Hi all. I am SO sorry that I haven't been active in my updates for all of my stories in a REALLY long time! With this story, you could say that it took a long time to figure out where I wanted this to go, because when I first started it, I had no clue what I wanted to do with it. I do, however, now have a plan, and hope that I will be able to carry it out in the chapters to come. And I hope that writer's block will not seize me too much. Without further delay, here it is: Chapter 2.
Chapter Two: On the Road with a Murderer
When Lisa awoke again, she noticed three things: 1. Her head hurt like crap, 2. She was in a car going who knows where, and 3. She was with Jackson Rippner.
Lisa tried to sit up from her lying position but soon after groaned and quickly regretted it. Her head hadn't hurt this bad since…great, just great. Why did Jackson always have to use his freaking head?! Lisa looked around her for a moment, observing her surroundings. She was in the backseat of a car with tinted windows, and in front of her face was Jackson Rippner's back as he sat in the driver's seat. She glared holes into his chair, but unfortunately, he didn't feel the heat in the back of his head. It was too bad; really, he could use being warmed up a bit since he was so very cold.
Lisa suddenly felt an itch on her head and tried to reach up and scratch it, only to find that her hands were bound behind her. Wiggling her legs, she found out that her ankles were bound together as well, and so were her knees. Seriously, her knees? What did he really think that she was going to do? Crack his head open in between her thighs?
Lisa felt a chill run down her spine. Whoa there, she thought, no need to get myself thinking on that path. Moving on mentally, she groaned again when she found that her mouth was bound as well. And the cloth tasted terrible. It also rubbed up against her sore skin roughly.
"Stop it," a hiss came from the driver's seat.
Lisa glared again at the headrest for the driver's seat. She noticed some of his brown hair sticking out on either side. Lisa suddenly wondered how cocky he would be if she found a way to shave his head while he slept. Of course, that would never happen, because he was probably a really light sleeper, and if she did manage to pull it off, he would kill her before she could scream for help.
Lisa shook her head suddenly at the thought. No. Besides, Jackson Rippner would not look good bald. She liked his hair too much for that to happen.
Once again moving on, Lisa tried to throw herself up into a sitting position…and failed, causing her to groan again in pain. For some reason, her butt hurt a lot. The sudden realization made her eyes widen. He wouldn't have…..
No, she reasoned with herself. He wouldn't have, because this was Jackson, and not some low-life creep who would take advantage of her while she was out. He must just have thrown her into the backseat on her butt really hard or something like that.
Yeah, something like that…
The thought got Lisa arguing with herself. Was she actually defending him? Was she actually thinking that he wasn't a low-life and a creep who stalks people and kidnaps them and twists them to his own demented enjoyment?
Lisa heard a growl from in front of her and almost yelped—if she was not gagged, that is—when Jackson turned a sharp corner and her head bonked into the door. She groaned again in pain, which seemed like the hundredth time already in, what, three minutes?
"I said stop it!" Jackson shouted from the front seat, quickly losing his temper. Well, wasn't he just Mr. Sunshine this morning? Or was it afternoon? Lisa wasn't sure, but whatever time it was, she wasn't really sure she wanted to know how long she had been out and how long she had been in the clutches of Jackson while unconscious.
Well, Lisa thought bitterly, if I didn't keep getting hurt because of you then I wouldn't be annoying you with my pain, now would I?
Lisa closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. She didn't like this, being helpless. Sure, she hadn't been much better off when she was on the plane with him, but at least she wasn't bound and gagged and was sitting upright. Also, in the privacy of just Jackson and her, he could do a lot more things to her and get away with them, with no one around to stop him, and that scared her most of all. No one would come to her rescue. No one would even know.
Lisa saved herself from being scared too badly by reassuring herself. Sure, Jackson was a cold and vicious and vile criminal, but he was just a murderer, nothing more. Well, maybe he was a psycho too, but that was it, a murderer and a psycho. And in all of the time that she had known Jackson—which was way too long in her opinion—he seemed like nothing more than a murderer and a psycho. She had been thinking about it these past two months, ever since the flight, even though it probably wasn't the healthiest thing for her to be doing. He wasn't a rapist. Jackson was above that. He may throw around a woman and injure her and try to kill her, but he wouldn't touch her, and Lisa felt confident in that theory. He wasn't that sick and twisted, no; not in that way.
