Keep Me Caged Pt 06

Hi everyone! I just wanted to thank you for your continued encouragement on all of my stories and for your well-wishes. I've been busy writing since it's difficult to do much of anything else at the moment and

have finished writing this story and am about halfway done with Keep Me Captured,

the next one. (cue balloons and noisemakers) I'll post updates as soon as I can.

This story contains true accounts of sexsomnia and sexual abuse.

This story is not like the other things I've shared so far. This story has no fantasy elements and probably falls in the "dark stalker romance" category of things. It's a gritty story and as such, has a lot of elements that some people may find triggering. BDSM, non-con, con non-con, violence, murder, kidnapping, submission, domination, alcohol, smoking, revenge porn, spanking, captivity, no safe words, suicide, sexsomnia, disability, eating disorders, Iraq war, tampering with birth control, and abuse are all part of this story. And again, there are no werewolves or faeries in this one - but you will see a lot of common themes across the stories I've shared so far, and this one. Stay sexy and don't get murdered - Ava

TWENTY-THREE - Leo

"I have been followed by enough police robots to know by now how indestructible they are. You can blow them up or knock them down and they keep coming after you; dragging themselves by one good finger and spouting saccharine morality all the while." - Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat

So he's a SEAL, and he drives a Maserati, but I gotta be honest - he seems like a sad boy and more than once I've had the feeling he's pining after my girl. I mean, he's obsessed with her, isn't he? And not like me, but in a creepy way. But I don't say anything about that. He's spent a lot of money to keep an eye on her over the years, that's pretty obvious, and I could feel threatened about it except that I don't. Not until he rolls up his sleeve to show me his injuries and I recognize all the tattoos. She thinks about him, doesn't she? Or at least, she was thinking about him once. And then she called him because she thought I needed his help. That hurts the ol' pride a little bit, I won't lie.

But maybe she was right. With Kane cutting me off, I have no leads on all this hacker nonsense but Esposito is so obviously distraught when I mention it that he has to know something. So I'm sitting in his passenger seat, staring at the red dot that represents my girlfriend while it sits somewhere in Northern California. I think it's too easy - why would she stop so soon? But he's convinced she got tired and found somewhere to sleep.

The first rays of sunlight are pinkening the sky above us when we approach the area where the car sits stationary on the map. My gut instinct is she got rid of the tracker, walked around in circles looking for somewhere to stash it, then just tossed it. But when we pull up at a hotel I'm a little less convinced. What if he knows her better than I do?

But it turns out neither one of us knows her at all. A cop car is parked in the driveway, its lights silently strobing blue light around the otherwise placid exterior of the hotel. Nic parks and we get out, thinking we're going to be searching on foot, but the conversation between the officer and a man in business casual catches Nic's attention.

"No, I didn't leave the keys in it," the man raises his voice, obviously frustrated with the officer. "See?" He dangles the keys in front of the cop's face condescendingly, "they're right here. They obviously hotwired it."

"Stolen car?" Nic asks.

"Yeah," the cop begrudgingly answers him, "been a lot of that around here lately."

"You don't say," Nic tuts and shakes his head, playing the part of the respectable citizen. "We're going to be on the road all day. What kind of car is it? We'll keep an eye out."

"A tan Chevrolet Cavalier," the guy throws his hands up in the air, "nothing special. The most basic car you can buy, and they stole it." He laughs and gestures at Nic's Maserati, then laughs again. "Just my fucking luck."

We move on, the feeling between us electric as he gestures to get back in the Maserati. I don't know what he's thinking at first, but he drives around the back of the hotel and misses it entirely. But I don't.

"That's her car," I snap at him, pointing out the tan Cavalier. "The license plates are gone, I almost missed it," I admit. The only thing that finally caught my eye was the little rabbit charm still hanging from the rearview mirror.

"What do you mean--" he starts to ask, then quiets as he sees the empty space where the rear plate should be.

