Seductive Shadows (33 page)

A long moment passed in silence. His eyes remained on mine, his expression fixed. His arms stayed crossed over his heart. “I need time to think. I’ll return with a decision. In the meantime, don’t leave this apartment.”

***

Both the pillow under my neck and the couch under my back felt like they were stuffed with concrete. My body was stiff; my ankles cracked as I rolled them and my shoulders tingled as though they were on the verge of turning numb. The sun beat against my closed eyes, pushing the headache that had developed even closer to my sinuses. The restless sleep I’d had made everything hurt. So did his lack of window treatment.

I slowly sat up, stretching my arms over my head and wiggling mobility back into my limbs. I noticed the Doctor sitting in the chair across from me, and I jumped. I remembered lying down shortly after his departure, but I didn’t recall the moment I’d fallen asleep.

“How long have you been watching me?” I asked.

“Hours.”

“I’ve been asleep for that long?”

He nodded. His expression was similar to the one he had worn last night: straight, indifferent. Serious.

I had taken off my shoes apparently, so I pulled my feet off the floor and tucked my legs underneath me. I settled in without asking what he was thinking, without pressing him for his answer. I was desperate to know, but I wanted him to speak when he was ready.

His hands moved from his lap to the armrests, his fingers folding around the metal. I sensed I wasn’t going to have to wait long.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

This wasn’t the first time he had asked me this. I didn’t understand why he was asking me again. He had given me no reason to change my answer.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you understand the risk I took when I told you about the mansion?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you believe it was a cry for help?”

His question surprised me. He had always seemed so confident, his movements so precise and calculated, as though he’d applied his surgical tactics to aspects of his life beyond medicine. But after finding out about me, knowing the position I was in, his actions had turned messy. I wanted to believe I’d made a difference. I wanted to think that he wouldn’t be able to carry on as though I had never existed, now that he knew I did.

“I believe I’ve changed you…or, rather, knowing
who
and
what
I am has changed you,” I said.

“I don’t have any other children, Charlie. You’re it. And it’s extremely rare for me to ever waver on a decision or alter an opinion…or question my own judgment. But that’s exactly what you’ve done to me. You’ve made me reconsider. You’ve…
changed
me. I believe I can be…and I want to be…a father to you some day. My life was empty before you. I can’t imagine how it would be without you now.” This was more than I’d hoped for. “So I’ve done some thinking, and I’ve made several phone calls.”

My body was reacting to the anticipation, the emptiness in my stomach reminding me of the stress, and of how long it had been since I’d eaten anything.

“It took a little while, but I’ve located someone who I can pass the information to…someone with the connections and power to take this to where it needs to go. This someone is far above the police, far above the court or the state, even.” He exhaled loudly. “I’ve decided to help you bring them down.”

My body should have been overcome with happiness. With the Doctor’s help, we were going to stop the mansion…the kidnapping. The killing. As relieved as I was that he’d agreed to come clean, I didn’t know what it would mean for his fate. I cared about the future of these girls, but I cared about the Doctor—my
father
—too.

“What’s going to happen to you?” I asked.

“They’re going to offer me a plea bargain. Beyond that, I have no idea.”

I wasn’t even sure how this would happen now. “Do you have what you need to do this…or are all the records at the mansion?”

He reached into the front pocket of his button-down shirt. A flash drive slid out, caught between his fingers. “All of the records are on here.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Even the clients?”

I couldn’t help but think of Mr. Hunt, of how Emma’s family would be affected if all of his dealing with the mansion were to be made known.

“Everything,” the Doctor repeated. “I’m a very thorough man. It’s all on here—any client who has ever had a membership, a list of the girls who’ve worked there through the years, the men and women who were kidnapped off the streets, all of the records we kept on them, the buyers, and a copy of our books.”

“And the employees?”

“Their names and social security numbers are on there, too.”

A piece of plastic the size of the Doctor’s thumb held as much potential for damage as a natural disaster; it incriminated
them
, it gave undeniable proof of what had been happening in the mansion. The aftershocks would continue for years. The number of people this would affect was almost unfathomable. And it was all coming out because of me.

“When are we going to deliver it to our…contact?” I asked.

“You’re not going to deliver
anything
, and you’re not going to leave this apartment for any reason unless you’re being relocated by the authorities. Tomorrow,
I’ll
be delivering the flash drive to
my
contact.”

 If his life was going to be on the line for this, then so was mine.

“No. I have to go with you.”

“Then the deal is off.”

“What?” I put my feet back on the floor, sliding to the edge of the couch. “Why?”

“After tonight, when they realize you’ve skipped work and the tracking device in your cell phone hadn’t shown any movement for hours, they’ll be looking for you. I refuse to put you at risk. For the time being, you need to stay hidden. No exceptions.”

“But—”

“I asked you if you trusted me, Charlie, and you said you did. You’re going to have to continue trusting me. I will prove to you that I’m going to do the right thing.”

Emma’s face flashed before me. She hadn’t purposely sacrificed her life for me, but her body had absorbed more of the impact from the car that hit us, all because she sat in the passenger side. My side. I didn’t want the Doctor to stop anything from hitting me. I was as committed as he, and I wanted to be just as involved. But I had just convinced him that his daughter was important enough for him to sacrifice his freedom. I knew he wouldn’t be willing to compromise my safety.

“OK,” I said. “You can go alone.”

He stood from the chair. “I promise you’ll have time to ask your other questions. I know you have a lot of them, and I’m sure they don’t all center around the mansion. It’s only fair that I answer…and I want to. Honestly. But it isn’t going to happen right now.”

I nodded. “I understand.” He broke eye contact and turned his back to me, walking toward the bedrooms. “Wait!” I called.

He stopped and glanced over his shoulder.

