Identities Ch. 03-04

"It sounds as though your father has become so enveloped in bitterness that he can no longer see those around him clearly. Which is heartbreaking. And is also a great pity, since he risks missing the great things you are going to do as a lawyer."

He looked at her again, a little perplexed, and found her returning his gaze with a small smile.

"I don't know you so well, but I have complete confidence in saying that you are going to do great things with your career, Mark. You are smart, hardworking, and you have a passion for bettering the world around you. There is nothing you can't achieve with a combination like that. Whatever field of law you decide to pursue, I know you will do so with skill and integrity."

He felt her affirmation settling around him almost against his will. Despite the strength of the grief that had gripped him only minutes ago, he felt his heart grow a little lighter at her words.

"I hope your father will choose you over the past. For your sake. But know that even if he never does, you are going to have the power to do good, good that will counteract all of that lawyer's bad. You are going to receive the same powers and privileges that he did, and you will not use them to abuse others, but to aid them. If your father would only stay open to your story, he will have the chance to witness powerful redemption."

If these promises had been made by someone else, Mark would have dismissed them as nonsensical flattery. But there was something in Arley's manner, in the strength of her conviction, that allowed him to accept the hope she offered. They sat in silence together a while longer, faces turned to the sun and the breeze. Inside of Mark, there was still the pain of rejection, but it was softened now by a sense of peace.

Finally, he got to his feet, and so did she, hoisting her bag over her shoulder again. Looking down at her, he wanted to thank her for what she had given him, but didn't know how. He tried to reciprocate instead.

"What about you? Is there anyone who is unhappy you're here?"

She laughed lightly as the autumn wind gusted around them, leaves scurrying at their feet.

"Oh yeah, loads," she said casually. "But I've left them way behind." And with a last, knowing smile, she turned and continued walking the route she had been going before.

Mark left the sunny street of his mind's eye and returned again to the basement of Michael's cottage. That was it, that was what he had: one moment of intimacy, in which he had spilled his pain before her and she had knelt to catch it. One moment of gentle understanding.

It did nothing to answer the question of whether her name was Arley Adair or Nadia Christensen. But in another way, a more real way, it did much to answer the question of who she truly was.

***************************************

Arley was roused from sleep as the surface she was resting on shifted. It took her a moment or two to remember her surroundings. Warmth surrounded her, tempting her to fall back into peaceful oblivion. Mark. He was the source of the warmth.

Just as she became aware again of his arms around her, they were withdrawn. He moved out from behind her, causing her to shiver as cool, damp air hit her in his wake. He kept one hand fastened around her arm as he moved to the edge of the bed, where he straightened, pulling her upwards as well. She blinked rapidly, feeling suddenly dizzy and weak. Need calories, she thought dully.

She obeyed the pressure Mark exerted against her arm without really thinking about it, falling into step beside him. He unlocked the door and brought her across the basement and up the stairs. She took inventory as they went. Her cheek hurt a little bit, but the pain was greatly reduced. Her muscles ached from the battle with Chris, and the skin on her arm and wrist felt tender where his fingers had dug into it. All manageable.

She realized then that she was lingering in thoughts of her physical state to avoid thinking about the fact that she had just spent an unknown amount of time lying in the arms of a (somewhat) unknown man ... and that it had felt far too comfortable. She forced herself to address this fact as Mark led her into the kitchen and sat her down at a large wooden table. Her first reaction was to feel guilty. It was wrong, somehow, for her to have found comfort in his touch. He was complicit in her kidnapping, and that meant she hated him, she reminded herself. No Stockholm syndrome for you, she thought firmly.

But perhaps it was possible to hate him and still accept whatever help he would give her. That didn't count as Stockholm syndrome -- that was just survival.

Mark was moving about the kitchen, pulling things out of the fridge and cupboards. Arley looked around the room cautiously. There was only one door, on the far side of the room. Mark had placed her on the opposite side of the table from the door, so that she would have to go around it to get out of the room, giving him plenty of time to block her. There was also one window on the wall a few feet to her left, a big one with many panes of old, uneven glass that would surely be a proper struggle to lift open, especially with tied hands. Again, he would almost certainly reach her before she could get through it. Arley bit back a disconsolate sigh.

