Someone Is Watching (44 page)

“No more panic attacks?”

“Some,” I admit. “But less frequent, less severe. And I’m sleeping better.” I don’t tell him of the deadly sharks that continue to swim through my nightmares, their fins slicing through the surface of deceptively placid seas.

Heath pushes himself to his feet. “Well, little sister, it looks like my work here is done.”

“You’re leaving?”

“You’re not going to believe this, but I actually have a date. A real date, not just a hook-up.”

“Wow.”

“Nothing serious. Just, you know, this girl I met on set.”

I follow my brother into the hall.

“What about you?” he broaches tentatively when we reach the door. “Given any thought to maybe dating again?”

“I think about it. I’m just not ready.” I picture Owen Weaver and wonder if his invitation to dinner will still be open if and when I
am
ready.

“You will be,” Heath says, taking me in his arms. “I love you, Bailey. Remember—you’re my hero.”

Tears fill my eyes. “I love you, too.”

I watch him through the peephole as he disappears down the hall. Then I double-lock the door.

After all, my rapist is still out there.

My
rapist, I repeat silently as I head toward my bedroom. As if he is someone I possess and not someone who once possessed me, possesses me still.
My
rapist, as if he is mine alone.

I doubt this is true. Experience tells me that, even in the unlikely event I was his first victim, it’s even more unlikely I’ll be his last. He won’t stop until something—or someone—stops him.

I’ve thought a lot about him these past months. I’ve researched the kind of man who rapes, what motivates and drives him. Of course, there are as many motives as there are rapists, but I’ve learned that these men share a number of traits: Many are the product of meek mothers and brutal fathers, or weak fathers and
overbearing mothers. Take your pick. Many were abused. Most feel inadequate in one way or another, often sexually, although rape has little to do with sex. It is a crime of power, of control and humiliation. In its quest to inflict pain, it cuts through class, economic boundaries and racial divides. One thing unites these men: Men who rape are men who hate.

Tell me you love me.

I’ve tried to reconcile these words with the act itself, to determine what kind of man would demand such an admission from a woman he’d just violated. I’ve discussed it with Elizabeth Gordon. We’ve postulated that the man who raped me might have been subjected to frequent beatings by his mother for even the most inconsequential of childhood transgressions, then made to apologize for his punishment and, in a final act of debasement, forced to declare his undying love. Another theory is that as a young boy, the man who raped me might have witnessed his father repeatedly abusing his mother in just such a manner. Both scenarios are possible, even plausible. Of course, it’s equally possible that neither of these suppositions bears any relation to reality, that the man who raped me is the product of a warm and loving home and that his parents remain blissfully ignorant to this day of the monster their love created.

And ultimately, do reasons matter? The “why” is of consequence only if it leads to the “who.” It’s the “who” that counts.

I sink down on my bed, scoop up my remote, and turn on the TV, absently flipping through the channels. Stopping on
1000 Ways to Die.

The reality is that I will likely never know who raped me, that he will forever remain faceless, nameless, that the biggest question in my life is the one I might never be able to answer.

But sometimes you have to be okay with ambiguity. Sometimes it’s all you’ve got.

As an investigator, someone who solves mysteries for a living, this is hard to wrap my head around. Even more ironic is the fact that the mystery I
did
solve had nothing to do with the mystery I thought I was solving.

My rape masked a lot of things. For weeks, I was operating
under a huge distraction, a distraction engineered by my half-sister, a distraction that cut two ways. The rape distracted me from dealing with longstanding family issues, while my family distracted me from dealing with my rape.

Elizabeth Gordon—the one positive to come out of Claire’s betrayal—will help me come to terms with both of these enormities. But first I have to figure out what is solvable and what is not. Now that I am no longer being overwhelmed by all the red herrings Claire threw my way, my focus is starting to clear.

Tell me what you see,
I hear my mother say now, her voice mixing with the voices emanating from the TV.

The darkness of that awful October night instantly surrounds me. I’m transported from my comfortable bedroom into the middle of a circle of prickly bushes. I breathe in the deceptively warm air, the gentle breeze blowing the subtle scent of the surrounding blossoms toward my nose. What details have I overlooked? I ask myself, as I slide off my bed to crouch beside it, mimicking my actions of that night.

