Jessie Ch. 01

Hell, I was sitting next to a stranger. And so was she. I was different than I'd been three years ago too.

"That's a big scar on your arm," Sienna said eventually.

"Seven sixty-two will do that. Just about lost the limb."

"How... How did you survive? I heard there was a shootout, but I didn't hear details."

"Tori's friend, Nina, the one who died, the one I was blamed for killing... Her cousin did it, with his family. His religion told him to, or some shit. He worked at my school. Intercepted my emails, so he knew where my place up north was. They gunned up and came looking for us. There was a shootout..." I squeezed the steering wheel so hard I thought it might break. My mind ran back, briefly, to a rainy day full of smoke, fire, flying bullets, terror, and burning pain, hatred, and rage expressed in every pull of the trigger. "I carried Tori down the highway until I collapsed. I was so focused, so...tunnel-visiony...I didn't realize I dropped right in front of a driveway. Guy was washing his car. Retired cop. He saved my life."

"And Tori? How's she?"

"We don't talk. She got shot in the leg, walks with a cane. Moved home to Cali, then to Colorado."

"Really? I thought she'd stay with you forever."

Dammit.

"It didn't work out that way. There was just too much...pain...for her to stay."

Sienna was silent for a long time. "And Jessie?"

"She told me in Milwaukee that if I ever wanted a relationship, I should look her up. I had nothing for me in Minnesota anymore. Parents dead, sister gone, Tori gone, you gone, job gone, my cabin burned down...I didn't want to lose her too."

"You love her?"

"I do."

She reached over and put her hand on my arm. "I'm glad you found someone."

"Me too." There was unspoken pain between us. I hadn't wanted what she'd been trying to give me when she was there. After she left, I went looking.

Her hotel was a single-story L-shaped row of rooms, long and intermittently lit. Streetlights shone down on the parking lot, casting the vehicles there in an orange glow. We exited the Suburban and crossed to the dingy little cabin, even our footsteps silent in the still night. Sienna unlocked the door and let me inside, obsessively locking the door behind us and checking chain and bolt before turning on the light. It was a standard hotel room, two beds scattered with duffel bags and boxes.

She pulled off her button-up and threw it into a bag, started zipping up the duffels. While Sienna was in the bathroom, I wandered over to the boxes. They looked industrial. I recognized the logo, a heavy-duty transport company. On impulse, I flicked up the latches and opened the lid.

Fuck me.

"Sienna..."

She stuck her head out of the bathroom. "Yeah?"

"Why are there a half dozen Mark Eighteens in this box?"

"I stole two crates of them from Morgan."

"Why?" I pulled one of the stubby rifles out of the foam, checked the mag and chamber, examined the markings. I popped out the rear takedown pin, looked inside. "Fuck me..." I whispered. "See, these rifles have the happy switch. Where did he get them?"

"I have no idea. I just know that they're valuable to him. So I stole em."

Valuable. Uh yeah. I didn't know exact equipment procurement costs, but each one of the little defensive weapons was outfitted with at least two thousand dollars in optics, and at least three in laser modules. These weren't civilian models, they were actual military hardware. I reached back in my memory. I might know someone who could look up serial numbers discretely.

She lugged a duffel bag out of the bathroom and slung it on the bed, stood before me fidgeting. "Gary, I need to tell you something."

I slotted the miniature carbine back into the box, closed the lid. "Go for it."

"There's another reason I need your help."

"Ok." The latches on the case snapped into place, loud between our words.

"I'm going to be going through opioid withdrawal. In about two hours. Probably sooner. I'm not sure."

This girl loved turning my world on its head. I sighed. "Spit it out."

"Morgan. He gave me drugs. Said it 'made me more fun.'" She spit the words out like they tasted sour. "I've been cutting back the dosage, trying to go longer without them, trying to taper down. I took my last pills a couple hours ago."

"What are we talking here?"

"Oxy."

Fuck. "See, you need to go to a hospital. You're gonna need help. Withdrawal is not something to screw around with. It's ugly and as far as I know, it can be fatal."

