A/N: Hey all. Just wanted to warn you that this chapter gets an "R" rating, because parts of it are pretty dark and deal with adult themes. I felt that in the show, they really used the kid gloves when they introduced Bob's character and instead used him more or less as a cartoony villain. I hope you don't mind BHBKN, but I'd like to use a line from your last review to explain what I mean here, "I always knew Bob was a creep but, to do something like that is... Criminal." Don't get me wrong, I'm not to be rude here, but what we're told Bob did doesn't reflect the way he was shown. The way he was portrayed in 1x14 and 1x15 truly did make him look like a moral-less, stalking, creep. But what he did to Ricky and Nora for years was criminal. This is a man who drank, used drugs, maliciously beat his wife and son for years (so much so that Nora chose to consume herself with drugs and drinking to escape the physical and mental pain and guilt), and who systematically molested and raped his son throughout his childhood (to show him "what it's like to be a man in the world") until the authorities intervened and took Ricky away from him. And that's what I wanted to explore in this chapter, the man who actually did those things to Ricky and Nora, and not the creepy half comical bad guy who went around town stalking Ricky's girlfriends and buying drugs in a bad neighborhood. (Now, granted, I do not feel I gave it the full exploration that you could, because I do feel like that should be reserved for someone who wants to write a true "M" rated story about Ricky and Bob, and this story is not it. But I have tried to show more flashes of darkness and twistedness than I feel the show ever even thought about doing when they physically introduced the character.) So maybe what I'm trying to say is that kidnapping Adrian and trying to manipulate Leo into ransom is probably a drop in the bucket compared with the things that "It's Hard to be a Man in the World" Bob is willing to do. (And then coupled with the rages we've seen that Ricky can go into as well as Adrian, as evidenced by her destroying the nursery with her fist, I think that it has the potential for a really volatile combination that I wanted to experiment with.)
Turning Tables
This Is Enough Of This
The first thing she noticed upon awakening were the undulating throbs in her back. It felt like déjà vu somehow, but she couldn't place it. Her back hurt, her neck hurt, her scalp hurt, and everything was fuzzy. Fuzzy in the same way that, "It was when I ran into Antonio's glass slider when I was six." In a flood, all the memories of the previous day came rushing back!
She felt him grab her by her flying hair. Just as easily, her hair slipped between his gloves a moment after it was caught, but the panic in being grabbed for even that second distracted her enough to make her misstep and fall. She immediately moved to roll over, planning to kick and punch and bite and spit, whatever she had to do to get free, but before she could, she suddenly felt a weight on her back, pinning her to the ground. Her mind screamed as she felt her stomach being shoved against the dirt, tears springing to her eyes as she felt the rocks and gravel beginning to embed themselves into her flesh. Then she felt her head violently yanked back, once again by her hair. As she opened her mouth to scream, a soft, wet cloth enveloped her nose and mouth and when she inhaled, all she could smell was a faint, sweet chemical smell.
Adrian jerked violently, only just then becoming fully aware of her body, similarly to waking up from a dream and realizing your arm has fallen asleep and it didn't feel like it was even there at first. At the sound of jangling chains and the icy blade of steel on her ankle, she realized that one of her legs was handcuffed to the bar of an old fashion wall mounted space heater and tied behind her back were her arms, with only her fingers able to wriggle. She began to violently shake and kick against the bindings and the heater, creating a tremendous amount of noise until the bathroom door opened and then she froze, waiting for whomever it was to come out.
"You can kick and struggle all you like, it won't do you any good. In fact, I don't mind watching…"
The voice sounded strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it. Adrian stared at the door, glaring and willing the person standing behind it to step out and show his vile face. When he didn't, she shook her foot again, rattling the handcuffs against the heater vent. "What do you want from me?"
A gloved hand reached around the door and pushed it back revealing a tall figure in a plain navy t-shirt and blue jeans. But over his head he wore a navy ski mask, leaving only his mouth and eyes visible to his captive. The man strode across the room and hovered over her, casting his hulking shadow over her tangled form. "It's not you that I want," he replied. Then, bending down, he grabbed her roughly by the chin and brought her face so close to his exposed lips that Adrian could feel the spray of saliva as he spoke. "Yet."
