“What the fu…?” he whispered in shock.
The redhead seized the pilot by his collar and gave him a head-butt of her own. She planted her skull so hard on the bridge of his nose that he yelped like a puppy when she connected with him. Blackness covered his eyes momentarily, and moments later he awoke to the women dragging him through an office door and unceremoniously dropping him on the floor.
“This is him.”
Stephen heard the familiar rasp of his feminine attacker, but he could hardly open his eyes. Pain filled his head. His brain was on fire and the wetness of his nosebleed had now become a horrid stickiness that trickled onto his open lips. “This is the pilot that is taking another passenger to the yacht of David Purdue.”
“Although, I suppose he is in no condition to fly now,” the young brunette mentioned indifferently. She nudged at him with the toe of her immaculately polished black shoe as if she were testing the sturdiness of a rock path. “Look at him! They will know he was interrogated now.”
“This is his phone,” the redhead said. “We didn’t want him to accidentally call for help until we’d concluded our business with him, you understand.”
“I understand,” a man’s voice answered. He sounded British, finally explaining why Stephen was hearing the women speak English and not Italian. “I am sure I can use this.”
Stephen forced open his eyes after the devastating counter-attack he’d received from the Italian Eva Braun, but all he could see was her thighs. She was standing so close to him that he could not help but think about how it would normally turn him on to look up a woman’s skirt, bar this instance. Stephen’s watering eyes sought the proximity of the redhead for the presence of others, but he could only see the brunette sitting on the desk while the British man was speaking from the other side of the desk.
“We have two choices,” the man said matter-of-factly. His voice reminded Stephen of Michael Cane, both in tone and dialect, and that was how he pictured him. “We can kill him and send one of you as a replacement pilot, which would awaken suspicion in the passenger, or we can send him in and hope that he will not speak of his ordeal.”
“I say we kill him,” the brunette said. “Maria hasn’t piloted a Long Ranger in years. It should be an adventure. Besides, did you see the passenger? Dark, wild, tall. Who knows what he looks like under that big trench coat!”
“Calm your hormones, Isabella,” Maria snapped. “Sleeping with targets and pawns is so primitive. Don’t you have any pride?”
Isabella’s dark eyes gleamed. “Do not question the pride of women like me. You might be a frigid old cow, but I can’t let that handsome passenger go to waste.” Her eyes shot passionately to the painfully well-groomed man in the high back chair, beckoning for his approval like a child asking for ice cream. She whined, “Oh, please, let’s get rid of this one,” referring to Stephen. “I really want to go on an adventure with the dark stranger.”
“I thought you didn’t like men to go to waste, Isabella,” the cool Brit said, giving Stephen some hope in the decision he was quietly eavesdropping on. She didn’t miss a beat, though, and promptly answered, “We won’t waste this one. We can use him as shark bait.”
6
Theory and Practice
“Her husband repeatedly cheated on her. Why wouldn’t she have left him? Not just that, but the beast was, shall we say, not against lifting his hands to women. Besides, he always claimed that she was insane because he could not understand her.”
“Of course he would think her mad. She did stab him once, remember? And let us not forget the time that she poured boiling water on him. Oi, perpello!”
“Because he was going to hit her! Jesus! You call yourself a professional, yet you seem to be incapable of putting acts into context!” Javier seethed suddenly. He did not mind that his sister’s psychologist could think that madness and violence ran in their family.
His sister had been missing since a brutal murder had taken place in a motel room in Sagunto, and he was being questioned by police. Madalina’s psychologist had run into him while he was waiting to be interviewed by the sergeant and the captain of the local precinct. In the sweltering Spanish heat the distraught young man lamented his sister’s disappearance, one he would have seen coming if it hadn’t been for his naïve trust.
The corridors were cold; not a soothing cold that alleviated the discomfort of the season, but cold in their indifference and judgment. Javier’s heart was ridden by guilt, but it was a secret he would not reveal to betray his sister. From what he had gathered thus far, the police had no knowledge of the child Madalina had been so obsessed with. He found it extremely odd, but he dared not ask for fear of sealing Madalina’s fate, not only as a murderess, but also as a child abductor. For now, while he was waiting to be grilled by the authorities, he was already receiving the treatment from Dr. Sabian.
“It’s no use to project your inadequacies onto me, Javier,” Dr. Sabian shrugged. “Clearly your defensive manner proves that you can’t see the fault in your sister’s behavior. Make no mistake, my friend, I do find it morally admirable. But in this case, where her mental health is regressing and causing harm to her and everyone around her…”
“Oh, just shut up,” Javier snapped. “You shrinks think you know madness because you read about cases in text books and folders held by asylums. You all make me sick. If anything, you are the one who failed. You are the one who is inadequate! Had your treatment even been worth the empty mantras you spew out, had it actually possessed some validity to it, my sister wouldn’t have been even remotely as volatile.”
“Healing people like your sister is not a magic trick, Javier,” Dr. Sabian stated arrogantly, denying the young man even the courtesy of looking him in the eye. The old Spaniard in the awkward suit lifted his black-framed glasses off his nose and pulled out his handkerchief to clean the lenses. “But you think because you are a psych student at that seedy night college — one I would not even send my dog to for house training — you can criticize my methods.”
He replaced his glasses and stared Javier down like a hated foe and his mock sympathetic tone was scratching at the young man’s innards. “I see projection is your favorite prognosis because you simply do not have the experience to recognize actual insanity, however mild, when it presents.”
Javier denied his innate sense of reasoning and his placidity as the emotional pain of losing his sister ignited the short fuse in his brain. The tether had begun slipping from the moment he first saw the crowd gathering in the street below that night. He whirled in his seat, his face in a tremor of fury, and he made sure that Dr. Sabian heard every word that he forced through clenched teeth.
“You might have years of experience, doctor, but so does the devil. Do not think that I do not know what kind of voodoo you imposed on my sister while she was in your care, you fucking freak. I know what you did. I don’t know why you made her into… into… that,” his voice quivered, “but I think you were paid by Paulo and his family to destroy her fragile self-esteem so that the courts would deem her insane.” Javier was livid, which only tugged at his sore heart even more, but it had to be said. He had kept it inside for so long in order to not insult or upset Madalina, and now that she was absent, he had free rein to say his piece. In addition to it all, Javier found the psychologist’s habit of randomly exclaiming nonsense extremely vexing.
“Is that what you believe?” the psychologist retorted. “Is that your professional opinion as a novice or is that just the ridiculous extent of your delusions, boy? Be careful of the accusations you spit around, and more so, those whom you accuse.”