She shook her head. "No hospital. I'll be fine. Eventually. I just need my Jane to be safe. I'll get through it. I'm... Not scared. I can do this."

I reached out and took her hand. "Yes you are scared, I can hear it on your voice."

"I know pain." A sad smile twisted her lips.

"This is not getting spanked. Belted. Flogged. Any type of punishment."

"All I need is a place to ride it out." She blew out a rough exhalation. "I can do this."

"No. You need actual help."

"Can I show you something?"

"Sure."

Sienna undressed before I could protest, pushing down her cargos and panties after just undoing the button, ripping the tank top off over her head with one hand. She stood there naked before me, those perfect, full breasts heaving. They were bigger than I remembered. Probably the baby. Her body wasn't quite as trim as it used to be, but she wasn't in terrible shape, she'd done a good job losing pregnancy weight.

She'd also gotten tattoos, a half-sleeve on her left forearm, and an intricate geometric design on her right shoulder. And nipple piercings. I tried to avoid looking at her sexually, but I couldn't help noticing the dark blonde bush, so completely alien to the landing strip or bare skin I remembered.

And then there was the scar.

"See, what happened?"

Her face crinkled and her eyes welled up. "He burned me. We stopped having sex after Jane was born. Like, well after the doctor told me I could start again. Yeah, there was stress, but I wanted...I wanted to be with him. I wanted to make him want to be with me. I started... Being a brat. Trying to get him to punish me like you would have, like he used to. Instead, he roofied me. I fell asleep at the kitchen table. Woke up tied up, completely immobilized. In the garage. I couldn't move at all, and I was still groggy, and Morgan, the father of my child, the man I...I loved, he's crouched over me and he says 'So you want to be punished.' And he tapes firework fuse down my body and lights it." She shivered, eyes far away. "I had to breastfeed Jane with that... With the..." She pointed at her left breast, at where the line of burn scar stretching from her left buttcheek to over her left shoulder crossed over the inner curve of her chest. Tears leaked down her cheeks and she had to stop talking.

Hot rage burned in my chest. Morgan might be a US government manufactured killing machine, but I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to murder him. I couldn't put a face to the silhouette of evil in my mind, but I wanted to carve it off with my knife and feed it to him.

"See... I'm, I'm sorry. You... Just get dressed."

She kept standing there, and eventually she looked up at me from where the concentrated sadness beaming out of her eyes had been burning a hole in the floor. "You can have sex with me, if you want. I'll... I'll be a good girl for you. Whatever you need. I can't pay you for helping Jane and I, but I know you enjoyed fucking me. It's ok."

"Get dressed."

Teeth gritted, she looked in my eyes. "It wouldn't be the first time I've exchanged sex for help."

I couldn't reconcile my former student with the broken woman standing naked before me now. I handed her the tank top she'd discarded. "Let's get you home."

#####

Sienna threw up twice on the drive home. She'd looked like hell going to the hotel, red eyes and runny nose, but I'd written that off as a cold. I had to hold her up as we walked in because her stomach was cramping so bad, and she sat down on the stairs to the third level to gather her strength, to try to compose herself while I brought in her bags. Jessie followed me out into the cool night air. "Everything alright?"

I told her the situation while I unloaded the Suburban. And then she stood there, still, clenching her fists and looking down the darkened street. "You ok? You still think bringing her here was a good idea? If you want to kick her out, I will."

"No, I..." Jessie sighed, looked up at the stars. "I think we're doing the right thing. I just wish...I wish she hadn't forced our hand. I wish I knew what to do. I mean, ok, so she spends the next week here detoxing. Ok, what then? She still has no family, no friends except for us, no money, and a two-year-old to take care of."

I put my hands on her cheeks, tilted her head up so I could see her strong, angular face. "I don't know. But she's barely a concern to me right now. You are. You're my girl, and my job is doing what's best for YOU."

Her face tilted into my hand and she gave me a sad smile. "I love you, Gary."

"I love you too."

She helped me carry the bags and boxes in, and Sienna wasn't sitting on the back steps. "Did she go upstairs?" I asked McKenna.

"Shhh. Jane's asleep on the couch. No, Sienna's in the bathroom."

