Twisted

"What can I do?" she asked. "I don't want to feel like this. Help me, Cale."

"I'm here for you," I said. "What do you want me to do?"

"I've been with you for eight months," she said. "Why haven't you made love to me? Is it because I'm spoiled?"

"You aren't spoiled," I said. "I didn't think you'd want me to do that. God damn it, you've been through so much that I didn't want to add to it by hitting on you."

"I want you to," she said. "Remember how I told you I felt dirty? I think you could make that feeling go away. If you made love to me, I maybe wouldn't have this feeling. I'm trying to tell you I love you, Cale. I'm in love with you and I want to make love to you."

I carried her to my bed and that's what we did. We were lying there panting. She was half across me and she was smiling. "You know how to feed a hungry girl," she smiled up at me. "I didn't know if this was going to work. I was afraid I was broken. I still may be. I may need this a lot."

I held her tightly. "I'll give it to you a lot," I told her. "Would every day be enough?"

"I was thinking about in thirty minutes," she purred.

It didn't take ten. That was the beginning of us making love. She still had periodic bouts of depression and sometimes the trauma of those events came back and she clung to me for dear life. She went downhill for a month or so and then she started getting better again. I thought she needed closure. She was afraid to go out of the house without me. It was impossible for her to work and she refused to see therapists. "You're all the therapy I need," she kept telling me. I knew I would have to do something about her terror of being outside without me. I think she kept thinking she would run into one of the guys who raped her, or her husband.

I talked to a few of my old Army buddies and they recommended a PI to me. Her name was Patricia Macalla. The guys I talked to told me she was as soft as a marshmallow inside, but hard as nails on the outside. I called her and she made me an appointment. There was a cute little girl with black hair in the office when I got there. Miss Macalla was a tall plush black girl. She was smoking hot and I liked her right away. She introduced the girl that was with her.

"This is Andrea Davis," she told me. "She's my lover. She has an interest in kidnapping cases. With your permission I'd like her to hear about this."

"Okay, I guess that will be fine," I was a little taken aback. No one had mentioned that Miss Macalla was a lesbian, and Miss Davis sure didn't give off that vibe either.

Miss Davis laughed. "I think you shocked the man, Patricia. We aren't lesbians, Mr. Henry. We love each other and we have sex. We like men, too. In fact... "

"Andrea, we don't fuck clients," Miss Macalla said.

My mouth was hanging open. It took me a minute to get my brain in gear. "I'm with someone," I said. "Not that I wouldn't... I mean... "

"Relax," Miss Macalla said. "You're safe. I'm Patricia and she's Andrea. We're going to call you Cale."

"Well, here's the story." I laid it all out. Everything we knew or suspected. I had dropped by the old apartment building and picked up the security tape from the incident in the garage. I had the name of the guy who had rented the apartment and his last known information. The apartment manager had done a credit check on him, and we had quite a bit of information. I gave her Molly's information and what we knew about her husband.

"What, exactly, do you want to do with the information we find out?" Andrea asked.

"Molly is terrified to go out of the house," I said. "She may always be like that. When you're kidnapped and raped for a month, tortured and addicted to drugs, it's pretty tough to get over. I know she never will as long as those guys are out there. I love her and I'm going to do something even if you can't help me. How much do you want to know?"

"We want to know everything," Patricia said.

"I'm going to kill them all," I said.

"You don't seem like the type," Andrea said.

"You don't know my type," I told her.

"I do," Patricia said. "I work with some of your type. You're a man of war, and if you need to be, you're a stone killer. You won't do it unless you or someone you love is threatened. Yes, I know you, Cale Henry. The problem is, what happens to Molly if you go to jail?"

"I'll find a way," I told her.

"Why don't you let me find the way?" she asked. "I'll set the situation up and you take them down."

"That's what I was hoping for when I came here," I told her. "Andrea, are you sure you want to be part of this?"

"I'm sure," she said. "I love her just looking at her picture. I can't bear the thought that that lovely girl is suffering because of scum like that. I can't stand thinking about what they did to her. You're pretty impressive, too, Cale. I'll do anything I can to help you. I won't kill anyone, but I'll help get the information you need so you can do it."

"Why don't you go to the police?" Patricia asked.

"They have a video," I said. "It would look like she was enjoying it." My voice broke. "They drugged her and tortured her sexually until she begged for it. She said two of them were cops."

"Jesus Christ!" Patricia swore. "We'll make them pay, I swear it, Cale."

I paid them a hefty fee and went home to Molly. I told her what I had done and she was horrified. "I can't let you do that, Cale," she wept. "What if something happened to you? What if you get hurt? What if you go to jail? Please, don't do this. I'll go out. I'll get a job. I'll do anything! Please, I love you and I don't know what I would do if anything happened to you. What would I do?"

"I'm going to fix it so that if anything were to happen to me, you'd be taken care of," I told her. "Patricia and Andrea are going to make sure of that, but nothing is going to happen to me. I know how to fight, baby. That's what I'm best at. These guys don't stand a chance."

