Chapter 62 - The Tale of the Almost-rape (1/2)
It takes Gabriel's housekeeping staff a few minutes to clean up Claire's mess, who is inconsolable on the big boss chair. Gabriel is standing in a corner, watching her, trying to make up his mind. How does he tell the entire thing?
”I don't even remember drinking it,” she says, her voice still quaking. Claire couldn't wrap her mind around the fact of it, what a close call it had been.
Gabriel says nothing. Who could blame her? Claire is as innocent as they come; she probably has a picture of reality in her head where justice and fairness exist, where people mean well. She never could have imagined that someone like Jake exists, and one so near.
Gabriel also had no idea about Jake's secret persona. There were rumors of what a womanizer he was, but Gabriel had dismissed that as being of a sales executive's reputation. You wouldn't be so successful selling stuff if you couldn't make up sweet lies to seduce people.
And besides, it was largely Gabriel's fault that Claire was left in harm's way—he should have done more effort in protecting her. It took that attempted **** for Gabriel to hire bodyguards to watch her every single day—although Claire, even now, doesn't know it. The bodyguards he hired are expert in subterfuge—they can tail someone by hiding in their blind spot, blend in, hide in plain sight. The proof of their expertise is the fact that Claire has no idea they exist. Gabriel wouldn't tell her about the bodyguards. Not yet. Perhaps there's a right time for such a confession.
But now, he must reveal the sordid details as much as possible, without traumatizing her. But how to do it?
”After you passed out,” Gabriel says, ”Jake brought you to his car and drove all the way to the city's outskirts. He has a house there, in a community where people never suspected anyone of anything. Perhaps they're the kind of neighbors who see a man dragging an unconscious woman to his house as something 'normal', the result of too much partying.”
”He brought me to his house?” Claire exclaims. ”Where was that?”
”A few miles outside the city.”
Claire tries to imagine it, and the more details Gabriel gives, the more the biggest question in her head grows: How in hell was she saved?
”Are you saying Jake had successfully drugged me and brought me to his place, and somehow he was stopped?”
Gabriel shrugs, as though it was no big deal. But inside, he's desperately trying to make shit up in order for Claire to believe his own version of the story. He couldn't tell her there's a GPS transmitter the size of a grain of rice in her blond wig. He couldn't tell her that he only realized she was out of the city because his smartwatch set off an alarm, that he grew instantly suspicious when her supposed location was in an area she was never known to go. That it took him less than half an hour to race to that location because he had connected the dots—Jake Magno was a womanizer, Jake was seen speaking flirtatiously to Claire that afternoon, both Jake and Claire were unavailable, and an hour later, Claire was in a strange location outside the city. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. And besides, he had the gut feeling that something terrible was up.
”Yes,” he begins, ”and maybe it was just pure luck that I needed to see Jake that evening for some urgent sales report.”
”Really?”
”Yes, of course,” he says with a straight face. AND THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR GOES TO… ”I tried calling him up but he was not answering. I thought I should go straight to his place to better discuss the matter.”
”You mean I'm sitting here now, still alive, only because you needed to discuss a sales report with that monster? What if there was no problem with his sales report?”
”I, uhh…” Jesus, more and more, Gabriel seems digging a deeper and deeper hole. ”Well, I was also looking for you that night, and… And…”
Claire raises an eyebrow.
”…And because I saw you speaking with Jake, I thought maybe, in the off chance, maybe you were together.”
Claire sighs. ”But what if he brought me to someplace else?”
I would still know because of the transmitter, Gabriel wants to say. But Claire cannot know that now. Not yet. ”I wouldn't have stopped trying to look for you. I would have combed the streets just to find you. And just to let you know, I have sharp instincts about these things. I'm almost like a psychic.”