Are You Tiffani Caine? Ch. 01

She looked up at her reflection finally, gazed at her eyes staring back at her. She held her own gaze for several minutes, and then wrapped another towel around her body and went to her bedroom to pray.

An hour later she was on her sofa, dressed in sweats and no closer to knowing what she needed to do. She ought to clean her apartment -- she always ought to clean her apartment but she seldom did, and today she didn't have the energy. At least with the doggy bag in the fridge she didn't need to think about cooking, which was good because she had a lot of other things to think about.

On that day seven years ago, that terrible day, she had been a very different person than she was now. She hadn't lied about that -- that day had changed her forever. It was in the dark period after, when she had come so close to ending it all, that Christ had touched her and taken her hand and led her back into the light -- the Holy Light Church and the community there. It was Christ's love that had pulled her back from the brink and changed her. Now, today, at this moment, she could barely fathom the girl she had been. And it wasn't even that she had been bad, or cruel, or wicked. Adam had been her first real boyfriend, the first (and so far only) sexual partner she had ever had. She had used alcohol, marijuana a couple of times, some party drugs, but she was not out of control. She had felt like a normal 19-year-old woman.

Until that day. And after that, nothing could ever be normal again.

She couldn't even guess the possible identity of the Caller (the name her mind had assigned her anonymous tormenter) and she didn't know who could have found out what had happened -- only two people had ever known, and those two people had died together four years ago.

Isaac would call her tonight -- they never went a day without hearing each other's voices -- and she couldn't talk to him, not today. He would know something was wrong and then she would have to tell him and she couldn't. She couldn't bear him knowing.

A text exchange:

-- Hey babe, I had a very rough day and I'm not feeling good. I just want to go to bed early tonight.

-- U OK? Want 2 talk?

-- Not tonight. I just want to be alone and fume.

-- Sounds bad. U sure ur OK?

-- Yeah babe. I love you.

-- Jesus loves U and so do I.

-- Thank you babe. Talk to you tomorrow.

And that was that. And she hadn't lied to Isaac, because it had been a very bad day, she was not feeling good, and she did want to be alone. She just hadn't told him the whole truth. And now there would be an evening of prayer.

March 26th

Sara awoke early and without answers. She had gone to her gym, a women's gym only four blocks away, and gotten in an extra-long workout. After she worked her core, her regular Friday, she climbed onto a treadmill and ran until her lungs burned. And it was there, with her legs and lungs and heart pumping and her endorphins flowing, that Christ imparted her some clarity. She didn't need to make a decision now. She could wait until the task came and decide then. The Caller had assured her that she was always free to refuse, and if what she was faced with was less palatable -- and less just -- than the consequences of refusal, then she would say no and take what was coming to her. Durance vile could not touch her immortal soul, and God had forgiven her all her sins.

And so she was calm when she arrived at work. Her first couple hours were spent putting together the presentation she had to give to Josh. Given the other things on her mind, the work drama seemed almost minor. She immersed herself in the task, pushing aside the other things to get it done.

Her work phone rang at 9:55, just as she was gathering herself to head into the conference room. She didn't recognize the number, but it was a 763 area code -- maybe one of her new clients? "Danforth Companies, this is Sara Moorhead."

A young man's voice, tenor. "Are you Tiffani Caine?"

She froze in her seat, her stoic reserve vanishing in an instant. "Wha...what?"

"Are you Tiffani Caine?"

Suddenly she was very glad she was sitting, because she was so dizzy the room was spinning. "Y-yes..."

"Parking ramp, 810 2nd Avenue. Level C, northwest corner, 12:20. Understand?"

"What? Wait, what?"

"That's where and when you're going to meet me, Tiffani." He sounded irritated by her questions. "You got that?"

"Hold on, hold --" She grabbed for a pen and her scratch paper. "Tell me again."

He told her again slowly, made her repeat it back, and hung up without saying goodbye. Sara sat, phone hanging dead in her hand, staring at the slip of paper...

"Hey, come on," came Josh's irritated voice from behind her, making her jump. "I've only got you for two hours and I need every second of it. Let's get going."