"Mike, would you mind staying here for the next week or so?" Jessie asked. "It looks like this is gonna be a bit more...involved."

The pint-sized woman looked surprised. "A week?"

"Yeah. I'm essentially done with work and so are you, but if Harper calls, we can pretty much work from home. Gary can't stay here all day, he just started a new job. I'm just... I'm gonna need some help taking care of Sienna and wrangling that kid."

"Uh...why?"

"She ran out of oxy about eight hours ago."

McKenna looked between us disbelievingly, realized we weren't joking. "Sure, yeah, I can stay here. Jane's pretty cool and I do all my programming shit on my laptop, don't need my desktop for that. Yeah. I'll stay. I'll go get my stuff in the morning."

"Thank you," I said, relieved. "Can I get you anything. Pizza? Candy? Other junk food?"

She yawned, stretched. "Take me out shooting this week? And if Jessie is OK with it... throw some dick into me a couple of times?"

Both Jessie and I snickered. "Yeah, we can do that."

I carried Sienna's bags up to the third-floor bedroom and set them on the bed and made sure the door to the playroom was locked. I didn't know jack shit about withdrawal. Was she just going to feel bad and throw up? Hallucinate? Try to kill herself? Fuck it, I'd go down to the basement and turn the gas off to the stove.

Sienna was out of the bathroom and looking like shit, leaning against the wall for support. "How's Jane?" she asked McKenna.

"Sleeping strangely well for all the sugar she ate."

See smiled wryly and leaned against the dining room door frame, looked at the little girl sawing logs on the couch. "Thank you you guys for this. This means..." She coughed, wiped her nose. "I...I feel safe now."

I reached out tentatively and rubbed her back. "C'mon, your room is upstairs. Let's get you settled in."

She followed Jessie and I miserably upstairs, looked around the bedroom, and headed straight to the bathroom to throw up. Jessie gave me a strange look. "Do we know she doesn't have MORE drugs? Addicts lie."

Shit. "I've got her clothes from Minneapolis downstairs. I'll go get them and we can go through her shit and make sure she doesn't have anything else."

"I'll stay here with her, make sure she doesn't choke or die or whatever."

I kissed Jessie's forehead. "You're an awesome woman, you know that?"

"I try."

I lugged the two crates of miniature assault rifles downstairs and covered them with scraps of sheetrock and lumber. I didn't think anyone was coming for them, but it didn't hurt. Fuck, what about a tracking device? One more thing to do, tear them all down to parts and verify they weren't bugged.

Sienna's stuff was in a couple of cardboard boxes by the water heater, and I dug through old homework, books, and expired makeup looking for comfortable clothing for her. I'd just tossed all this shit in boxes when I got back to my townhouse, and it was a mess.

Sequins rustled and I pulled out a short gold dress. She'd worn that a lifetime ago. For me. I dug up a couple of t-shirts and some sweatpants, set them in a pile. A heavy strap of leather fell from one of the sweatpants, and I picked it up. Green, accented with black, set with D-rings and a clasp .

Sienna's collar. I remembered how happy she'd been to get it, the look of peace on her face when she knelt and held up her hair so I could fasten it around her neck.

That had been a lifetime ago too.

I snagged a six-pack of Gatorade and brought everything back up to the third floor, and Jessie and I started separating out Sienna's clothing from her duffel bags.

The bathroom door opened and the redhead leaned heavily on the frame. "What are you doing?"

"I had some of your old stuff in storage. Gonna wash your clothes." I pitched her a Gatorade and she missed it, it rolled into the bathroom. "Drink. You're gonna be sweating and vomiting, and you need to stay hydrated."

"I'm good."

"Drink it," I said, steel in my voice. In pitched clothes at her. "And put these on while you're in there. I don't know shit about withdrawal, but I know addicts lie. I'm gonna make sure there's nothing else in your stuff, wash your clothes."

"Gary, I..."

"You'll do what I say."

Her exhalation was heavy. "I will."

###

No you don't mean nothing at all to me

But you got what it takes to set me free

- Say It Right, Nelly Furtado