SOMA
1.
Jackson sighed heavily and rubbed his temples, trying not to look at the crying girl in front of him. She sat bound at the wrists and ankles to a not uncomfortable looking chair. Behind her, the tenth floor view the early New York skyline hinted at yet another painfully hot day to beat upon the city.
The girl kept crying. She was really getting annoying, he thought.
"Please," she said desperately, leaning forward and trying to get his attention. "Please don't do this."
Jackson looked over at her shortly, his startling blue eyes flashing. He'd yet to say one word to her in the three hours since he'd entered the hotel room they were using to hide her. The Tribeca Grand Hotel was hardly a place where one would suspect a kidnapped heiress to be held captive for ransom.
"Please let me go," she moaned, twisting in her chair in a vain attempt to get out of the ropes that bound her. Her curling auburn hair fell in to her dark eyes, making her look all the more pitiful if it was possible.
"I'm sorry, Anna. I just can't do that," he said with a humorless smile and she burst another sound of heaving sobs.
She was Anna Carlton, the daughter of a business mogul and heiress to her father's vast fortune. She was only seventeen but could have passed for much older in her tweed channel jacket and high jimmy choo pumps; clearly a spoiled little rich girl who was no longer in her cushioned designer world.
Jackson was not her actual kidnapper. He was just the manager, they left the dirty work to common thugs. His part was to watch her for the following week and deliver her to her family and the money to his clients at the end of the ordeal. He was taking on most of the risk but at a benefit of fifteen per cent of the prophets.
She kept on crying hysterically, becoming louder than before. That wasn't safe. He stood from his place on the bed and strode over to her quickly. Terror quickly seized her eyes.
"You need to be quiet." He said firmly, as he pulled off his tie and doubled it over, turning it into a gag. "Good." He said, as she finally fell silent and let her head drop down so that those matted curls covered her pretty face once again.
Jackson sat back down, swallowing heavily. She made him nervous. The way she looked reminded him far too much of someone he most certainly cared to forget. Lisa Reisert, the only person, let alone woman to best him. Best was a relative term. More like nearly kill him and destroy the life he'd built for himself. The last time he'd seen Lisa was just after he'd been shot, and lying helplessly on her kitchen floor she'd stood over him, staring solemnly with those charming green eyes. Her eyes were as deceptive as Jackson could ever hope to be.
Jackson had woken up three days later in a sterile white hospital room. At first he'd felt an uncharacteristic feeling of dread flood his being until he realized things weren't quite as they were supposed to be. He was not handcuffed to the bed. There were no guards positioned outside the room. He wasn't even in Miami anymore, let alone facing charges of attempted man slaughter and conspiracy.
As it would turn out, many owed favors had pulled through for Jackson. People were paid off, files went missing and Jackson went missing. He spent the better part of a month in a private hospital in northern Vermont until he had fully recuperated. From there he suppressed the urge to fly straight to Miami and slit Lisa's throat. He wasn't stupid. That would have been brash and irresponsible, getting himself in trouble despite all the work that had gone into getting out of that mess by influentials who owed favors to him.
No, Jackson told himself he was taking the high road in sparing Lisa. Killing her would have felt good but it wasn't a means to an end.
Instead he'd gone to Paris and helped an old friend involved in the money laundering business. It was profitable, but short lived. That led him back to New York and his old apartment in lower Manhattan. It felt good to be home. It felt better to be doing something that would leave him with a high six figure digit pay check.
The door to the hotel room flung open and a scraggly balding man with long matted gray hair stumbled into the room. He could have passed for homeless had it not been for the tailored black suit and silk shirt he wore. The overwhelming stench of cigarettes and cheap cologne followed Bradley wherever he went. He was one of the actual kidnappers, and Jackson despised him instantly upon meeting him. He was a disgusting junkie and a thief and as far as Jackson could tell, completely incompetent.
Anna made a terrified sound and shrank back in her seat. Jackson found himself sympathizing with her as watched Bradley grin widely at her, baring a set of brown crooked teeth. A few were missing.
"You were gone too long," Jackson said stiffly, diverting his attention from Anna to himself. He had an idea that if left alone with her, she wouldn't come out of it with her…. innocence, if you will.
"Sorry, guy," Bradley chuckled, "My score was late."
Jackson's eyes narrowed. "You went out to score?" he asked in a low voice
Bradley just shrugged and wound his way over to Anna like the disgusting snake that he was.
Jackson wondered what the ordeal with Keefe would have been like if Bradley had been the one who had to make Lisa call her hotel. Would he have frightened her more? Made her make the call faster? No, probably not. She would have been disgusted by him, making her will of steel even more impenetrable. She probably would have stabbed Bradley in the throat within five minutes of meeting him, he thought vainly.
The thought of that pen in his neck made him unconsciously raise a hand to his throat to trace the slightly raised area where the scar was. He'd recovered perfectly, despite the slight rasp that held his voice now. He sounded like he'd chain smoked cigarettes for fifty years, it was better then not being able to speak at all, he supposed.
Bradley was now petting Anna's hair affectionately while she squeezed her eyes shut and leaned away from him stiffly.
"Get away from her." Jackson said his tone deadly. "Now."