The next two hours were agony. Sara did her best to focus on the task at hand simply to get through it, but per presentation had been hastily prepared to begin with and delivered by a distracted person in a far shorter time than required to do an adequate job. Josh kept interrupting her to ask questions and go again over points she'd either garbled or missed outright, which cut into the time even more. His irritation began to show halfway through, and by the time noon was approaching he was openly angry. "Listen," he told her as she began to pack up her laptop, "that was shit. You owe me another hour at least. Let's stay here through lunch and just keep going, the client deserves it."

"I'm sorry, I can't," she said, climbing to her feet and heading for the conference room door. "I have a lunch meeting I can't miss. I'm sorry."

He tried to beat her to the door to hold it closed, but he was half a second late and only slammed his knuckles into the door as it opened. "Ow! Shit! This is crap, Sara. This is totally unprofessional and it's sabotage. You can't handle that you lost your biggest client to me and you're trying to make sure I fail."

"Look, I may have some time after lunch," she said, pushing past him and into the hall. "Check with me about three."

"Ken is going to hear about this, you understand?" he told her, pitching his voice loud enough that people passing by could hear. "If you think you're getting away with this, you are sorely mistaken."

She almost ran to her cubicle to get her coat. If she hurried, she'd have just enough time to make it to the garage by 12:20, and she had a feeling that it would be a terrible idea to be late. In her space, she dropped off her laptop, grabbed her purse and coat, and reached for the paper with the instructions --

And froze. What was she doing? What the heck was she doing? Going to meet a total stranger, in a parking ramp? It was insane! This wasn't a meeting, it was a setup for a kidnapping! What if the Caller was involved somehow with what had happened, a relative or friend? Was this some weird, elaborate revenge? But what choice did she have? If she didn't go then the Caller would make good on his threat, she had no doubt of that. And that, while maybe not a fate worse than death, was a not-very-distant second. So what then?

Impulsively she pulled her phone out of her purse, snapped a picture of the instructions, and left the paper on the desk. If she didn't come back, the police would find it. Maybe that would lead them to whomever took her. It was a cold sort of comfort, but it was very slightly better than nothing. She turned and ran for the elevator.

Ten minutes later she was standing outside the parking ramp at the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue. Her knees were shaking, and not only because of the cold, damp wind that whistled down the skyscraper canyons of downtown. If she went in there, something would happen; she didn't know what, but she knew it would be bad. If she didn't go in, she knew exactly what would happen, and she knew how bad it would be. She hesitated for a minute that seemed much longer, caught on the brink between the known terror and the unknown. Was the Devil she knew better?

No. Not this time. She squared her shoulders and headed into the ramp, looking for the staircase that would take her down to the third underground level, and to whatever awaited her there.

When she emerged from the staircase and looked around, she had her hands in her coat pockets and her keys laced between the fingers of her right hand. If whomever she was meeting had a gun it would help her not at all, but if not...well, she was stronger than she looked and faster, and she might get in a good punch or two with a fist full of sharp objects. She might even get away.

Maybe.

She looked around, trying to orient herself. She wasn't good with cardinal directions, always getting them confused, but the northwest corner must be...that way?

Oh how she hated parking ramps. Even at the best of times they were spooky, with shadows and echoes and places for perverts and attackers to hide between and around every single car. But as she walked, she was not alone. It was lunch hour and this was one of the busiest parking structures in downtown; it was difficult to imagine anything befalling her without a witness, without a chance to scream, without someone seeing something. If this was a kidnapping setup, it was a dumb one.

She found the corner, and with it the man. He was standing next to a big black SUV that was parked in the corner spot. He was perhaps 30 years old, white, and seemed about average height. Although he was wearing a concealing spring jacket, he looked to be rather muscular. She would have said he was average-looking except that he sported a Van Dyke and his sandy brown hair was swept up in a man-bun, which made him look like a complete tool. She hesitated a moment when she saw him, but then stepped a few feet closer. Cars were driving by every few seconds -- he wouldn't try anything now.

Would he?

