The Love Trap by Nicole French

15

Present

“I’m sorry, baby. Oh, fuck, I’m so goddamn sorry. Detective, what the hell is wrong with her? Why is there so much blood?”

I moaned as I tried to sit up on the cot. My entire body felt like it was on fire, and my vision was even worse than before. My head throbbed like I’d been clocked in the temple.

“Eric?” I asked. Was it really his face I’d seen earlier? His voice that had comforted me?

A tall shape squatted beside me. This close, things were a little clearer. Behind him, blurry shapes moved all around the room, looking more like dark, shapeless snowmen than actual people. How many were there? Five? Ten? My head hurt too much to count.

Eric. Eric’s face. Eric’s golden face. He bent down until he was almost in full focus and I could almost ignore the pain.

He looked like he’d aged ten years, with tiny crow’s feet more apparent than usual around his eyes, the lines across his forehead in high relief, and haggard circles under his normally bright eyes.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said in a voice that was a lot calmer than he looked. “You’re awake.” He exhaled and cupped my cheeks gently. “I’m here now. Can you—shit, can you tell me what’s wrong? There’s an ambulance on the way.”

“I don’t feel very good,” I mumbled. Who was I kidding? I hadn’t felt good in days. Everything about me was completely wrong.

“Jane, they—they gave you something. A few things, looks like. They split just as we arrived—I think one of them saw us coming down the road. Do you know what they gave you?”

“They gave us a lot of things.” I shook my head. “I dunno what. Where’s Eomma? Where are we?”

“She’s—Cho is helping her out to the car, see? You’re at an abandoned farm outside of Jinan. Carson’s owned it since the eighties. Cho thinks he used it to run a local prostitution ring when he was in town.”

I squinted, and barely made out the figures on the other side of the room. One of them—I guessed Cho—looked up from where it was helping another figure from the other cot.

“I can’t see,” I said. “They took my glasses.”

“Shit,” Eric muttered. “You can’t see anything?”

I shook my head, though the movement made it hurt even more. “You’re all blurry.”

“She’s in a bad way,” he called to someone else across the room. “What’s the ETA on the ambulance?”

I couldn’t make out the response.

“Jane,” my mother called vehemently. “Who is—get away from—” She broke into a string of Korean while standing up, pointing at me, then Eric, as blurry Cho towed her out of the room.

I looked away as her voice faded. No, I couldn’t listen to that now. Everything was no with her. My whole life, just no. No to my hair. No to my clothes. No to my husband. No, no, no.

I just wanted to stay here, in the quiet. Two hands clasped my cheeks, and when I blinked—verrrrry slowly—Eric’s face filled my vision once more.

I relaxed. And then stopped, because everything hurt.

“Yu-na is pretty out of it too,” Eric said. “Jane, what did they give you guys?” He looked down at me, and through my haze, I registered the barely concealed fear playing across his features.

“You’re so pretty,” I murmured as I reached a weak hand to play over his lips, which cooperated with a slight smile. The lines across his brow seemed to deepen. “Don’t worry so much.”

“Maybe I won’t if you tell me what they gave you, gorgeous.”

He looked away again. No, don’t look away, I thought.

“Tony, did you find anything?” he called.

Another familiar voice responded, but I couldn’t understand it. The tone, however, didn’t sound good.

“They gave us a lot of things. In all different places.” I could hear how thick-lipped I sounded, like I was speaking through water. But no matter what, I couldn’t manage to articulate properly. “A lot. Check—check the soup.”

“The soup? Tony, did you find soup?”

“I’ll check the kitchen.”

I tried to look around to help them, but even the movement of my eyes made me dizzy. I closed them.

“Jane.” Eric’s deep voice was more strained. “Baby, you have to stay with me. Don’t go to sleep yet.”

“You never call me baby.” My eyelids felt weighted by anvils, but I managed to open them again. “You must be really worried. Where’s the guy?”

Eric’s face screwed up in confusion. “What guy? Do you mean Jude? Carson?”

I shook my head and immediately cringed. Oh, that hurt. “No, they left. The Russian. They called him Anton. He—he was the one who—gave us the—” I slumped against the wall, just barely missing smacking my temple on the concrete when Eric’s strong arm propped me up again. Oh, his chest. Yes, that felt good. That was the place to be.

“The soup,” I mumbled again. “Check the soup.”

My eyes closed again, and the room went black. The hands around my shoulder stiffened.

“Jane,” Eric’s voice hummed pleasantly enough next to my ear, though I could still sense its strain. “Jane, stay with me, okay. Cho, do we have an ambulance on the way?”

“Yes, it is coming.”

I sniffed. Something smelled wrong. There was him, of course, full of light and linen and the cologne I loved so much. Tom Ford.

“You smell like money,” I bleared, and Eric’s chuckle vibrated under my cheek. But when I sniffed again, that other scent was back. Something metallic. Something…wrong.

The man. Jude. Carson. He had said their names. Where—where had they gone? What had they done to me?

Get it done, he said.

Bait, he said.