Every muscle in her body tightened as he shoved her head back against the wall and used her moment of disorientation to walk away. Her stomach curled up and she immediately began to wipe her mouth against the shoulder of her top to wipe her captor's spit from her lips.
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"That's him?" Ben asked, stunned.
"That's the bastard, yeah!"
"Ricky!" Margaret scolded.
"What?" The drummer spun on her, voice cracking. "He is! That's what he is and you know it! We all know it!" Being crowded into a single room down at the police station, three families – him and his parents, Ben and his father, and Adrian's mother with George – not to mention the officers as well as Bob's disgusting image on the computer screen, made him feel claustrophobic.
"I've seen him before! Today!" Ben shook his head. "Yesterday, technically," he amended, glancing at the time stamp at the corner of the computer screen.
"What?"
Ben shivered, turning slowly to his father. "He came into the store, asking about birthday catering and I-" He shut his mouth.
"Birthday," Ricky spat out. "Birthday!" He curled his fists, wanting to beat the shit out of something. Anything.
"The baby," Ben nodded. His eyes lifted as one of the officers extricated himself from the room.
"Somehow he's been keeping tabs on me from prison. I don't know how, but somehow! That's why he knew where I was, when I was, and the people I've been associating with. I'm the reason he knew about Adrian!"
"This is not your fault, Ricky-" Leo began.
"Isn't it?" Ricky interrupted. "He found out about her because of me! And her baby may or may not be mine, but he's still banking on the fact that you, Mr. Boykewich, have the money to pay ransom and he thinks you'll do it, on the off chance that she's carrying your grandchild. He's a manipulative fucker and Adrian wouldn't be gone right now if I'd never slept with her!"
"You can't help what Bob did to you," Shakur voiced. "No more than you can help what he may have done to Adrian."
"May have done? Are you hearing yourself right now? Who else could it be? He broke the restraining order to see me and I've got a goddamn picture of it and he was at Mr. Boykewich's butcher shop! What more proof do you need?"
"A lot more, I'm afraid." Officer Diablo, the one who had left the room just minutes earlier and now was reentering, spoke. His jaw set and eyes appeared grave. "I just spoke with Mr. Underwood's parole officer. He says that Bob had community service yesterday."
"Well obviously he wasn't there!"
"It's not as simple as that," the officer sighed. "He's on video camera. He'd been at his community service since five o'clock."
Ricky pulled his cell phone from his pocket and brought up Bob's picture, flashing it at the officer. "After he talked to me! After he broke parole! Isn't that enough to send him back?"
"We could arrest him for the parole violation," the officer nodded, "but-"
"I-if you arrest him and – and he h-h-as taken Adri-an…" Cindy's wracked voice cut in.
The officer bowed his head regretfully. "Then it's likely he won't talk. Especially since we have no idea who his accomplice might be, if he is the one responsible for Adrian's disappearance."
"Can't you get an officer to follow him?" Ben asked.
"That is an option we're looking into right now," the officer confirmed.
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She could hear her captor in the bathroom, door shut, but talking on the phone, but the sound of the bathroom fan made it impossible to tell what he was saying. There were so many things going through her head that she couldn't possibly net them all and give each one the contemplation it deserved. There was only one that she really wanted to think about: "I have to get out."
But as long as that handcuff was on her ankle, that was an impossibility. Frustrated and so, so sore, she pushed her back up against the wall and shook her hands behind her back again. The bonds there was also too tight, she'd never get her hands free. Then a thought began to seed in the fertile soil that was her mind. "Oooh," she whispered. "I'm brilliant!"
Staring intently at the bathroom door to make sure she wasn't caught, she placed her palms together and began to wriggle her shoulders, worming her arms as far around her back as possible. Her left shoulder began to ache and she heard it making poppy joint sounds, so she paused for all of ten seconds to rest it, then resumed her movements until her hands were as far around her hips as she could get them.
Once in position, she curled the fingers of her left hand into the palm of her right, allowing the fingers on her right hand as much free range of movement as possible. Then, slowly, steadily, she began to worm them underneath her baby doll top and into the tight pocket of her jeans. "Further…just a little further…" She stopped breathing when she felt the tops of her fingers touch the top of her cell phone. "Just a little more…"
And then the fan turned off.