“I have a favor to ask.”

He turned and faced me fully. “After all of this, you want something more from me?”

It probably sounded ungrateful of me, though that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Yes,” I answered. “Just a small favor.”

I had nothing but time before the evidence was handed over, so I explored the apartment and learned that there were multiple bedrooms throughout the space. There was also a movie theater, and an entire second level that had its own kitchen. The panic room was the most interesting of everything. It had multiple cameras and monitors that displayed various vantage points within the apartment, outside the building, and along the surrounding streets. The Doctor had let me choose where I wanted to sleep, so I’d picked a room that faced Washington Street. I watched the sidewalk below, filled with shoppers and pushcarts, activity that reminded me of how quiet everything was in here, and that, somewhere nearby, life was normal.

The Doctor’s assistant had filled my closet with clothes—jeans and tops and pajamas. Everything was the perfect size…even the dresses. I had no idea what I would need those for, but they hung in my walk-in among the shoes and belts and undergarments. My bathroom had been stocked with cosmetics; the cabinet under the flat screen was loaded with Blu-Rays and books had been added to the shelves above the desk. I had cable, and a mini-fridge; I even had an array of nail polish at my disposal. The Doctor had said to let him know if I needed anything else. Considering that the only things I had brought with me were a change of clothes, a few brushes, and Lilly’s sweater, all I would have needed to make it complete was a canvas and a palette filled with paint.

Our conversations in the penthouse were far less structured than our sessions in the mansion, and less emotionally-charged than our discussions in the limo. Here, there was no prescribed form to our dialogue and I could tell he didn’t know how to act around me. So instead of maintaining an awkward silence, he allowed me to ask anything I wanted.

And I did.

I learned that he had never been married, and he wasn’t dating anyone presently. He’d never been intimate with any of the girls at the mansion; it hadn’t felt right after counseling them and manipulating their logic for wanting to stay employed when he would only end up calling their time of death. I tried to understand his reasoning, but his lack of empathy was sobering.

As for his share of the mansion, his father (also a doctor) had played a similar role during his time there. He’d passed down his share a decade ago, a few months before the man I now knew to be my grandfather had passed away unexpectedly.

When the Doctor first began working in the mansion, the girls were kept alive, but sold and trafficked on the international market as sex slaves. It was about five years later, when the demand for organs and the profitability of their trade was discovered, that the mansion switched their tactics. I asked him what had drawn him into this lifestyle; he told me he was tired of the practice he worked in, being held captive by insurance and medical restraints. At the mansion, aside from the board, he had no bosses, no colleagues or co-workers for him to pretend he cared about. He was in complete control. Power wasn’t the only thing that had enticed him, though; he’d been compelled by the dark mysteriousness of the house, the decades of secrets held within those walls, and the allure of the underground. We never discussed the killings, who was actually responsible for them or how much he’d witnessed through the years. I didn’t ask how it had affected him, but I could see by his inability to register remorse that his not caring had led him to apathy rather than freedom. It seemed as if I’d entered his life at just the right moment.

Alone in my bathroom, I cracked the door to let out some of the steam from the shower and swiped my hand over the fogged mirror. I held the towel with one hand and leaned toward the glass. My fingers shook a little when I drew them under my eyelids and pushed against the puffiness of my cheeks. My mask was finally off, and there wasn’t a shadow dark enough or a foundation thick enough to hide me now. Nothing could change who I was. I knew I had made some poor choices all the way through, and that things might never be how I wanted. But I accepted that. After doing so much wrong, I had finally done something right.

“Charlie?”

The sound of my name made me jump; the towel almost dropped. I turned toward the door. A tiny portion of a face stared back through the crevice. The voice, the tone, the caramel skin...

It couldn’t be.

I yanked the door open. Standing a few feet from me, dressed in jeans and a casual button-down, was Cameron. “What are you doing here?” I wanted to rush into his arms. But after everything I’d put him through, I had to let him be the one to make the decision for something like that.

“I wanted to know where you were, so I got in touch with your dad. He isn’t so happy that I did it…or that I’m here.”

My stomach tightened.

“Why would you do something like that?”

His hands rose to the doorframe and pressed on the jamb as he leaned into the bathroom. I shifted my weight between my feet, squeezing the ends of the towel so it wouldn’t fall open.

“I wanted to find you. To meet you there. To start over again with you, wherever you were.” His eyes said as much as his words.

“You were going to give up
everything
…to come with me?”

He stepped into the bathroom and stopped just inches away. His hands cupped my cheeks as he tilted my face up toward his. “I don’t know what you went through before you started working in
that place
; I’m not going to pretend to understand. Something in your life must have been bad enough for you to have made that choice, and I can’t judge you for that. We’ve all done things we regret, Charlie.”

I searched his face, hoping to know what he was leading to with all of this, to prepare myself for whatever overpowering emotion I was headed for next.

“You’re not there anymore; you did the right thing by leaving that place. What isn’t clear to me is why you’re still here.”

“Still here?” I put my hand on his chest. I needed to know that he was actually in this bathroom, that he had really just spoken…that his mouth was really this close to mine.

“Yes—still
here
, at your dad’s apartment. Why are you still in Boston at all?” His fingers stroked my cheeks; his thumb slowly circled the skin above my lip. The promise held within his breathtaking blue eyes encircled me. I knew I was safe.

“I’ve decided not to run after all,” I said. “I’m staying instead.”

“So you’re not leaving…me?”

My flesh began to heat and tingle under his fingers. My hands still clenched the towel and held it closed...but I was losing strength.

“We’re taking the information about the people I’ve been working for to the authorities. We’re going to put an end to their organization.” Saying it to him out loud was surreal. “They may end up taking me somewhere to keep me safe. But I’m not leaving…not like I thought I would be.”