"She swapped her plates for his, then stole his car. It's kind of genius - both sets of plates will show they're registered to a tan Cavalier and no one will look any closer. Does she know how to hotwire a vehicle?" I ask him, but he just shakes his head. After a while he grumbles, "who knows what Talia knows?" I don't like that answer. "But where would she learn to do that? She's an artist--"

"She worked at a TTI ranch," he snaps at me, "she probably knows how to hotwire a car and do a lot of other illegal shit that neither of us even suspected."

I frown, waiting to ask more questions while he makes his way back to the freeway. "What's a TTI ranch?"

"Troubled Teen Industry. People pay someone to kidnap their teenagers and take them away to work and be 'disciplined' by strangers until they straighten up. Her grandmother arranged it for her. Probably picked the ranch because Talia already knew how to ride horses, but that's where Talia had her accident. Those places have terrible safety records and kids regularly die at them," he tells me.

"What the fuck? Her parents paid someone to kidnap her?" I'm so glad I didn't let Kane convince me to black-bag her. I can't even imagine the fall-out from that.

"Yes, and then she spent two summers there with juvenile delinquents learning how to actually be a delinquent. Imagine Basic twice, but both times with nothing but criminals and fuck-ups."

"So, Army Basic," I joke. "Why did they do that? If she wasn't a delinquent, why put her with them? And where are we going, what are we doing? If she took that man's car, we don't know where she is."

I can tell he's mad. The way he's gripping the steering wheel has changed and there's something tight about his facial features that wasn't there before. Maybe he's starting to wonder if Talia isn't as innocent as he thought she was. Well, join the club.

"I'm certain she's still going to Arizona, so we're heading that way until I see a good reason not to. She was just a borderline kid, yunno?" I guess it's because of his anger, but now when he talks a little New York accent slips out and I can't help but grin. He reminds me of my father's family, and my father, before he decided to bury his identity and became "a patriot."

"That seems extreme for borderline," I start to say, but he's chuckling and I know I'm in for a story if I can wait long enough while he runs through gears, cutting people off in traffic and irresponsibly whipping the Maserati through the growing clusterfuck of morning commuters.

"She liked to fight. Did she ever tell you that?" I shake my head, but I've only known her for days, not years like him, and I'm discovering there's a lot of things she didn't tell me. The fact that she didn't break her hand when she socked me should have made me suspicious. I just told myself she was tough, but there was more to it. "She was a good kid but she got in a lot of minor troubles, started neglecting her homework, talking back, skipping school, sneaking out, normal shit. Her grandmother thought martial arts would straighten her out, but once she learned how to fight she was worse. She'd pick fights because she knew she could win them, usually with other kids, but she finally rocked some cowboy's world and got in real trouble for the first time. They decided it was a sign and tried taking her to therapy, then the TTI ranch--"

The truck seems to come out of nowhere. One second Nic is painting a picture of Talia that clashes against what I know about her, but somehow fits the puzzle at the same time. In the next second the laptop is crashing into my face, my ears are full of the sounds of twisting metal, and for the briefest moment I have a glimpse of the truck through the passenger window. It looks just like my truck,

that's funny,

I think. Then the Army Veteran decal flashes past as the truck careens into traffic and I realize it

is

my truck.

How is my truck here?

The white billowing fabric of the airbags blocks out everything else, red filling half of my vision as blood pours into one of my eyes. Beside me I can hear Nic groaning, then the deafening ringing starts and everything is white-hot pain. I think maybe death or sleep will take me and that seems like a relief, until hands reach through the twisted wreckage and pebbles of glass to pull me out of the vehicle.

I try to fight, but I've just taken a heavy-ass laptop and its metal cradle to the head. "Where are you taking me?" I manage to choke out, but the response doesn't make any sense.

"Back to your truck," he snarls. I black out and when I next wake up I'm lying beside my truck on the hard surface of the freeway. The door hangs open above me and two firefighters are pressing an oxygen mask to my face. An officer leans down and yells, "how much did you have to drink?"

"Nothing," I tell him, but he snorts and picks a beer can up, jiggling it in my swimming vision. "There must be six cases worth of empty beer cans in there, not to mention the half-drank fifth of Jack," the cop laughs.

