ashley told me she´d take care of your safety." She turned to Ashley. "Thank you so much for doing this! I was so worried about him. How did you get them to come back so fast?"
"We never left town," said Angela brusquely, before Ashley could answer. "Somebody torched our car."
There was a silence.
"Oh, my God," said Christine said in hushed tones. "I…I´m really sorry, Raoul."
"Yeah, me, too," he said glumly. "We went down this morning, ready to drive home – we were supposed to hit the road last night, but we got delayed..." He directed a significant glance at Ashley, who grinned at him, then stifled the grin suddenly and looked down at her lap. "…Anyhow, there it was: my Mercedes! A burned-out shell in the middle of a busy parking lot. And not one witness. I´m not sure that insurance will pay for this…"
"They´ll pay. I´ll work something out," said Angela, tapping her fingers against the sofa cushion restlessly.
"If it hadn´t taken you so long to get ready, maybe we would have been on time to stop whoever terminated the car!" commented Raoul irritably.
"Now, Raoul, that just isn´t fair!" protested Angela. "And if it was who we think it was, then you would have been in trouble…"
"Sorry," interjected Christine miserably, "I´m so sorry…"
She dropped into an armchair, her head in her hands. So soon, Erik?
Yet she knew that if Erik had truly meant to kill him, Raoul would not be sitting across the living room from her now.
"As soon as we discovered the car, Ashley called us with news of what was going on with Christine," added Angela, "and then we knew what had happened. What I don´t understand is why we don´t call the cops."
Ashley, who was lighting a cigarette, seemed to start momentarily, and she dropped her lighter. "No way we´re calling the cops! Erik St. Amand clearly has them in his pocket, and they´d give him the location of this house in a minute."
There was a silence. Christine had put off the sharp, agonizing pain of ending it all, distracted as she was by the conversation,but now it came back full-force. Raoul´s presence seemed a living reproach to her now, and guilt began to stir – and, with it, its sister-feeling, regret.
What if I just gave up? What if I just went back to Erik, no matter what he´s done? Raoul could go back to his life, and I could learn to live with…everything. She felt tired.
"The burned car was a warning, and it was intended for me," said Christine, finally. "I can´t force you into hiding this way, Raoul. I …I need to go back to Erik. Maybe we could talk…"
"No!" exclaimed Ashley so forcefully that everyone in the room gaped at her. "No," she added, more softly now, "What are you going to accomplish talking with a murderer, Christine? Nothing! He knew how you felt, and he went and murdered poor old Nadir!"
"Christine, I don´t want you to go back to him – not if he´s really killed someone again, and it looks like he has," added Raoul. "I don´t want to be used this way, as a way of blackmailing you! I want you to be free."
"This is free?" asked Christine, indicating the house. "We´re here as if in a cage…"
"Listen, honey, it´s not the Taj Mahal, but it´s all I could offer you on short notice. It´s way out in the middle of nowhere, and the family who lived here before sold it to me with the furnishings. Their names are still on the mailbox, and their nearest neighbors still think they live here. It´s the perfect safe house!"
"You bought this place?" Christine asked.
"Yeah, I thought it was a good investment. Then your little problem came up, and I thought, 'Hey, why not help out Christine?' So here we are. I think I told you that I came into a little windfall after Jack died. He had a nice little life insurance policy."
"I see. I was wondering…"
"You were wondering how it is I don´t have a steady job? Let´s just say that I´m a woman of independent means," said Ashley, smirking. She exhaled, clearly enjoying her cigarette. Christine thought of her baby and shifted in her chair uncomfortably.
"I´m glad that Jack was finally good for something," she continued. "Hell, he´s been much better for me dead than he ever was alive! Oh, don´t look so shocked!" She directed this last imperative at Raoul. "You men are all the same. You wouldn´t have believed how much I loved that son of a bitch! Didn´t matter to him, though…"
Ashley took another puff, staring off into space, unblinking, bitter, and pensive. Smoke enveloped her. Another puff, and she turned her stare on Christine. Something in the gaze chilled the younger woman, and she shuddered slightly.
Ashley smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes. "What´s the matter, Christine? Someone walk over your grave?"
That night, sleep came to Christine twenty minutes at a time, alternating with panicked awakenings and the feeling that she was falling into something dark and endless. The routine was familiar – she had experienced this torment after her father´s death, but her marriage to Erik had ended it. Cold, aloof, silent, gentle during lovemaking – she had not known what to make of him those first nights together, but somehow she had slept well beside him. She had never felt so protected in her life.
