Caught In The Shadow [Jenlisa]

Chapter Nineteen -

Jennie

Day 6:

I look around the room and feel let down by the lack of darkness and sterility. I had an image of what an interrogation room might look like: two-way mirror, scratched metal table, a high watt bulb lighting my face and making me sweat. Instead, the room looks more like a kindergarten classroom with art projects and motivational sayings glued onto bright construction paper on the walls. I am sitting on a plastic chair, staring at Jeon across the round, faux-wood, table in front of me.

"Okay," Jeon says. He releases a breath, "just to get the chronology right: After you were kidnapped, you spent approximately three weeks, locked in a dark room, in a city you can't recall. You escape the woman known as 'Lisa', and are, almost immediately, held for ransom by a man named 'Tiny', and his motorcycle gang. You contact your friend, Irene Bae, and ask her to obtain your ransom of one-hundred-thousand-dollars and meet 'Tiny', in Chihuahua, Mexico, to exchange your fJeonom for the money. You never make it to the drop because you are rescued, by 'Lisa'. In the morning, you discover she has kidnapped two people and held them hostage in their home. She leaves them alive, but steals their car and you both drive into Zacatecas, Mexico. You are there for approximately three months."

There is a long pause, as though he expects me say some other thing that will amaze him. He'll be vastly disappointed. He ought to start expecting disappointment.

"Is that all correct?" Jeon asks.

"You look like you want to spit every time you say her name," I say, without inflection.

"My feelings are irrelevant," Jeon says.

"They're relevant to me."

Jeon shakes his head and can't seem to stop himself from giving me his two cents, "She's a human trafficker, Miss Kim, a murderer, and a rapist. She didn't rescue you. She captured you. There's a wide distinction between the two. Have you considered you might have Stockholm's Syndrome? Otherwise, I can't see how you can defend her on any reasonable level."

My vision is blurry. "She was a lot of things, that's true enough," I say. My voice is raspy and my lips tremble with the force of my sorrow. "But she was also more than what you've written in your damn reports." I blink, and glare at Agent Jeon. "It was the bikers who tried to rape me. It was the bikers who nearly beat me to death! If Lisa hadn't stopped them, I'd probably be dead."

"Is she the one who killed them?" Jeon asks, insistently.

I take a deep breath and lean back in my chair, wiping the tears from my face, "How would I know?" I shrug. "I was unconscious."

"I'm not defending what those men did to you. Especially, if it happened the way you said it did."

"Are you implying it didn't happen that way?"

Jeon lets out an exasperated breath, "I didn't say that. I'm interested in the truth and nothing more." There's a long pause, both of us regrouping. "The auction. When is it supposed to happen?"

"Lisa said about a week from now."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Pakistan, somewhere."

Jeon's questions come at me quickly. I have no choice but to answer just as fast. I don't want him to mistake my pauses for answers. Worse, I don't want him to think I'm taking time to form a lie – which I am. "So, according to Lisa and Choi Muhammad Jiyong, Demitri Balk, also referred to as, Vladek Rostrovich, is supposed to be there?"

"I guess," I grind out.

"Will, Jiyong, be there?"

"How the fuck would I know?"