Behind Her Smile

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five: It’s Complicated

Ting. Ting. Ting ting ting. Ting. Ting. Ting ting ting.

Dex taps her ring on her hand on the bars of her cage in time with the dripping of the water from the pipe.  She had her feet propped up and her head on the cold concrete floor. Dex shivers and rubs the goosebumps on her arms. She was still in only pajama shorts and a tank top as no one had bothered to give her any clothes or turn up the heat.

Rude.

Dex keeps her eyes closed. Maybe if she stayed really still then she could convince herself that this is all a really twisted dream. And when she wakes up, Axel is gone, her friend hadn’t betrayed her, and Ro is smiling down at her and calling her princess.

She smiles to herself even when she feels like sobbing.

Dex eyes snap open as she hears footsteps. She puts her legs down and scrambles to the farthest corner from the stairs that lead up to the first floor. She curls up in a fetal position and pretends to be asleep as she had done whenever someone comes down to check on her.

She had no interest to talk to anyone.

"Dex." The voice is pleading and Dex stiffens from the sound. This is the first time, her former friend had made an attempt to talk to her after Dex had been drugged. "Please eat something. You will starve."

Dex turns and glares at Rosie. "Don't pretend to care about me. You no longer have to pretend," Dex growls.

Rosie looks guilt-ridden. But Dex doesn’t bat an eye. She is no longer falling for her tricks.

"Dex, please believe me, I never wanted to hurt y-" she stops when Dex throws a fist to the bars.

"If you didn't want to hurt me, then why did you help him!"

Rosie bites her lip. "It's complicated." She responds in a whisper.

Dex shakes. "No. I don’t want to know. No matter what you say, I will never forgive you." Her fists clench and unclench.

"Dex-"

"NO!" Dex didn't think. She just wanted Rosie from speaking. Dex opens her eyes when she hears Rosie gasp. She had thrown her food tray at Rosie.

Rosie eyes widen at Dex before she looks at the bits of fried rice in her hair and soy sauce staining her shirt. When Rosie looks at Rosie, Dex could see that she looked ready to cry.

Even though she knew it was unnecessarily cruel, Dex smirks in response.

Rosie flinches and backs away before turning to go up the stairs. Before she reaches the door at the top, Rosie turns around. "I really am sorry, Dex. I didn't want it turn out this way."

'In what way did she think this was going to turn out? Did she think Dex would happily go to Axel and all would be merry?' Dex thinks to herself before scoffing.

Rosie escapes to upstairs before Dex could voice her thoughts.

..........

Dex wakes up screaming.

Her hair is drenched with sweat and she is shivering uncontrollably.

It is the same nightmare as always, but worse. After Axel shoots her brother, he shoots her mother, Leo, and Ro. And she couldn’t do anything about it. She screams and fights Axel, but nothing stops him from draining bullet after bullet in the head of the people she cares about.

Dex rolls over and vomits. Since she hadn’t eaten in a few days, all that came up was bile and the smell alone made her want to retch again.

She lies awake for a while just trying to stop her heart from trying to beat out of her chest. Or she assumes is night, she couldn’t tell because there is no windows in the basement, but the lights have been turned off.

She must have dozed off because when she wakes up again, there is two little white tablets on her breakfast tray.

................

Since Kit's place had been destroyed, he stays with Ro for the time being. Ro is glad because he wants to find Dex as soon as possible and Kit seems the most plausible way to accomplish that.

Ro and Kit end up being able to find the owner of the car by Kit asking one of his father's old friends who happened to be a policeman to run a plate for him. Surprisingly, the man named Owen did it with no questions asked.

"It says it belongs to a...Dimitrius Sol? Weird name." Ro asks when he looks at the email they got from Owen. The guy sent it to both Kit and Ro.

Kit frowns. "Where have I heard that name before? It seems familiar but I don’t know from where."

Ro had never heard of the name before, so he tells Kit to look it up.

