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“But let’s back up just a bit…a few observations if you’ll permit me.”
Shelby didn’t object, though she could feel her anxiety start to rise. She’d almost not come to the appointment, knowing that when the last session with Dr. Ramsey ended there were no more sordid tales about the past to tell, just the story of Vienna and Padraig. “Sure, why not?” she answered in a shaky voice.
“What I have seen, Shelby,” the doctor began, is that you’ve grown up quite a bit since I saw you five years ago. You are more direct, less timid and unsure of yourself. You were just coming into your own, but it seemed to be more tiptoeing than arriving with a shout. You left Clive Darcy, but did you really leave him?”
“No. Obviously,” she grimaced
.
Dr. Ramsey smiled warmly. “Even now there is that young girl in you, the one that gave herself to Mr. Darcy. But she’s much less in charge. I’ve found it interesting when you were telling your story about Greystoke, that you went back and forth between calling Mr. Darcy by that name, and then by the name Clive. His first name still seems awkward for you at times. You lapse back and forth. Maybe it depends on how you’re thinking of him.”
“Maybe I’ll never be over him.”
“Oh, I think it’s possible that you can put him behind you. But he was your first love and as severely as he controlled you, wrenching yourself from his control can’t be easy, as you’ve already seen. Maybe you needed those two years with Mr. Greystoke.”
“I thought I did and the money was good. Even if it sort of makes me a whore, money for sex, that was what it boiled down to.”
“But that really isn’t what bothered you when you gave it up.”
“No, that wasn’t what bothered me. It was so empty. Maybe Clive wanted me to see that so I’d go back to him.”
“But you didn’t go back to him.”
“But I leaned on him for money. The assignments…”
“What was that about?”
“His work, his private intelligence company needed me to make flights across the Atlantic carrying certain parcels. Clive even had a microchip implanted in my shoulder so that he could track me if necessary. He said it was just a precaution, that my assignments were only simple deliveries…but just in case.”
“And how long did you do these assignments?”
Suddenly, the truth seemed to be aimed from an arrow right between her eyes. A burning sensation began there. The reason…the truth…Vienna and Padraig and Jessup… Shelby fumbled with the zipper on her hoodie, closed her eyes and took a breath.
“How long, Shelby?” the doctor prompted.
“Three years. For three years until,” she hesitated, toying briefly with the idea of lying, but then the truth just seemed to spill out “…until a few weeks ago.” She squirmed in her small corner of the couch unable to meet Dr. Ramsey’s gaze.
“So, all this time,” she said.
“Only once or twice a year, maybe it was three times that first year. I had an all expenses paid vacation for a simple trip to Europe.”
“With a chip in your shoulder.”
“Yeah, with a chip in my shoulder,” she smiled nervously.
“And what happened on the last trip? It was the last trip when something happened, wasn’t it?”
Shelby’s whole body clammed up; even her open posture changed back to that of a frightened girl. “But that is another story, Dr. Ramsey…”
“And we have nearly an hour, Shelby. Just tell me what happened.”
For the next hour Shelby rambled on about the Vienna airport, the surly guards, the detention center and Col. Jessup, then the nights at the brothel under the control of Madame Pavlenco, the harrowing rescue by helicopter and finally her reunion in Vienna with Padraig
Finnian.
“I got home and went to the office where Clive was holding court. I told him off. I cut the ties. I had the chip taken out, and the tattoo removed days later. I won’t see the man again, even in a moment of weakness, I know this now. I won’t. I can’t!”
“I feel that, Shelby.”
