Lucas began dressing himself and said, “Now Pike and I share something else in common.”
Her wrists strapped to the top of the bed frame, Jennifer said nothing. Her panties and bra had been ripped off, but her pants remained wrapped around her lower legs, her shirt bunched up to her neck.
Lucas continued, “I’m sorry it has to end this way, but I’ve got a plane to catch, and I can’t have you messing anything up. I mean that. You and Pike are the closest thing I have to friends, and it pains me to do this.”
Jennifer tested the lamp wire around her wrists. During the assault she’d fought like a wild animal, to no avail, but had felt the wire loosen. It wasn’t the best for holding knots, and she thought she could work it to her advantage, especially since Lucas hadn’t bothered to tie her legs down. She continued to act catatonic. Defenseless. Simply staring at him with large eyes.
Lucas picked up a pillow from the floor. “I wish I could have simply talked to Pike. Let him know that it was all professional. Just like the targets he attacks. There’s nothing personal in it at all. In a way, I’m glad I missed him three years ago.”
He held up the pillow. “Someday he’ll come to grips with what he is, and he’ll see that he’s just like me. It’s taking him a little longer, but it’s true. He and I are the same.”
He leaned over her. “I’ve heard that suffocation is the most painless way to go. Once you pass out, you feel nothing. Of course, I can’t prove it, since no one I’ve done this to could give me an opinion when it was over. It’s the best I can do, given the circumstances.”
He brought the pillow to her face and hesitated, staring into her eyes. She rotated her body, bringing her legs into her stomach. She lashed out with all the strength she had in a mule kick, hitting him in his upper chest.
Caught off guard, Lucas flew across the room into the far wall. Jennifer yanked one arm free, then frantically began working her hand out of the second loop. Lucas sprang up and rushed her. She snapped out with a side kick, connecting again, and felt the hand slip out.
She jumped off the end of the bed, putting Lucas behind her, the door to the living room to her front. She yanked her pants up with one hand and clawed at the door with the other, getting it open. She almost made it out before he tackled her, bellowing in rage.
They bounced off the table in front of the anteroom television, then hit the floor. She rolled onto her back, Lucas straddling her body and trapping her left arm. She whipped her right elbow up and caught him on the chin, stunning him enough to allow her to snake out of his grasp. She leapt to her feet and he followed suit, slamming her into the wall. Rattled, the blow cutting her ability to think, she felt herself rotated around until her back was to the wall, her arms trapped in his grip.
He leaned into her face, the spittle flying out.
“You fucking bitch. Never want to make it easy. Always want the fucking pain. So be it.”
He reached his hands up to the base of her neck to repeat the pummeling she’d endured earlier. She stared into his snarling visage and felt his hands close. She knew she was done. No way out.
She thought of Pike. Of how he wouldn’t quit. Never, ever quit.
Never. Ever. Quit.
She whipped her head forward, catching him just above the bridge of his nose with the bony part of her forehead. He shrieked, and she did it again, feeling the nose crunch underneath the blow. Feeling him back up to escape.
She turned and ran, reaching the door to freedom a millisecond before him. She felt his breath on her neck, his hands grabbing her shirt. She launched a leg backward, felt it connect and heard him grunt, then she was outside.
She sprinted to the north elevator bank. The one with the envoy’s security. She got within sight of it and started walking, checking her appearance. Her shirt was back in place, but she had abrasions on her wrists, and her hair, she knew, must look wild.
She glanced behind her and saw Lucas scowling from the entrance to his room. He pointed a finger at her like a weapon, then blew the tip as if he was clearing smoke before shutting the door. She continued past the elevators until she reached a stairwell, ignoring the stares of the security men. She sprinted down them and ran to her car. A minute later, she was out of the garage and pulled over to the side of the road, throwing up on the shoulder.
She collected herself, sitting in the front seat and panting, unable to fully come to grips with what had just happened. She felt a simmering rage. Pulling out her phone, she saw several missed calls from the team. Out chasing a terrorist while I was raped.
At that moment she decided to keep the attack a secret. To pretend the abomination was nothing more than a bad dream that had never happened. She’d help the team find and capture Lucas, then watch him get the Taskforce version of justice. For the first time, she understood fully what that meant. Embraced the reasons why. Wanted to be the one who dropped the hammer.
She texted Pike, telling him she was okay and on the way back. She put the phone away without calling, not caring what had transpired with the Ghost. She drove to their hotel and went to her room. She stripped out of her clothes and went straight to the shower, letting the hot water beat her body.
She began scrubbing furiously as if she was covered in poison, doing whatever it took to cleanse her skin of Lucas’s touch. After an initial flurry, she stopped. She clinically surveyed the damage to keep her mind off the implications of the assault, wondering how she could keep it secret.
She had vicious bruises to her abdomen and a bite mark on one breast, but all of that could be hidden. Lucas had never struck her in the face, so nothing obvious would show. The biggest issue was the abrasions on her wrists. It would be hard to hide them. She thought of how she could bandage them, what she would say to the men of the team, when the enormity of the entire attack came crashing down, flooding her, drowning her.
She curled up in a ball in the bottom of the shower and wept.