The Love Trap by Nicole French

11

Present

“You’re not going anywhere.”

The voice was a mere echo, the ghost of a warning. Its owner had vanished by the time I finally managed to open my eyes again, conflated with the visions of Eric’s hurt expression.

Was this why I had always been convinced someone was out to get me? Did some part of me, buried within half my DNA, know that out in the world lay a monster, waiting to capture me at just the right moment?

What an idiot I had been my entire life, running from demons like high school bullies and one-night stands. What a privileged fool. What a joke.

Shadows dragged through the blinds at the window, casting a yellow-orange light through the slats that told me it was nearing sunset here in…well, wherever this was. I had been drugged in the car for who knew how long, but I was still willing to bet I was somewhere in Hwaseong. Unless…oh, God. Visions of the map of South Korea, that tiny speck that marked the Goseong plant, throbbed in my mind. What if that’s where I was? Or even farther? Across the border, maybe?

All day. I had been here all day, lying on this cot. Freezing in this dusty room. The reality was I could be anywhere. And no one would be able to find me.

I turned, arrested with sudden panic, though my body responded with sluggish reticence.

Drugged, a tiny voice said in my head that sounded vaguely like Carol Lefferts. That’s because you’ve been drugged, Plain Jane. You’ve been drugged and taken hostage by your own fucking biological father.

And there could only be one reason for that. John Carson wanted something from Eric.

Eric.

Just as dazedly, another thought occurred to me. If I was a hostage, maybe I was with someone else.

“Eomma?” I croaked as I turned over on my cot. “Eomma, are you here?”

There was a groan from the other side of the room. With Herculean effort, I managed to drag myself up, though the blood rushing suddenly from my head almost knocked me back down. Everything ached. And everything was blurry. My glasses had been taken, so I was left to my own poor vision. But it wasn’t, thankfully, bad enough that I couldn’t see movement on the other cot.

I looked out into the thin afternoon light and tried to take in my surroundings.

It was a small, bare white room with some kind of tiled floor. Our two cots were shoved against opposite walls, each with dark rumpled blankets that barely kept out the January chill. I could make out small heating vents on the floors, plus three barred windows with the blinds drawn. There was a plastic table with a chair in the other corner.

“Eomma!”

My limbs wouldn’t work. I couldn’t walk properly, but I did manage to crawl across the room, a few scant feet that felt like miles. When I reached the other cot, I collapsed at the edge breathing heavily and touched the blanket-covered lump.

She turned. And it wasn’t until I saw her face, with a mosaic of bruises up and down her left cheek and a nasty, half-healed cut above her lip, that I finally exhaled fully.

“Eomma,” I whispered as I fell over her small, solid form. “Oh my God, Eomma, it’s okay. I found you. It’s okay.”

“Jane?”

Her voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable. Her eyes widened, pupils severely dilated as she took me in. This close, I could see that her hair was brittle, her skin blotchy and shiny at the same time. It was clear by the way she half looked through me that she wasn’t entirely certain I was real.

“It’s okay, Eomma,” I said, grabbing her hand and pressing it to my cheek. “I’m real. I’m here. I’m…we’re going to get out of here, okay? I’ll figure something out.”

But her eyes only widened in pure panic. “Jane, you must—oh, you must…” But she couldn’t even finish her sentence before a stream of Korean poured out, like her hard-won, nearly perfect English was simply too much to bear under the strain of everything else.

“Shhh, shhh,” I whispered, rocking her to me with the awkward, stunted movements my body would allow. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

She calmed slightly, and I felt her body wilt against me. We remained like that for a long time.

Eric, I pleaded mentally. Eric, please help us.

But, of course, no one answered. Eric was furious with me and maybe even still behind bars, depending on how quickly he was processed. Who knew if he would even come at all once he was out. All I had to help me here was a third or fourth cousin with a minor interest in an old serial murder case. That was it.

Before despair could overtake me completely, the door to the room opened, and a familiar figure entered—not John Carson. The goateed, eminently punchable face of Jude Le-fucking-tour.

“Well, well, well, our little butterfly emerged from her cocoon.”

He strode in, followed by a much larger man carrying a tray bearing two bowls. The smell of noodles and broth filled the room, and my stomach growled in response. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? Hours or days?

My head swam. I just curled more into my mother’s cot.

“Jude,” I said through thick lips. “Or should I call you Hermes?”

I looked over his blurry form as critically as I could. He no longer wore the splint over his nose, but was that a bit of bruising still evident around his eyes? Eric had really gotten him in Lucerne.

Good lord, was that only three weeks ago?

“You’ll cooperate if you know what’s good for you,” Jude said with a leer. “None of that smart talk. Not without anyone here to protect you.”

I glared. “How’s your nose, Jude? Are you ready to have some other things broken?”

He touched his face self-consciously and grimaced. “Why? Are you going to do it, Tinkerbell?”

I cocked my head. “No, but I wouldn’t want to be here when Eric shows up. My guess is he’ll want to break something else too.”

It was bravado, of course. My failsafe. My default mode. Even if Eric were coming, he wasn’t a fighter. In spite of his admirable takedown of Jude in Lucerne, I had a feeling that side of him only came out when pushed to the extreme. And I also knew he didn’t particularly like it.