And now? She wondered whether she had ever understood Erik at all. Perhaps Ashley was right. Perhaps there was something so fundamentally missing in the psyche of a man who had killed so many times that noble feelings – like love! – were out of the question. The closeness she had felt with him lately, every bit of progress they had made as a couple, had been an illusion. Or had it? Every instinct within her, deep down, refused to believe this.
The dark silence hovering over her small, borrowed bed was oppressive. How different one silence could be from another! When she thought of silence, she thought of Erik – to be brutally honest, when she thought of nearly anything, she thought of Erik. Yet silence was such an integral part of Erik´s being. His silence as he watched her, his silence as he moved, his silence as he held her. She had often wanted words from him, but she realized now that his silences had meant more.
The abrupt separation from him – was this the final silence? She thought of Nadir's bloodied form under the sheet for the thousandth time.
The baby stirred. Christine groaned, punched her pillow, and gave up on sleep. 4 am – again. Twenty-four hours have passed since everything collapsed.
She rose and opened the bedroom door quietly. Her admiration for Erik´s grace and stealth had caused her to emulate him unconsciously, and now her footsteps were silent. She peered out into the hallway. Light was streaming from the living room, and she could hear the tapping of a keyboard; Ashley was on her laptop. Did the woman ever sleep? She seemed to be in conversation with someone in the kitchen as she worked.
"Don´t worry. It won´t be much longer, and you´ll have your new identity, a tidy sum of money, and you´ll be flying home with Christine. I wonder how the bitch´ll look in a chador?" A nasty chuckle.
Ice water flowed through Christine´s veins suddenly. She waited, listening.
"Watch what you call her!" That voice…that soft accent…! "I worry about you. Too many thoughts of Christine and your dead husband! You are not cool, not cool at all, and you should not lose your head. Maybe you will hurt Christine before this is over? If you betray me, you will pay, and you know it!"
"Calm yourself, Nadir. Geez, you guys tire me out! As if it wasn´t bad enough having Jack thinking that Christine was the Virgin Mary. God, I got sick of hearing him talk about her. He was so smitten with her, the asshole, just because he couldn´t get her into the sack! And now I get to hear you putting her on a pedestal! Hurt her? You make me want to kill her. Oh, don´t put on that face! I don´t want to kill her anymore. Damian wants his bait unharmed, and I can´t ever cross him.
"Not that I´m not tempted to! You shoulda seen Christine this morning!" Ashley´s voice went into a high, mincing, derisive soprano – "`Oh, thank you so much for saving my life and Raoul´s, Ashley, I know it´s been such a bother!'" Her voice returned to its usual smoker´s contralto now. "I mean, what an idiot! Who does she take me for, Glinda, the Good Witch of the North? And you should have seen her when I lit up a cig. She´s sitting there, right? And it really bothers her, right? But she´s such a wimp that she just sits there and takes it without saying anything. I swear I hate that bitch! She thinks that if she floats around being nice to everybody, that all the fairies, gnomes and sweet little animals from the forest will come and protect her! I´m so sick of being nice to that little wimp! I nearly lost it this morning – I think I scared her for a second there." A dry chuckle.
As she listened from the shadows in the hallway, Christine´s mouth went gradually dry – the blood coursed through her now, and her knees felt weak.
Nadir came out of the kitchen to stand over Ashley. Christine was positioned so that she could see Ashley´s back, but she drew back as Nadir came into view, frightened that he might see her. She went slightly off balance and her hand hit the wall with a dull thump as she sought to support herself against it.
Both Ashley and Nadir turned rapidly and looked at her.
Ashley smiled slowly. "So much for keeping your involvement hidden, eh, Nadir?"
Nadir had paled visibly.
"Christine…"
"How could you?" Christine gasped. She was hyperventilating; the air around her seemed to be disintegrating into a type of grey static. Nadir approached quickly and helped her into a chair.
"It is not what you think…" Nadir said quietly.
Christine sat in the chair, still hyperventilating. She was relieved when the baby moved, oblivious to the upheaval affecting her.
"Hell, yeah, it´s what she thinks," said Ashley recklessly. "We did a pretty good job of fixing Nadir up to look like a really, really dead guy, didn´t we, Christine? I mean, when I go to so much trouble to do something, I like to hear what people think of my efforts. Not that the trick was my idea – it was all Nadir´s! He didn´t want us to kill him for real, I guess…"
"Where´s Erik?" Christine hissed, recovering herself.