"I don't drink Jack," I argue. I don't drink anything, not anymore, but I don't want to tell him I'm trying to knock up a girl I just met and that my spirits of choice before that were German ones. I don't manage to get anything more out. It hurts to talk and somewhere nearby I can hear Nic arguing with someone that I was in his vehicle. I already know no one is going to believe him. This isn't my first rodeo. I'm sure the cops already know about the DUI I got on my motorcycle right after I left the Army, back when civilian life was still new and I hadn't quite figured out not to trouble the population.

I'm fucked, and I'm not going anywhere any time soon.

TWENTY-FOUR - Talia

"At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Watermelon juice," I muttered to myself as I parked "my" car in the Fresh and Easy parking lot. I had a whole list of my favorites that I'd been dying for ever since I left Arizona, and I was so hungry I couldn't think straight. The store was about to close, but I ran in and filled a basket, bought a styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice, then hoped it would keep my food long enough to get me back on the road to my actual car.

What a mind-fuck,

I thought to myself, laughing.

Some poor person is going to get his car back, parked right where he left it when I'm finally done with it.

"What am I even going to say to Leo when I see him again? He's never going to forgive me." I sat alone in the car regretting some of my decisions, but I knew that somehow I was doing the right thing. These were my problems, trouble I had gotten myself into by being a fool. Why should he have to clean it up or pay for it? That didn't make sense to me at all. He was just being noble and kind of an idiot by throwing himself on the line for me. I had to clean it up and then go back and fall on my sword. "He might take me back," I deluded myself between bites of mocha crème cookies. "He'll get over it."

In Southern California I'd stopped on the side of the road long enough to make a few phone calls. Leo had taken my phone, but burner phones were cheap and available all over. In the space of a few minutes I had a new phone and had made the phone calls I needed to make. I knew that if the computer club, or "Truth Seekers", was an officially sanctioned club that there had to be some sort of documentation. Someone had approved their use of the multi-purpose room, given them the weekly meeting time where it would be all theirs. Whoever had requested that had to be on paper somewhere. But I was shocked when I called the school and learned that they had sold the multimedia equipment to another school. My program was gone. The buildings were empty, and no one had used them for Truth Seekers meetings since the previous year.

"How can they do that, just close it down and say nothing? I'm still paying my fucking student loans," I cursed and ranted to the empty car for the next several miles. "Well, if no one is there, they won't notice me break in," I decided. And now with my belly full of watermelon juice, Caesar salad, and mocha crème cookies, I was ready to do something potentially very stupid.

It wasn't surprising that the parking lot was empty and security was nowhere to be seen. The semester had just ended and no one had any reason to be around there. No good reasons, anyway. So I walked right up to the office building and tried the door. It was locked, but the student identification scanner was lit. Theoretically, my student ID should have been deactivated when I left, but given how often they hadn't disbursed my tuition payments on time, I figured there was a chance they had overlooked other things. They had always given me the same excuse about the late payments - the special character in my last name did something to the computers and my file had to be manually found by my student ID number, which no one could be bothered to memorize. Any time I spoke to them, they had to see my ID to read the number off of it and find me in the database. Maybe they were right about the computer glitch, and maybe I was glad my dad had given me his last name and nothing else.

"I shouldn't do this. They will know it was me."

I pulled it out of my wallet and swiped it, and the door opened.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I laughed, then cautiously stepped inside. If I could get in I reasoned that maybe some other students still could, too. But from the looks of things inside, no one had been there in a long time. It looked like the set of a zombie movie and my skin crawled as I moved past ransacked file cabinets, abandoned desks, and empty offices. I found no one, and the cables that dangled from disconnected cameras told me no one would notice if I got comfortable and started searching through the paperwork left behind.