Lisa had to laugh at herself. Again she was thinking higher of him than he deserved! Of course he was sick and twisted! Was she saying that being a murderer and a psycho was above being a rapist? Of course not! They were all the same, in a way. They were all terrible, heinous crimes—except for being a psycho, because sometimes you really can't help losing your mind—and not one was better or worse than the other. Raping destroyed lives. Killing destroyed lives. And in Jackson's case, being a psycho did kind of destroy lives, in its own little way.
Lisa sighed as best she could with the gag in her mouth. Why did these things always have to happen to her? Why did they keep on happening to her? And why did no one ever stop it? No one was there to help her that day in the parking lot. No stranger would have wanted to get involved for the sake of helping someone they didn't even know. No one was there to help her on that plane, she'd had to think and act for herself and defend herself against a blood-thirsty monster. And no one was there to help her now. Lisa bitterly thought how life must secretly hate her.
Good things didn't happen to good people, and bad things didn't happen to bad people. It was all chance, everything. Life was a game of chance. Sometimes you got lucky, and sometimes you weren't so lucky. Karma was just a figment of the imagination. She'd done a lot of good in her life, always being kind and polite and nice to people, always helping out. And how did Karma repay her? By doing terrible things to her because Karma didn't exist. Life was like the flip of a coin, sometimes you get heads, and sometimes you get tails, and it's all based on luck and chance. And aerodynamics and the laws of gravity, but that was unimportant at the moment.
What was important was Lisa trying to figure out a way to escape this predicament she had found herself in. And, what was also important, was that Lisa had to stop thinking along the same lines as her other thought processes had been, because they were all not getting her anywhere, and some of them were quite…on the disturbing side.
Lisa looked all around her again; studying her surroundings very carefully, even the back of Jackson and all those little brown hairs sticking out from behind the headrest. All those luscious, chocolaty brown locks of soft—
Lisa shook her head. No. No. No. No. No. She wasn't thinking this. She couldn't be thinking this. She mustn't be thinking this. Besides, she didn't know how soft his hair was, it's not like she ever felt it before. But now, having nothing more interesting to stare at besides his hair, she couldn't help but find herself wondering how his hair would feel underneath her fingertips.
And Lisa suddenly wondered if he had drugged her with something before or while she had been passed out, or if his head butt had damaged some part of her brain, because she was sure that she was going crazy.
Lisa closed her eyes and refused to look at anything anymore. If all she could do was to stare at Jackson's hair then she wouldn't give herself the opportunity to look at anything. She would try to go back to sleep until Jackson had taken them to wherever he was going, or at least until she came up with a solution.
Jackson threw her up against the wall before pressing himself up against her, holding her by her chin and breathing down upon her face. The bathroom had begun to look claustrophobic to her.
His fingers pushed back the slight amount of cloth covering her scar before he scowled at her and threw her up against the counter in the airplane bathroom, lifting her up by her throat as she struggled to be able to breathe again or to find something to hold on to so she wouldn't suffocate at the strangling by the strong and dangerous man in front of her.
Jackson chased her throughout her house with a freaking butcher's knife.
Jackson threw her over the banister and down the stairs of her own home until she collided with a door, slumping down onto the ground in immensely unbearable pain.
Jackson just stared at her with those cold, icy blue eyes, in different situations, there were just flashes of him staring into her eyes.
Lisa gasped as she awoke, actually making more than a muffled noise now that the gag had seemingly found its way off of her mouth.
"Good, you're awake."
Lisa turned to where the noise was being made, directly to her left. She stared at him in shock and horror as he kept his eyes on the road, pretending as if he didn't notice, and pretending rather well too.
She looked around her before sitting up straight, realizing that she had slid down in the seat a bit. She was in the passenger's seat now. When had he moved her there? How long had she been out? Why did he take off her gag?