“Triton is every bit as much a coward now as when we were young,” Jude said, as if he were reading my thoughts. “Still scared of his own shadow. Still falls for the nearest bit of street trash. His own Madame Butterfly.” He looked me over. “Such a cliché. You’re even pregnant with the lieutenant’s child, aren’t you?”

He bent down and tapped my nose. I batted his hand away with slow, stupid movements that made Jude laugh. I tried to spit at him and failed miserably. Jude stepped back, chuckling as he leaned over to check on my mother, who had gone back to feigning unconsciousness beside me. I hoped.

“How unfortunate for Triton,” Jude remarked languidly as he turned his attention back to me, “that this piece of trash already belonged to someone else.”

“Then why am I here?” I asked. “Why not just kill him and be done with it, since that’s obviously what Carson wants?” It was a classic technique. Ask the questions you already knew the answer to. “Because you need him, don’t you? You and your stupid society. Eric has something he wants. The question is, what?”

“Triton owes a debt,” Jude replied gleefully. “A very big one, not that it’s any of your business.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’d say that makes it my business.”

My words came faster, less slurred. Adrenaline was taking the place of the wearing-off drugs. Vaguely, I wondered what I’d been dosed with. In the car, it had been a clap of something over my mouth—a handkerchief soaked with chloroform and probably something else to maintain the effect. Here, it was something milder. Perhaps a fucked-up cocktail of benzos to keep me calm and sluggish, maybe ketamine.

“You could let me contact him,” I tried again. “I promise he’ll be more amenable if you let me speak. Tell him I’m all right.”

It was never going to work. But I had to try. My mother’s body moved slightly behind my head, and I set a hand on her covers, looking for her solid warmth. I could barely feel her bones through the thin blanket. God, how much weight had she lost here?

Jude just shook his head, as if the suggestion were little more than a small child requesting ice cream for breakfast. “It’s almost cute, Cio-Cio San. But you’re not that stupid. You’re bait, pure and simple. So be a good little worm, and eat up. Can’t have our prime nightcrawler shriveling up too much.”

He gestured behind him, and his gorilla helper brought over the tray of soup. Jude set one on the table for my mother, and held up the other, bending over me to hold it to my lips.

“I’ll even help you, since your motor function seems a bit…deprived…at the moment,” he said. “Carson wants you well-nourished. Generous of him, isn’t it?”

I kicked out, causing Jude to spill the broth all over himself. He seethed, looking down at the mess of noodles all over his perfectly cut wool pants.

“That,” he said, “was unnecessary. Not to mention wasteful. Your lovely mother won’t be getting dinner now.” His hand snaked out and grabbed my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “Anton. Hold her.”

The large man smiled, and then I was lugged off the floor, shoved onto a chair at the table, and held there by a pair of arms that each seemed bigger than my entire torso while Jude secured my wrists and taped my ankles to the chair legs. When I was well and properly bound into place, Jude bent down again so he was only a few inches from my face.

“When you learn to behave, maybe we’ll let you go,” he informed me.

“You look like you pissed your pants,” I said.

Immediately, I received a harsh slap across the face. From her cot, my mother squeaked.

“Would you like to go on?” Jude asked through gritted teeth. “I happen to know Anton would love to have his turn. And I hate to tell you, but he’s not nearly as nice as I am. It’s why he’s Carson’s favorite.”

I said nothing, but only because the lump on the cot began to shake.

“That’s what I thought,” Jude said with satisfaction. “Now it’s time for dinner.” He accepted the second bowl from Anton and held it up to my lips. “Drink.”

I eyed the soup. It smelled so good—the ubiquitous instant noodles similar to the kinds my mother had always kept in stock in our house for easy meals and after-school snacks. But addled as I was, I wasn’t stupid.

I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine. I was starving. I was hungry literally all the time now that I was pregnant, and I probably hadn’t eaten in, what, twelve hours? The growl of my stomach filled the room.

Jude’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not an option, I’m afraid.”

If I hadn’t been sure he was drugging me with the soup before, now I was. “No.”

His eyes closed for a moment, as if he was gathering his patience again. It was a small victory, but I would take it. Even if I’d regret it seconds later.

“Hold her nose,” Jude said finally, standing back up.

My eyes widened as Anton circled around the chair and proceeded to close his broad hands over my nose, cutting off my air supply unless I opened my mouth. Jude stood poised with the bowl over my lips, and as soon as I opened them for a single breath, he wrenched my jaw the rest of the way open and proceeded to pour the broth down my throat.

I coughed, hacked, my body shaking against the onslaught. But some of it made it down, much to my dismay.

Jude stood back, observing with humor. “Had enough? Or are we going to cooperate now?” He looked back at the bowl. “There’s quite a bit more where this came from. Waterboarding by chicken stock. Very elegant.”

My choice was clear. Drown in lukewarm broth or allow at least some of it down.

Survival won.

Less than fifteen minutes later, I was asleep again, wrapped in a shroud of perilous dreams filled with probing hands and my cries in the dark. I didn’t know which parts of it were real. And at some point, I no longer cared.