Love's Arithmetic

XV: Axiom

Caer couldn't speak. She was utterly terrified. She was grateful she couldn't see Garrett's face, if she could, she imagined it would be horrifying. "Answer me!" He yelled again.

As tears filled her eyes, she tried to come up with a way to rationalize with him. To help him understand her need to lie to him. "What are you going to do to me?" She cried. Burying her head in her hands. She feared they would kill her, dump her in a ditch where the rats would slowly eat at her flesh, pulling out her hair, and feasting on her eyeballs. By the time they found her she wouldn't be recognizable. The only way her family would know it was her by the birthmark on her butt. She didn't want anyone seeing that, even dead!

"Why did you lie?" He asked harshly, she heard him shift his weight and she tried to bury herself further in the covers. "Why did you lie!" He roared with a ferocity that made her tears spill over. This was it, she was going to die. She would never do the things she promised herself, never get married, never have kids, never have sex!

She heard his heavy footsteps approaching her before he yanked her up by her arms. Caer cried out more from fear then pain. "You will answer me now, or you will suffer worse consequences than I already have planned." He said, still horribly furious. She couldn't fathom what things he had planned for her already and she didn't want to think about the sadistic things he could conjure up.

"I lied because I was afraid." She said quietly through her tears. "I didn't want to anger you." She was slowly gaining confidence when he didn't say anything, when his grip loosened a little, and when he didn't immediately move to kill her. "But my family has money, they'll pay the ransom, just please don't kill me!" She cried, hoping that he would accept it.

Garrett didn't say anything for several moments. Caer wondered what he was thinking as he held her on her tip toes. She hoped he would decide just to go ahead with the ransom and then let her go home. But then a horrible thought emerged. She had seen their faces. They had no intention of letting her go. "Oh please just let me go!" She cried, all of her dignity shattering as she realized that this could be her last chance to fight for her freedom and her life. "I won't tell anyone, I'll tell them that I didn't see your faces, I'll tell them that you kept me tied up in a basement somewhere. Please just let me go!"

Something broke inside of Garrett as he heard her cry. Her tears had played havoc on his anger, and now her wailing and pleading was getting to him. She was acting like a small child separated from her mother. Lonely and terrified. Although under the circumstances it was understandable, even he could acknowledge that. But it affected him more than he wanted it to.

He stood there looking at her bowed head, her body looking fragile in his extended arms, and felt his heart clench. He couldn't go through with his original plans. It was impossible for him to do so. Realizing how tight his grip was, he immediately released her, and she dropped to the bed like a rag doll, sobbing with more frequency. He left her like that, a sad, pitiful creature that he couldn't stand to look at without feeling sympathy.

His teammates Brian and David waited for him in the observation room with odd looks on their faces. Brian looked as though he had been asked to shoot his grandmother and David looked as angry as a pit-bull. Neither said a word as he sat down across from them and sighed, rubbing his face with his hand. Both stood up and walked away, leaving him in his solitude.

For the next four days David and Brian took turns giving Caer her meals. They would sit with her until she was finished, trying to pry at least a few words from their now silent captive. Other than a brief "thank you" when they left would she speak. Garrett continued to be eaten up with guilt. Although he hadn't said as much. Instead he immersed himself in work, finding new ways to increase their money, hardly moving except to eat, sleep, and use the restroom. He hardly spoke, not that Brian or David were willing companions.

While they had had little interaction with Caer before their discovery of her identity, they felt sympathy for her, and wished to make her feel more at home, because not even they could understand the intentions of their boss.

It had been five days since Caer had been delivered food by Garrett. She had been spiraling deeper and deeper into a dark depression that she didn't have any hope of escaping. All she wanted, all she prayed for, was to go home and be embraced by her Aunt and Uncle, by her parents. She wanted to go back to the ranch and ride for days and days and never look back. She wanted most of all to just be free.

Her wish, or so she thought, came true the day that Brian forgot to lock the door to her bedroom. The perfect opportunity