"What are you going to do to them?" she asked.

"What do you want me to do to them?"

"I want you to stay away from them," she sobbed. "Please Cale, I'm really scared."

"Molly, look at me," I took her beautiful face in my hands. "If they were helpless, right here in front of you right now, what would you do?"

"I'd torture them," she wept. "I'd harm them so that they couldn't ever do this to anyone else. I'd damage them and turn them loose and let them live out their miserable lives as helpless cripples."

"That's what I thought," I said. "That's what we're going to do, but we aren't going to let them live. I'm going to kill them, Molly. The nightmare is going to end and you won't ever have to think about it again. I love you and I want to marry you and have four kids. I can't do that until you're out of this nightmare."

She threw herself on me and pushed me back over on the couch. She practically tore our clothes off and pressed her beautiful naked body against mine. When we were skin to skin she became as soft as a kitten. She kissed me from head to toe. Every inch of my body felt her lips. Her nipples were hard enough to shatter, and she scraped them all over me. She was so wet she dripped on me, and she covered me with her juices as she rubbed her hot little pussy over my body.

"I love you, Cale," she whispered over and over. "I want to marry you, but I only want two kids."

She took me in her mouth for the first time. "I want to do everything with the man I love," she whispered. "Not like with those sick bastards, but because I love you and I want to give you everything."

Being inside her was like being inside a furnace. Molly burned hotter than ordinary people. Kissing her, being inside her, always felt like she was running a fever. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and I couldn't believe she was with me. We made love like teenagers on their first date. She came for me like a string of firecrackers and for the first time since we'd been together, she stopped first. The look on her face was indescribable. She looked like she was glowing. We rested our sweat slickened bodies together and just cuddled for hours. She whispered to me and I have no idea what she said, but they were words of love and contentment. I was in a daze of euphoria, and she was, too.

"Cale, I know you were in the army," she said. "I saw what you did to those two creeps in the garage. How good are you? Tell me a story about when you were in the army."

"I'm not proud of that," I told her. "I was young and stupid. I bought into the whole 'keep America safe' thing. It didn't take me too long to figure out that what we were doing had nothing to do with 'keeping America safe.' How does going to some foreign country and killing people in their homes 'keep America safe'?"

"I don't know," she said. "I think you should be here in America if you want to keep it safe."

"I don't know why we were there. It just became about staying alive and keeping the guy next to me alive. The best way to do that is to become deadly. I figured that out. We had targets selected for us and we went out and got them. I was more like a SWAT policeman than a soldier. We'd get information about where a person the higher ups wanted was and we'd go get them. They told us five terrorists were going to be at a wedding and we were tasked to capture or kill them. I remember it every day. We took our positions outside the wedding venue and waited for the group to get there. When they got there, the bride and groom got out. They had three kids with them. The terrorists we were supposed to be taking were in a second vehicle and there must have been 200 people in that wedding party. As soon as our targets were in the clear we made our move. We ran toward the party and one of them had a gun under his robes. I don't know who started shooting, but it was a blood bath. People came out of the surrounding houses and started shooting at us. I took cover behind one of the vehicles the wedding party had come in. I was crouching there and I looked down. There was a little girl lying there. She was one of the kids with the bride. She had on a little white dress and she was dead. I don't know who shot her, but the side of her face was ripped off. She only had one eye left and it was staring at me like she was accusing me of killing her. I went crazy."

Molly held me tightly as I sobbed out the story.

"They killed nine of us right there in the street. There were three of us left and we fought our way out of that neighborhood. Those scars you kissed came from that fight. I got hit five times. One of the three of us made it three blocks and we were all wounded. There were two of us left and my buddy couldn't walk. He had been hit in the leg three times. He lost that leg. We got pinned down in a garden behind a wall. We were there nine hours before they found us. I don't know how many men I killed that day, but they haunt me. They told me I was a hero, that I'd saved my buddy's life. They gave me two medals for that. When they were putting them on me, all I could think about was that little girl, accusing me with that one eye. I didn't feel like a hero, I felt like a piece of shit. I got out as soon as I could, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about that little girl. I'll never fight again for lines on a map. I'll fight for you, Molly. I'm damned good at it and I'll win. Then maybe the nightmares will go away for both of us."

She looked into my eyes for a long time. "We're both kind of broken, aren't we, Cale?"

"Yes, but we're not going to stay that way," I told her. "The difference between me and you is that I volunteered for my nightmare. You didn't have a choice and we're going to take their choices away, too."

It took a month for Patricia and Andrea to get all the information we needed. They kept us posted, and I was very impatient. They kept me calm and Andrea flew out and stayed with us for four days. I think she and Molly fell in love the first day. Andrea was as sweet as honey, and she was so kind and compassionate with Molly that they became very good friends. Patricia came two days later and she stayed with us, too. She had the locations of all five men and we put our plan into action.