It was surreal. I could tell that no one knew the firing was coming. Files were left open on desks, and a computer, which must have been asleep for months, woke and was already logged in when I tapped the spacebar. I found nothing useful on it, but it was nice to know I had a computer at my disposal. I finally found an employee directory and circled a few office numbers that sounded like likely locations for the folder I sought. I headed off to find them, using the flashlight feature on the burner phone to light my way. I was afraid to turn on the lights and potentially draw a lot of attention to a building that was supposed to be dead. "This would certainly feel less freaky if I turned on the lights," I told the first of the offices.

This person had been listed for "student activities", but their office was devoid of anything.

I guess they moved it to the main office,

I thought. Some generic school-specific items had been left behind, but the thick layer of dust told me this office had been empty longer than any of the others. "Fired before everyone else," I observed, then moved to the next person on my list. The next few offices were dead ends, but the fourth office was like a time capsule. Whoever had worked in that office hadn't even come back for their personal belongings. They'd just left it all.

"Okay, Sandra," I murmured as I tugged on her file cabinet drawers. They were locked, but the keys were in the first drawer of her abandoned desk. In the second drawer of the file cabinet I found a folder labeled "Clubs", and the instant I realized I had what I needed, I ran back to the registration office and dug through all the cards of student contact information.

"You fucker," I breathed as I pulled his card from the stack.

Even in his student photo he was wearing that stupid black hoodie. "Evan Parks," I read aloud, squinting at the photo. Did he look like a Sueycide? In the meetings he'd always called himself, "The Darkness," which had left me stifling a laugh every single time. He seemed to see himself as a Batman-of-sorts and generally took everything that came out of his own mouth too seriously. I slid the card inside the folder, then jogged through the stale air of the building back to the front door. Almost too late I realized a security guard had materialized. I heard the reader beep as he swiped his card and I stumbled into a dark office and hid beneath the desk.

Please don't catch me, please don't catch me,

I begged the Universe to help me.

"I know you're in here," he called out. In the distance, the blue light of the computer screen shone through the glass of all the offices. He moved towards it with a flashlight in one hand and a taser in the other, calling out to me to reveal myself. Still crouching, I moved out from under the desk and watched him disappear around the corner and into the office where I'd woken the computer. Then I ran for it. In Leo's loaned boots my feet seemed to pound louder than should have been possible on the sidewalk. The officer emerged from the building behind me, but only caught a glimpse of me as I rounded the corner of the building. By the time he could even get a good look at me I was already hotwiring the car again and leaving as fast as I could. A few blocks away I tossed out the old student ID. If anyone came looking for me I would just tell them it was stolen. Maybe they would believe me, maybe not.

While I drove I fumbled in the folder for Evan's card. "I hope you still live on Hermosa Drive, you dick." It took me almost twenty minutes to get there, and I wondered why he would choose to live so far from school. I know why I did - I didn't like the crowds of downtown and rent in Mesa was more affordable for nicer places. But Evan's place was a pit. I pulled into the parking lot of a dumpy apartment building that looked as though a student of bad 1960's architecture had designed it. It was ugly, a hulking monstrosity of dark-stained wood. The landscaping had been let go and the few bushes that survived were surrounded by endless seas of tan, featureless rock. I stepped out of the car and onto a sidewalk lit by warm nighttime lighting, carefully maneuvering around a puddle that had attracted a swarm of cockroaches. It was water in the desert, a rare thing in June, and I was certain the apartment building played host to legions of roaches. That part of town was totally overrun with them.

Evan's apartment was on the first floor. I stopped there first, peering through the two windows it had on offer. The lights were off, but I could faintly hear KMFDM pulsing through the apartment. "I bet the neighbors love you," I muttered as I checked out the area around the door. There was no mail there or anything to identify the apartment owner.

I have to find the mailboxes,

I decided, and moved along on my adventure until I found them. I took out my car keys, useless as they were to me at the moment, and used the flat side of a key to pry open the mailbox that should have been his. I barely managed to squeeze a finger inside and grab the corner of an envelope. I tugged it out, ripping it in the process.

Evan Parks, APT #110 634 Hermosa Drive.

I held it up beneath the flickering green sodium lamp that lit the area around the mailbox and grinned. Victory.

He still lives here.