"Did you know that you thrash in your sleep?" Jackson told her, making seemingly light conversation as if nothing terrible had ever transpired between the two. He kept his eyes on the road the whole time with a poker face, his eyes glancing over to Lisa only once when he was sure that she was looking before he looked back to the road half a second later.
Lisa looked around again a bit more, confused about the sudden situation. Her hands were still bound but now they were bound in front of her and the cloth around her knees had been removed too, but she refused to think of the thoughts that she had had earlier about why she would need to be bound around her knees. Didn't Jackson know that right now she could harm him? Now that she was sitting within arm's reach of him?
Lisa turned back to look at Jackson with a confused expression on her face. "What?" She asked, as if he would somehow understand that she meant "what's going on?" instead of just the vague question of "what?"
"Were you having a nightmare?" Jackson asked; his eyes still on the road.
Lisa stared at him like he was a loon that had just escaped from an insane asylum.
"What?" She asked him again before turning away and looking out of the window. "I don't see how that's any of your business." She responded bitterly.
She heard Jackson make a tusking noise behind her head. "Now, now, is that any way to speak to me after I just made your situation a bit more comfortable? And it was not easy doing all that while you were kicking and shoving and clawing in your sleep. I think that the least I deserve is some answers." He sounded like he was genuinely hurt, although she knew that it was his acting skills working right now instead of his emotions and feelings. Jackson Rippner didn't have any feelings or emotions, other than greed, anger, wrath, frustration, and cruelty, although Lisa wasn't really sure if cruelty was exactly an emotion.
"Why do you care?" She bit out as she turned back to look at the road in front of her.
"Come now Leese; let's try to be civil, shall we?" Jackson spoke as if he were talking to a little child who didn't want to play with the other children.
Lisa spat out a short, emotionless laugh. "Since when have you ever tried to be civil?"
"Leese," Jackson warned.
"I see you got your voice back. It's a shame sometimes what medicine can do these days, and in such a short time too. I would have thought that pen wound would have taken much longer to heal, considering how deeply wedged into your throat it had been and how badly you were wheezing the last time I saw you." Lisa said angrily.
Jackson came to an abrupt halt and Lisa flew forward, smacking her forehead on the dashboard. She pulled away in pain. "Ow," she whimpered.
"You know, Leese," Jackson said as he took off his seatbelt and turned to face her full-on, "I'm beginning to see now why you don't have any friends or why you haven't had a date in years. It's because you can be very unpleasant when you want to be."
"For your information, I was asked out on a date before you kidnapped me!" Lisa retorted, turning her head to face the window, not being able to face him.
"And you turned it down." Jackson said. "Detective Forbes, the clueless and annoying; sad excuse for a 'detective.' I'm glad to know that I'm not the only guy that you lash out at."
"You bugged me!" Lisa accused angrily, turning to face him full-on as well, although not being able to shift in her seat much so that her whole body face him like his did hers. She still had her seatbelt on and couldn't undo it.
"I had to find some way to entertain myself." Jackson defended with a smirk.
"But you were in the hospital!" Lisa reasoned.
"Well, technically, the bugs were in your apartment and office since the last time I set them up, a few months ago when I first started my surveillance of you."
"You mean stalking." Lisa said vividly.
Jackson waved it off. "Same basic principles," he dismissed. "Anyways, don't change the subject. Even if you were asked out on a date, you told him no. So that doesn't count since you didn't actually go on a real date."
Lisa turned back to look out of the passenger window. "What do you care? It's my life."
"Because watching a boring life can be very boring," Jackson stated matter-of-factly.
"Well then stop watching my life." Lisa said angrily.
"Believe me, I would gladly stop, but I'm afraid that I am unable to." Jackson said.
"Of course you are." Lisa muttered to herself, still looking out of the passenger side window.
"Look at me." Jackson said.
Lisa didn't, and continued to look out of the side window.
Jackson growled and reached over, grabbing her chin roughly and harshly yanking it toward him so that she was now facing him. Jackson hated being ignored, especially by Lisa. He didn't know why, but it bugged him more when she ignored him than when everyone else did.
