Sandy led us to a white van parked out behind the building and shoved us into the back, switching on the overhead light. Then she climbed in with us and slid the door shut with a bang.
“Make yourselves at home.” She patted at the rusted metal floor.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I said with a hiss. “Where’s Romeo? Weren’t you going to take me to him?”
Sandy motioned at me.
“Shush. I said
I’d
do all the talking, and you’d just sit there and stay put, if you want to see your son again. Remember?”
I shut my mouth. Sandy smiled, a bitter grimace of satisfaction.
“That’s better,” she said.
She glanced me up and down.
“You look as pathetic now as you did when you left the office this afternoon,” she remarked wryly. “I could tell right from the first day that office work doesn’t suit you, Annasuya.”
“Then why’d you keep me on?” I shot out “Why didn’t you notify the agency and fire me?”
Sandy arched her eyebrows at me ironically.
“What? And lose track of you? If you were working with me, at least I could keep close tabs on you.”
“Keep
tabs
on me? But why?”
Sandy smirked.
“Bruno’s orders, of course.”
She let the implications of what she’d just revealed sink in.
“So you specifically
asked
for me from the agency?” I said at last.
Sandy shook her head.
“Not by name, no.” She smirked. “But I did describe someone with your characteristics to such a tee, there was no way they would have sent me anyone else. And if by the odd chance they’d sent me someone else anyways, I would’ve sent them back right away. I only wanted
you.
”
I glanced at the floor sullenly.
“Why?”
Sandy brushed her lips with her fingertips.
“Shhh. I said
I’d
do the talking. Remember?”
She made as if to stand up and pretended she had just remembered something. Her playful leer betrayed her true intentions.
“Oh, and by the way...”
She pulled some papers from her purse and spread them out before me. I gaped at them.
There was the print-out of an email. The real, authentic email. The original one that I had written. With the date of the meeting as I’d typed it – the correct date – printed clearly across the line: May eighth.
“Yes,” Sandy whispered. “You’d written it correctly. You never made that mistake that I accused you of.”
I could only gaze at her in stupefaction. She shifted more papers before me. There was the pamphlet from Dunn’s Furnishings. The name of the CEO: Kerry Weatherspoon. The woman I’d addressed my email to. I
had
used the right name. Sandy giggled.
“Yes, I had a modified pamphlet printed out specifically for
you.
”
I was floored.
“Why?” I stammered out at last.
“So I could retain you at the office, of course.” She shrugged. “To give Bruno time to carry out
his
part of our deal.”
“His part of your deal?” I parroted like an automaton.
“Of course.” Sandy giggled again. “So he’d have time to pick up Romeo and spirit him away to our hiding place.”
“And why did he want to do that?” I continued, still in a monotone. “You’re in cahoots with Bruno?”
“Obviously.”
Sandy waved her hand frivolously in the air.
“We’re not interested in the
boy,
of course. We just wanted to use him to catch
you.
”
She grinned.
“It worked, didn’t it? We have you here now, and you came willingly on your own two feet.”
I tried to work things through, but my mind felt as if it had turned to molasses.
“So, you don’t really have Romeo?” I murmured. “You just pretended you did, to get me to come with you?”
Sandy laughed.
“I never realized you were that dense. Of course we have Romeo. We picked him up from his school. Remember? We didn’t just
pretend
to pick him up.”
I tried to make sense of what she was saying.
“Why do you want me?” I cried. It was the only thing it occurred to me to ask. “Is it just Bruno, taking some sort of revenge on me or something, because I got away from him?”
Sandy let forth another of her annoying giggles.
“Really, Annasuya. I thought you were much more intelligent than that. Revenge? You think Bruno is that petty?”
She clapped her hands together.
“Bruno’s going to be the leader of a new world order. And you have an important role to play in it. That’s why he needs you.”
“An important role? What role?”
I wondered why I was playing along. Bruno was obviously nuts out of his mind.
Sandy spread out her hands.
“I don’t know what role. Bruno doesn’t confide these sorts of things to me, you know. But if he says you’ve got an important role, then I know it’s true. I trust him intrinsically.”
I stared at Sandy, utterly mystified.
“Sandy, why are you doing all this for Bruno? What is he to you, anyways?”
Sandy grinned, a smug smile of contentment.
“You know, when I first met Bruno, years ago, I just knew it was my destiny to serve him. Something inside him just lit up, like a glow, like there was some sort of halo surrounding him, every time I looked at him. I just
knew
he was different. Special. I could tell one day he would rise above all those other petty mortals. And, I guess, I wanted a part of that. It was a bit like a dream, you know. It was like, it was my new mission and purpose in life, so to speak. So when he finally noticed me and invited me to be his right hand in preparing his new world order, I jumped at the chance. Didn’t even have to think twice about it.”
She pushed herself abruptly to her knees.
“That’s enough now, Annasuya. I’ve told you more than I was supposed to. I was supposed to just keep quiet and drive. And that is precisely what I’m going to do now.” She crept towards the door. “Besides which, isn’t that what you wanted? To be with your son again?”
She shoved open the van door, stepped out and locked us in again. A few seconds later, she climbed into the driver’s seat at the front of the van. The back, where we were, was separated from the cab end by a thick sheet of tinted and obviously bullet-proof plexiglas. With the overhead light still on, reflecting in the glass, and the darkness of the tint, it was impossible to see where we were going.
