Poor Unfortunate Souls, Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years
Chapter Ten: The Stolen Years
Contents and Warnings
Chapter Nine: The Sound of Never
The staccato click of shoes grew closer, and a man in a grey suit entered the room.
[Everyone talks, nobody listens]My first thought was relief - he wasn’t Christian Grey - but he was still definitely armed and professional. I could tell because of the military stance and the earpiece, and decided, from the way that our captor subtly paid attention when he entered, without taking his eyes off of Allie or myself, that he was important.
It took a few seconds for my brain to click into gear beyond registering that I’d probably seen him distantly amongst Grey’s security entourage at the party. I blame the fact that it had to be nearly three in the morning.
The double take that he did upon seeing us was enough to jog my memory.
“Who are you,” asked Jason Taylor, “and why are you here?”
I mentally sighed. “I’m Lindsay Pilot,” I told him, “This is Aliea Veldon, and we’re detectives.” Then, trusting that it was now all right to make more than the minimum amount of movement, I leaned back in my uncomfortable seat. “I don’t suppose the name Lelia Williams means anything to you?”
I could feel the look of fond exasperation that Allie was giving me. More than that, I could feel the tension slowly starting to seep from the room, like air from a leaky balloon.
Taylor opened his mouth to say something, but there were a few soft footfalls that cut him off.
“I told you not to come,” Leila said softly from the doorway.
The spring-tightened corner of my soul relaxed as I looked at her. I could almost hear Allie’s shoulders unwind next to me. Leila looked a bit ruffled, and Allie’s coat hung on her like a deflated circus tent, but she looked calm and was only hunched in on herself a little. Considering where she was, it was almost a planted flag of defiance.
“Lindsay insisted on chasing you down so that she could remind you when your stitches had to come out,” Allie said.
“You know these people, Leila?” Taylor asked, eyeing us suspiciously.
She came half a step into the room, and nodded at him. “They’re working with the police to bring him down,” she said. “They took me in.” Her eyes flickered down to the painfully gleaming tiles, and though her expression didn’t exactly tremble, it flickered a bit.
“This is ridiculous,” I said to Taylor. “I take it you’re no longer holding us at gunpoint?” I stood up and crossed the room to offer Leila a hug. She put her arms around my shoulders and hung on with surprising strength. “Believe me, I know you want to help,” I told her when I let go, “but you don’t have to do any of this alone. You don’t have to work with these guys unless you really want to, and-”
“No, we have a plan,” she said. “And I do want to help. I think - well, this is the least I can do. I found out that he’s been… controlling… her, by telling her how dangerous I am.” Her voice quavered a little. “I shouldn’t have come back.”
There were only two people here who could have told her that, so I split my glare between Taylor and Sawyer. Hadn’t they ever heard of giving people only the information that they actually required?
Taylor was unimpressed, but he’d put his gun away and apparently instructed Sawyer to do the same, which effectively meant that Allie and I now outnumbered them. “And how did you come into this?” he asked, extending his cynicism to Allie as well as me.
“We were hired to investigate Christian Grey, and we have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility,” Allie replied, deploying an equally sardonic eyebrow.
“By who?” Sawyer chimed in.
“You can’t seriously expect us to answer that,” I replied. “Your turn: what’s the plan?”
“Ladies first. How did you come into contact with Leila, and why are you here?” Taylor’s voice was all business. “Sawyer, we need to get back on track before Welch or someone shows up - take Leila and keep making the copies. Leila, are you good to go get what we need?”
“Yessir.” Leila replied, and gave a frankly awful salute.
“Good girl,” Taylor said, giving her his full attention and an almost paternal smile. “We’ll be out of here as soon as we’re done.”
I watched the relief slide over her face before she turned around and disappeared through the door again. Sawyer shot a glance at his boss before following her, giving her a wide margin of space.
That left Allie and I alone with Taylor, which meant one of two things: he trusted us, or he was confident that he could take us. Either way, he gestured for us to sit down with him at the table, and we cooperated.
