Torture to Her Soul

  "What happened?" I ask, glancing between them uneasily. I hate crying, no matter who's doing it.

  "It's Paul," Karissa says carefully, shooting her friend a sympathetic look when the name makes her cry harder.

  "Ah." Paul. "Something happen to him?"

  "Yes," she says, hesitating before sighing. "Well, we don't know. He sort of just… disappeared."

  That he did.

  Poof.

  Gone.

  Carried away by the wind.

  "Disappeared," I repeat.

  "Yeah," she says. "Nobody's seen or heard from him in days. The police say there's no sign of foul play, but his car was left at his work and his phone was all smashed up in the alley, so I don't know how they can say that. Clearly he didn't run away."

  "He wouldn't," Melody chimes in, sniffling as she tries to control her sobs. "He wouldn't just run away. He had work… and school… he had me. Something happened to him, somebody did something to him. God! Why would somebody want to hurt him?"

  Why? The million-dollar question.

  I could answer it, but it wouldn't be what she wanted to hear.

  Melody starts crying again. I take it as my cue to excuse myself. I pull the discs from my coat pocket and walk over to my desk, sitting down across the room, giving the two of them their space.

  I pop the first disc in the drive and wait for it to load. Six cameras are positioned around the outside of Cobalt, two in the front and two in the back, with two more along the alley, giving a complete view of the building and the streets around it. The screen is split into squares, the feed from all angles playing simultaneously. I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, or if it'll even help, but I know Carmela. She wouldn't have just attacked me that night on a whim. She would've scoped the building out, put a plan in place and gone over it again and again.

  Desperation doesn't completely erase a built-in knack for survival, which she clearly has.

  I watch the feeds for a while, fast forwarding through hours of nothingness, watching the comings and goings around Cobalt, and waiting for something to spark my interest. I breeze through two days of footage as Karissa and Melody talk amongst themselves across the room. The crying grates on my nerves as I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair, growing more and more on edge.

  I want silence, and peace.

  I want this over and done with.

  I need to put an end to it.

  Move on with my life.

  I'm on day three of the footage already when Melody finally pulls herself together and climbs to her feet. "I should go. It's getting late."

  It is.

  It's nearing dusk.

  She's been here for hours.

  "Are you sure?" Karissa asks. "You don't have to go. You can stay as long as you want. We have guest rooms."

  My eyes dart over top of the laptop screen, meeting Karissa's right away. She shoots me a 'no nonsense' kind of look that silences me before I even say anything. She'll fight me on it. She will. And it'll get ugly if I interfere.

  "I'm sure," Melody says, hugging Karissa. "Thanks for being there for me today. Sorry you missed your classes because of this."

  "Not a problem," Karissa says right away. "Anything you need, you just let me know. I'm here."

  "I'll remember that." Melody gives her a watery smile before turning to me. "Thanks for letting me cry on your couch, Ignazio."

  "Thank Karissa for that," I say. "She extended the invitation, not me."

  Karissa groans. "What he means to say is 'you're welcome' and 'come over anytime'."

  Karissa walks her friend out as my gaze settles back on the laptop, the afternoon streaming away on the screen. After Melody is gone, Karissa strolls back in, pausing in the doorway. I can sense her gaze burning through me.

  "You skipped school," I say without looking up, "on the first day."

  "She needed me."

  "For what? It's not as if you could do anything."

  She says nothing.

  I can still feel her gaze.

  Glancing up, I meet her eyes. She's staring at me hard.

  "Could you?" she asks. "Could you do something?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know… whatever it is you do. Dealing with people and finding things are your specialties, right? That's what you told me. So you can find people, too, right? I mean, you found me."

  "Actually, you found me," I say, hitting pause on the feeds to look at her. "You stumbled right into my path."

  "But you would've found me, eventually," she says. "You were looking for my mother… maybe you still are looking for my mother. I don't know."

  She pauses, staring at me. She formed it as a statement, but I see the questions in her eyes. I'm not going to answer, though, and I don't think she expects me to, because she moves on quickly.

  "I'm just saying, you do things… those kinds of things… so I thought maybe you could find him. For Melody. For me."

  "For you."

  "Yes," she says. "As a favor."

  I lean back in my chair, eyeing her warily. She's opening a door I'm not sure she's ready to walk through. "Tell me something, Karissa."

  She hesitates at my serious tone. "What?"

  "When you poisoned my food, where did you get the drugs from?"

  Her cheeks grow red, a hint of alarm in her eyes as she averts her gaze. "I didn't poison your food. I didn't want to hurt you."

  "You're avoiding the question."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "It does," I say, "to me."

  Shaking her head, she stares at the floor near my desk. "What does this have to do with anything? I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry I drugged your food. I'm sorry I ran off in the middle of the night. I'm sorry I led you to my parents. I'm sorry I got my father killed."

  "I thought you didn't have a father."

  "I don't." Her voice has a hard edge to it. "I'm just saying…"

  "You're saying you're sorry," I chime in when she doesn't finish. "But what you're not saying… what you're avoiding saying… is that Paul gave you the drugs that sparked all of it."