Reflexively, I retrieve my binoculars from the bottom drawer of my nightstand, conjuring up the scene and watching it play out again. I see the large rectangular window of the third floor corner apartment across from my hiding place. Occasionally, a woman walks into view. Once, she stops and lingers in front of the window, craning her neck, as if she might have spotted me. I’m growing tired, thinking of calling it a night. Which is when I hear the noise, feel the modest shifting of the air.

Tell me what you see,
my mother prompts again.

I see a sudden blur of average height and weight, a flash of skin, brown hair, blue jeans, and black sneakers with their trademark Nike swoosh. I relive the onslaught of punches to my stomach and head, and strain against the roughness of the pillowcase that drags my hair over my face and burrows into my eyes, nose, and mouth.

The phone rings.

I jump at the sound, a familiar reflex. Taking a series of long, deep breaths to calm my newly jangled nerves, I grab the remote
and turn down the volume of the TV. It’s closing in on ten o’clock, and Jade is at a party. She’s probably calling to see if I’ll extend her midnight curfew.

But the number that comes up on my caller ID doesn’t belong to Jade.

My heart is reaching into my throat as I push myself to my feet, my hand hovering over the receiver, as I try to decide whether or not to pick it up. On the television screen, a woman is choking on a plastic Easter egg she mistook for chocolate. “Number 912 …,” the announcer begins as I press the mute button and pick up the phone, sitting down on my bed and leaning back against the pillows. “Hi,” I say.

“How are you?” Sean asks softly in return.

“Okay.” Why is it that, in spite of everything—the revelations, the lies, the fact it’s been months since he’s tried to contact me at all—a part of me still thrills to hear his voice, a part of me wants nothing more than for him to come over and spend the night holding me in his arms, assuring me that his feelings remain unchanged and that he will always be there, to love and protect me, to keep me safe and out of harm’s way?

Except, of course, he was never there for me at all. He never loved or protected me. His arms never kept me safe. How could they, when his grip was so deliberately tenuous?

“It’s been a while,” he says.

“It has,” I agree.

“I still can’t believe that Claire, of all people …”

“Yes.”

“She seemed so nice.”

People are rarely what they seem. “She had us all fooled.” Why is he calling?

“Look. I hate the way things ended between us,” he says, answering my silent question. I picture him hovered over his phone, keeping his concern for my welfare well away from his pregnant wife’s ears. “I think about you all the time.”

“I think about you, too.”

“I miss you, Bailey.”

“I miss you, too.” A wave of shame washes over me. Have I learned absolutely nothing?

“I was thinking maybe I could stop by sometime soon.…”

It would be so easy to give in, to overlook, to surrender.

Except I’ve already surrendered too much of myself. And I’m tired of feeling ashamed. “Aren’t you expecting a baby any day now?”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

“Well, maybe it should,” I say forcefully, surprised by how easily the words fall off my tongue.

“Bailey …”

“I don’t want you to come by. In fact, I don’t want you to call me ever again.”

“You don’t mean that. It’s late. You’re tired.…”

“And you’re a liar and a fraud,” I tell him, borrowing the words Jade threw at her mother. “Call me again, and I swear I’ll call your wife.” I drop the receiver back into its charger, my adrenaline pulsing through my veins, my veins threatening to burst. I want to scream. If I don’t do something, I will explode. I jump off my bed and march into the bathroom, coming face to face with my reflection in the mirror over the sink.

While I’ve put back a few of the pounds I lost in the immediate aftermath of my rape and I’ve cut down on the number of showers I take, I’m still way too thin, and my hair continues to hang like a crumpled dishrag around my too-narrow face. Sean always loved my hair.

Reason enough to get rid of it.

I head back to the bedroom and retrieve the scissors from the top drawer of my nightstand, then return to the bathroom and impulsively begin hacking at what was once my crowning glory, slicing it off in clumps and tossing fistfuls of it to the tile floor. I continue recklessly, not stopping until all that remains of my once luxurious locks has been reduced to barely more than stubble, a five o’clock shadow run amok.

