One Safe Place Page 8

  Does she have a man in her life now? I don’t need another person trying to do something counterproductive to what I will have to do, even though I don’t know what that is yet. She says her life is lonely and has been for years because she doesn’t know whom she can trust to come in to her life. I feel sad for her.

  I invite her to an event later. She says she will come. We shake hands, and she leaves.

  CHAPTER 9

  Totally Naked

  “I know somebody is in the room. I can hear you breathing. Are you getting off looking at me sitting here tied up and naked? You like what you see?”

  Evita perceived evil close to her; she thought it was one person, but not the same person all the time. She’d been awake, clearheaded and bound since morning. She figured she must have been out through the night. She sensed it was mid to late afternoon. She was warm. A hood over her head made her skin itch from the heat inside.

  Evita, hearing how her muffled voice resonated in the room, thought she was in a medium-sized room, with other furniture. She turned her body and placed her bound feet to the side of the mattress so they could touch what was under her. Carpet. The person in the room with her moved to a standing position. Evita could hear their breathing change, but not to any level of panic. Yet, the pace of the inhale and exhale changed.

  It was not the first time Evita had been bound. Her life on the wild side of the streets had taught her about forced and unforced captivity. Evita didn’t consider screaming; she knew no one was going to hear her. Pros had taken her. With her hands and ankles tied and no gag in her mouth, her captor or captors apparently weren’t worried about her screams being heard. She had an inner chuckle about watching a crummy movie where a woman screamed and begged to be let go, and she’d never tell anyone. She placed her feet back on the mattress and placed her tied hands between her legs and closed her thighs.

  “Are you going to kill me?” She repeated the same question two more times. Evita was gauging distance and windows. She knew her back was near a wall. To her left, her voice reverberated, dead in a way, alerting her it was possibly wood there: furniture or a door. To her right, her voice sounded thinner, like a glass window was nearby. Evita calculated that most likely she was not in a basement or a warehouse.

  “I need to use the bathroom. Now! Or you deal with the smell.”

  Her hood was dark with a tight thread count; light was almost nonexistent. Evita needed to walk, to know if she could, or if whatever drug had taken her down was still having an impact. She needed to know the texture of her surroundings, and hopeful she would pass close by light to signal for help. Lastly, she wanted her kidnapper to come close to analyze. Psalms’ survival lessons. His training, first as a Navy SEAL and then as a Secret Service agent, taught her to dissect situations, and think of possible counter measures.

  “Now, asshole…now!” Evita feared to speak aggressively, but she needed her captor to get pissed, even if it caused her harm. Evita was in the survival mode of deduction.

  A forceful grab of the hood near the back of her neck almost lifted Evita off the bed and off her feet. The captor stood her erect and led her like a dog on a choker chain and spun her around many times. Evita let out a wounded cry, but she did that each time so she knew she’d turned 360 degrees as a marker. She kept her eyes open and peered straight ahead knowing it would keep her from getting dizzy, although she was in the dark. Evita started to get a sense of her captor; at least the person holding her was not a pro. The person now leading her in a few turns was about her same height because the pull on the rope was not a downward force. The person behind her was trying to use a straight arm to keep distance, but the distance was short. Evita’s bound ankles had enough slack to allow her to take baby steps, and she kept count, just in case she needed to know.

  Evita walked into a small room with a tile floor, and six feet from the entrance, she felt a cold toilet hit her leg. The toilet seat was down. It smelled clean. She knew she was in a nicer place: most likely a house.

  Evita did her business, number one and two, and found a tissue roll next to her. Because her hands were bound loosely, she managed to clean herself, and water was turned on for her to wash her hands. Evita played ignorant of being able to follow the sound of where the water was coming from, and she was led to the sink.

  Led back to the room, her eyes detected light—outdoor light, a window. The captor did not spin her around on the return. She was pushed from the back of her neck. Evita fell onto the bed. The hand that pushed her was small.

  Time to listen for planes, trains, cars, dogs, human or mechanical noise.

  Evita now knew all she could. She was by water. She could tell by a distant sound.

  In the darkness, under the hood and in her mind’s eye, she saw Psalms carrying her away to a safe place like times before. This time was so different: she understood she would be dead if Psalms didn’t save her. A desire made her heart beat irregularly. If Psalms didn’t save her in time, she still wanted him to carry her away, even if totally naked. Then her heart lost several beats. What if he sees what is wrong with my body after all these years? Maybe he won’t even touch me or bury me.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Most Powerful Man I Know

  Gabrielle

  Deniece Williams’ “Cause You Love Me Baby” smoothly enters my ears, and I’m sure my head looks like a bobblehead with rhythm to the cars we are passing. I reach to turn the volume up, but PB beats me to it with the volume control on the steering wheel. The back of his hand touches my cheek as softly as the music.

  Night lights on the Eastside of Seattle sparkle and seem to bounce with the music. Microsoft’s neon signs are affixed on high-rise buildings, overlooking high-rent office space and high-end retail stores. I feel a slight G-force as PB powers the car on a wide, circled ramp onto the freeway.

