Текст книги "Meet Me in the Dark"

Автор книги: J. A. Huss

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“All I can do is open the door. I can’t make you walk out.”

– Case

She has the most confused look on her face. How can it be so hard for this girl to get it? “He brainwashed you, Sydney. It took years and years and years to do that. Do you understand? I was a PSYOPS in the army. With Garrett. We did it together, like a team.”

She sits her butt on the ground. Not to get comfortable, I don’t think, but because she doesn’t have the strength to squat anymore.

She’s in shock. Just like that rabbit.

“We were in charge of people. Company people, Syd. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

She nods. “People like me.”

“Yes, unfortunately. People just like you. Mothers and daughters. You know what it means to be born a Company kid. You know they own you if you’re a girl. You know that they ask the parents when a girl is born if they agree to the mother-daughter promise or not. And what happens to the mothers when they don’t agree?”

“They kill them.” She says it like a robot. She’s caught up in her memories.

“That’s right. They kill them. So if a Company girl grows up with a mother, even if that mother dies when she is small, what does that mean, Sydney?”

She looks me in the face for this and I know, of all the terrible things I’ve done for the wrong reasons, this terrible thing is for the right one. “The mothers agreed to sell those daughters and allow them to be… used.”

“That’s right. Your mother agreed. At least at first. I don’t know what happened with your mother. Or your father. I only know that part is true. She did this to you. They both did this to you.”

“Was I your assignment? In the army?”

“No. I saw you for the first time out there at that cabin. But I had other assignments. Garrett and I had them together. I didn’t understand what the Company was back then. I didn’t understand that they were a shadow government that exists right here in the US, right alongside real people and regular governments. But I got an order once—Garrett and I got an order once. Probably the same kind of order that the Company man who killed your mother got.”

She licks her lips and the cold wind dries them immediately. Her face is flushed and I know that if I were to check her heart rate right now, it would be off the charts. But she’s holding it together, so I continue.

“And we were ordered to take care of this Company mother-daughter pair.”

“Did you do it?” She has hope in her eyes that I didn’t, and it kills me to admit that I did.

“Yes. I did it. I did it because Garrett had already raped the mother and he was going for the little girl next. She was twelve. The same age Sasha was when they tried to take her. Her mother never gave her up. They killed her before Sasha ever left the hospital when she was born. But her father did things that were against the rules. It was a father-daughter kill that night I was sent to save you. And I chose to save her instead.”

“You left me there.”

“I know.”

“Because I wasn’t worth saving?” She’s crying now. Silent frozen tears.

I lean in and grab her face, holding it in both my hands as I look her in the eyes. “That’s not why,” I whisper. “I just figured you would be OK. You were sixteen. Sasha was only twelve. I made a choice and I’d like to say I regret it, but I don’t. I love Sasha very much. She is the only good thing that has ever happened to me.”

“But I wasn’t OK.”

“I know that now. But I really thought you would be. I really thought you would be, Syd.”

A noise off to our left drags our attention away from each other and back to the cage. The rabbit hops forward once, then twice. It sits there at the edge of freedom and hesitates.

“Be the rabbit, Sydney.”

“The rabbit gets eaten by dogs.”

“No, watch.”

She does watch. She strains so hard she might be giving herself a headache. But the look on her face when that rabbit finally figures out it can run—it’s amazing.

She gasps as the small animal zigzags across the frozen river and disappears in the thick woods of the opposite bank.

“Be the rabbit, Sydney. Get away from him. Garrett filled your mind with lies. He filled you up with instructions and triggers. He’s been using you to do his dirty work. And even though I never saw him again after he disappeared, I know he was taking you. Wasn’t he?”

If she knows, she holds it in. And I let her.

Because I just set her free. And now we’re ready for the final step.

“You can hope for truth, but always be prepared for betrayal.”

– Sydney

We check the rest of the trap line and if there’s a rabbit in there, I set it free. It’s amazing how something so simple can mean so much. My mind clears as the morning moves on. Memories come back and others recede. I’m feeling pretty good, and when we get back to the cabin, Case—or is he really Merc?—starts making something for us to eat as I watch from the barstool, nursing a beer.