Kit types the name into google to see if anything pops up.

Something does. Ro could tell by the way Kit's eyes widen in surprise.

"What did you find?" Ro asks as he scoots his chair over to look at Kit's laptop screen.

Kit doesn’t look at him as he says, "It says he is actor for some of the popular hispanic films such as...well I won't even try to pronounce that. But he has been in some American films as well. He is rich. Like filthy stinking rich."

"That doesn’t make sense," Ro frowns. "Why would a guy like that go after Dex? When had they even met?"

"I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up." He opens the Wikipedia page on the guy. "Hey, look at this. Didn't you say Dex is from Dominican Republic?"

"Yeah, she is." Ro looks to where this guy is pointing to. "And this guy is from there as well." He says stiffly. Why did this guy follow her from her hometown?

"It says he is shooting a movie only a few hours from here."

Ro grabs his phone and starts to dial. "I’m calling the police. They need to arrest this guy."

"Ro..."

"I don’t care what Dex said. I am not going to wait any longer."

Kit grabs his phone and stuffs it inside his pants. Ro pauses and grimaces. There is no way he is reaching down there. "Give it back. After you sanitize it."

Kit rolls his eyes. "Ro. I am just as frustrated as you are, but Dex was very adamant that we do not call the police. Besides I made a promise."

"You already broke it by telling me." Ro points out quite accurately.

"Regardless, I do not think calling the police is the best option for-" Kit pauses and then he slowly says, "I think I have an idea."

"An idea? What type of idea?"

"It is possibly really foolish and we could get arrested." Kit says with a growing smile on his face.

Ro stares at him for a long moment before sighing in resignation. "Fine. Anything for Dex." He says with much less enthusiasm.

.............

"That is the plan! You want to waltz on to set and just ask the guy if he kidnapped Dex and Rosie. This is foolish and not to mention illegal!"

"This is why I didn't tell you where we were going!" Kit gives him an exasperated look, before reaching into the back seat of the car to get his duffel bag. "Put this over your clothes."

Ro frowns, but opens the bag anyway. "What is this?" He pulls out a white coat with black pants. "Is this supposed to be scrubs?"

"Actually we are chefs. How good is your acting?"

"Not good." Ro replies. Then he looks at Kit warily. "Whhhyyy?"

Kit lips quirk as he takes off his shoes and slips his legs through the pants. "Just follow my lead and don’t look suspicious."

Ro is already sweating. "Suspicious looking? What do you mean follow your lead? What are you going to be doing??" Kit just smirks, obviously enjoying Ro freaking out and finishes getting dress.

"Kit! Answer me."

"You’ll find out soon enough. Just finish getting dressed." Kit says before stepping on the gas.

..........

Forty minutes later they get close to the movie set.

Kit stops the van he is driving and turn towards Ro after pulling something else from the duffel bag. "Put these on."

"A bow tie?"

"Dont worry its clip on."

Ro still doesn’t put it on. "I mean why do I need to wear a bow tie?"

"I'll explain later, just put it on!"

"Fine. No need to yell." Ro mutters as he puts it on. He looks down at himself "I feel ridiculous."

Kit doesn’t dignify that a comment as he continues driving. Ro's heart starts beating louder the closer they get to the entrance. Then he spots people at the entrance and he blanches. "Is that security? Are they on to us?"

"Ro. Calm." Kit commands as if talking to a dog. If Ro wasn't close to hyperventilating, he would’ve smacked Kit for that. "They are just there to check IDs"

"But we don’t have IDs!"

"We don’t need it. Just shut up and trust me." Ro just closes his eyes and tries to get his breathing under control.

They make it to the checkpoint and Ro swears he stops breathing.

"ID, please."

Ro doesn’t even make eye contact with the guard.

"We don’t have any. We are just temporary replacements since my buddy got sick. We were told just to deliver Mr. Sol his food and then get out." He hears Kit say.

