O’Hare was standing in the doorway, his suit far too fresh and sleek for whatever awful time of the morning it was after a long night, and maybe it was just because I was seeing him under better lighting than I had yet, but he looked about as irked as he ever had since I’d first seen him.
My attacker made a feral noise. “This bitch…” Then he realised who had joined the party and froze.
“Get the fuck outside,” said O’Hare, and the guy slunk out in front of him. O’Hare turned his eyes back on me, their wideness just allowing me to see deeper into an apparent abyss.
“I apologise,” he told me, “and I will be back to address this further, but there is something I need to take care of just now.”
He closed the door very gently after him. As soon as he was gone I was out of bed. I checked in the closet for a bathrobe, anything I could wear to cover myself, but when I came up empty I ran to the door to press my ear against it.
Another door slammed. Yes… O’Hare had sent him outside.
I was definitely not going to leave the room in my pyjamas when more of those men might be out there. I moved to the little window in the room, but I could see nothing but the bush almost backing up against our accommodation.
A high-pitched masculine scream had me ducking behind the bed. The scream was quickly cut off, then there was a softer noise outside, something that sounded a little like sobbing. Then a number of raised voices, a slamming door, and an engine starting.
Were they leaving me? I started to rise over the edge of the bed, then ducked down again when the door opened.
“Julia?” O’Hare again. Somehow his voice had become incredibly familiar to me. When I peeked back over the edge of the mattress, he was closing the door with him inside the room this time. He looked much the same as he had a few minutes before, except his cheeks were slightly flushed… and there was a red smear on one shirtsleeve that didn’t seem to have come from him.
I forgot myself and stood all the way up. “What did you do to him?”
“He’ll live,” said O’Hare. “He just might have… a visual reminder of this day the next time he decides he wants to whip it out for a lady. Whether she’s consenting… or not.”
I could feel my eyes widening. He hadn’t given me enough information to know exactly what had gone down, but I had plenty to let my imagination go wild. “Is he…”
“I sent the lot of them off with him to the hospital. They’re not coming back. What kind of maladjusted idiots think that being tapped on the shoulder to take a girl means they can fuck her at will?” He shook his head. “It was bad enough that they were so unnecessarily rough with you during the extraction. I won’t be having a business relationship with them again. I must beg your forgiveness for my questionable choice in employees.”
I couldn’t believe this situation. “I… apology accepted.” But that seemed like it was just my shock talking. Why should I make it easy for this man, after all? “You know, you’re giving me a very poor impression of your talent for judging character. First you loaned money to my parents, now you’ve hired unscrupulous rapists…”
I ducked back behind the bed when a laugh burst out of him. I was quick to poke my head out again, because he looked stunningly young with such a big smile on his face. Well he was young, surely. He couldn’t be that much older than me—thirty at the most. It was strange to think that we might even be part of the same world, and yet he seemed to be in a completely different place to me. I wondered if he’d been roaring ahead from the start of his life, or if at twenty-two he’d also been a bit of a tryhard, convincing himself he had some role to play beyond his bedroom but really fooling himself.
It was a bit of a journey to take just from one laugh. Embarrassed that I’d hid and by all the thoughts that had come after, I pulled myself up so I was sitting on the bed and tried to look as dignified a captive as possible.
>
O’Hare was now watching me with no amusement in his eyes that I could see. “Are you done playing peekaboo?”
“I, um, I think so, yeah.”
He sat on the side of the bed opposite to me, turning his back. I put my hands out to balance myself on the shifting mattress. I was surprised I’d even been able to sleep on something that might as well be a pile of balled-up socks compared to my usual bed.
“Hopefully it’s not my ability to judge character that’s at fault,” O’Hare said. “To be honest, I knew exactly the sorts of people your parents were. I’m not a fool, or I wouldn’t still be alive. In my kind of business, you have to get used to dealing with shady individuals.”
“I guess I’ve got a pretty good idea already, but what is your kind of business anyway?”
“Not yet,” O’Hare said. “Now, of course I’ve formed certain opinions of you from having had you in my company over the past several hours. Actually, I find you intriguing.”
I hated the way it made me feel when he said that. It was the sort of thing that would be appropriate if we were sitting across from one another at a nice restaurant, me sipping a glass of a really nice white or whatever and trying to make the most of my looks… him smiling at me without my having to wonder what the deeper meaning behind it was or if it would all go away at something I said or did in the next moment. Oh yeah, and me showing him only the parts of my body I wanted to.
“Do you think you could find me something more decent to wear before we have this conversation?” I asked. “Sitting here in my silky pyjamas like this is making me feel nervous.”
“No,” said O’Hare. “I want you nervous.”
Well that was telling me.
“Actually, that’s part of what intrigues me. You weren’t expecting this, you’re clearly afraid… but there’s something unexpected in your response, too. You’re not quite as much of a wreck as you should be.”
I turned my head to find him already swivelled around, watching me. I couldn’t decide if it was a good idea to tell him, but I found the words spilling out anyway. “Actually it’s… not the first time I’ve gotten myself kidnapped.”