Puppet On A String (20 page)

      
“With Mrs. Greystoke gone, the woman looked at me and smiled. Then she kissed me on the mouth. I still remember how soft her lips were, and the smell of her perfume. It was very sweet and earthy, almost like incense; the fragrance was still clinging to my skin when I got home. ‘You are a lovely woman,’ she said. I think she wanted to say more. In fact, I’ve imagined her telling me to stop doing such self-destructive things like this, but she didn’t go that far. But it felt good that she was worried about me. Even worried that she’d damaged me. Although, I don’t imagine she was thinking about that when she was getting off…”

      
“You think what you were doing was self-destructive?” Dr. Ramsey asked.

      
“That day I did,” she replied wistfully. “I don’t think it had ever occurred to me before.”

      
“And after?”

      
“I went back again. But there were only two more times with Greystoke – Mrs. Greystoke disappeared again like she was never even there. By the time I went back, all I wanted was to scrape up information that Clive could use against Greystoke. I got lucky that day. He left me dangling from the ropes because he needed to answer a phone call in the next room. He left the door open, probably thinking that I was too out of it to hear a thing, but I overhead plenty. That wasn’t my first big score, though. Right after the session with Mrs. Greystoke and her friend, I spent a long time with Greystoke’s date book. The two women had left the room and I’d been ordered out. But neither one stayed to see me leave. Greystoke would never have left me alone, not with sensitive material that close by. Not that he was suspicious of me in particular; but he would have been careful with anyone inside his house. I don’t know; maybe his wife wasn’t aware of his criminal activities so she had nothing to fear from me. Luck? Coincidence? Who’s to say? But between Greystoke’s date book and that telephone conversation, I learned everything that Clive wanted. Clive didn’t exactly admit that during the debriefing, but I could see his eyes light and that satisfied smirk…gave him away every time.”

      
“And that ended your sessions with Greystoke?”

      
“Just one more. I’m not sure why I went back. Habit, maybe. But it was worse than all the others. He did the usual stuff, maybe a little more extreme than normal, but any magic there’d been was lost. As far as spying for Clive, I think he had all the info he wanted. When I told Clive afterwards that I was done with man, he was surprised, but not really bothered. I guess he figured that I’d eventually tire of the bondage, even if it did earn me some decent money.

      
“Making the decision to stop may have been difficult, but once it was done, it was like a huge weight was lifted from me. There’d be no more stripping for Clive either. I was done with him too. I swore him off…”

      
“And
were
you done with him?” Dr. Ramsey asked.

      
“I was.”
Shelby
laughed a little with a shamed face. “Except for a night about three months later when I came to the office for money he owed me. He was very good at sensing my vulnerable moments and sliding into them like a wedge. He pried me wide open with a few keen observations and we fell into a scene that I still regret. He poured out a cold wrath on me, bondage, and pain and sex…hard nasty sex. Of course, I came. I’d been programmed to come with that kind of rough abuse. But it felt as empty as the last time I was with Greystoke.
That
was the last time with Clive Darcy.

      
“I told him over the phone that I wouldn’t be coming back. I’m sure he didn’t think I was serious. After all the time I’d backpedaled, why would it would be different? He suggested that we meet occasionally for lunch, ‘nothing formal’ he said. He had assignments for me. Easy stuff. Nothing dangerous. No bondage, no sex. No debriefings.”

      
“And you took his offer?”

      
“Sure. There was money in it, money I needed for the coffeehouse. But I didn’t want to see him. I stipulated that he was to make arrangements over the phone. I wasn’t going to see him anywhere for at least three months. He accepted that.”

      
“And you kept to your word?”

      
“I did. In fact, it was probably five months before I saw him again, and by then there was Padraig.”

      
Dr. Ramsey raised her eyebrows as if she really would have liked to have heard about him, but the hour was up.

      
“Maybe you can tell me about Padraig in our next session,” she said.

Chapter Fifteen

Session Five…

“You’ve had a busy life in the years since we had our first sessions.” Dr. Ramsey opened the next hour with that observation, to which
Shelby
jumped right in:

      
“I guess I have.”

      
“But you haven’t even approached the reason you called three weeks ago. Am I right?”

      
“Yes,” she grinned self-consciously.

      
“But let’s back up just a bit…a few observations if you’ll permit me.”

      
Shelby
didn’t object, though she could feel her anxiety start to rise. She’d almost not come to the appointment, knowing that when the last session with Dr. Ramsey ended there were no more sordid tales about the past to tell, just the story of Vienna and Padraig. “Sure, why not?” she answered in a shaky voice.

      
“What I have seen, Shelby,” the doctor began, is that you’ve grown up quite a bit since I saw you five years ago. You are more direct, less timid and unsure of yourself. You were just coming into your own, but it seemed to be more tiptoeing than arriving with a shout. You left Clive Darcy, but did you really leave him?”

      
“No. Obviously,” she grimaced.

      
Dr. Ramsey smiled warmly. “Even now there is that young girl in you, the one that gave herself to Mr. Darcy. But she’s much less in charge. I’ve found it interesting when you were telling your story about Greystoke, that you went back and forth between calling Mr. Darcy by that name, and then by the name Clive. His first name still seems awkward for you at times. You lapse back and forth. Maybe it depends on how you’re thinking of him.”

      
“Maybe I’ll never be over him.”

      
“Oh, I think it’s possible that you can put him behind you. But he was your first love and as severely as he controlled you, wrenching yourself from his control can’t be easy, as you’ve already seen. Maybe you needed those two years with Mr. Greystoke.”