She watched Mark in silence for a while. He had daubed some sort of spread onto two slices of bread and was now cutting thick slices off of a brick of cheese.

"Where are the others?" she asked. She didn't hear any voices coming from other parts of the house and wondered if the other three men had left.

"Around," he said unhelpfully.

Arley's mouth twisted sideways as she considered pressing him. Ignoring the little shoot of frustration that had unfurled within her, she decided it wasn't worth opening hostilities. Yet.

"Where are we?" Her tone was casual; she might have been asking about the weather. She saw the corner of his mouth twitch as he set aside the cheese and reached for a tomato.

"An old cottage on the coast."

He glanced back at her and their eyes locked briefly. She knew then that he was not going to tell her anything that could help her. He might not enjoy hurting her, but he was still a willing participant in her capture and imprisonment.

Undeterred, she cast about for a question that he might actually answer, one that would give her information without appearing to do so. He had turned back to the tomato.

"Who was that man in the video?"

The knife that was sawing through the tomato stilled. Behind his back, Arley watched Mark closely, waiting for a sign. He resumed cutting the tomato slice and placed it and others on top of the cheese and bread. Next came a few leaves of lettuce. When the sandwich was finished, he put on a small plate and turned to the table. Coming to her side, he placed the food in front of her and looked down into her face, his eyes searching her features. She noticed that his eyes were a soft, warm brown, almost gold. His gaze did not pierce; instead, it seemed to press upon her.

"You tell me, Nadia."

She turned cold inside at the sound of the name. She glared up at him, ignoring the sandwich.

"My name is not Nadia," she said through gritted teeth, unable to restrain her temper. "It's Arley, and I don't know who he is."

It was impossible to tell his thoughts. He turned away from her and went to pull a glass from the cupboard.

"Well, I guess you'll soon find out, won't you?" he said impassively, filling the glass with water at the sink.

Hurt and bitterness swelled in Arley at his total lack of concern. He seemed content to just hand her over to that psycho who sat in his white boardroom, buying women. Hurriedly, she reached for her anchor, her truth, and, with a great effort, she clawed herself upright into self-sufficiency again. She did not need his support, or his belief.

She ignored him as he set the water before her also, turning her attention instead to the sandwich. By all accounts it looked like a good one, but she had no appetite, only a kind of empty queasiness deep in the pit of her stomach. The thought of food was repulsive. And yet, she knew it had to be approaching 24 hours since she last ate, and if she wanted to expend energy later, she needed to ingest some now. Calories in, calories out, she thought glumly as she forced herself to take a bite. Escaping would require strength.

The nutty brown bread tasted like dirt in her mouth, and the sweetness of the tomato was almost unbearably rancid on her tongue. Arley managed to choke down two bites before she put the sandwich down.

"Eat it," Mark ordered. He was leaning against the counter, watching her.

"I can't," she snapped. "I'm not hungry."

"I don't care. Eat it."

"What, are you going to force it down my throat?" she shot at him, feeling increasingly vexed.

"I might."

Arley stared at him, anger and apprehension jostling inside her. Would he really?

She raised her bound hands to the sandwich again, telling herself she was doing so to better her chances of escape, and not because he had threatened her.

Half a sandwich later, Arley pushed the plate away. She stared hard at Mark, silently daring him to object. But he only collected the plate with the half-eaten meal and took it to the sink. Still simmering with resentment, Arley gulped down several mouthfuls of water as he washed dishes, her bound hands holding the glass on both sides.

She avoided Mark's eyes as he moved around the table again and shrugged irritably when he grasped her arm once more and lifted her out of the chair. The constant manhandling was starting to wear on her, and she longed for the simple freedom to move on her own again. How absurd it was to miss such a thing.

When they exited the kitchen, Arley expected to be taken back downstairs but instead, Mark turned her in the other direction. A short way down the hall from the kitchen and around a corner, they came to a bathroom. Arley was grateful, and then worried. Would he insist on coming into the bathroom with her?