His phone rings and he looks at the caller ID and smiles. “Sash,” he says. “Sash?” He looks at the phone and then I can just barely make out the three hang-up beeps from the speaker.

My head begins to pound.

“Huh,” he says. “She called me yesterday with news of a boyfriend.” He shoots me a smile. “I do background checks on them. And she had a date and needed one pronto. But I had things to do.” He smiles at me. “You needed me more yesterday.” And then he chuckles as he dials again. When there’s no answer, he shrugs. “Probably in a remote area and lost signal.”

I close my eyes as my mind starts to swirl.

“You OK?” Case asks.

I open my eyes again and shake my head. “I feel funny.” He looks worried. “Dizzy, almost.” And confused, I don’t add. “All that rabbit stuff, maybe.”

“Maybe you’re just hungry?” He pushes a plate of salmon and a glass of water in front of me.

I drink the water and push the plate away. “I’m really not feeling well.”

“You want to go lie down?”

“Not really,” I say, squinting my eyes from the sudden headache. “But I probably should.”

“It was too much, maybe?” He picks me up and carries me towards the stairs, climbing them easily. He takes me into the bedroom and sets me down on the bed. “I’ll stay with you if you want.”

I nod and close my eyes as soon as my head rests on the soft pillow. “I feel a little better already.”

He pulls his thermal shirt over his head and throws it on the floor, then kicks off his boots and goes to work on mine. They drop with a thud. I study him as he stands at the end of the bed. He’s hard to ignore. Perfect, really. His muscles are cut into his body like a statue’s, hard as stone.

Which is how I’d have described his personality as well, a few days ago. But now I’m not sure what to make of that mind of his. The killer part of him I can accept. And this tender part, the part that wants to fuck me softly—I’d like to accept that too.

But right now something feels wrong.

He crawls up the bed, his hands and knees on either side of me. And for a moment, when I look into those blazing amber eyes, I see him as the predator he is. My whole body trembles.

Then his hand is on my stomach, underneath my shirt that belongs to him. And the coldness I’ve imagined is not there. He is warm. And he smiles at me. I take a deep breath, not sure I want to do this stuff in the light. The darkness hides me. I like it. But the sun is streaming through the large windows that have the same view as the crow’s nest and it makes me self-conscious.

“Want me to stop?” he asks.

“No,” I whisper. I want to keep him forever. But even though he’s been nice and I don’t think he wants to hurt me, he’s flashing a red danger sign right now.

“Relax,” he says, lifting my shirt up so he can kiss my stomach. “And tell me what you want.”

“I want to be sure.”

“Of what?”

“That you’re real, and this isn’t a trick.”

“Why would I trick you?”

“Because you need information.”

“You said you don’t have it.”

“I know, but—”

He stares at me. “But what?”

“But you don’t believe me.” And then I take a deep breath and gather my nerve. “Do you believe me?”

He goes back to kissing me. He makes me feel like I’m being tortured with pleasure as he licks a small circle around my nipple, gently squeezing the other one at the same time, until they are both erect and tingling. He scoots up a little and takes his kisses to my neck. “Do you think I’ll hurt you, Syd?” His hot breath makes the words skim across my skin. I feel like I’m floating.

“Not physically. Not anymore.” I say. My head is spinning again, not the same way it was downstairs. “But—”

His mouth steals my words and even though I have this pressing need to know if he’s genuine, I give up. I just give up and kiss him back.

It’s a long, slow kiss that makes my heart ache. It’s a sad kiss. One that has so much meaning, I can barely breathe. I want him to be real so bad. “You were always in my head, Case. You came to me in a dream and told me how to survive. You taught me to fish and hunt. But it wasn’t about fishing and hunting. It was you, splitting my mind into yet another piece. Not the way Garrett did it, with fear and threats, but with smiles and sunshine. It was you I dreamed about when he made me do things.”

