Chapter Eight: Embarkation
Lisa's head lay peacefully on his chest as it rose and fell with deep, heavy breaths. She could feel the still slight rattle caused from the pen she had shoved into his throat eons ago. His hand was teasing the curls that fell around her face in a slow, almost languid manor. There were no windows, so she must have imagined the glow of morning sun in a beam across the two of them. She knew in her mind that it was still mid-afternoon, but it felt like a new day had already begun. She knew that nothing would be the same as it had been. She could never return to the "normal" life she'd been living after this. She didn't know how long they had lain together, silent, in a state of calm, but it felt like an eternity. And she was all right with that.
"Lisa," he said quietly.
She sighed against his chest, not wanting to answer. She wanted to stay just as they were. She didn't want to think about the pick-up, or Christian, or anything other than the feel of his body next to hers.
"What?" She asked at last, feeling his hand follow the curve of her jaw.
"You're mine now, you know." His voice resonated in his chest below her ear. She turned to face him, propping herself up with her hands on his chest. "If anyone so much as looks at you in anything other than a platonic way, I think I might just have to kill them." She watched his eyes closely, searching them for truth.
"Jackson," she called, eyelids fluttering close to his. He made a small, satisfied sound and kissed her softly on the edge of her lips.
"I love it when you say my name," he muttered against her cheek.
"Jackson," she said again, partly to urge him on, partly because she liked saying it, "no one owns me." He gazed up into her placid eyes from his position on the pillow beneath her, and then he grinned slowly.
"All right, Miss Lisa Reisert, I don't own you." He tucked a stray, still-damp strand of hair behind her ear in an almost compassionate way. "But you realize that this means no one else can ever own you either."
She relaxed again, nestling her face against his neck and eyes closed against the world. He seemed a man obsessed, fingers twirling in her hair incessantly. He let the silence coat them before speaking again.
"You realize that you've just slept with the man that tried to kill you and dear old Dad, don't you?"
She bit back the familiar tears and replaced them with a steady stare.
"And you've just slept with the woman that put a bullet and a pen in you."
"Point taken," he mumbled as he began to kiss her.
He took her again, for the second time that afternoon. And this time, she didn't cry.
She didn't know she had nodded off until she opened her eyes. She was facing the wall, the warmth of Jackson's body nowhere to be found. She sat up quickly in bed, taking the blanket with her. The room was dark, save for the dim light of the lamp on the desk. Her old clothes, cleaned and folded, were lying in the lamplight as if they had always been there. Her watch read 4:13 PM.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see that her bedmate was nowhere in the room. Not lurking in any dark corners or hiding under the desk just to see her reaction. He was gone from the room. She felt a wave of sickness wash over her slightly at the sudden abandonment, then realized that she would have to get used to it. It was Jackson's style to leave her sleeping peacefully while he went about whatever unsavory business he had that day. But he would always come back. She knew this somewhere deep in her heart, and she trusted it. He would always be back for her.
Lisa got out of bed and dressed herself at 4:17 PM. She felt a dull throb through her body at 4:21 PM, and she knew that it meant she needed Jackson. She flirted with the idea of turning the TV on, but decided against it. Nothing would be able to tear her mind from the eyes that were burned in her memory.
Because he had insisted that she look at him the whole time.
The time crawled by, from 4:30 to 5:00 PM. At that time, she stood from the bed and placed a hand on the doorknob. She had to use the bathroom. For real this time. But who would let her out when Jackson had the only key?
She didn't need to worry, for the knob yielded under her touch. The door swung open into the hallway, spilling light into the dim bedroom. She couldn't stop the tears this time. He had left the door unlocked.
The warehouse sounded empty save for the solitary hammer that pounded away on the first floor. It grew in intensity as she descended the stairwell. As she let herself into the bathroom, she glimpsed a large truck of some sort sitting in the center of the warehouse. She took her precious time in the lavatory, taking another shower while she was at it. She wasn't sure if she had ever been so glad to see her own shampoo.
She had dressed herself again when she heard voices outside of the door. She wrapped the towel around her hair and knelt beside the door, pressing one ear up against the wooden frame. She immediately recognized two of the voices. Jackson and Jones-- or Dr. Collins, whichever he had chosen to be that day. The third was new to her.