  She has no argument for that.

  She just glares at me.

  "Bad things happen to bad people, Karissa."

  "Paul wasn't bad."

  "He endangered you, didn't he?"

  "Yeah, well, you were going to kill me!"

  "I was," I admit, "but I never pretended to be good."

  "What are you trying to say, Naz? Huh?"

  "Exactly what I'm saying: if you want me to look for him, I will, but I'm not going to find him. Nobody will."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because if he was meant to be found, he would've been found already."

  Karissa leans against the doorframe, mulling over my words. Shutting the laptop, I stand up and smooth my suit coat.

  "Look," I say, "why don't we go out and grab some dinner, celebrate the first day of classes."

  "I skipped them, remember? There's not much to celebrate."

  "Nonsense. Regardless of if you were there or not, the day happened. There's a lesson to be learned there, you know. Life goes on without you."

  "I hear you, Plato."

  I smile at her sarcasm as I stroll across the room, pausing in front of her. "I prefer the words of Plautus." I cup her cheek, stroking her warm skin with my thumb. "Let us celebrate with wine and sweet words."

  "I don't know Plautus."

  "Huh." Leaning down, I kiss the corner of her mouth. "He also said the chap that endures hard knocks like a man enjoys a soft time later on."

  She smiles softly when I kiss her again. "What does that mean?"

  "Whatever you want it to mean."

  "What do you want it to mean?"

  I kiss her a third time, nipping at her bottom lip as I pull away. "Maybe I'll show you when we get home."

  I forgot all about the goddamn Chocolate Mint Tea.

  The full cup is still sitting in the car, perched in the cup
holder between the seats, exactly where I set it when heading to pick her up from class. A peculiar odor clings to the interior from the hours old drink.

  It makes my nose twitch.

  Karissa stares at the cup during the drive into the city. I wait for her to ask me about it, but she doesn't say a word. I can feel the tension mounting, though, the theories forming in the back of her mind.

  "I bought it for you," I explain before she even mentions the thing. "I tried to pick you up from class this afternoon."

  Her voice wavers when she responds. "I told you I didn't need a ride home."

  "That's never stopped me before," I say. "You weren't at the school, though, so I tried to call you."

  "Oh, yeah." She finally looks away from the drink to glance at me. "My phone's not working."

  "What did you do to it?"

  She narrows her eyes. "What makes you think I did something?"

  I smile at her defensive tone. "Because I know you. You're hell on that phone."

  She rolls her eyes. "So, okay, I dropped it, and like the screen went black and now it won't turn on, but that doesn't mean I broke it. It could be unrelated, you know. Maybe it just died."

  "Unlikely."

  "Whatever."

  "Regardless, we'll get you a new one. With a new number. I'll put you on my plan."

  "How very... domestic."

  "Well, you're going to be my wife, aren't you?"

  She hesitates.

  Hesitates.

  "You're going to be my wife," I say, not phrasing it as a question this time for my own sanity. "What's mine is yours. Which, for the record, is also a Plautus quote: for what is yours is mine, and mine is all yours."

  She's quiet for a few minutes before clearing her throat. "I am"

  "Are what?"

  "Going to be your wife," she says, "someday."

  "Someday soon," I amend.

  "Not that soon."

  "Soon enough."

  "Whatever."

  "Whatever," I mimic. She's starting to love that damn word. "Speaking of, have you chosen a date? Have you thought about any of it?"

  "No."

  This time there's no hesitation.

  Infuriating woman.

  "No," I echo.

  "It's not that I don't want to," she says. "I think I do."

  "You think you do."

  She groans loudly. "Can you not do that right now?"

  "Can I not do what?"

  "That! Repeating everything I say in that tone you use."

  "Repeating everything," I say, "in the tone I use?"

  "Naz!"

  I breathe deeply, trying to combat the swell of frustration when she yells that name. I don't even realize when I do what she's complaining about. It helps me keep things straight to repeat her, to take her at her word and not misinterpret what she says.

  "You think you want to," I say, picking up her train of thought. "Continue. I'm listening."

  "I think I want to. I still feel how I felt the day you asked me, even though you never really asked me."

  "I never asked you?"

  She cuts her eyes at me, glaring, but doesn't complain that I repeated her words. "You didn't ask. You said 'marry me'. It wasn't a question."

  "Huh."

  She looks at me like she wants me to say more, but I'm not sure how to respond to that.

  "Anyway," she says after a moment, stressing the word. "The point is, yeah, I think I want to, but the whole wedding thing is daunting. I just, I don't know... what's the point? It's not like I have anyone to give me away. Hell, I don't even have anyone to invite. Melody, I guess... I'd invite my mother, but I'd rather it not turn into murder, Game of Thrones style. She wouldn't come, anyway. And now Melody has her own stuff to deal with. I guess we could invite your former in-laws. I'm sure they'd be about as thrilled to attend as the rest of your family, who clearly all hate me. Maybe your father can cater the event."

  Her words have a bitter bite to them.

  I can't help but laugh.

  "My father doesn't hate you."

  "He clearly didn't like me."