He watched her sidle closer to him, his face betraying no expression except perhap a trace of amusement that might just have been her imagination in the orange light of the overheads. She stopped three cars away and stared at him for a few heartbeats, waiting, but he said nothing. Finally, quietly, she said, "Hello?"

He looked her up and down, then asked, "Are you Tiffani Caine?"

"Yes. I guess so." He wasn't at all as she had imagined him on the phone. The voice on the line had been electronically disguised, but she had somehow imagined a big man who looked like a football player, a hulking figure with a shaved head and perpetual back-lighting so she couldn't see his face. This guy looked like a junior ad exec. It was rather...anticlimactic.

"You guess. Well, come on over here, let me take a look at you." Slowly she moved a few feet closer, hands still in her pockets, her body tense and ready to flee. He looked her up and down with an expression of vague...disappointment? Distaste? In truth there was little he could tell from just looking -- she was wearing a dark blue suit jacket over a simple white blouse, a matching skirt that fell midway between knee and ankle, black stockings, and plain black two-inch heels, but most of that was covered by a nearly shapeless light grey coat that shrouded her to her upper thighs. "Hmmph," he snorted at last, "you don't look like much."

She didn't care what he thought, but the situation was so uncomfortable and dangerous and the man so apparently disappointed that she found herself murmuring, "Sorry..."

Without another word, the man turned and began to walk toward the corner of the structure. He got to the end of the SUV and stopped, turning to look back at Sara. "What are you doing?"

"I..."

"Get back here, Tiffani."

Sara swallowed on a dry throat. "Back there?"

He looked at her like he was an idiot. "You wanna do this out there?"

She had no idea what "this" was, but whatever it was, it was probably going to be better if people didn't see it. Her feet didn't want to move, and it took her several seconds to will herself forward. It was the longest walk of her life.

She found him leaning on the back of the SUV. He looked at her and grinned, nasty and oleaginous. "Jesus Christ Tiffani, you look white as a ghost. You think I'm gonna hurt you or something?"

"I...I don't know. Are you?"

"If I was gonna hurt you, we wouldn't be here, in public, at a busy time of day. Right?"

It sounded right. Maybe she just wanted it to be right. "OK."

"Alright little rabbit, get that coat off. Let's see what we're dealing with."

"My coat?" She glanced around. The space they were in was formed by the corner of the building, the diagonally-parked SUV, the pickup to the right, and the Pontiac G6 to the left. It was actually as shielded from passersby as she could expect a space to be in a parking garage, though she could still hear cars and people around. More to the point, though, there was nowhere to hang a coat. "Where...um..."

"Just toss it on the car."

"Is that...your car?"

"Who gives a fuck?"

Well, she couldn't argue with that. She shrugged out of her coat and laid it carefully on the trunk of the car, making sure the zipper side was up so she didn't scratch the paint, and then stepped back, facing the man, her eyes on the ground. She wasn't chilly -- it was over 40 degrees outside, and anyway the ramp was heated so it was cool but not cold.

He looked her up and down again. "Do you even have a body underneath that shapeless shit?"

"Wh -- of course I do. What kind of question is that?"

"Little rabbit has some spirit," he chuckled. "That's good, I thought you were gonna faint for a second."

"I'm not going to faint."

"Good, it'll be more interesting this way. What kind of panties are you wearing?"

Sara flushed red. "What?"

"What. Kind, Of. Panties. Are. You. Wearing?"

"That's none of your business!"

"Show me."

One of the things that Sara most disliked about herself was that when she got angry, she was not intimidating. Her ears and big cheeks reddened, her big eyes got wider, and her voice raised two octaves into an outraged squeak. Anger, in the words of Kait, turned her into an adorable chipmunk. That was what happened when she piped, "I will not do anything of the sort!"

She was rewarded by laughter. "Holy shit you're cute! Do that again!"

Anger was joined by humiliation. Sara's face was red, so red that it was a little surprising steam wasn't rising off her head in the cool air. She shut her mouth and glared.

"Show me."

"No."

The man shrugged and turned away. "Fine. Then we're done."

"We're done?" she squeaked.

"We're done. I don't have time for this shit if you aren't going to do what you're told. You can leave now." He turned to go.

