Page 67 of Prohibited

She stood there in her bare feet, not sure what to say to him. He, for his part, also remained silent. The silence stretched on until impatience began to replace whatever stupidity was gluing her mouth shut.

“What if I was?” she said, suddenly remembering that he had actually asked her a question.

He huffed a little, a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. It certainly didn’t touch his eyes.

“You aren’t.” Flat. Final.

“Why didn’t you lock me in the storm cellar?” The question was driving her mad and she would go crazy if he didn’t lift the ambiguity of her situation.

“Anyone ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” His expression didn’t change, but his hand shifted slowly, closing the paperback with his finger holding the pages apart. He tapped the book against his leg. The fingers of his other hand turned the coffee cup.

Watching them made her mouth go slightly dry.

“I just want to know what’s going on.” She made her voice as flat as his, careful not to give him a hint of her anxiety. Her vulnerability.

“I haven’t decided,” he said at last.

Evie let out a puff of air. “I don’t understand. One minute, I’m being held prisoner in a cell. The next, I’m being given a room with a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear.The staff are fussing over me. I’m being treated like a guest. I can’t be blamed for feeling totally and completely bewildered, Ryan.”

“Why did you do it?”

She didn’t have to ask him what he meant.

The question rang through her like a heavy iron bell, a feeling so intense that it swallowed her voice.

On some level, she had never expected to have this conversation with him because he’d wanted nothing to do with her. But on the other hand, she should have expected it eventually.

After all this time, the fact that he was looking directly at her. Speaking directly to her like a person. It was almost too much. It took everything she had not to clasp her hands together and curl in on herself. Instead, she stood tall and straight and laced her fingers together, looking back at him and trying to summon an answer to his question.

He didn’t ask her again. Just went on staring at her with a cold but otherwise unreadable expression.

“I–” she began, but she had to clear her throat. “I told you, I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

A slight sneer on his face put a feeling of panic through her.

“He– He was upset with me,” she said, twisting her right hand in her left, fingers catching on her absurd wedding ring. “I left with my husband for three weeks. He was angry that I was gone for so long. Hedemanded that I ‘help him out’ to make it up to him. And he said it was just a little thing. Just a robbery.”

Evelyn looked down at her hands because suddenly the weight of his gaze was too much. Ripples of grief were starting in her chest.

“I figured, what difference does it make? These guys are always fucking each other over. It’s just a robbery. Right?”

He put the book aside entirely now and his other hand abandoned its attentions to the white porcelain of his coffee cup. He folded his hands in front of him, never taking his eyes off of her face.

“He said I just needed to pose as a new client. One of your guys–S-Sandy, I think–he’d put the whole thing together. Walter was paying him to set the whole thing up.” Evie bit her lip, backs of her eyes stinging. “I guess he probably just wanted you out of the way.”

“I guess he did,” Ryan said, coldly.

Evie cleared her throat. “So he told me that when the guys arrived, I was supposed to get out of the car like I was coming to greet them. To put them off their guard. I–” Her voice trembled slightly. “I didn’t know that man–T-Tommy–I didn’t know he was your brother. I didn’t know anything except for what Walter told me. And I did what he told me to do. I was a fool for trusting him. I’ve always been a fool for trusting him.”

A tremor went through her lower lip, so she bit down on it. Try as she might to prevent it, a single tear escaped her eye. She swept it away quickly, no hope of Ryan offering her sympathy. She expected none.

“You have to understand that I–” She hesitated. “I– He frightens me. I’ve been trying to think of how to escape from him but there’s nothing I can do. There is nowhere I can go. He’ll find me.” The despair that went rippling through her made her body heavy.

“He hurt you?” Ryan asked suddenly, watching her with guarded but angry eyes.

“Sometimes,” she said, sighing. “He tells me that if I leave him he’ll kill me. I didn’t know what sort of man he was when I…” She laughed, a sardonic sound. “I knew he was a criminal. But I– I don’t know what I thought. I thought he’d grow tired of me. Men like him, I thought, they can’t be kept down.” She shook her head. “It’s the opposite. He’s obsessed.” She said the last word in a low, heavy voice. “And I think… I think one of these days he will kill me.”

Clear as day, she could picture his eyes, boring into hers. Pinning her down. Keeping her trapped as he took everything from her and more. So strangely like Ryan’s, but the fire in Ryan’s was warm. Walter’s eyes, they were cold enough to freeze blood.