Adrian froze, fear crippling her as the handle on the bathroom began to turn. As slowly as she'd managed to get her fingers around her back and into her pocket, she two times as quickly ripped them back out and literally toppled over as her captor walked out of the bathroom and began to laugh at her.
"You are a determined one," he chuckled. "I can see why the boys like you."
Adrian pushed herself back up, another idea forming. "The boys?" she asked, then tilted her head to the side, revealing the full length of her neck. "Is that why you kidnapped me?" she asked, her voice transforming, becoming silk and lace. "Do you want me?" Her heart began to beat in her throat, staring at him with the lusty looks she only reserved for the boys she was about to have in her bed. All the while, however, the corner of her eye was on the handcuff around her ankle. "Because if that's all you want," she continued, her stomach flip-flopping as the words came out, "why don't you just ask?"
She felt the pulses of her wrists quicken against each other as he started to strut towards her. It was an oddly familiar strut, déjà vu again, like with his voice. But Adrian tried to push that to the back of her mind when he crouched down in front of her. She lifted her eyebrows and leaned forward, pushing her chest out despite all the gut instincts that were trying to stop her from doing so.
The masked man slid his gloved hand around the back of her head and forcefully shoved her head forward. "Ask?" he whispered, his eyes exactly level with hers. "That's all it'll take, huh?"
"Ask and you shall receive, as they say. I'm a pretty giving person. And believe you me, I can give a lot if you'll let me." In a flash, his mouth was on hers and Adrian's mind was reeling. His lips were hard and leathery, his teeth clashed against hers painfully, and the taste of his tongue was like the one time she'd accidentally tasted curdled cream without having first checked the expiration date.
When he was through, he yanked her head away by her hair, but continued to hold her head in place. "Get one thing straight, bitch: I don't ask, I take! I'm the man and I make the decisions here! You do things on my terms, got that?" When she didn't answer, he yanked at her hair. "Got that?"
"Y-yes!" Adrian yelped, her eyes tearing up at the feeling of her burning scalp.
"Good." He released her hair and held his gloved hand in front of her face, revealing that it was full of a wad of her hair. He flipped his hand over, letting the hair drift into her lap. Then he touched his hand to the side of her face, moved it down her chin, and let it drop to the collar of her top with his fingers curling inside.
For almost a full minute, Adrian sat like a stone statue, sure that he was going to drop his hand into her chest and fondle her, but then he merely removed his hand and returned to the bathroom, where she heard the toilet lid lift. She finally resolved to let her eyes bleed the tears they'd been holding back.
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Just after six in the morning, Ricky's cell phone went off instead of his alarm clock. He hadn't slept all night, nor did he intend to sleep again until Adrian was back home where she belonged; safe like she should be, were it not for him. "Grace?" he answered.
"Oh, Ricky, thank God! I just saw my phone and got all the messages you left, you sounded so upset. What's wrong? What's going on? Did something happen with Adrian and the baby?" Her voice blew through the speakers like a rush of wind. "I'm so sorry I didn't get back to you last night, I turned the ringer on my phone to silent because I had all this reading homework to do for my history class and I didn't want to get distracted because I'd already been guilty of putting it off because Adrian wanted to sleepover last night, but had I known you were going to call me-"
"Grace!" he yelled, bringing her rant to a dead stop. "She's missing."
"What? What do you mean, she just never came home?"
"I mean she's been kidnapped. Ben's father got a ransom note last night, but we haven't heard anything else."
"Oh my God! Oh my God, if I'd only turned on my phone-"
"It's not your fault, Grace. You had nothing to do with this. It's – it's mine."
"Ricky, you're not making any sense."
Ricky placed his hand to his forehead. "It's not something I can tell you over the phone," he sighed.
"What's your address? I'll have my mom take me to your house-"
"No!"
"But Ricky-"
"Nobody else should be involved in this, Grace. Especially not you. Look, maybe you should just stay home today? I've been around you too and I'm sure he knows that-"
"He who? Ricky, please! I'm so lost here!"