"And how does the little lady like her new accommodations?" The new voice asked. She could practically feel the sarcasm oozing from under the door. "I take it she didn't want to take the room that Gerard was murdered in?"
"Indeed," Collins said with a haughty air. "Murdered would not be my word of choice, however. Miss Reisert has a new room, as you suggest. Number seven, in fact." She had never heard Collins string together so many words in a sentence. Perhaps he wasn't as taciturn around co-workers as kidnap-ees.
Then Jackson laughed.
She had never heard him laugh like that before. It was a full, round, cheerful laugh. She could see his lips curling into a wide smile in her mind's eye, the lines that framed his mouth when he smiled wide enough.
"I think she's quite comfortable," Jackson said after he had finished laughing. "You can ask her yourself if you want, Robbins. We'll take a trip upstairs, I think."
"Now wait," the new voice cut in-- Robbins, she guessed. "You can't just dodge the question like that! Why does the girl get to make the pick-up? All of us are qualified, and she's just a stupid woman!"
There was a deadly silence, and she heard Jackson crack his neck with a loud snap.
"I've given you your assignment, Robbins, and if I find out that you're ignoring orders again, I think that I'll report your 'activities' to Mr. Vore." The next words were hard for Lisa to catch, but she could swear that she heard him say, "--you and Gerard will have more than bad fashion sense in common."
Two sets of footfalls left her range of hearing, and one approached the door.
"Hey, Leese," Jackson said from the other side. She sheepishly opened the door, looking up at the smiling man. She found herself searching for something to say.
"You left the door unlocked," was all she could manage. He nodded, leaning his forehead against hers. The sign of affection caught her off guard, and she could do nothing but stare into the icy eyes.
"Lisa," he prompted, then thought in silence for a moment. "I almost don't want you to make the pick-up."
"Why?" It was a strange question to leap to mind, but it did.
"Call me a helpless romantic," he said with a slight laugh, "but it could get dangerous tomorrow. And--" He broke himself off, shaking the thoughts from his head physically. He looked away up the stairs, then back to her. "You, Collins and I are going to masquerade as garbage collectors. Unless that damned woman's gone and squealed to the police, it'll look like nothing more than a routine garbage route."
"And I'm going to be the one picking up the bags and throwing them in the truck," Lisa finished for him. He nodded. She looked perplexed.
"What?" He asked.
"I guess I expected something more elaborate," she said with a shrug. He took her by the waist and led her from the doorway.
"It's more elaborate than it looks on the surface. We've had to get a truck, get rid of a few crewmembers, and I've had to teach myself ho to drive one of these damnable things."
The truck came into view. It was the ugliest garbage truck she had ever seen, but she had to admit to herself that she had never really paid much attention to a garbage truck before. The hammering had disappeared during her time in the shower, and the truck was as solitary as a single duck blind in the center of a lake. Jackson adjusted the side-view mirror slightly, then turned to Lisa.
"You and Collins will be riding on the back, looking your finest in Waste Management jumpsuits." His lips twitched into a fiendish smile, then he averted his eyes to the truck. "The only reason I won't be back there with you is this." He ran a hand over his neck wound, the perfectly circular red scar standing out against his pale skin. She didn't know whether to feel sorry for it or not. Her fingertips brushed over the scar, and he winced. He obviously wasn't healed as well as he liked to put on.
"You promise," Lisa began, feeling that low ache again, "that if we get the money she gets her brother back unharmed?"
"Promise," he assured her. "And you know how I stick to my word." She nodded. Her eyes drew down his neck and rested on his unbuttoned collar.
"Who is he?" Lisa asked. Their eyes struck again. "Why is he so important to you?" Jackson's mouth turned into a thin line, and he looked away quickly. She grabbed him by the chin and turned his face back to hers.
"Leese--"
"I know what it's like to lose someone I care about," she said, almost sternly. "Do you?"
The words seemed to strike him, deep and low, like a kick to the nether regions. She wasn't quiet sure how they had ended up back in his room, but she knew that something was different that time. He was gentle, as if she were some china doll that he might break. Someone had knocked on the door and stolen him away not long after, but she waited for him. And he came back.
