Steal My Life

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Red Eye!

Chapter Twenty-one

Lisa awoke dazed and flat on her back a while later. Her entire body ached and the sunlight was burning her skin. A concerned man helped her to her feet and offered to take her to a hospital.

"No, I'm fine. I just fell," she insisted, declining the generous offer of a stranger. "Thank you though."

It was not until she made it back to her lonely apartment and undressed that she realized something was wrong. It was more than an ordinary fall.

Ashamed, Lisa realized that she been raped and cut by her attacker. As she touched the bleeding wound on her chest, she remembered an intense gaze focused on the red liquid seeping from her battered body as he soaked up her pain. He had a light build, but he was deceptively strong and he had wanted her.

She threw herself into the shower, feeling extremely unclean and scrubbed at her tainted skin until the hot water had nearly singed her and she had scrapped her flesh raw. Faint traces of red circled around the drain from the gaping wound—the imperfection that he had left.

Lisa felt sick and slowly slipped down to the bottom of the shower stall, tears flowing from her eyes as she sobbed.

Why, why? Why me? What did I do wrong? Should I have fought harder? Is this my punishment for letting David die?

She felt an irrepressible urge to vomit. Soaking wet, she grabbed a towel and knelt beside the toilet in time to lose whatever bit of food was left in her system. Exhausted, Lisa lay back on the cold floor and tried to recall his face, his name, anything that might help her identify her attacker.

A light blue dress shirt paired with a suit jacket… a smooth, calm, charming voice… pale skin not unlike her own… sun-streaked, short-cropped brownish hair… his eyes—what color were they?

A gaze that made me shiver—he looked into my soul with those eyes… his eyes betrayed him…

What color? What color were his eyes?

Why does it feel like he knew me? Like he was targeting me? Why? Who is he? What does he want?

Sticky blood covered her hand as she pressed her palm against the jagged cut that his knife had left.

The rational thing to do would be to go to the police—they could find him…right? But they'd also ask nosey questions and I already ruined any evidence. I don't want people to know what happened…I don't want to speak in front of a jury. It's bad enough that he—he violated me…

Wrapping the towel around her body tightly, Lisa walked into her bedroom and picked up the telephone. She dialed the well-known number of her doctor's office and fabricated some story to cover up her rape. She doubted the receptionist believed her, but if she said outright that she was raped, then the police would become involved and she did not want that to happen. Lisa scheduled an appointment to receive a morning-after pill later that day to stop any chance of a child resulting from her unwanted encounter.

I am doing the right thing, right?

"I'm leaving the company," Jackson announced the following day as he placed his hands on Craig's desk while he looked down on the older man.

He had spent most of the night dreaming of Lisa. He could not remember having seen her in ages until they had met in the parking lot. She had clung to him and begged him to make love to her right then. He had gladly agreed and once they had finished, he had continued on to his errands and headed home.

"What prompted this?" Craig seemed surprised, but not completely shocked at his blunt statement.

"I can't take these stupid, menial jobs anymore. It's sucking up my life and my career is going nowhere. Plus, I hate meeting with that know-it-all shrink and taking those damn pills."

"Anything else?"

"Lisa—as long as I work for you, I can't have her. You'll stop me. You have stopped me."

"Correct, but wasn't it also because of her that you became a manager in the first place? Who was it that arranged the perfect murders of your treacherous wife and her lover? The murders that won you a coveted position?"

"Don't bring Sofia into this," Jackson said coolly; trying to remain calm.

"You don't need a woman in your life, Jack. You'll get by fine without Lisa Reisert."

"Jack?" He pretended to be confused. "My name's George."

"You've been calling yourself Jackson Rippner for how long now? Don't you dare think that I didn't know about your clever alias."

"But how?" he asked weakly. "No one…"

Craig shrugged his shoulders and smiled at his employee. "It's what I do. It's what we do, Jackson. This is our business—our world…"

"No longer," he swore, shaking his sun-lightened hair. "Consider this my two weeks' notice."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you look good with brown eyes? They make you almost appear to be human," sneered Craig.

Jackson reached up towards his eyes and felt the contacts residing in his crystalline eyes. Angrily, he removed them, the murky brown disappearing and being replaced with an ice-cold blue.

"Fuck you," he said bitterly, slammed the colored contacts down on Craig's desk before stalking out of the office in a huff.

How could he know about Lisa? Are they surveying me too?

Author's Notes:

I forgot to mention in the last chapter exactly why Lisa didn't recognize Jackson. His hair was cut short and sun-streaked and no longer a color that she recognized. He was also wearing brown contacts, which hid his most identifying feature. Hopefully this chapter made that clear. Plus, Jackson doesn't remember attacking her. Eventually, he'll forget that he even saw her in person that day and he certainly won't connect her story about rape to himself years later.

I know the time-frame can be confusing, but this story takes place before the movie (currently two years prior) and the rape that just occurred was the one that she mentions on the plane in the movie. Hopefully this clears up everything.

Thanks for suffering through this painful two chapters and reviewing. It was not an easy subject to write about and I'm trying to make it realistic without giving too much detail.

The next chapter will be much calmer as Jackson ends his therapy with Dr. Donovan and Lisa starts to move on with her life.