"I'm going to hang up, Grace. And then I'm going to send you a photograph." Without allowing her to respond, he ended the call and quickly began to configure a text message stamped with the photograph he took of Bob: Do whatever you have to do to stay home today, don't go outside, and if you see this man just run! Less than sixty seconds later, his phone began to ring again, but he just held it until the noise stopped. And then it pinged to warn him of a new text message. He debated the idea of not opening, but ultimately decided it could do no harm, as Grace wouldn't know either way.
I've already seen him!
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The fan was going again and it had been for the last five minutes. Five minutes in which she spent trying to get her cell phone out of her pocket again. She could feel her inner sides of her index and middle fingers around the edges of her phone, but it was just to wide to get a good grasp on. Every time she thought she had it, it would slip back down as soon as she'd try to bring it up.
"Damnit!" she cursed under her breath. "What else…" Thinking quickly, she decided to rotate her fingers. Instead of trying to pull it out by the sides, she twisted her shoulders again until they were screaming in rage, and then she managed to flip her fingers around, this time pushing one down over the smooth LCD screen and the other down the back of the phone casing. She clapped her fingers as tight as she could and then began to pull. "Yes!" she breathed, inching the phone up and up and up until it breached the top of her pocket.
Adrian pulled the phone up as far as she could, then pushed herself against the wall, holding the up between her hip and the wall, then she released her fingers and pushed underneath the fabric of her pocket, pushing the phone out the remainder of the way. She hadn't even realized how long she'd been holding her breath until the phone plopped onto the floor. Still watching the bathroom door, she pressed the Power button and quickly sat on the phone to muffle the vibrating sound as it turned on. It continued to vibrate several more times, alerting her that she brought had several messages and/or texts, but she didn't have time for that.
Instead, her fingers traversed the buttons, re-familiarizing themselves with the phone face. There four buttons in the center shaped like arrows: up, down, left, and right. They also acted as shortcut keys. Feeling her way around, Adrian pressed the arrow pointing to the right, which she knew automatically opened up a blank text screen. Then, moving her fingers down to the keypad, she felt around for the grooves between the keys.
"Twelve buttons in total," she whispered to herself, envisioning the face of her phone in her mind's eye. Although the teachers at her school found it the bane of their existence that their students could text under the table thanks to having memorized the keypad of their phones, Adrian realized it just might be the key to ensuring her own existence. "The first three rows are one through nine and the last is star, zero, and pound. So all I have to do is find five, which should be dead center in the first three rows." So she moved her finger along the keys, they were smooth, but five always had two small raised bumps on it. "Gotcha!"
Wasting no time, she moved her finger along directly to the left of the five to the four and down once, to the seven, which she pressed. Then she moved her finger back up, over to the five, and over one more, to the six and pressed that too. Once more, she felt her way to the seven and pressed it again, then worked her fingers back up to the topmost button on the right of the right of the phone face and pressed it three times. "Please!" she whispered, shutting her eyes. "Please get this!" And with that, she pushed herself over her phone to resume sitting on it, for when her capture finally made his back out of the bathroom.
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"I had my parents turn the car around as soon as your message came in," Alice said as she, her boyfriend, and her best friend sat alone in Ben's kitchen.
"I can't believe this is actually happening," Henry said, voice strained. "It feels like something out of a horror flick."
"They just finished setting up a trace on the house phones before you guys got here," Ben said, staring dully at the plum jam covered toast on the plate in front of him. It had one bite out of it from when he had attempted to eat at his father's insistence, but he couldn't taste anything.
"Can't they trace her phone or something?"
"They tried that," Ben sighed. "But it was off, so no GPS signal."
"Any leads on Bob?" Henry questioned.
Ben shook his head. "But we did find out he's probably been stalking Adrian for a while, because Grace said that she saw him and Adrian talking yesterday at the Dairy Shack. He was sitting behind them in a booth and Adrian was so agitated afterwards that she wanted to leave before they even got a chance to eat. They have someone watching's Grace's house too, just in case. But it's likely that they already got what they wanted and now we just have to wait for them to contact us again about where to leave the ransom."
The table began to vibrate and the three teenagers jumped simultaneously at first, then all eye soon came to rest on the cellular device beside Ben. "Do you think that could be…"
Ben cautiously picked up the phone. "It's a text message." Confused, he opened it and nearly dropped the phone.
"What?" Alice and Henry asked unanimously.