When I’m done, I drop the scissors to the counter and stare at my handiwork, my energy spent. “Holy shit,” I whisper.

In the movies, when the anguished heroine chops off all her hair, she somehow manages to look as if she just emerged from a high-end salon, her hair short but expertly and stylishly layered, her new do even more fetching than her previous one. Not so in real life, I realize, staring at the mess I have made. “Holy shit,” I say again. What else is there to say?

Overwhelmed by exhaustion, I collapse on top of my bed, turning back on the volume of my TV and watching as a woman wearing a billowing white bridal gown wades into a river, laughing happily, a photographer running along beside her on the shore. I hold my breath, knowing what is about to transpire. I remember reading about the growing trend of brides to do something outrageous in the way of wedding pictures, how this trashing of tradition has become all the rage. I watch the unsuspecting bride’s gown become waterlogged, the weight of her dress ultimately dragging the now-struggling woman beneath the water’s surface. I’m asleep before the announcer can tell me where her tragic drowning stands in the pantheon of
1000 Ways to Die.

I turn on my side and tumble into a dream. I’m running down a sun-drenched street, pursued by half a dozen faceless men. They chase me to the edge of the ocean and I wade in, quickly becoming weighed down by both my billowy white skirt and the heavy blue waves. There is a raft in the distance, and I swim toward it, sharks gathering beneath my feet. I pick up the pace of my strokes, not noticing until I am mere feet from the raft that there is a man lying on top of it. He sits up, his silhouette familiar although his face is blocked by the glare of the sun. He extends his gloved hand toward me. “No!” I scream, flailing about helplessly in the water, my clothes wrapping around me like duct tape as a giant fin breaks through the ocean’s surface, and hundreds of scissorslike teeth rip into my flesh.

Which is when I jolt awake.

“Damn it.” I glance over at the clock, realizing that barely ten minutes have passed. A whole night of bad dreams to look forward to. I run my hand through what remains of my hair, deciding
to go to the hairdresser’s on Monday. Maybe they’ll be able to do something. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think. I walk into the bathroom and once again confront my reflection in the mirror. It’s exactly as bad as I think.

I splash water on my face, debate taking a shower, then decide against it. I’ve regressed enough for one night.

What was it Jade once said—that we have recurrent nightmares for a reason?

So what exactly are these dreams trying to tell me?

“Probably that I’m watching too much damn TV,” I say as the phone rings.

This time I’m so sure it’s Jade that I don’t even bother to check the caller ID. “No, you cannot stay out past midnight,” I say instead of hello.

“Miss Carpenter,” the familiar voice says. “It’s Finn from the concierge desk. Wes just arrived for his shift, and he asked me to tell you that as soon as he changes into his uniform, he’ll be up to check out that sofa bed.”

A feeling of dread immediately worms its way into the pit of my stomach, and I swallow a growing panic. Don’t be silly, I tell myself. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Wes’s visit is not unexpected. Jade made these arrangements with him days ago.

Except Jade isn’t home, and I’m alone.

And a young man is on his way up to my apartment, a young man who’s always made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, a young man of average height and weight, a young man with brown hair and a familiar voice, a young man whose breath occasionally smells of mouthwash.… “Oh, God.”

“Miss Carpenter, is everything all right?”

I forgot I was still on the phone. “Could you come up with him?” I ask suddenly.

“What?”

“Please. Could you come up with him?”

“I’m just about to go off shift,” Finn says, lowering his voice. “I’m meeting this girl.…”

“Please.”

“Sure thing,” he agrees quickly. “What am I supposed to say to Wes?”

“Just tell him you’re interested in the sofa, too.”

“He’s not gonna be very happy.…”

“Finn …”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“Thank you.” I hang up the phone, knowing I’m being ridiculous, that Wes is almost certainly not the man who raped me.

Except.

What if he is?

There’s nothing to worry about, I assure myself as I proceed down the hall. I’m being paranoid, bouncing from one extreme to the other, from not being able to focus to focusing too much. Instead of letting go of what happened to me, I’m hanging on tighter than ever. But this is just a temporary setback. Elizabeth Gordon warned me to expect this, that my journey back to normalcy would not be a smooth one.