And her blood instantly froze in her veins, and she was shouting before she even knew she was going to speak. "Wait!"

He stopped and turned. "Why?"

Why? Was she actually going to show this strange man her underwear? In public? She couldn't! And yet if she didn't, then by the time she got back to her desk, the Florida Attorney General might have the information. Was it worth it? It wasn't as though she was wearing anything revealing under her skirt, it was just ordinary underwear.

It wasn't worth going to jail over.

She looked to the left and the right. Nobody was in a position to see anything except this wretched little man. She closed her eyes, took her skirt in her hands, and slowly tugged it up to her waist. Her heart was hammering in her ears and she felt like she could sink right through the floor, but she had done it. She was showing him her underwear.

"Well damn, you've got real legs under there, don't you? I didn't see that coming. Sexy thighs. You must work out."

"Yes."

"It shows. You pole dance, right?"

"Certainly not!"

"What a waste. Legs like those you could climb a pole without your hands." She ignored the comment. "Turn around. Show me your ass."

She knew she should draw the line here. This could lead to places she could not allow it to go. But it was still just underwear. She had already shown it, so what difference did it make? She turned her back to the man.

"Holy. Shit," he breathed. "Look at that thing, it's a sweet little bubble-butt. Why don't you show that off?"

Her cheeks burned. How in the world could anyone be so perverse? How could he face himself in the mirror? "It's none of anyone's business what my...backside looks like."

"So is it real or an implant?"

The gall of this man! "I have never had cosmetic surgery."

He whistled, sending another ripple of humiliation through her. "If that's real, then your clothes are a crime against humanity. Especially those panties. Why would any bitch with an ass like yours cover it in gray granny panties?"

"They're just ordinary underwear!"

"Ordinary for an 80-year-old. You're a pretty girl, Tiffani. You need to dress like it."

Still facing away from the man, her butt still hanging out under the skirt she held up, she drew herself to her full height and said, "I'll dress as I please."

He snorted. "Turn around." She did, and he laughed. "Put your skirt down, girl. Nobody wants to look at those boring britches."

Somehow blushing even more furiously, she tugged her skirt back down and smoothed it out. This whole ordeal was beginning to feel quite surreal, as though it was an odd movie that she was watching rather than something she was participating in -- or something she was having done to her. It was all so impossible, so absurd. These kinds of things just didn't happen.

"Now let's see your bra."

More unreality. "You want to see my bra?"

"You look like you got titties under there, but that suit coat makes it hard to tell. I want to check."

She was blushing so furiously that she was starting to feel a little dizzy. But what difference did it make? She'd shown her panties already, and her bra was no more exciting. It covered her completely, and it was definitely designed for support, not for show. It didn't matter. She wasn't the one being debased by this, it was the miserable little man-bun making her do it. Numbly, she began to undo her buttons, one by one, until her blouse gaped to her navel. Just get it over with. Show him what he wanted to see and this misery would end. She pulled her blouse open.

"Damn, girl!" the man said, and the genuine appreciation in his voice was even more humiliating. "I mean...damn! And those are real too?"

"Of course they are."

He shook his head in disbelief. "You grew stripper tits and you keep them in a plain white bra under clothes that make you look like a church lady."

"I am a church lady!"

Now he laughed. "Oh! Oh that explains it! Prissy little church mouse with a fucking porn star body. I love it."

She knew she ought to be furious, but the outrage was fading as the sense of unreality grew. She was actually calm when she said, "I don't care what you like,"

His lecherous smile widened. "Show me your tits."

"Show you..."

"If you're gonna make me repeat myself every time then I'm gonna get real pissed, real fast. And then I'm gonna leave. Do you want that, church mouse?"

She felt her throat constricting, felt her heart hammering staccato in her chest. "No."

"Then show me your tits."

Under her long skirt, Sara's knees were trembling. This was so weird that it was beginning to feel like an out-of-body experience, or maybe like an indigestion dream. Inside her mind, a voice said, But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. She had been sued for her tunic; her bra was merely her cloak.

She didn't consciously tell her hands to move; by themselves they tugged her bra cups down. Her nipples hardened instantly into small, pink, protuberant buds.