“He brainwashed you, Syd. We’ve been over this. He told you a lot of things.” Case unbuttons my jeans and then sits up and drags them down my legs, tossing them onto the floor with my boots. And then his warm chest covers my cold one and never have I ever wanted to hug a man like I do this man right now. I wrap my arms around him and pull him close. “He gave you triggers, Sydney. Little things that only you know about. Words like bobcat.”

“And hush,” I say.

“No, cowgirl. Not hush. But there are more things I need to know. More words and symbols that hold his secrets. Do you remember any of them?”

“I feel like I’m floating.”

“Shhh, Sydney. Try to answer my question. Do you know of any more words or symbols that he planted in your head to make you do things? He might want you to hurt me, for instance. Did he give you a word that would make you hurt me?”

I’m flying. I’m high up in the clouds. I can barely open my eyes.

Case is on top of me and we are naked. “I want you,” I say. It comes out like an echo in my head. I’m not even sure if I said it out loud. “I want that soft fuck again, so bad.”

He spreads my legs and hikes one knee up to my chest, the tip of his cock pressing against my clit. It feels so fucking good. “You need me to fuck you, Syd? To remember what he said?”

I can’t answer that. “My stomach hurts.”

“He planted a trigger that makes you sick, Sydney. If you talk about it.”

“I feel so weird.”

“Concentrate now, OK? Did he tell you where he was? He came to you, remember? All those years you thought he was missing, he came to you.”

“I don’t think he did.”

“You told me he did, Sydney. You told me a lot of things when I had you under the drugs the last time. So you don’t need to pretend anymore. Just tell me where he is.”

“He’s gone.”

Case lets out a long breath and then slips his dick inside me. It’s painful, he goes too fast. But when I cry out, he stops and lets me settle. After a few seconds, he begins again. Slower this time. Softer than anything I’ve ever felt. I grab his shoulders and try to squeeze, but I have no strength. I open my mouth to ask why I’m so weak, but Case is there with his lips again, his tongue twisting up my thoughts and making me confused.

He flips me around, spooning me from behind, and then his cock fills me up again. He reaches around my waist and his fingers find my clit, strumming me like the song he played last night. The music plays in my head and my excitement builds with each stroke of his fingers and thrust of his hips.

“Where is Garrett, Syd?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”

I’m about to answer, but the climax I’ve been driving towards is building. I hold my breath and press back against his body, into his cock, wanting him to take me deeper. The moment I find my release, he pulls out and spills his hot come all over my back.

“Did it feel good, Syd?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Now concentrate,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and pushing his mouth into my neck. “Where did Garrett go? Where can I find him?”

“You don’t need to find him,” I say back, feeling so, so sleepy. “I heard the trigger. He’s on his way here.”

Case throws me aside and is off the bed in an instant. But the time I gather enough sense to open my eyes, he’s already dressed at the end of the bed.

“Where are you going?” I slur out. “I need to go with you.”

“You’re staying here,” he says.

“No!” My heart begins to beat wildly as I try to sit up. I don’t even come close to sitting before I am slumped over, my face in the pillow. “You drugged me. You drugged me again, and you promised you wouldn’t.”

Case leans down and whispers in my ear, pulling my hair so I’m forced to look up at him. “I’ll take care of you when I get back.” And then he releases my hair and my head drops back to the bed.

“But you were nice to me. You said you weren’t going to kill me. You promised not to drug me!” I try to swing my legs out of the bed but he shoves me back.

“I lied, Sydney. But if you stay real still and go back to sleep, you’ll never have to think about it again.”

“Always have an ace in the hole.”

– Case

I turn away from her and hastily get dressed, wondering where Garrett is. How far he’s gotten, what his endgame is. How he’ll play this out.

“Sasha,” Sydney says from the bed.

I whirl around and look at her. Her eyes are drooping pretty bad from the drugs I put in her water. Her head is slick with sweat and she’s lying sideways across the sheets, like she’s been trying to get up while I was lost in thought.

“What?”

“He’s got Sasha.”

My stomach rolls as her words sink in.

“He’s got her and you do not want to know what he’s gonna do with her.”

I reach for Sydney’s hair, fisting it hard and pulling her face towards me. “Where the fuck is he?”