I rolled over and stared at Calvin. His eyes still looked like they were popping out of his sockets like toad eyes. He gazed at me in an obvious state of shock and began to pat me awkwardly on the arm.
“Well, at least Romeo’s safe, babes,” was all he said in the end.
*
I estimated that Sandy drove for more than an hour. I tried to do as people did on TV and tried to listen for tell-tale sounds that could give us a hint as to where we were headed. But we changed directions so many times, sometimes passing what sounded like noisy thoroughfares or even busy highways, other times humming in complete silence on roads that could have been simply residential streets within the city, or quiet country lanes.
At last, the van bumped along on what felt like gravel for a short distance, then pulled to a stop. Sandy hopped out from the cab and within a few seconds, she was dragging the door of the van open.
“We’ve arrived,” she told us succinctly. “You can have a look around, if you want. I doubt you’d recognize the place anyways.”
We climbed out. We appeared to be in some sort of back yard, large enough to belong to some family residence in the suburbs. Before I could make out much more than a few murky trees in the distance, Sandy was hustling us down a paved path towards a door on the side of a white bricked bungalow. I tried to examine the house in the dark, but immediately Sandy flung the side door open and pushed us through. We found ourselves at the top of a flimsy wooden staircase which led into some sort of cellar.
“Get down those stairs before I shove you down,” she hissed.
I heard the rustling of footsteps in the dimly lit edges of that subterranean cesspool, and within a minute Romeo dodged into view, a furtive, terrified gaze in his eyes. My heart leapt into my throat. I forgot everything else and dove down the stairs, nearly tripping on my heels and breaking my neck in the process.
“Roomeooo!”
I shrieked. I jumped onto him and grabbed him so tightly I almost suffocated him.
He groaned underneath me.
“Come on already, Mimi,” he protested faintly, his voice muffled by my loving arms. “Let me go. I can’t breathe.”
I let up a bit, but didn’t let go of him. I seized him by the hair and planted a hundred kisses around his face.
“No, I will never let you go, honey buns. Not as long as I live!”
I hugged him some more, and stroked his baby-soft, silken hair. After a while, it occurred to me to look up and glance about. The door at the top of the stairs was closed and probably locked. I hadn’t noticed when she’d closed it. Calvin was running his fingers meticulously around the walls and corners of the room.
“This looks like just some sort of underground cavern,” he said. “Did you find anything of interest, kiddo?” He turned to Romeo.
Romeo shook his head.
“It’s just like every basement I’ve ever seen. It’s got a few tools. Lots of mice and ants and spiders and stuff.”
He kicked at the floor with his scruffy shoes.
“I couldn’t find any other way out. And I’ve been here for hours. No secret chambers or hideaways or anything like that. It’s not like you see on TV.”
Calvin chuckled.
“Do you even know
how
to check for secret chambers?” he asked with a grin.
“Of course. I’m not dumb, you know. You have to bang on the walls and see if they sound hollow.”
He stamped on the floor.
“The same with the floor. I’ve jumped all over the floor. It’s just concrete.”
“All the same...” Calvin continued inspecting the minuscule space.
I turned and grabbed Romeo by the shoulders.
“How did you get here?” I said.
Romeo wiggled out of my hold.
“In a car, of course. You didn’t expect I’d walk here, did you?”
I swiped at Romeo but he avoided me deftly.
“Don’t be such a leech, Mimi,” he complained peevishly. “It’s not like I’ve been gone for days and days.”
“Well, almost!” I nearly screamed. “I meant, how did you end up here? Weren’t you supposed to wait for me or Calvin to pick you up at school?”
Romeo kicked at the dirt on the floor.
“Yeah, I s’pose. But you’re always late. And that guy said he was my dad. And I’ve always wanted to know about my dad, and what he’s like.”
“And you
believed
him?”
I reached for Romeo’s neck. At that moment I could have easily strangled him but once again he slipped out of reach. He shrugged.
“You never tell me much about him.”
“But you know he’s dead.”
He shrugged again.
“Yeah, but maybe you were mistaken. Maybe you just
thought
he was dead, but he really wasn’t. You never told me how he died,” he added defensively. “Are you gonna tell me one day?”
I nodded.
“For sure I will, one day. But not right now. Now’s not the time.”
“Anyways,” Romeo continued, kicking at the floor again. “After I got into the car with him he told me he’d lied and he really wasn’t my dad. So then I wanted to jump out of the car, but it was going too fast. I was a bit let down, you know. I kinda hoped my dad’d be that tall, and maybe one day I could be tall like him.” He thought for a minute. “Was my daddy tall, Mimi?”
“Tall and beautiful,” I said gravely, and chucked him under the chin.
Romeo studied me.
“You’re just saying that,” he concluded.
I shook my head.
“No I’m not. He really was beautiful. He was my first love, and you never forget that. I’ll always love him. There will always be a place in my heart for him. No matter how many more men I love in the future.”
Calvin arched an eyebrow at me.
“And I was hoping I’d be the last man you’d ever love,” he quipped, sounding nonetheless a bit hurt.
“I hope so too,” I replied softly. “Really, Calv, you’re the first person I’ve ever cared this much about since Eli, Romeo’s father.” I meant it.