  I’m free from security restrictions tonight. I’m never away from a security detail unless I’m with PB. People want me dead. I would be a crest for their cause in and out of my great country. People hate—to the point of taking a life—as if it might bring some form of satisfaction, or avenge their cause. The ugly get only uglier. They kill Americans and will kill even more of them, and paint it pretty.

  Most worry about death in terms of one day their time will come. Some worry about death in the form of an accident or sickness they hope to avoid. Fortunately, not many have to think death can come at them from the hands of a killer dreaming, plotting, hunting, and executing their mission. The killer who pulls a trigger, or pushes a button, maybe sets a timer, and boom…they smile and revel in the same fulfillment of an orgasm that never stops…I live with that daily.

  I wake up and wish I could plan my day with all I want to do. I go about my life, eating, drinking, laughing and possibly dancing the night away, and from there, I’ll make love to my lover. In the middle of any joyous or ordinary moment, my killer or killers can rise up, and remove my smile, my breath, and take my last heartbeat. Tonight could be that night, but hopefully after I make love to the man next to me.

  Why kill me?

  Men starve women and children for land, or just to say they are in control. Many times, in my capacity of leadership in the administration I was in, I had to take a stance to support a cause I did not believe was right. America’s best interest is always the last deciding factor. I cannot say I’m proud of everything I supported or took a stand for, but there is the greater good. I understand to some I’m an awful person for the decisions I have been a part of. Some are right; decisions can be awful and we often find out after the smoke has cleared. With everything any and all have done in their lives, turning back the hands of time is just a song when it’s all said and done.

  I’ll be judged in history for my effectiveness or failures. Ultimately, the president I served under will receive the praise or blame, and ten or maybe twenty years later, I’ll be forgotten or a side note.

  I just left from the dinner where I told bits of truths and left out the
whole reality of decisions made. People listened to me and acted as if they cared for forty minutes. People paid two hundred dollars for a steak that most likely came from another country. Some paid one-thousand dollars or more for a table to bring their friends to impress. Unknowingly, they ate farm-raised fish imported from a poor country where people will starve. But tonight, because it was all cooked to picture-perfect presentation, we say it’s all for a good cause.

  How ironic life is. I helped drive contracts and treaties on countries to become trade partners with our great country. While the ink was still wet, I took lots of pictures with heads of state, helping foreign countries to keep oppressing their own people, while people here lost their jobs. One might wonder, why did I do it? I have to ask myself that very question at times. But I sleep fine knowing good does occur in the long run…I hope. To others, in order for them to sleep, I’m better off dead, or they want to die as a martyr in a gas chamber or at the end of a smart bomb.

  Right now, I’m getting away with my man to escape from politics. PB hasn’t said much, and that happens often, but he has told me we are headed down to a boat landing on Mercer Island. We will board a private ferry boat, known as the Washington Loch Ness Monster, because it is so old. It is a restored, 120-foot ferry from the 1920s. It’s been converted into a yacht with state rooms and a large performance ball room. The ferry belongs to PB and Tylowe, and a youth foundation that PB and his other woman administer. I’m a spokesperson for that foundation.

  The other woman—she is not his woman in the sense that I am. She’s a troubled child whom he watches over. Psalms Black does not lie. I’m not sure he knows how, but he’s not a liar. He says he and the other woman—Evita—don’t have sexual intercourse, and I trust him.

  Why should I share any part of him? I’m the former Secretary of State of the United States, and a beautiful black woman at that. Black and white and foreign millionaires want my hand in marriage, and don’t even know me. Hollywood male sex symbols flirt intensely, wanting a prize like me. CEOs invite me to their chateaus for dinner and to parties wanting to court me—so why PB?

  The man holds the steering wheel, and his thumb and forefinger look like they could crush any man’s collarbone to tiny pieces. But when he touches me…his hands, his hands, his hands . . .when he caresses my clit with that same thumb and he slides his middle finger inside me, it feels like every nerve ending in my body explodes in a joy that no other man has ever come close to making me feel. Dammit, I just squirted a little bit…shit.

  Why PB?

  Power. Men I know and meet are full of some kind of power, but not enough of what it takes to make me happy. I could have a husband, a head of state, or a senator, or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Money makes men powerful in a sense, but it’s not for me. I’m not amused or intrigued. The men I know can give me every material thing there is to have, and almost all of these men don’t give a damn if I’m black. If anything, to a white man or a foreigner, I’m a prized black queen to make him even more powerful due to the perception of social consciousness.

  I look over at PB who is driving us to the ferry. For the last fifteen years or more, I have ridden in expensive vehicles. Many of them were Mercedes. Now, I’m riding in a SLS AMG Gullwing coupe. I don’t get to go fast in cars, passing other cars, unless I’m with PB. We pass cars quickly, but the way he drives it feels like he’s not speeding. I chuckle, knowing he takes advantage of his special government security permits if he’s pulled over. His license plate has a code for local police to give him clearance to come and go as he pleases. Retired Secret Service agents are always on call in a national emergency.

  On the stereo, the playlist is a mix of his and mine. From Deniece Williams to Miki Howard’s “Love Under New Management,” I feel a rush, like my heart is racing. I keep my body moving happily as I’m with my lover. I’m singing background, loud and clear. PB smiles as he keeps his eyes on the road.

