I sat frozen, barely breathing, my spine rigid against the chair back. Jumping at every sound—a drawer sliding open, a book being lifted, footsteps on the hardwood. The collar felt like it was constricting, cutting off my air supply, and I had to consciously force myself to breathe in and out, in and out.
They looked between the books and examined silly little figurines, and that was when I realized they were looking for bugs. There wasn't a single nook or cranny that wasn't inspected, including my air vents and all the electronics, which there weren’t very many of.
When they disappeared into my bedroom, my face burned.
They'd see the rumpled sheets, smell the faint scent of my body spray. They'd know I'd been alone here, that this was my sanctuary, and now it was being violated all over again.
Then I saw the one thing that I was sure they would take. My cell phone was sitting on my dining room table under a pile of sheet music I had been studying.
I stared at it for a moment, then glanced away. Silently, I sat and watched these men from beneath my lashes while I pretended to stare at the floor. If they looked at me, they would only see a woman staring at her feet.
But inside, my heart was drumming. Each beat sent a fresh wave of adrenaline through my system. My jaw ached from clenching it so hard. A bead of sweat rolled down my spine despite the cool morning air.
I even counted the seconds on the analog clock above my sink so I wouldn't look at my cell phone and draw their attention to it.
Every time they got close to the table, I silently prayed that they wouldn’t find my phone. God only knew what messages my mother had left on it. Did she send me a message about what the plan was with the police? If they knew who Darius was.
I knew she wasn't overly affectionate. She was just driven and ambitious. If it had been my father who was like that instead of my mother, I probably wouldn't have thought twice.
It was a lie I told myself frequently. But there had to be a kernel of truth in it somewhere.
I didn't want them to see messages from my mother, the number of missed calls from her or any protection detail she’d arranged for. I just sat there silently, letting them search through my life, praying they didn't see the one thing that they were looking for.
My heart raced and my mouth went dry, but I said nothing and just held my breath at the thorough search they were doing.
My lungs burned from holding air. My vision went spotty at the edges. Still, I didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe until they passed by the phone again.
They never found it.
Thank god my apartment was a mess.
It wasn't messy in a gross way. There wasn't food hanging out or anything disgusting, it was just cluttered, and I had a veryparticular horizontal filing system with my sheet music. I knew where everything was before they started trampling through it.
Both men gave me long, annoyed looks on multiple occasions, but I didn't care. This was my home. And my mess was one of the few rebellions I still got away with. It was how I’d defied my mother's stifling childhood rules.
A senator's daughter always had to be perfect, beautiful, intelligent, neat, and mannerly.
I was never smart enough for her, so that rule wasn't hard to ignore. Dying my hair purple was in defiance of my mother's beauty standards. And my apartment was an ode to what an unmannerly mess I was.
Still, each time they looked at me with disapproval, the collar grew heavier.
My breathing grew shallower.
I wanted to scream at them to leave, to get out, to stop touching my things, but I couldn't. I could only sit there, a perfect, obedient doll with a bomb around her neck.
Finally, the men said something in Russian to each other, then nodded to me and left, closing the door securely behind them.
I didn't dare move from the kitchen table. I sat there and counted to ten.
My entire body vibrated with tension, muscles locked so tight they burned. I counted again. And again. My injured hand pulsed with my heartbeat, each throb a reminder that this was real, that I was still here, still alive, still wearing this thing.
When I got to ten the third time, I immediately got up, flipped the deadbolt, attached the chain to the door, and then went back and grabbed my cell phone.
My hands shook so violently I almost dropped it.
My legs finally gave out, and I sank to the floor, back against the wall, the cool surface doing nothing to stop the tremors wracking my body.
My mother must have been terrified I hadn’t called her back.