But no: with gentle, but unyielding, force, he pushed her into the room in front of him, while he remained in the hall.

"You have five minutes," he said, looking her full in the face to see her understanding. She turned her back on him and he closed the door.

After first ascertaining that there was no lock on the door, Arley glanced around the little room, savouring the precious minutes of solitude. Mirror, sink, bathtub with showerhead -- old, but decently clean. Towels, toilet, window-

Her heart skipped a beat. I can fit through there.

Without removing her eyes from the window, she rushed across the bathroom towards it. It sat behind the toilet, and she had to straddle the toilet bowl awkwardly and lean over the tank to examine the sill and frame. With a surge of excitement, she saw that the glass had not been fastened permanently shut, as was so often the case with small windows in old homes. No, it could definitely be opened. It would be tight, but doable.

Her heart had resumed beating with a vengeance, thudding in the back of her throat with hope, and with fear. Her instinct was to scramble through the window right now, but how far could she get with bound hands? And how much time of her five minutes had already passed? It was too risky, and one failed attempt at escape would surely result in disaster. She needed to get back here when she was untied. But what if she never made it back, what if this was her one and only chance?

A hard knock at the door startled her out of her paralysis. "Three minutes left," came Mark's voice.

She would come back. She would find a way.

When Arley opened the door three minutes later, she felt as though she had a small flame inside her. A secret hope. Mark's touch as he took her arm no longer carried the same weight of oppression and subjugation. She had a way out from under his control.

She kept her head bent as she walked with Mark down the hall, allowing her hair to swing forward and hide her face from his view. She didn't trust herself to keep a neutral expression as she reviewed what she had seen through the window. Adjacent to the house lay an expanse of barren grass, faded and frosty, that swept over dips and hillocks for a distance approximately the length of a football field. At the end of the grass, the scrub pine forest -- so characteristic of the Maritimes -- began. To the right, she had been able to glimpse longer grasses, the kind that grew on beach dunes, and she guessed that the ocean was in that direction. There had been no sign of a road or drive, so it must be on the other side of the building.

Between the driveway and the woods, Arley preferred the trees. Hiding on the road would be impossible, and if they pursued her, she didn't want to make it easier for them by being someplace accessible by car. She would get to the forest, and then, once hidden, make her way to a main road and flag down a car. Not knowing where the house was located, she didn't know which direction the city was in, but if she kept heading inland, she was bound to reach something eventually.

Arley hardly noticed as Mark led her back into the bedroom and sat her down on the bed. She was thinking about her bare feet and insubstantial dress. It was cold outside now, and getting colder. She estimated that when she got herself through that window, it could be anywhere between plus five degrees, if she was lucky, and zero, if she was not. Minus five, if she was unlucky.

Mark's voice cut through her brooding: "Get some rest. You're going to need it."

Damn straight I'm going to need it, she thought fiercely, her eyes following Mark as he left the room and locked the door behind him. I've got a long run ahead of me tomorrow.

---------------------------------------------------

When confronted with approaching disaster, Arley had learned to push all thought of future harm from her mind and focus instead on her immediate circumstances. This generally served her well. In the past, her ability to disconnect from the panic of an imminent threat had allowed her to make hard -- but necessary -- decisions, decisions that saved her. Later, when she had extricated herself from whatever danger she was facing, she would return her mind to the looming disaster. And more often than not, dealing with the problems right in front of her actually solved much of the future problem.

So it was that in the middle of the following day, as she sat alone in the dining room, Arley was resolutely focused on wriggling out of the rope that bound her wrists and ankles to a heavy wooden chair, and doing her best to ignore the black computer screen on the table in front of her. Or rather, the thoughts of what she had seen and heard in that screen. Later, she would deal later with the things von Bauer had said, or better yet, if she could only get out of this chair and out the door, she wouldn't have to deal with them at all.