"It's – it's from Adrian!" Ben was shaking as his two dearest friends crowded around to look over his shoulders as he opened the text. Immediately, his face contorted. "What?"
Henry jabbed his finger at the screen. "What the hell does 'seven-six-seven' mean?"
"An address? An area code?" Ben said uncertainly.
"Wait, but I thought you said her phone was off!" Henry suddenly exclaimed. "If it's on, it can be tracked, right? Ben!" He grabbed his friend by the arm, hauling him off the chair. "We need to get this to the authorities!"
Alice nodded in agreement, though her eyes were squinted and she was unusually quiet, even for her.
"Alice, you coming?" Henry asked.
"Right behind you," she nodded, following a few steps behind.
Ben pressed the cell phone to his chest. Too many things to process: the message, how Adrian sent it, if Adrian sent it, and what was going through Alice's computer brain. "Dad!" he hollered as they left the kitchen. "Dad! I think we may have a lead!"
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About twenty minutes earlier Adrian had observed her captor receive a call that had had lasted for maybe five minutes and afterwards, he'd stormed out of the bathroom and appeared heavily distressed. First he'd broken a lamp, then tore out some dressers and hurled them about the room, and finally he'd overturned the bed's mattress in a rage. Then he'd looked at Adrian and for a second, she almost thought she was next to be torn into, but then he'd blown out the door only to return two minutes later, even angrier than when he'd left, because he'd forgotten his keys.
She'd been initially afraid to pull out her cell phone again for fear that he would come back and catch her if he'd also forgotten something else, but as the minutes ticked away, she realized that time was off the essence and she could not stand to wait any longer. With her stomach in knots, she scooted off her phone and began to feel up the keypad again. Her cell phone hadn't vibrated again with return correspondence, which was probably a good mood, in case her kidnapper had heard. But now she was beginning to worry as she felt around for the down arrow button, which was a shortcut to her call log. Once pressed, she felt for the Call button and it began to ring.
"Adrian?"
The Latina felt the breath catch in the back of her throat. Ricky's voice! It had to be the most beautiful thing she'd heard in twenty-four hours. "Ricky, thank God!" she whispered as loud as she could. "I've been kidnapped and I don't know where I am and I need your-"
The front door blew open, rattling the walls as it slammed against the wall behind it. The kidnapper charged in. "You little bitch!"
Adrian screamed on instinct and turned her head away as the kidnapper's open palmed hand came down across her face.
Then Ricky's voice bellowed from the cell speaker: "You stay away from-"
But the kidnappers snatched it up from the ground and threw it across the room, propelling it into the wall at full force. The battery snapped off and the phone itself fell to the ground, revealing a giant crack in the LCD screen. The kidnapper further proceeded to stop on it, until the cell itself was in several pieces beneath the sole of his shoe, then he returned his rage to Adrian. "You stupid bitch!" he screamed. The veins in his arms were swollen and visible as he charged at her, smacking her face from side to side before grabbing her hair and slamming her head against the wall.
Blood began to gush from Adrian's nose, thick as paint, running down her lips, chin, and soaking into her clothes. She stared defiantly back at her kidnapper with wild eyes, refusing to visibly cower in response to his abuse. The part of her that normally would have fought back, said something taunting or maybe even laughed, was dying to come out, but it wasn't just her life that was at stake anymore, so she remained silent, but the silence was message enough.
Further enraged by Adrian's body language, the kidnapper abandon his physical assault and flew into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, his voice could be heard screaming into his cell phone, amongst the sound of a shattering mirror and slamming toilet lid.
And Adrian began to laugh. Slow at first, then it grew, coming from her gut. The blood running over her lips mixed with spit, creating bloody bubbles as she cackled. Then she repositioned her legs and began to spit and held her head down over the carpet, allowing the blood from her nose to create a large red spot on the carpet, then she pushed herself up against the wall and began to rub her bloodied face against the white paint, leaving ghastly smears of blood and saliva up and down the wall. When she felt satisfied with herself, she scooted across the floor a few inches to un-bloodied section of the wall and began to systematically touch her spotless fingers to the paint, all the while laughing as she listened to her captor's rant from the bathroom, for he had been so upset that he'd forgotten to turn on the fan this time.