Ro could practically hear the guard lift an eyebrow. "Sorry. If you don’t have an ID, then I can't let you inside. Please turn around."

He silently begs Kit to follow the nice man's advice before things got worse. Unfortunately for him, Kit didn't hear his telepathic message. "Sure, then you can tell Mr. Sol why his food didn't get delivered. I imagine he won't be happy about that, will he?"

The man is silent as he considers Kit's words. Ro keeps his eyes firmly on the dashboard.

"No. He wont." The security guard admits. "Fine. Drop the food off and I will hand deliver it."

Ro could literally feel his heart stop. They didn't have any food. What happens now?

Fortunately, Kit seemed prepared for the security guard to ask that question. "I can't do that. You know how Mr. Sol gets paranoid when someone else touches his food, not to mention the dress code he requires his servers to wear. He will just throw it in your face if you deliver his food yourself." Ro raises an eyebrow.  Dress code? Is that why he is wearing a bowtie and black slacks? Because that psycho wanted his chefs to dress up for him. "Look. You seem like a nice guy, so I am willingly to spare you that sort of humiliation and trouble. Can't you just let us in this one time?"

Ro sneaks a glance at the officer and he is relieved when he sees that the guard is considering Kit's word.

It seems like ages before he says, "Fine. Just this once. Next time come with ID."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Dannell." Kit says what Ro could assume is the guard's name.

"But just you. Your friend can wait with us."

Kit and Ro exchange a look. Ro begs Kit with his eyes not to leave him alone, but he just smirks.

"Sounds fair."

Ro freezes, but Kit pushes him. "You heard him, get out." Ro glares at him, but reluctantly gets out of the car.

"Last time I am ever trusting you, you big turd!" He mumbles beneath his breath as he stomps over to the lawn chairs under the umbrellas that the security guards had been sitting under.

...................

Thirty minutes later, Kit drives out of the gate and Ro jumps up from the lawn chair in relief.

"Bye!" Ro farewells as he hurriedly climbs into the passenger seat.

Kit calls out as well, "Thank you again!"

The officers just nod in acknowledgement.

Ro nearly jumps in his seat as he is itching to ask Kit what had happened.

As soon as the movie set was behind them he asks. "So what happened? Did you find him? Did you get him arrested?

"Nothing much. Yes. No." He answers and Ro gives him a dirty look.

"I need details."

"Well he didn't kidnap Dex or Rosie. But he knows who did."

"Who did it?"

"His son Axel who happens to be Dex ex-boyfriend."

Ro gapes. "Ex-boyfriend?" He didnt know what was more surprising finding out Dex had a boyfriend before or finding out that said ex-boyfriend had tracked her to California to harass her.

"Did he tell her where Axel could be?" Ro shudders. Even name sounded dangerous. He better not have harmed a hair on Dex's beautiful head or he would...he would do something horrible to him.

"Yeah. I got the address. Sol is willing to let us come with him as long as we don’t call the police. He was very adamant about that."

"When?"

"Tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow night! No, we have to go today! De- they could be in danger." Ro exclaims. Thankfully Kit doesn’t comment on his slip up. He still won't accept that his sister is working with Axel.

Kit's face tightens in reaction. "That is the quickest he could do it. He needs to be there he said."

Ro was not satisfied with that answer. "You said that you have the address. Lets go now!"

"No!" Kit nearly yells, then he sighs and soften his voice. "Ro, we are just two nerds with no plan, no weapons, and no backup. It would be foolish to do that. I don’t like it more than you do, but it would be dangerous to go by ourselves."

Ro jaw sets in a stubborn stance. He sure didn't like it. "He seems more desperate than us to find his son. Did he say why?"

Kit shakes his head. "No. He didn't, but I had a feeling he is hiding something. And he looked really, really worried."

Ro gulps. He suddenly had an ominous feeling about all this.

11/14