Witness

The next two days went slowly. Dramatically, I began to cross off the days until Harry’s return on my calendar. I worked a little, though the girls thought my near silence odd – I could admit it was unusual after all. The first day, I pressed Mary to go to self-defense class with me in Crewe though she insisted she was too tired after her morning shift. The next day, she went more willingly, but sat in the lobby while I went to the next class afterward. Then, on the third day, I decided to spend my day off taking every class available – kickboxing, aerobics, Pilates, hula hooping, spinning – I worked and I worked until I couldn’t move anymore and they had to call Mary to come take me home.

“You’re working yourself too hard,” she insisted from the driver’s seat of her car, shaking her head as the countryside went by outside the window. I kept my mouth shut, but my thoughts went a million miles an hour. Damien wasn’t going to stop working. Neither could I. I had to be ready, I had to.

“Let’s get you some food,” she suggested at my silence. “Your body is going to shut down with all the calories you’ve burned. There’s an amazing Thai place in Middlewich I think you’d like.”

That was an idea I could get behind. “Thai is my favorite,” I replied excitedly, my stomach suddenly growling with a hunger I didn’t know I had. “I haven’t had it since I left New York.”

“New York?” Mary questioned with a confused glance.

Shit.

“Oh, I was visiting family in the city before I moved here,” I recovered awkwardly and hastily. “It’s cheaper to fly from JFK internationally, you know? So many flights go out of there. Plus they have amazing Thai.”

Thankfully, Mary seemed to take the bait, returning her conversation to my nutritional needs. Internally, I heaved a sigh of relief. Mistakes like that were going to get me killed if I wasn’t careful. Not with Mary, I was sure, but whoever could know.

Loose lips sink ships, at the end of the day. And my ship was pretty easy to sink.

We grabbed the Thai to go and ate it at Mary’s, a place of residence much more homey than my own. When we’d finished, she painted my nails and told me stories of growing up in Holmes Chapel – of springtime, of Harry, of summers when she went away to college for art and came back with nothing but a diploma. She read our horoscopes from some British magazine and we laughed over an old Bill Cosby comedy tape she’d found in Manchester. Eventually, I fell asleep with my head in her lap, too exhausted to even keep going anymore.

Mary was a good friend. But she wasn’t Amelia.

The next day, everyone but me was scheduled to work, which was odd for a Wednesday. Which meant all of my work friends were at the Old Red Lion, leaving me with few options for company. I decided against calling Thatcher James and his crew, because while I adored them it would only end in harassment. I went over to Harry’s to see if Anne or Robin was around, but the house was empty. In the end, I ended up going on a run on mine and Harry’s trail, alone.

God, I was alone.

I ran until my legs had next to no strength left in them, finally arriving at my house and crashing on the floor of my living room, unable to even wipe a bead of sweat from my face. Everything in my heart told me to keep going, but I simply couldn’t. I was worn down, I was worn out. I felt like I was disappointing Amelia, like I wasn’t being brave enough, but when I drifted in and out of sleep I dreamt she told me everything was okay.

An hour later, I decided that it was time to reconnect with the world. It had been days since I watched the news, read an article, seen an advertisement. It was a sad thing that without those things, I felt disconnected, but it was how I felt nonetheless. So I pulled up The Guardian, my homepage no longer the Times, to see the news.

And I saw Amelia’s face. And my name.

SUSPICIOUS BILLBOARD APPEARS IN DOWNTOWN LONDON

My heart rate spiked. Above the headline was a picture of an electronic billboard on the rooftop of a building in London, displaying a cartoonized version of Amelia’s face – blonde hair, full lips – with black ‘X’s over her eyes. Superimposed over the image were the words ‘GAME ON, MARA.’

Game on, Mara.

I would later read the article and find that someone had hacked into the server of the display mainframe, removing the original advertisement for Soap and Glory cosmetics and replacing it with a handmade threat tailored just for me, knowing that somehow, someway I would see it and be terrified.

But at that moment, I didn’t have time to read the article. My phone was ringing. My heart was racing, the sound pounding in my ears, so I almost didn’t hear it. And as I went to answer it, I assured myself it was Hudson – they had to be able to track Damien’s activity somehow, somehow they had to be on his trail.

But instead it was a 1-800 number. One I’d never seen before.

I shouldn’t have answered it. But like the dumbass I am, I decided that it couldn’t be Damien. He couldn’t have gotten my number. It just wasn’t possible.

“Hello?” I said into the receiver, amazed at the sound of just how much my voice was shaking.

I was met with the voice of an automated recording. “Hello! And congratulations! Damien Trask would like to play a game with you! Press one for yes!”

My blood ran cold, my lungs unable to take in any air.

He’d found me.

“Are you still there, Mara? Damien wants to play!”

I pressed one with shaking hands.

“Excellent,” the voice replied almost immediately, chilling my bones to the core. “Damien loves a good game. You’ve done well so far. But it’s time for things to get interesting. To hear the rules and gameplay, say, ‘I’m ready to play, Damien.’”

The sadistic motherfucker.

And through tears, I said, “I’m ready to play, Damien.”