Molly's reaction to Andrea was like they became sisters. They were rarely apart the entire time Andrea was there, and Molly told me that Andrea was like the sister she never had. It was easy to see they were going to be friends for life.

Patricia leased an abandoned factory building that had a basement vault. It was about twenty by twenty and I took tools and made it into a dungeon. I screwed eyebolts into the concrete and we bought chains and welded them to handcuffs and the bolts. Patricia came up with some sort of medieval looking leather masks. She said she got them at an S&M fetish store. I didn't want to know what they were used for. She had a whole bag of that kind of stuff, and I shuddered every time I looked at it.

We talked, and I decided to take Molly's husband first. His name was Jonah Keene, and he was a commercial artist. He had a new live in lover, and he still hadn't reported Molly missing. He worked late every Wednesday, and he was the last person to leave the building. I rented a van and Patricia drove. She had a big, angry looking guy with her. His name was Roman and he looked like a skinhead. He was huge, had tattoos all over his bald head and his arms were covered. She introduced him and said he was going to be our jailor.

"Roman doesn't like women or black people," she said. "He likes men and he likes pain."

"So, how do you get along with Patricia?" I asked him. "She's sort of a black woman."

He glared over at her. "I'm afraid of her," he growled. "Besides, she saved my ass twice. I owe her, but this is going to be all about fun."

I shivered. "Jesus, Patricia; you know some pretty damn odd people."

She just laughed. "I know you," she said.

We parked outside Jonah's building, away from the cameras by his car, and when he came out I hit him with a taser. He went down, Roman and I wrapped him up in duct tape and loaded him into the van. We took him to the dungeon and trussed him up like a Christmas Turkey. We left him there and went after the apartment guy.

His name was James Worth and he had a new apartment. There was a party going on when we got there. We put on ski masks and went in with combat shotguns. There were six of them, and they had a girl in a collar. Two of them tried to fight and they had to go down. It took me about five seconds to fill them full of buckshot. The girl was on top of Worth and we caught him with his pants down, so to speak. The bonus was that we got one of the other guys. His name was Reggie Thomas, and we tased them all. It took a while to get them in the van and Patricia took the girl off while Roman and I put the others in the dungeon. It was getting crowded and we had more prisoners than we had gear for. Roman took the spares away and I left them to his tender mercies.

It took us a week to get the other two. We got them both at the same club when they came staggering out. Our lineup was complete and we had all five of them in their cozy little dungeon.

I asked Patricia what I should do. I didn't want Molly involved, but I knew she might want to be. Patricia was totally opposed to the idea.

"Jesus Christ, Cale; I can't believe you're even thinking about it. Hasn't that poor girl been traumatized enough? What the hell?"

We finally got a plan together that she needed to know they wouldn't be around anymore. I would bring her to see the bodies after they were dead, and that would be the end of it.

They didn't die pretty. Roman used them like two-dollar whores, and after two weeks they were done. They couldn't even scream anymore, and I killed them all with a knife. I brought Molly to the warehouse and she just stood and looked at them. Tears were rolling down her beautiful face and she turned away. I took her away and we torched the place.

Patricia and Andrea stayed one more day and we had dinner together at our house. It wasn't exactly a celebration, but it was closure. They made us promise to stay in touch and come and visit them. The police identified the bodies and they started looking for Molly. She got in touch with them and we were able to convince them she hadn't seen Jonah for over a year. She was a free woman, and she finally started leaving the house without me to go to the store or just out for a walk.

It took her five years to feel secure enough to get a job. She had a teaching degree, and she got a job teaching kindergarten at a school near the house. I graduated from college and got a job as a mechanical engineer. Molly loved teaching the little kids, and after three years she told me she wanted to have a baby. I reminded her that we weren't married and she asked me what I was going to do about that.

I knew what I wanted to do. I bought a ring. It was a big sapphire surrounded by three smaller diamonds and I took her to the best restaurant in town. I knelt by the table after dinner and proposed. Her eyes were glistening and she jumped up and shrieked.

"Yes, oh my God, yes; I will marry you Cale."

Everyone in the place applauded and I carried her out. We made love all night and she threw away her birth control pills. We got married in June, and Patricia and Andrea were her bridesmaids. I kidded Patricia that Roman was going to be my best man, but I never saw him again, thankfully. My boss stood up for me, and Molly was radiant. She was growing a little baby bump, but she was the most beautiful bride in history, to my mind.

We've been married twelve years now and we have two beautiful little girls who look just like their Mom. Molly's still teaching kindergarten, and I'm going to get my fifth promotion next week. I came home last week and Molly was at the sink looking out at the back yard. She was crying and I slipped up behind her and folded her up in my arms.

"Mol, are you okay?" I asked her.

She nodded. "I don't itch inside anymore," she said. "I'm okay, Cale. I'm finally okay. Look out at the girls. That's my life now. You, me, them; that's all that matters. Are you okay, Cale?"

"As long as I have you," I squeezed my beautiful wife and the eye wasn't there to accuse me.