Why the fuck is he so eager?
Chapter Three
Ricky
Throbbing headache, tongue that feels like it’s coated in rubber cement, and a slurry of chemicals burning their way through my veins — mostly cheap alcohol and whatever additives ol’ Granddad puts in his whiskey, but something different, too, whatever Adriana, if that is her name, dosed me with — it’s a night like any other since I got to… fuck, I think I’m in Sacramento. She looks surprised that I’m lucid enough to talk with her. Obviously, she doesn’t have much experience dealing with people who’ve had my past with addictions.
“The movie’s over,” I say.
“There’s still the credits.”
Her eyes are glued to the thing. She’s come all this way, worked so hard, and she’s hesitating just to watch a bunch of no-names, aside from Mr. Van Damme, scroll across the screen.
“You’re hesitating.”
“No, I’m not. I just learned that Forest Whitaker was in this movie. He played ‘Rawlins.’ Did you know that?”
“It sounds like you don’t really want to do this.”
“Why the fuck would you think that, you fucking asshole?”
“No one watches the movie credits willingly.”
“Well, I just did.”
I look at her, trying to drink her in with my foggy eyes. What I see isn’t so bad to look at — those familiar features, only with harder edges, sharper eyes, and a downward curve to her lips,which is a look I rarely saw on Vanessa’s face. She cried a lot, sure, because life was fucking tough, and I made it tougher, but she had a smile that lingered for days when it came out, like a sunset that just wouldn’t quit.
“No, you’re hesitating. Why? I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. And I’m not hesitating. I got you here, didn’t I? Went through all that fucking effort to kidnap you.”
“Just to bring me back to some seedy hotel? Shit, people do that with a swipe of their thumb on Tinder.”
“No, this took a lot more work. I had to find this hotel, deal with the creepy front desk guy who watches porn at full volume, and pay extra for the ‘no questions asked’ suite.”
I shift a little, which isn’t easy with the drugs in my system, the handcuffs around my wrists, and the bindings on my legs. The room’s dark as hell, but even so, I make out things that lead me to believe this is no ordinary hotel room: metal hooks in the walls, a chain dangling from the ceiling, and peeling wallpaper decorated with a pattern that looks like it was made by a discount Georgia O’Keefe moonlighting for Playboy.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “You put in some effort.”
“The handcuffs and everything else came with the room, too. I have my own handcuffs, but why risk leaving behind evidence?”
“Good point.”
“If you look over there,” she points towards a corner, where in the shadows I see something boxy. “There’s a cooler. It was bloodstained inside when I got here, and there’s a hacksaw attached to it with some cabling.”
“Oh, fuck, this place is serious.”
She nods, smiles at me in a way that chills my blood and fills me with hope. “It is. It isn’t cheap, either.”
“You really put a lot of effort into this, huh?”
That smile twitches and grows just a little in a way that isn’t unattractive. Inside, it makes me shiver and wonder if I’m feeling attracted to her because she’s attractive, or if she just looks so similar to Vanessa. Or is it both?
Does it matter?
She’s going to be giving me what I want soon enough. At least, if she has the balls to actually do it instead of blabbing about how long she’s waited for this moment or how determined she is to do it, instead of actually doing the damn thing.
“I did. I loved Vanessa,” she says. “She was my little sister. And when she ran off to do all that fucking sick shit you pushed her into, all that shit that trapped and killed her, there was a part of me that already thought of her as dead, that I’d never see her again and just give up hope. And then there was the part of me that remembered my little sister for who she was when we were younger, the trouble we used to get into together, how we’d braid each other’s hair, gossip about boys, and how she had a fantastic singing voice and spent a couple years in a row really dreaming about making it as a singer. That part of me kept an eye out for her, would run her name through searches, would check obituaries and news articles, just hoping for a hint that maybe the logical part of me was wrong and the sister I grew up with was still out there, alive, and maybe, just maybe she’d want my help to get her life together.”