“He’s waiting for you, Case.” Sydney tries a smirk on for size, but it comes off as a grimace. “At the end of the trail.”

I let go of her hair and get up, pulling a thermal shirt on as I jump down the stairs.

Motherfucker. The call. The call Sasha made earlier. That was Garrett. That was the trigger Sydney was talking about—it has to be. She was in on this from the beginning. My ringtone must be a trigger for her. Which means that asshole has been close enough to me to hear it.

I clench my fists as the anger runs through me. But the anticipation is there too. I will end him today. Nothing else matters. Garrett is a dead man.

“In the end it all comes down to what you’re capable of. Rescue means debt. Save yourself and you owe no one.”

– Sydney

I don’t wait for Case to leave. The drugs are taking over and if he comes back to find me rifling through his medications and puts a stop to it, well, that’s the chance I have to take. Because I have about two minutes before I pass out for good and either way I’m dead.

I roll across the bed one more time and reach for the drawer in the nightstand. My hand misses it a few times, but finally I hook a fingertip through the pull and it slides open.

Downstairs a door closes with a slam.

My hand waves around inside the drawer for the first-aid kit and I’m just about to get frustrated when it hits me.

He took it downstairs to bandage my hand.

Fuck. Sixty-seven thousand fucks are running through my head right now. Do I not deserve to catch one break? One?

I roll over again and fall to the floor. I don’t know if I can make it downstairs—

“Syd,” beautiful Garrett says.

Is he Garrett or Case? Who is the man in my head?

“Grab the guns,” he says, the beautiful mountain landscape behind him shimmering. Aspen leaves, yellow, like it’s fall. No, golden. Everything about this dream man is golden.

“Grab his guns, Syd. The ones in the case. Then go downstairs and find the kit. You know what to do. They told you about overdosing in your training.”

I don’t care who that guy is at this point, I’m taking his advice. I grab the gun case and pull myself up. There’s furniture I can lean on to make my way to the door. But as I stand at the top of the hardwood stairs, I have serious doubts I will be able to get down them without breaking my neck.

Sit on your ass and scoot, that guy says, whoever he is.

I plop down and fall forward, my head hitting the banister with a crack. There’s no pain. I’m far too numb from the drugs to even know how badly I’m hurt. I grab hold of the banister and pull myself up again, then scoot down one step at a time. When I finally get to the bottom step I let out an ironic laugh. I got all this way—I can see the kit on the kitchen counter—and I’m gonna die here on the steps. Or maybe reaching for the kit, my hand outstretched—

Shut the fuck up and get over there!

That guy in my head is the one who needs to shut the fuck up, that’s what I think. In fact—I force my legs to stand. My eyes are almost closed, that’s how sleepy I am—I think I’m gonna kill that guy in my head with these guns…

Shit. The guns are up on the steps where I fell over.

I shake my head to try to snap out of the growing lethargy and drop to my hands and knees so I can crawl. My hair drags on the polished wood floor and I have a moment of relief that Case is so neat. No dust bunnies on his floor to soil my hair.

A laugh bursts out at that thought. I’m really fucking losing it.

I make to the bar and stand up. If I open that kit and there’s no antagonist in there to stop this drug, I will die laughing.

It’s in there, a little vial of clear liquid in a tightly sealed container. I rip the metal tab with my teeth, twisting the bottle, peeling it off. And then I rip open a sealed sterile syringe and push the needle into the rubber cap.

Poison training? I took that, right? Garrett told me how much of the drug to use for my body weight when we went over poisoning. I know he did.

But I have no clue. My arms are so heavy. My fingers barely work. So I draw in enough liquid to fill the syringe, pull it out of the rubber top, and stab myself in the upper arm.

I don’t feel a thing. Not the stab, not when I push the drug into the muscle, not when I fall over and barely avoid cracking my head on the floor as I hit the ground palms first. But I do know I’m still in the game if this works, because a snow machine roars past the house outside. He just left.

I come to screaming as I sit up straight. My lungs inhale a huge breath, a gasp that echoes up into the cathedral ceiling of the house. I am instantly alert and the past few hours come rushing back.