With more energy than I thought I had, I pushed off Eric and sat up, the sudden motion causing another sharp stab in my belly. “Oh! No, Eric, that’s—ah!—that’s what he wants. He’s—Eric, you have to get out of here.”

“What? No, Jane, I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for you, all right? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bait,” I wheezed. “I’m…bait. He said that I’m—he’s here for you. Owwwwww!”

I moaned as I collapsed back against the wall. The pain made me wake up again, more attuned to my surroundings. I looked down, finally finding the source of that terrible smell.

Blood. That’s what it was. Lots and lots of blood, enough that my blankets and the sheets tangled with my legs were soaked.

“Why—oh, God, is that…is that mine?”

Eric’s face told me everything I needed to know. “Tony!” he shouted, though he didn’t look away. “What’s the ETA on the fucking ambulance?”

“Two minutes, sir!”

“I—I don’t know—what’s happen—what did they do…” I mumbled, unable to say much more than that. God, I was tired. So tired, and yet, I didn’t want to go back to sleep, back to those terrible dreams that reminded me just how much I had to lose. I couldn’t go through that loss again. I couldn’t.

“Jane? Look, gorgeous, I need you to stay awake, all right? Help is on the way, but you have to stay awake.”

“You have to…you have to get out of here,” I mumbled. “He’ll be back.” Another massive round of pain clenched my belly, and I curled into myself like a shrimp and cried like I hadn’t since I was a child.

“Tony!”

“One minute!”

I sank back into the bed, no longer caring about the metallic scent of blood in the air or the fact that even Eric’s face seemed to be fading away.

“I’m so tired,” I said into my sweat-soaked pillow. “So…so tired.”

“Jane, just hold on! Fucking hell, Tony, her pulse is dropping!”

“They’re here!”

There was a rush of activity as another several blurry figures burst into the room. My eyes opened one last time as I was lifted from the bed and transferred to another. They rolled me out into the cold, Eric jogging beside me. I began shivering violently the second the January air hit my soaked, shriveled body. His face. I could only focus on his face.

“Is she going to be all right?” Eric kept asking as he followed me into the back of the ambulance.

An EMT looked up and rattled off machine-gun speeds of Korean while he took my vitals and tried to push Eric away. He was one of the few I’d met so far who did not speak fluent English.

“Just try it,” Eric snarled at him. “I’m not going fucking anywhere.”

Cho, thankfully, appeared in the doorway next to Eric, listening intently, and then translating.

Eric just watched with obvious dread. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“The EMT wants to know,” Cho said. “Was she pregnant?”

“Was?” Eric asked, dumbfounded, though the arms around my shoulders squeezed a little tighter.

“No,” I moaned, holding my waist. “It’s—she—no, please!”

Cho looked regretfully at Eric. “Was,” he said quietly.

Behind me, Eric sucked in a tight breath. Energy seeped from my body, and the edges of my vision darkened once more. I fell back into the pillow, blinking as the monitors in the ambulance flashed on and started going off loudly all around.

The EMT shouted again in a frenzy, trying to push Eric out of the way.

“Get the fuck off!” Eric roared back.

“Mr. de Vries, she is failing,” Cho translated. “You have to leave now so they can help her!”

“Over my dead body, Cho.”

Vaguely I registered doors closing, the rumble of an engine. Movement. Movement of bodies around me, of the floor beneath me. Everything started to numb.

“Jane! Goddammit, Jane, stay with me, do you hear me?”

“I can’t,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.” God, I just wanted it to go away. I wanted to sink into the nothingness that beckoned and never return. Anything would be better than this, than the stabbing pain in my belly, the nausea, the lightness, the fatigue.

The complete and utter desolation that awaited me on the other side.

Do you really want to give in, pumpkin? Is that your style? My dad’s voice questioned me, even from the grave.

Oh, Daddy, I thought with an inward smile. That was always your problem. You loved me, but you never knew me at all.

“Jane!” Eric shook me slightly, ignoring the shouts of Korean around him. “Jane, listen to me!”

My eyes opened once more, my vision clouded not by pain, but by the fathomless gray eyes full of love and fear.

And really, didn’t those things always go together? At least with us?

“You listen to me,” Eric ordered. “You listen. I refuse to let him kill one more person I love. And you? I love you, you stupid, stubborn, headstrong girl, more than anyone or anything I have ever loved in my entire sorry life. I love you, Jane Lee Lefferts de Vries. With everything that I am and everything that I will ever be! So you are not allowed to leave me in this world, because if you do, I’m not staying behind this time. You go, I follow. And I’m not ready to die yet, Jane, so you have to stay!”

My eyelids fluttered, and Eric pressed me to his breast, giving me one last inhale of his clean, masculine scent before he was pulled away. It was the perfect way to go.

“Do you hear me?” he kept saying. “Do you hear me, woman? I love you, and I can’t live this shitty fucking life without you. So you have to stay with me, Jane. I’m begging you, pretty girl. Stay with me!”

I fell back. The world was a scream.

“Oh, Eric,” I murmured. “I love you too.”

The words were my goodbye.