Unfortunately, there was almost nothing she could do to work out her present predicament. The rope binding her was slippery, hard, and pulled tight against her skin, not tight enough to cut off circulation to her hands and feet, but definitely uncomfortable. The knots on the ropes around her wrists were placed beneath the arm of the chair, unassailable by mouth or fingers. She had to grudgingly admit that Michael knew what he was doing. There was no way to pull herself free from his bondage. And as long as she was tied to the chair, she couldn't put in motion any other plans of escape.

This left her mind insufficiently distracted, and her thoughts kept swinging back to the recent video call, despite her attempts to push it to the back of her brain. She felt a kind of burning deep in her belly as she remembered what the German had said. His version of the past, and his vision of the future, a future in which she was entirely his, his property and his plaything. Made to pay for past indiscretions. The guttural noise in the back of his throat as he called her mäuschen -- little mouse. The glint in his grey eyes as he described the things he would do to her body. Arley took a deep, shaky breath, trying to steady her mind. Not now, later, just get out - get out!

Her head was bent over her wrist, and she was gnawing at the rope there with her teeth (with little effect), when she heard footsteps in the hall behind her. She straightened just as the door latch clicked and someone entered the room.

The door closed again. Arley didn't turn to see who it was, but pulled back her shoulders and waited. There was a minute of silence as neither she nor the other person spoke.

Then footsteps, behind her, coming closer. She expected him to pass her and retrieve the laptop from the table, but he did not. Arley forced herself to breathe normally as she sensed the man drawing near, willing herself not to turn around, not to react. She knew now who he was.

Apprehension curled in the back of her throat as she realized that he was standing a hair's breadth behind her. She wished suddenly that one of the others was in the room with them. In an attempt to dampen her mounting anxiety, she started to count, trying to suppress the emotional side of her brain and engage the logical side. Another survival trick, learned not so long ago.

"Did you please him, Nadia?"

His deep voice cut into her. She tried to ignore him and keep on counting. Nine one-thousand, ten one-thousand, eleven one-thousand...

"Did he like what he saw?"

Only half-an-hour previously, Michael had carefully painted over her bruised skin with concealer, hiding the evidence of his anger. He had also rubbed the makeup under her eyes, where she guessed there must be dark circles, and had run his hands through her hair, tousling the limp curls to make them seem clean and fresh. Presenting the best version of his merchandise to his buyer.

"I hope he was satisfied with his new toy."

Michael began slowly to walk around her where she sat bound in the heavy chair. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. Eighteen thousand, nineteen thousand, twent--

"Did he tell you what he's going to do to you?"

As he moved behind her again, his hand settled on her shoulder, hot against her bare skin. He continued to take slow, measured strides and his hand swept along her shoulder and across the nape of her neck. Her skin seemed to ignite beneath his touch, ripples of sensation spilling down her back from his trailing fingers. She shut her eyes tight as he moved up her other side and came in front of her again. Twenty-three thousand -- no -- twenty-two--

"I know what he's going to do to you."

Her brain was stuck, suspended. His hand was sliding down from her shoulder to the soft swelling of her left breast. Her heart jumped up and lodged itself in her throat as his fingers dipped between the two silky globes, and then began to stroke the top of her right breast as he moved around her yet again. She knew he must be able to feel the rapid pace of her breathing as each breath pressed her soft flesh up against his hand.

"First, he's going to take off that dress."

The words were growled in her ear and Arley jerked as she felt the heat of his breath against her neck. Then her eyes snapped open in horror as he slipped his hands under the straps of the dress. He slid the thin material over her shoulders and down her arms, stroking her as he went. The dress fell in a pool around her waist, leaving her upper body covered only by her bra. She tried not to respond, tried to go somewhere else in her head. But her body started to shake.

"Then he's going to examine his new toy."

Once more, he came around the chair to stand in front of her. Arley couldn't help herself, she glanced up quickly into his face. Pure, unbridled lust burned in his dark eyes as he stared hungrily at her exposed body. A sharp flare of anticipation streaked through her lower abdomen, almost painful in its intensity, and she felt her pussy twitch and clench of its own accord.