  When he looks over at me, I’m reminded I can’t go without his looking in to my eyes. My lover, my man, is the most powerful man on earth. That’s how I feel about him.

  When he talks, he talks with me, and not at me. PB speaks as if he has the same amount of knowledge I have, maybe more, but he shares of himself in a way that I want to know all he knows. That’s a power that turns me on. At one point, when I was still in office, I could rely on his opinion concerning world affairs.

  We became a team. We made world-influencing decisions, yet he knew how to keep me from feeling I was not the one leading. He has never reminded me of his help or how he led me to a decision.

  For sure his body is sculpted of God’s best for the human eye to see. He is physically fierce, but he can make love to me with the gentleness of baby’s caress, and he can take me to the mountain top with his visceral passion. Damn, I’m damp.

  PB knows what he wants and does what he wants, and most of the time, it’s for someone else. He would take a bullet for me, not because it’s his business, but because he loves the ground I walk on. That’s how he treats me and looks at me. He’s a man’s man, larger than life, without any put-on of a Hollywood big-screen ego. I have the most powerful man on earth. I’m sure many women feel that way about their man, but my man fits my soul. He apologizes with sincerity, and I want to say I’m sorry back to him for no reason.

  He’s not bought, he’s not kept. He was rich before he was rich. He has no fear of me and won’t hurt me, which is the most powerful feeling of all. Trust. That is why I have little concern about his other woman. I’m in a safe place with him. Although I want her gone!

  We pull into a gated driveway and head toward the ferry. Cars are parking, and people are getting out and walking down the road. We pull into a reserve spot near the boat. Tylowe and Meeah are standing by their car waiting for us. I love them. They are the perfect couple. Do I wish I was a wife, perhaps a mother? The power game for women in my position is problematic. If you give in to your career, some feel you’d be letting down a husband, and possibly children. I had incomplete thoughts on the subject for years, and now age has made the decision for me.

  The women are dressed attractively, but warmly, to keep the chill off their legs, wearing pantsuits, or dress jeans. Most of the men are wearing jeans and nice sweaters. Music is flowing from the ferry.

  I’ve been anticipating this all day: good people, great food, music, and spoken word as we cruise Lake Washington. I can’t wait to change out of this dress and into something warmer to be on the water. Later, I want to peel my off my clothes, and even my skin, for PB.

  CHAPTER 11

  What Are You Doing For the Rest of Your Life?

  The ferry barely moved through the dark water of Lake Washington. Lights from houses along the shore reflected like floating glass globes. Oldies played loud. Several rolling mini-bars wheeled through the crowd while bartenders made drinks.

  At a table on the upper deck overlooking everything, Tylowe and Psalms had dark beers in hand. Meeah and Gabrielle sipped Gin Mojitos: 2 oz. of Farmer’s Gin, a few sprigs of fresh mint, light green spearmint, 2 Tbsp. of fresh lemon juice, 2 Tbsp. of fresh lime juice, a splash of Sprite. Mix and muddle in the mint. Add the juices and ice. Pour in the gin last.

  Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Everlasting Love” played. The music reached in to the mature gathering of souls as the ferry headed past Seward Park and into the Renton Bay area. Some of Seattle’s coolest, most chill folks danced and socialized in the cool air, but the party groove made it a hot night.

  The people on board were a full range of friends of both Tylowe and Psalms. Some they knew from business. Some were city officials. Others were just friends, from average wage earners to the affluent nouveau riche. Most were African American, but there was also a distinct segment of whites, and people of Asian and Hispanic descent, too—a blend as diverse as Seattle itself. A few LGBT people were also there, right at home partying with everyone on the boat while the ignorant were ashore.

  The policy on the ferry for ev
eryone was: no cell phone cameras or personal cameras allowed. Hired photographers took down everyone’s email addresses, and would send them all the pictures they wanted of the evening, free of charge. Of course there was censorship of any kind of compromising pictures; Psalms and Suzy Q prided themselves on security and well thought-out plans to cover all circumstances. Their business was in demand on the West Coast as well as in some foreign countries.

  From East Seattle City University, Coach Ayman Sparks with his wife, Vanessa, and Coach Sterlin Baylor with his wife, Lois Mae, joined Tylowe and Psalms’ table after dancing to the Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster.”

  The men had all known each other since their college days at the University of New Mexico. Psalms and Tylowe, originally from Seattle, had been close since grade school. Ayman and Sterlin coached the local, nationally ranked college basketball team together. Tonight, all the old classmates and their mates enjoyed one another’s company. The only one missing from the group from back in the day was Elliot, who was sitting in prison.

  Since Tylowe and Psalms had their plan in place, they would have to think of Elliot at some point that night, however strange it might feel.

  Tylowe made an effort to distract his mind. “Sterlin, who would have thought your ass could dance?” Tylowe teased.

  “You call that dancing? I thought he was in pain.” Ayman sounded as though he wasn’t joking, but he was.

  Lois Mae came to her husband’s defense. “Leave my baby alone; he can dance just fine. I love the way he moves.”