“Think carefully before you answer,” he said in a low voice. “If you’re only trying to get information out of her, I swear you’ll live to regret it.”
I could feel my indignation bristling up, so I took a deep breath and tried to answer diplomatically. Allie got there before I did. “We bumped into her on the street,” she said, “Like we’ve already told you, we were hired to stop Christian Grey, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
“If you think you can force her to testify, you’re wrong,” Taylor continued, his voice level and somehow painfully earnest. It was the voice of a man who doesn’t need to rely on volume or anger. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to put Grey away, but if you think you’re going to drag her through all that, again -” he shook his head. “I’ll testify myself, give more information than you knew existed - but you have to let her go.”
The indignation settled out of my shoulders. “We’re not exactly officially with the police,” I said. “Private Detectives. I’d just hoped… she left us a note,” I finished lamely, and shrugged. “Said that we should contact you if -” unexpectedly, I felt my throat swelling with the ache that came just before tears, and Allie shifted closer to me. I tried to clear my throat and only partially succeeded. “I thought something awful was going to happen, so we came straight here.” It was all I could still manage to say.
I watched Taylor sag, and scrub at his face.
“What a mess,” he said, and I couldn’t help but agree.
“What about you?” Allie asked, drawing Taylor’s gaze. “We’ll work together better - or at least get in the way less - if we know what you’re up to.”
Somebody had clearly given Taylor pointers on how to drag himself back together. In under a second, he’d gone back to efficiency and command.
“You don’t want to get involved,” he said. “Grey’s dangerous. I’m sure you know that already, but - no offense - you don’t understand what he will do to you. And he’s not the only one who we’re going to take down. I still wish that we didn’t have to get Leila involved, but the truth is, we needed her, to get him to leave the building without us. In a couple hours, we’ll have enough information to go to the police and give them everything, including the evidence against everyone who has been enabling Grey, and they’ll be able to catch them all in the same net.” He glanced between me and Allie and came to a decision. “I’ll let you out the back way with Leila before we do. She’ll need somebody to help her get out of the way.”
It seemed fair enough to me. We’d come to see Leila safe, and we couldn’t push our way into the circle of this heroic conspiracy any more than we could force the police to allow us to investigate alongside them.
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” I told Taylor, “but all right. Allie?”
Allie made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “You’re in charge of this investigation,” she said. Her eyes were tired, and my heart swelled painfully when I realized what she was trying to say. Of course she’d want me to keep talking, cover for her while she tried to scrape together some magical protection for Taylor and Sawyer.
She’d keep going until she dropped.
“The girl that… Ana,” I fumbled. “She’ll be okay?”
Taylor nodded, but grimaced. “All right as she can be,” he said, “don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. With any luck, Grey won’t know what’s happened until he’s been arrested. She’s a sweet kid, and she doesn’t deserve anything he’s put her through.”
“Nobody does,” I said, quietly. “If it helps - between your case and ours, there’s almost no way he can walk free. Leila’s testimony could help, but she won’t need to if she doesn’t want to.” And I was fully resolved that after tonight, our couch was hers for as long as she needed and wanted to stay. Home was something I doubted she’d had much experience with in the last few years, and if she didn’t want to go back to her parents in Massachusetts right away, she should have somewhere to stay.
Taylor nodded and stood up. “Please stay in this room and out of our way,” he said, “this will be over far more quickly if I don’t have to stay here and watch over you.”
At that moment, Sawyer stepped back through the door.
“I can’t find Leila,” he said.
Chapter Eleven: War Far from Over
[Notes]* I fixed the medicine fail in Anoxic with the gracious help of dragonclaws, who should know. PSA: keep your bandages clean and dry, and your stitches away from water to prevent infection, and use iodine or chlorhexidine to clean them rather than rubbing alcohol, to prevent scarring. Never use hydrogen peroxide. This has been a public service announcement by Scribbles.
** An overdeveloped sense of responsibility is not the same thing as an overdeveloped sense of vengeance.
*** After so many self-contained chapters containing multiple days, I have to say it’s nice to be able to do proper cliffhangers again.