“I can’t hear you!” the voice taunted. “Try again!”

More shrilly this time, “I’m ready to play, Damien!”

I couldn’t be strong anymore. Not when Damien had me by the throat. He had my phone number, which had to mean he had my location, too. As the voice continued on, I was frantically searching for Hector’s phone number in the mass of things I’d still yet to unpack, still hanging on the shred of hope that I could go home.

That hope was lost by now.

“Great!” the voice chirped, still animatronic and lifeless as ever. “This game is a test of will. Damien wants to see how long you will last under the pressure. Here’s what he wants you to do – go to your TV and turn it on. The channel doesn’t matter. Watch what we play you for as long as you can. A reward will be given to you for as long as you last – we will be able to tell when you turn it off.”

I was still tearing my room apart, searching for that shred of paper with that handful of digits on it when the voice got to the rules. “Rules are: No leaving. No tampering with the television. And most importantly, no outgoing calls. He’ll be able to tell.”

Defeated, I stopped searching for the shred of paper. It wouldn’t do me any good. Damien was a master hacker, wanted by the government for his skill. There was simply no way I could around those rules. Somehow, he would know. He always knew.

“What are you waiting for?” the voice questioned. “Damien is ready!”

I dragged myself across the floor on my hands and knees, unable to bring myself upright again. Every muscle in my body had given up with the fear, my limbs shaking uncontrollably at my own weight. But even still, I was able to turn around the TV to face me and press my finger to the ON button. And immediately, my own face appeared – a photo from that night in London.

An eerie strain of a lullaby began to play in the room.

A photo of my face, close up and clear as day. A photo of Harry’s face, close up and clear as day. All sorts of photos of us out and about in London, of us together, of us smiling and happy and free. The last few weeks I thought Damien was dead. And then more photos, from that night in Manchester, of Harry with fans, and then somehow, the one of us together. Even more pictures. But these ones, I realized, weren’t taken by the paparazzi.

They were from police cameras in the city. From security cameras at Sony. From Harry’s phone. From mine.

He’d gotten into everything – he had hacked into every inch of every mainframe and compiled every bit of evidence I’d left and forced me to watch. Words from my call records began to accompany the pictures – me, telling Amelia “Because my Harry is Harry Styles from One Direction,” her saying “I already have my plane ticket home… I go home on Friday,” me replying, “I love you too, ‘Mil.”

A photo of her, bloody on the floor.

I lost it then, my body shaking with sobs. “Stop!” I screamed. “Make it stop!”

But Damien wasn’t going to make it stop. This was his game and he was going to make me play it by his rules. And I was terrified to find out what would happen if I broke them.

Then, it broke to photos of Harry in Korea. Photos of him and the boys, mobbed by fans in the streets of Seoul. Photos of him in high definition, smiling as always for the fans he loved, but his eyes abnormally dull with exhaustion. Photos of Harry from the police mainframe. Photos of Harry alone.

I was screaming at this point, pounding my fists against my body so hard I was sure to leave bruises. I pinched at my skin so hard it bled, punishment for being so ignorant. For bringing Harry into all of this in the first place. I wanted to turn it off, to call for help, to run as far away as I could. But I feared the consequences – I feared them with every cell that held me together.

“Are you ready for the grand finale?” a voice rang out, Damien’s this time. My sobs halted then – it was a sound I hadn’t heard since that night in August, his face just inches from mine, steaming hot gun pressed to my skin.

Without even waiting for a response, a picture of Harry’s house in London came on the screen. The passcode to his gate came next. Then, a picture of his parents house in Holmes Chapel, just meters from my own. And finally, what I feared most of all.

A picture of my house with the bright teal front door, the little garden, the front path.

And with a slam, the front door flew open. I screamed so hard, I thought my head was going to explode.

That was it – that was the moment Damien was going to kill me. It was all over then, right there in my living room with my face all puffy with tears, just the way he wanted me. A sitting duck, just waiting for him to finish me off. I’d been a good game but now it was time for it to be over. Maybe my reward for making it through the video would be him ending it quickly and mercifully.

But as I watched the stairs through flooded eyes, it was not Damien I found, but Hector Pruitt.

In a moment, his arms were around me, pulling me off the floor. The house was flooded with agents in the blink of an eye, people everywhere – searching every room with guns pointed at the ready. Hector smoothed his hands over my hair, trying to calm me as I wailed into his shoulder with relief. For that moment, I was going to be safe.

“We have you, Mara,” he murmured into my ear, throwing the use of my new name out the window. “It’s going to be okay. He can’t get at you here. He can’t. He may have all his technology, but he can’t get to you here.”

All I could see was Harry alone in the streets of Seoul, searching through storefronts with the curious eyes he always let get the best of him. Just like me, a sitting duck.

“Harry?” I managed to croak into Hector’s tear stained shirt.

“He’s safe,” he assured me, pulling me closer as I shuddered in his arms. “Everyone’s safe. We’re two steps ahead of him. We’re going to make sure nothing happens to you, I promise.”

I promise.

As they escorted me out of the house and into a car, something worried me that promise was one he wouldn’t to be able to keep.