      
“I thought I did and the money was good. Even if it sort of makes me a whore, money for
sex, that
was what it boiled down to.”

      
“But that really isn’t what bothered you when you gave it up.”

      
“No, that wasn’t what bothered me. It was so empty. Maybe Clive wanted me to see that so I’d go back to him.”

      
“But you didn’t go back to him.”

      
“But I leaned on him for money. The assignments…”

      
“What was that about?”

      
“His work, his private intelligence company needed me to make flights across the
Atlantic
carrying certain parcels. Clive even had a microchip implanted in my shoulder so that he could track me if necessary. He said it was just a precaution, that my assignments were only simple deliveries…but just in case.”

      
“And how long did you do these assignments?”

      
Suddenly, the truth seemed to be aimed from an arrow right between her eyes. A burning sensation began there. The reason…the truth…
Vienna
and Padraig and Jessup…
Shelby
fumbled with the zipper on her
hoodie
, closed her eyes and took a breath.

      
“How long,
Shelby
?” the doctor prompted.

      
“Three years. For three years until,” she hesitated, toying briefly with the idea of lying, but then the truth just seemed to spill out “…until a few weeks ago.” She squirmed in her small corner of the couch unable to meet Dr. Ramsey’s gaze.

      
“So, all this time,” she said.

      
“Only once or twice a year, maybe it was three times that first year. I had an all expenses paid vacation for a simple trip to
Europe
.”

      
“With a chip in your shoulder.”

      
“Yeah, with a chip in my shoulder,” she smiled nervously.

      
“And what happened on the last trip? It was the last trip when something happened, wasn’t it?”

      
Shelby
’s whole body clammed up; even her open posture changed back to that of a frightened girl. “But that is another story, Dr. Ramsey…”

      
“And we have nearly an hour,
Shelby
. Just tell me what happened.”

For the next hour
Shelby
rambled on about the
Vienna
airport, the surly guards, the detention center and Col. Jessup, then the nights at the brothel under the control of Madame Pavlenco, the harrowing rescue by helicopter and finally her reunion in
Vienna
with Padraig

Finnian
.

      
“I got home and went to the office where Clive was holding court. I told him off. I cut the ties. I had the chip taken out, and the tattoo removed days later. I won’t see the man again, even in a moment of weakness, I know this now. I won’t. I can’t!”

      
“I feel that,
Shelby
.”

      
The woman calmed her with her soothing tone of voice.

      
“What you’ve told me is astounding. Takes a lot of toughness to go through the ordeal you described. I find your resiliency amazing. But…I also sense that there’s something else going on, a subject that you haven’t talked about.”

      
Shelby
was silent. So was Dr. Ramsey, waiting placidly for a long time, until she finally leaned forward purposefully.

      
“Let’s get to the point,
Shelby
, I want you to tell me about Padraig
Finnian
.”

      
The woman could be so subtle, meandering her way through the minefield of a client’s ramblings, and then there were times like this when she might as well have donned the leathers and zipped up the stiletto boots. She was quiet in her manner, but her words cut right to the core where the broken shards of
Shelby
’s last three years lay waiting to finally be swept away.

      
“I loved Padraig. He was a better man than I’ve ever known. He’s handsome and sexy and down to earth, so Irish…he tries to hide it, cause he says he’s about being an American now. But the Irish slips out in such beautiful ways. I thought it might work out between us…but then
Vienna
happened and he appeared from out of nowhere after I was rescued. But he didn’t belong in
Vienna
…”

      
“He didn’t belong? I don’t understand. He came to bring you home and you say he didn’t belong?”

      
“It didn’t feel right from the moment I saw him in the hotel. I always assumed he knew nothing about my relationship with Clive…that he knew nothing about my bizarre sexual desires. But then when I got home, the truth started falling into place. What I thought to be true about Padraig was a lie. He belongs to Clive Darcy. Not the way I belonged to him, but he was one of Clive’s agents. Here I was thinking that I’d cut my ties with Clive and the man who steps in as my boyfriend turns out to be on Clive Darcy’s payroll. He even knew that the man was sending me to
Vienna
…that I was about to be arrested and swept into the underground slave market…” She spoke angrily, her body shaking, tears streaming from her eyes.

      
“Do you know this for a fact? Are you sure he knew what would happen in
Vienna
?”
      
Shelby
was silent then, drifting off, sobbing quietly.

      
“
Shelby
, answer me,” Dr. Ramsey’s voice took on a stern edge. “Do you know this for a fact?”

      
“What else am I to believe? He’s on Darcy’s payroll, why wouldn’t he know everything?”

      
“For the same reason that you didn’t know everything. Clive Darcy is a schemer…

what’s to say that he didn’t set Padraig up along with you? Did you have any reason to suspect Padraig before? Any reason?”

      
“No.”

      
“Did he admit to knowing what would happen on your trip?”

      
“No.”

      
“And the last time you saw him…what happened?”

      
“I told him about some of the things that happened with Jessup and the Madame, and how it wasn’t all that new for me…I told him the truth about what a slut I am. I couldn’t keep it from him anymore…he had to know that the kinky side of me is not going to go away. So what does he do but tell me he already knows – or at least he thinks he knows. He didn’t have to say much, I put it together on my own. I mean, I’d been suspicious all along…since
Vienna
. So I asked him point blank how he got the money to make the trip. That’s when he told me that he worked for Clive…”