Page 69 of Violent Delights

Everything is fine.

Everything is fucking fine.

Except that it’s not.

“Mr. Bennett, I-”

“Yes, it’s fine,” I croak. “It’s… something came up. Family emergency. I’m sorry, I was too preoccupied to contact the agency.”

“Oh, I see,” Lisa says. She’s not sounding convinced, but if there’s one thing these guys are good at, it’s discretion.

“Pay the girl the compensation,” I tell her.

“Okay, thank you, Mr. Bennett,” she says. “I’ll get things sorted with her. Please, could you let us know next time? I know how stressful things like this can be, but we’re working in a very delicate business here. With very delicate subjects.”

I roll my eyes, unbeknownst to her.

“Yes, I’m sorry for the trouble,” I tell her. “But I have one question. This Ruby girl, did she do what she was told to, during the days when her window was open?”

“According to her, she did,” Lisa tells me. “She’s been out and about, wearing everything that she was asked to.”

I had just been able to breathe again, when her words take the air out of my lungs anew.

Ruby, or whoever she is, didn’t wear any of the things I asked. She didn’t wear stockings under her skirt, and she didn’t understand why I got so mad at her in the beginning. She didn’t follow the most mundane commands, and she looked at me with a terror that looked so real it was bone-chilling.

It looked real, because it was real.

I made a mistake. I kidnapped the wrong woman.

How could this fucking happen?

“Oh, but she did mention something,” Lisa interrupts my distressed stream of thoughts. “Her red coat was stolen one night. I believe it was meant to be her token?”

Yes.

That fucking coat.

I’d watched her run around in that coat for days, I watched her enter a bar wearing that same coat, and I watched her come out of that same bar in that very same coat.

Or so I thought.

“It was stolen in a bar?” I ask.

“Yes, I think that’s what she said,” Lisa says, sounding surprised. “How did you-?”

“Just a guess,” I hurry to say. “Listen. I have business to attend. Will you handle Miss Ruby and let her know I’m very sorry for the trouble?”

“Yes, sure,” she replies. “So, I shouldn’t file for a new arrangement?”

“No, not at this moment,” I tell her. “Goodbye.”

I don’t wait for her final words before I end the call and throw the damn phone across the room. The noise as it hits the floor echoes through the hall, piercing through my head like a thousand knives.

My chest is still tight, a cold wrath of panic closing in on me as I try to gather together the pieces of this fucked-up mix-up.

She’s not Ruby Red. She even fucking told me, she’s not her.

“Do you think I’m Ruby?” she said. “Because I’m not.”

But I was too occupied to listen, too certain, too immersed in the game. Just like her when she first got here, I’m overwhelmed with questions – the most salient one banging against my skull with urgent precedence.

If the girl upstairs is not Ruby Red, then who the hell is she?

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