"Jesus, calm down, guy." Bradley chuckled, moving away from the girl towards the mini bar. "Don't want to damage the goods? Is that it? Doesn't matter, does it? O' Riley's not here and so long as we get paid we can do what we want."
Jackson rolled his eyes. "If you lay a hand on her, I will kill you, Bradley." He said, hating how all he could think of was Lisa while he said it. Like he was saying it for Lisa, instead of Anna.
He thought about Bradley with Lisa in the bathroom in his place. Pushing her up against the wall, his dirty fingers scrabbling over her throat and chest. It made him feel nauseous, whereas that memory usually gave him a fleeting feeling of something positive he couldn't quite identify.
The sound of a key in the lock made all three of them look over at the door expectantly. Quinn, Bradley's far more tolerable partner entered the room with a duffle bag under his arm. Quinn was a tall man with a big nose and shaggy blonde hair. He always looked clean and smelled like soap, but that might have just been because you always saw him next to Bradley.
"Hey, Banks," Quinn said with a sigh, looking at Jackson. James Banks was Jackson's current name. It was what his passport and driver's license had said since he'd returned from France. Before that he'd been Arthur Benton, Marcus Kennedy, Thomas McKinnon, and so on. When he'd told Lisa his real name in the airport bar, he'd been surprised to hear it come out of his mouth. He hadn't planned on telling her that. Even his current girlfriend though his name was James. He was even more surprised by himself when he told her about being called Jack when he was ten. Jack the...
Quinn dropped the small bag down on the bed. "I got some stuff for her. You know. Girl things."
Jackson raised an eyebrow. These where the people he had to deal with. He had been left alone to watch Anna for three hours while tweedle-dee satiated his heroin addiction and tweedle-dum went to Saks fifth avenue to buy the hostage some new clothes.
Ridiculous.
---
Lisa climbed into the cab that waited for her outside JFK airport.
"The Tribeca Grand in Manhattan, please." She said to the driver, who promptly sped out of the parking lot at a rather alarming speed.
Lisa's phone began vibrating in her bag and she found it after rooting around for a bit in her spacious bag. "Lisa Reiser"
"OhmygodLisa!"
It was Cynthia. She sounded frantic as she relayed yet another life or death emergency to Lisa.
"It's the Caroline Party. They refuse to stay in suit 4080 even though we've just finished renovating it. They found out about the Keefe-thing and there are no other suits, Lisa…."
Lisa smiled and calmly told Cynthia how to handle the situation. Calmly handle the situation. That was one of her top ten ways to handle stress. Also on the list was, assess the situation from all angles, not just yours. As well as, rely on facts, not assumptions.
The self help books had more then piled up in the last year. Life had gone back to a reletivly normal place, even after Jackson had disappeared from his hospital bed a few days after she'd saved the Keefe family. At first Lisa threw herself headfirst into her new start at life. She wanted to make sure she wasn't anymore of those boring things that Jackson Rippner had made her feel dominated her mundane life.
She even started dating a little. That had been short lived, though. Every man she met just seemed boring and unimpressive. Lisa didn't' have the energy to start a relationship with someone when she just felt like she was wasting her time with someone…. Like herself, really. Boring and Mundane. She's only had sex once in the past year too. It had been a disaster. He was attractive and nice enough, but to her horror at some point she realized it was him she was thinking about. Her mind wandered and she thought about him. Jackson, that bastard. Like some kind of moral deity who could see what she was doing. She thought about the dark hair that feel into those shockingly alert blue eyes and the pale curves of his cheekbones.
Then her horror grew as she thought back to being in the bathroom with him. When he'd almost killed her, choking her and pressing her into the wall, his face inches from hers. Lisa had promptly gotten out of bed and been sick in the toilet.
Now Lisa was back where she started. In a stable life dominated by work, romantic comedies and scrambled eggs.
But not Bay Breezes.
"Well, have fun at the conference," Cynthia said faintly, still sounding nervous about handing the Caroline's.
"Oh yes," Lisa joked, "A room full of hotel managers discussing guest services and how to increase customer satisfaction. I'm sure it will be exciting."
"Oh Lise," Cynthia laughed. "You never know, maybe Prince Charming will be the Manager of the Continental Hyatt House or something!"
Lisa hung up on Cynthia and watched out the window as they went over the bridge into Manhattan.
The flight had been stressful. She'd taken two codeine and ran a mantra of her stress relievers in her mind. Still, she couldn't bring herself to use the lavatory or look at anyone who might have been watching her. Lisa's paranoia had reached an all time high, even for someone who had been unknowingly stalked for eight weeks.
The cab pulled up to the Tribeca Grand and a bellhop helped Lisa with her case.
She saw a tall thin blonde man with a big nose waiting for the elevator on her way in. He carried a small duffle bag under his arm and wore a dark suit. They looked at each other and that tight paranoid feeling in her chest contracted slightly. She'd never seen him before in her life but the way he looked at her made her feel…. Scared.
Lisa decided not to think about it. Or Jackson. Or Planes. She decided to go up to her room, have a drink and prepare herself for the busy day of Hotel Managing meetings the next day.
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Disclaimer: I don't own Jackson, Lisa or anything having to do with the Film Red Eye. But if I did I would have had them kiss AT LEAST ONCE.
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