The next time she woke up, it was morning.
"Wakey-wakey, Leese," Jackson breathed into her ear. She woke with a stifled yawn, and the bedsprings gave as Jackson levered himself from the bed. She saw the sanitation uniforms and held her face in her hands. She had forgotten.
There was dread pulling on her stomach, a feeling she knew all too well around Jackson. Feelings bombarded her all at once: fear of what she had to do, anxiety for Christian and his sister, but a strong determination boiling in her gut.
"Lisa?"
She looked up to see Jackson zipping the worn gray jumpsuit up to his neck. He looked rather ridiculous, but she didn't laugh. She simply held out her hand expectantly.
"Clothes, please, Jackson."
He obliged.
It was not long before the two of them met up with Collins, who was also dressed in the terribly jumpsuit complete with sanitary gloves and rubber boots. Lisa had tied her hair back and hid it beneath an ugly cap. Jackson had rubbed some oil onto their jumpsuits to give the illusion of a hard workday, and he even smeared a long streak across Lisa's cheek. She looked much more a blue collar woman than she had ever looked. Collins had similar effects on his uniform and face, but his lips were still pulled tight in an expressionless flat line.
He also had a gun hidden on his person somewhere. Collins patted his chest, where the gun was nestled in an inside pocket, with fondness before helping Lisa jump up onto the back of the garbage truck. Collins joined her on the opposite side. Jackson stood below them.
"You'll know the house when we come to it," he began, looking directly at Lisa. "I'll stop in front of every house on that street, just to be safe. You'll load all of the normal garbage into the compartment you're standing in," he added with a smile. "Collins will pull on the lever to dump it into the main compartment, so you don't have to worry your pretty head about that. Now, when you pick up the money," he rested his hand on a smaller, obviously added, compartment at her feet, "this is where it'll go. To anyone watching, it will look like any other garbage run. Collins will pull the lever and we'll be off to the next house. Once we turn from that street, we'll cruise back here and send poor Christian back to Sister Dearest."
"Simple," Lisa said emptily.
"Simple," Jackson echoed. He turned to Collins. "Watch her. I'm not worried about her running off. But if there's any evidence that the police are involved--"
"Don't worry about it," Collins assured him, patting his gun again.
Jackson flicked his eyes back to Lisa.
"When this is over," he said, more quietly, "you're going to have a few choices to make." Lisa slipped the dust-particle mask over her mouth and nose.
"I know," she said as calmly as she could. Collins's lips twitched slightly. Jackson touched the underside of her jaw slightly with his finger.
"See you," he said.
He walked to the front of the truck, accompanied by a man that sounded like Robbins. Two men opened the front sliding doors of the warehouse, and the truck rumbled awake beneath them. Collins fastened his arm around the bar near his head. Lisa did the same. They rolled into the morning sunlight, and Lisa shielded her eyes. She hadn't seen the morning sun in nearly three days.
AN: . . . . -peeks out from under the desk- I am. . . ALIVE. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I am ALIVE! Okay, I've been really really ridiculously sick for a long time now, and I'm just now coming out of it. But that's not a reason for not updating for so long. So I prostrate myself before you and beg for forgiveness. I plead! Do not crucify me! It took me a long time to get the tone of this chapter down as well as I wanted to, and I still didn't get it exactly the way I wanted it, but they say the more you tweak with something the worse it gets. So here it is! The long-awaited party- I mean chapter! (kudos to anyone who gets that reference.) So, now that I'm back, it's time for shout-outs to my long-suffering fans!
Ayumi Omoide: Okay, one of the reasons I didn't update was because you hadn't reviewed. I look forward to your reviews maybe more than most, and I love to get reviews from you. So this one goes out to you, my friend! Hot with two t's? Scandalous! Jackson may be getting hotter with each progressive chappie, but I think my skillz are deteriorating. Oh well. Only aboot 2 chappies left! GASP! Here, have this lovely e-scone. If you find some e-tea, it will make a lovely snack. -plays with Jackson plushie- I LOVE YOU TOOO!