"He would be at home now, I think," said Nadir.
"He killed no one, he did nothing…and I left…" said Christine, her voice trembling with the enormity of the discovery.
"Well, if he killed Nadir here, the guy sure made a quick recovery!" sneered Ashley, opening a bottle of beer and taking a swallow. "Look, honey, you have to give Nadir credit for the way he managed things. He sent your husband off on a false emergency, and all he had to do was fix himself up and wait for you to find him. You have to hand it to him – he used pig intestines and blood from a slaughterhouse to give himself a distinctive aroma! Now, I did his face, and the flies were my idea…after all, he´s a fly guy!"
"They were a stupid idea!" snapped Nadir, rounding on Ashley. "Shut up!"
"I…need to go home," said Christine hurriedly. She got up, surprised that her legs could support her. Her knees still shook, and she had only taken a few feet before Ashley strode towards her and pulled her roughly backwards by her arm.
"You are an idiot!" she said through her teeth, which were clenched with rage. "You still don´t get it, do you? So now it´s time for me to spell it out for you, right?"
She did not release her purchase on Christine´s arm until Nadir wrenched her hand away roughly. Ashley laughed, an ugly laugh, as Nadir guided Christine back to the armchair, distancing her from Ashley.
"You must stay here, Christine," he said apologetically.
"Another Romeo who thinks you´re Juliet. You seem to collect them, don´t you?" said Ashley with a scornful smile. "I hope you enjoy spending time with this one as much as you enjoyed fooling around with my husband." Her voice had become quiet, icy.
"I did not 'fool around' with Jack!" snapped Christine. Her angry demeanor was a cover; she was watching Ashley now as a mouse watches a snake.
"I guess you didn´t really fool around with him, technically," said Ashley, seemingly thoughtful. "That´s what really got him going about you – you didn´t give in to him. You must have been the first woman he failed to bed since he was twelve!"
"Jack never tried to bed me!" growled Christine. "It was never like that! We were nothing more than friends – well, I thought we were friends…and he was dating Meg! If she had known he was married…"
"He dated Meg to get close to you. He got close to you to get the goods on your husband. Well, he failed on that last count," Ashley replied. "Still, I got sick of hearing about how perfect you were. The shithead was smitten with you."
There was a silence during which Christine digested all that Ashley was saying, mortified. Ashley stared at her, her hatred undisguised now.
Nadir offered Christine a bottle of water, and she accepted it absently, without a word to him. He stood behind her chair, looking down at her with obvious concern, but he was silent.
"I thought Jack was my friend, Ashley, and that´s the honest truth. Nobody knew he had a wife!"
"Least of all him!" spat Ashley. "I was supposed to be the good wife and stay at home, waiting, ready to help with Jack´s plans when he needed me while he ran around with…whoever. There he was, all excited about those frickin' skin grafts, thinking of the money to be made with that, and he completely missed the most important discovery Erik St. Amand had made. He was such a shit-for-brains!"
Christine waited expectantly. Somehow, she had completely recovered her calm. She felt numb, as though she were experiencing the conversation within someone else.
Ashley took another swig of beer. "Such an idiot, that Jack! Nobody had counted on me, though – not Jack, not anybody, not even Damian, if that´s really his name. No, no one was counting on old Ashley. I´m no slacker, though. Did you know I have a Master´s in biochem? Of course you don´t. Well, I also happen to be really observant, and one night, Jack came home drunk…" Ashley looked dully ahead into space as she remembered, and Christine realized that the beer she was drinking was not her first. "…At least, I thought he was drunk. He was talking. A lot. It seems Erik St. Amand was not happy with his little friendship with his wife, and he had trapped him in the lab, injected him with something, and interrogated him. And Jack, who never in his life told the truth to anyone, suddenly told his boss the truth about everything he wanted to know. Boy, did Jack sing! He told St. Amand that he wanted info on his research, and that he was trying to see if getting close to his wife would help him in some way. Of course, St. Amand wanted to know what Jack was planning with his wife. 'Nothing!' the wuss said to him. 'She acts like I´m a eunuch or something!'" Well, that made Erik St. Amand so happy that he left him alive, threw him out of the lab and told him never to come back."
Ashley finished her beer and stared vacantly at the empty bottle as she moved it from one hand to the other. She laughed bitterly.
