Saving Hope

XXII. Taken

The list was almost useless. There were people who sounded old and young. There were men and women. Almost all of them had one question the moment they picked up: “What do you want?”

Once, he tried to trick one of them by asking where they are and the caller answered, “Why? Going to kidnap me as well?”

He asked one with a weird question like, “Can we meet?” The answer he got was, “Fuck you. Don’t call me again.”

But there was one who answered in a raspy voice. Maybe it was just that or the person was trying to keep a low profile. “Did you do it?” was the question.

He answered with a, “Yes.”

“You are not Carl,” the raspy voice said and the line went dead.

For a moment, Devin feared that the door would burst open and someone with a gun would shoot him dead. But nothing happened. He turned off the cellphone just in case.

*****

She eyed him suspiciously.

Devin blew out a breath of frustration.

“Do you know that if I am among the bad guys, I wouldn’t have risked getting shot yesterday?”

“Then why did you call the numbers on your own?” Her eyes were full of accusation.

“I already explained, didn’t I? What happened yesterday must have caught some attention from the neighbors. And the house smelled awful. How long do you think it would take before someone calls the police? And how long do you think it would take for the media to smell the news? You think that Carl’s contacts would pick up their phones after seeing him on the news, hanging by a rope?”

“Then why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You were wounded. You are wounded. Don’t be stupid now,” he snapped the last sentence. He was at the brink of bursting out of the room. He could leave her here. “And I didn’t find anything worthy from that list. They were all people who were not pleased to be in Carl’s contact list. I guess it is now safe to assume that he was just a sick bastard who knew how to cover his tracks by getting the services of others.”

There was not a sign on her face that she believed everything he said. Her brows were knitted in a frown. “It’s just seems simple.”

“You want complicated? Try living my life. I would gladly switch places with you. Look,” he stood up to walk toward her on the bed, hands deep inside his pockets. “I think it is time for you to go home. I believe you’re finally safe, Hope.”

She just looked at him without saying anything.

Then it struck him.

“I think you don’t want to go home,” he said in a low voice.

“Of course, I want to go home!”

“I am not stupid, Hope. Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe you are afraid to go home.”

“Shut up.”

“You think there are others like Carl out there. You think you will never be safe. Or maybe you take comfort to the fact that you are on the run and that no one knows you.”

She shot to her feet. “You don’t know anything,” she said in a surprisingly calm tone. “I can’t go home to a bunch of people who would see me as a charity case. Don’t follow me. I have to buy some slippers.”

Devin did not open his mouth and let her leave the room.

She had been on her own for too long. For ten years, she had taken care of her self—comforted herself. What Hope needed at the moment was herself.