Shadow in Darkness: Huzzah! A new reader! Thanks so much for taking the time to review. It brings me much joy. I'm glad you enjoy the way I write, and I'm happy I can make your day just by writing. And yes, I love you too.
Princess Stephy: Augh, I loved that moment too, the visualisation of Jackson's hard exterior melting because of the feelings between them... So touching. I hope I'm able to delive some of the same emotions in this chappie, friend. Thanks for the review, and may you munch on e-scones!
Ashley: I'm not sure it's the best ever, but then again, I am a little biased. -bwahaha- Writing "teh smut" is just not something I would be comfortable with and thought, meh, they won't miss it. And, BTW, Miss Ashley, where the poo is your story? I'm-a cry if you don't update... No updates till you update! AUGH!. . . Sowwee... Got a little carried away. -tosses e-scones at you-
hilby: You crack me up! Good crack-me-up, not bad crack-me-up. Food pr0n? Interesting word choice. They got to eat a little bit, but not overly much. I take it Lisa was hungry but feeling a little too intimidated to eat. "Jackson had burst into song suddenly (which was rather amazing considering the damage Lisa had inflicted to his vocal chords), and ripping off her shirt in frustration, he found to his amazement words written across her chest... 'Christmastown?" he said. "Hm m m...'" Oh... My goodness... You... are a silly person who needs to be my best friend. -gives you special e-scone- Thankee for the review, friend!
Rashida: Oh, I am sooo glad I've been getting Jackson right. You are now my official "Tell Me if Jackson is Wrong" person. -gives you a pin-on badge- A chorus of angels? Sweeeet. I have the power to invoke heavenly beings. And I really don't mind long-winded reviews. I rather prefer them to the one-liners. Although I love one-liners still. Because I love everyone who reviews. ANYWAY thank you so much for reviewing, and I love you forever and here's a heaping pile of e-scones.
A.R. Bellance: I'd rather have your constructive criticism than 150 reviews of nothing but praise. It really does help when people tell me what I am doing wrong as well as what I could fix. I'm glad you still like it despite obvious flaws. And if you find some in this one, tell me so I can fix. I'm not exactly sure if this is a great chappie, so... YES! Much love to you, friend!
LuningRavatic: If you've really checked that many times, I am so sorry for not updating sooner! Ahh! Now I feel really bad. But I'm back! Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with myself now. "I'm just really, really hoping for an uber-fluffy morning-after scene." I hope I didn't disappoint in that respect in this chappie. Thanks much for your review and I hope I was able to keep the fire going! -gives e-scones-
Shawcross Gal: I'm glad you've finally started to review! Maybe this shoutout will keep up the good work -bwahaha- I'm glad you noticed Jackson's vulnerability when it comes to Lisa, because that was a major theme I tried to play up in this chappie. He melts when it comes to her. I'm glad you think I have him in character. Well, that's what everyone seems to think actually... Hmmm... Anyway, thanks much for the review and I hope you continue to enjoy what I churn out!
steph88NYC: Oh my, did I really make you tear up? Real LisaJackson? Oh wow, this makes me so happy! I'm sorry I moved you to saying "fnck". I love you too, friend, and I hope I'm able to keep up with the expectations everyone has of me by now. Help yourself to e-scones and I hope you enjoyed the chappie!
Jack E. Peace: Another one moved to tears? I can't be that good, can I? I'm so sorry that your night was bad, but I'm glad you were cheered up, no matter how slightly, by my little piece here. And I'm so glad that I didn't make Lisa the dumb!Lisa some fanfics make her. And I'm your hero? You're gonna steal me? AHH! -hides under the desk again- Happy reading, friend!
DarkVerity: Giggles abound, my friend. ABOUND. I hope I managed to capture the right feelings for the two after "the big bang" -tee hee- but if I didn't do so well, please tell me so I can fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for being awesome! -huggles- Oh yes, and have an e-scone.
That's it for shout outs! And rememebr, even if you don't get a shout-out, I still love you, all of you. I think this is the longest AN I've ever done. Wow... I might have added 1,000 words or more. I write too much. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys the new chappie, and I'll try to update sooner next time. ADIOS AMIGOS! And enjoy!