  "He just felt bad for you for having to deal with me."

  "I don't need pity."

  I smile at that. "Welcome to my world."

  "Killer."

  The lone word echoes through the den. I glance up from my work, eyes darting to where Karissa sits on the couch with her notebook. A strange sense of déjà vu hits me. She's back to taking notes while watching cooking shows.

  It's quiet as I stare at her.

  She's frowning, looking right at me.

  "Killer," I repeat.

  Killer.

  "Yes," she says. "Killer."

  I have no idea what she's talking about. Is she calling me a killer? Does she know something she ought not know?

  After a moment, her expression softens, a slight smile touching her lips. "You have no idea what I said, do you?"

  "Killer."

  "Yes," she says. "I said I miss Killer."

  It takes me just as long to comprehend those words, to realize she's talking about a damn dog. I remember her mentioning him when we visited the house in Watertown and then encountering the mutt in her father's house months ago.

  "Ah," I say. "Your dog."

  "Yes, I miss him." Her brow furrows contemplatively. "Is that weird? Everything going on, everything that happened, and I think the dog worries me most."

  "That's a little weird, yes."

  She laughs to herself, turning back to her notebook, and absently scribbles along the edge of the paper. I can tell she's distracted and paying no attention to anything. "I just... I don't know. I sometimes think he's the only innocent one in all of this."

  "The dog," I say, wanting to clarify to make sure we're still on the same page.

  Another laugh. "Yes."

  "You don't think you're innocent?"

  "Me?" she asks incredulously. "Not anymore. You screwed the innocence right out of me. Literally."

  "I'm serious, Karissa."

  "So am I. Maybe I used to be innocent, I don't know, but I'm not anymore."

  "You really believe that?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm with you."

  She means that. I can tell from the tone of her voice. She thinks she's one of the guilty parties, that she played a hand in what's going on.

  "How innocent can I really be to sleep with the man who wants to murder my family?" she asks. "When you first told me about... about Maria, and the baby, and what happened to them... when you told me you wanted justice, I knew what you meant. I knew you were out for blood. And that night you told me, I loved you more for it. I respected you. The bloodlust didn't bother me. It wasn't until I realized you were gunning for me... for my family... that I was bothered by it."

  "I'm not going to hurt you," I say for what feels like the millionth time.

  "I know," she says quietly. "I believe that now. Maybe I always believed it. But you do hurt others. I'm not an idiot. I know what you're capable of. I've seen it. And still, here I am, worrying about a dog and what happened to him. My mother, she's resilient. I worry about her, too, but I just... I don't know. How could I even begin to defend her? I'm not even sure what she's capable of. But the dog... he's done nothing wrong, and I worry about what's going to come of him in this all."

  If I were a shrink, I'd say something about projection, about how's she's channeling her fears for herself into another living thing because she's too scared to face them, but I know she doesn't want to hear that.

  I know, because the hospital made me talk to one of them years ago. I almost ripped his fucking spine out when he tried to diagnose me.

  Personality disorder, my ass.

  No, Karissa wants to talk about the goddamn dog, so I'll talk about it.

  "Don't worry," I say. "Killer will be fine."

  "You mean that?"

  "Sure."

  She smiles, like my words set her at ease, even tho
ugh it makes no sense. How the hell could I know anything? She goes back to scribbling in her notebook, her eyes bouncing between it and the television as she takes notes.

  My gaze turns back to my laptop, every muscle in my body seizing the moment I look at the screen. There it is, in the top right hand corner, the camera view of the alley beside Cobalt.

  An old Jeep Waggoner.

  I almost missed it, distracted by Karissa. But I know that car. I recognize it. Carmela drove one the entire time she was on the run, the plates fictitious, completely untraceable. I hit pause, isolating the frame and enlarging it. Bingo. I hit play again, running the feed at half the speed. One person in the car, but something else moves around in the backseat.

  Killer.

  "You know, he used to sleep with me at night," Karissa says across the room, still going on about it. "He was kind of my best friend. He could always tell when I was upset or lonely and made a point to keep me company. And yeah, I know it's ridiculous, but he's kind of the only one who's never lied to me."

  "I've never lied to you."

  "That's a damn lie if I've ever heard one," she grumbles. "You're the freaking king of deception."

  "There's a difference between lying and misleading."

  "Maybe to you there is, but not to me."

  I jot down the plate number, not sure how much help it will be, before letting the feed run at regular speed. I go back to all the camera angles, watching as the car circles the club before she speeds away. She hits the end of the alley and takes a right, heading south through the city.

  Sitting back in the chair, my gaze shifts once more to where Karissa sits, tapping her pen against the notebook. She's not watching the television anymore. She's looking at nothing, staring into space.

  Yet again, I'm overcome with how beautiful she is. Physically, she's a combination of her parents, but I don't see them anymore when I look at her. I don't see Johnny's freckles or Carmela's face. I see what's inside. I see the innocence, even if she doesn't feel like it's there anymore… I see it, burning so strong that even sleeping with a man like me could never dim it.

  Sighing, I close the laptop and grab my phone from where it lays on the desk. "I have to make a few calls."