"I said, 'Look at me.'" He muttered dangerously to her, staring into her eyes with a cold look in his blue ones. He could see a shiver run down Lisa's back and was glad. She should be afraid of him, she had every reason to. And he was glad that he still made her fear him, even now, even after she had bested him two months ago.
"Like it or not, you're stuck with me. So, until you can get over this little childish fit you're having, just remember that I can make things much worse for you. Understand?" Jackson said in that same dangerously low voice.
Lisa felt like his eyes were piercing into her very soul, as if he could see right through her. His eyes were always what unnerved her the most. Even though they were stunningly breathtaking, they also felt so cold and evil, and knowing.
She nodded weakly and Jackson searched her eyes for something. She wasn't sure what, or if he found it. She just noticed that his eyes traveled down to her lips—or so she assumed—for a second or two, before traveling back up to her eyes.
And then he abruptly let go of her chin and leaned back into his seat, re-buckling his seatbelt. Lisa was left dumbfounded, still staring at him blankly, a little confused.
Jackson turned his keys in the ignition and started the car back up again, after having turned it off when he stopped on the side of the road. He drove back onto the empty road, going well past sixty miles an hour.
Lisa finally turned back to look out of her window. There was a good twenty minutes of silence, in which Lisa found rather awkward. She didn't really want to speak with him, but the silence was really starting to bug her. She kept on thinking back to when he had been looking into her eyes. His eyes had briefly strayed down toward her lips, and thinking about it gave her a weird tingling sensation down in the pit of her stomach. Lisa didn't really know quite what it was.
Suddenly, and without warning, Jackson broke the silence. "Would you really rather die than be with me?" He asked nonchalantly, as if asking her about the weather.
Lisa choked on her air. What?! It took her several seconds until she could properly breathe again. When her lungs could function once more, she turned toward him, giving him a look like he was insane or something.
When Lisa didn't say anything, Jackson continued on, seemingly innocent from his expression, tone of voice, and eyes. Lisa, however, knew better than to think this of him though. "I mean, really, I know I'm no Prince Charming, but saying that you would rather die is rather somewhat extreme."
Lisa felt her face heat up and flush. This was so embarrassing. However, she responded, not wanting to give him the satisfaction in embarrassing her so much as she wouldn't be able to form coherent words when in his presence. "It was not extreme, it was merely the truth. I would rather die a thousand deaths than be with you in that way." She said harshly.
Jackson faced a mock look of hurt and said, "Ouch. That was a bit melodramatic, wasn't it?"
"Not in the least bit." Lisa said, not caring to spare his feelings, which she wasn't even sure if he had.
"Wow, you are surprisingly cold today." Jackson said.
"You would know." Lisa bit back at him.
"Leese," Jackson said warningly, "You're trying my patience."
"Good," Lisa grumbled as she slumped down in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, still looking out of the passenger's side window.
"What are you doing? Pouting like a little child?" said Jackson tauntingly.
"I am not!" Lisa shouted at him, turning to look his way.
Jackson turned to her for a couple seconds, giving her a knowing look, before turning back to the road. "You just proved my point."
"I—" She started, but then didn't continue, not seeing the point in it. She didn't like giving up, especially not when it would give Jackson the satisfaction of knowing that he had won. She hated it when he won. His ego was already rather up there a bit too high.
She turned back to look out of her car door's window.
Trees and plants passed by, all incredibly green. She wondered where they were, but didn't ask. Jackson hated questions. That was one thing she learned on the Red Eye flight two months back. She hoped that she would be able to find out later, but for right now, she was growing increasingly tired.
Lisa wasn't sure how much time had passed, but before she knew it, her eyes were drooping closed, and all that was able to be heard was the soft lulling sound of the car as it whizzed on by.
She wasn't sure if falling asleep right next to Jackson in the car was the best idea, but right now she was surprisingly tired, and she'd deal with the consequences later.
Well, what did you think? How was it? I hope it was alright and satisfied all those who had to wait so long for it. I personally am not very pleased with it. I don't think that they were very in character, myself. However, I hope that you all enjoyed it, and again, I am incredibly sorry for the inconveniences caused. Well, until next time. Please review! :)