"So, Jack came home in a talkative mood to say the least. He told me about everything he was doing – all the different affairs he´d been having, up to the one with Meg. He had his sights set on St. Amand´s wife. She was special. She refused to go to bed with him – and he wanted her because of that, but he wanted her so he could take her husband´s ego down a peg or two. Right in front of me, Jack started planning that crazy scheme to kidnap his boss´s wife. Did he think I was going to help him?
"He had no idea that I was thinking of something completely different. As he talked and talked, I realized what St. Amand´s little injection had done to him, and what the potential for such a drug could be. I said nothing to Jack, though. The idiot had his head so far up his ass that he completely missed it all."
Ashley fell silent, still contemplating the empty bottle, and Christine dared a question.
"You´re telling me that Erik injected Jack with some sort of a truth serum?"
"Boy, you don´t miss a thing, do you?" snarled Ashley in response. "Do you have any idea what the market potential is for a truth serum that works? Ever heard of the CIA Project MK-ULTRA, Christine?"
Christine shook her head.
"Of course not – I forget! You´re so dense that your husband never tells you anything. The CIA was so crazy to come up with an effective truth serum that it tested a bunch of drugs on different people, then interrogated them. This was in the '50´s and '60´s, you know. One of the subjects died. They´d given him LSD."
"You´re not with the CIA!" Christine interjected. Her mind was working furiously – all the implications of what Erik had discovered – a truth serum? – presented themselves, one after the other, in a never-ending parade. Yet, was this the truth? She had often doubted Ashley´s sanity, and she wondered whether outrageous lies were a symptom of her pathology.
"No shit!" Ashley responded impatiently. "I´m telling you that there are several entities that might be willing to bid for something that helps out with interrogation techniques, something that´s better than sodium pentothal, that actually works – and from what we know of your husband´s track record, this stuff really works."
"I can´t believe this!" said Christine.
Nadir cleared his throat. "I think I mentioned Frontier 4´s interest in this to you, Christine…"
"Frontier 4? Those idiots are history. St. Amand killed them all, though nobody could prove it. He started with my husband, and he killed every last one of them except Damian, who´s working with me now. He´s the one with the knowledge and connections to make our plan work, and that´s where you come in, Christine."
"I´m bait," said Christine miserably, "and you were setting a trap for me the whole time. And you helped her do this," she added, this time to Nadir, who looked uncomfortable.
"So, finally, she´s learned something!" announced Ashley.
"Look, Ashley," said Christine, "If Erik had come up with something as extravagant as you describe, he would have patented it and sold it by now!"
"Just how well do you know your husband, Christine?" asked Ashley derisively.
"You´re crazy, and I´m leaving!" Christine spat, and she turned to Nadir. "You have to help me, Nadir. I can´t believe you would do this to me. This is a joke, right? Some sort of a joke! Your playing dead, this business with a truth serum…"
"I wish it were so, Christine," said Nadir, and he looked miserable. "But I tell you that you cannot leave. There is no choice."
Ashley went to the front door and opened it, beckoning to someone. Dylan appeared and stood at the entrance, and Christine realized with a jolt that he was equipped with a sidearm.
"I´m sorry, Christine," said Ashley, "I´ve been very rude. I´d like you to meet Dylan. He´s one of your babysitters. He and Mark will make sure that you, Raoul and Angela behave."
Dylan nodded at Christine amiably, popped his gum, and at a word from Ashley, went outside again.
"Well, it´s no use keeping Raoul and Angela here," said Christine.
"Oh, they´re very useful! If you try anything, Christine, then you´ll have to worry about your dear friend Raoul, now, won´t you? I´m not so sure you´re so fond of Angela, though. I´m in agreement with you about her, you know. I don´t care for her at all. Not at all."
Alone in her room, Christine paced. It was nearly dawn now, and ideas chased each other through her mind.
A trap for Erik, and I´m the bait. All because I didn´t wait before I ran. All because I didn´t talk with him.
Was Ashley calling him now with news of where his wife was? Or would Damian be the one to do that? She could imagine the kind of language they might use. Your wife is fine, and if you want her to remain alive, then…
I can´t let this happen!
She went to the bathroom and looked through the medicine cabinet. Bandages, mouthwash, iodine…
Minutes later, she had created an iodine-tinged puddle of water on the floor. She bathed the insides of her legs with the liquid, and created a trail to the door.
She opened the door and glanced outside. Nadir was pacing just outside, his face haggard.
"Nadir!" she rasped, hoping she sounded convincing. She was perspiring; that would help. "You have to help me! I just broke water, and now I´m having contractions!"