Case. That motherfucker.

Sasha.

Garrett.

I run up the stairs and get the gun case, opening it up there on the landing where it fell.

Three bullets. What fucking good are three fucking bullets? I run back in the bedroom and open the other nightstand drawer. But of course the other guns are gone. He took those and left these collector’s items behind with three stupid bullets.

I smile. I guess that just means there’s one for each of those assholes, and none left over to spare.

I load one bullet into the chamber of the first gun, and two into the magazine of the other. I dress in my snow gear and stuff the guns in my pockets as I head out into the cold. I reconnect the wires that I pulled out on the Snowcat to buy myself some time the other night when Case told me to leave, and follow his tracks down the trail.

“Even a man with nothing to lose can lose things.”

– Case

I cut the engine on the machine at the fork in the trail and haul my sniper rifle over my shoulder as I trudge through the snow. It’s a decision that will cost me some time—the snow is deep and I have to wind my way between drifts to make any progress at all. But this party only starts when I get there.

I’m the guest of honor.

The garage where I keep the trucks in the winter comes into view sooner than I’m ready for it. My heart—fuck, my heart has never been filled with such dread before in my life. I should’ve known it was Sasha he was after. I should’ve seen that coming.

But she’s been well-hidden over the years. Living out a quiet life in private schools and summers overseas with her adopted family. Good grades and dreams of the future driving her instead of looking over her shoulder. She’s had some trouble, but none of it was Company trouble.

Hell, even I stopped looking over my shoulder. It’s my own damn fault I’ve been up here preoccupied with his bait while he was planning how to get the only person I ever loved.

I walk slowly and carefully up to the back of the garage, my eyes darting up to the trees in case he came with a sniper.

But that’s not Garrett’s style. He works alone now and he uses women to do his dirty work. He’s always been like that.

He’s starting to remind me a little too much of myself.

I press my back against the garage and then peek around the corner, my rifle in the ready position, my eye looking down the sight.

A big, black truck idles in the center of the cul-de-sac. It’s pointing away from me, like it’s getting ready to leave. Black smoke puffs out of the tailpipe, clashing with the pristine white snow that surrounds it. It’s angled in a way that gives me a clear view of the passenger side, but not the driver’s.

Sasha is in the front seat. I know her profile. Her dark blonde hair is recognizable to me anywhere. I could pick her out of a crowd of hundreds of people.

It hits me then. He has my Sasha. He’s gonna kill her. Right here. Right now. And he’s gonna make me watch.

A sound disrupts my thoughts and then her door swings open.

I look through my scope to find him. Where are you, motherfucker?

Sasha is pushed through the door and falls out of the truck like a dead body. Her hands are tied behind her back, her feet are tied together, and there’s tape over her mouth.

My heart stops. And then she starts kicking her legs and trying to scream. And it starts again.

She’s alive.

“If you hurt her I will rip your goddamn throat out!” I roar it so the whole forest echoes with my threat.

Silence. And then the creak of the other door. He ducks getting out or I’d have his head already. But he knows me. I have skills he does not. Fucking punk.

“Did you hurt my Sydney, Case? Or don’t my girls matter?”

“Fuck you.” I duck back behind the garage and stalk the length of it, peeking out around the corner again and then making my way to the opposite side. Now I can see the truck a little better. More front on, but still, no Garrett in my sight.

“How about we play a game, Case? You tell me what you did to Sydney and I’ll tell you if I did the same thing to Sasha.”

All the things I put Sydney through flash into my mind.

“Drugs? Oh, that one’s a given. Sasha here might be a good shot, but she’s not been subjected to very many drugs, has she. It didn’t go well.”

My whole body heats up with rage.

“Torture?” he calls again. “Sydney is quite good at withstanding torture. But again, this one—not so much.”

“What do you want?”

“I want my girl back.”

“She’s at the house. Go get her.”

“Not that girl, Case.” He laughs. “You know how we have that whole I owe you, you owe me, and then we’re even thing going in the Company? Well, you owe me, Case. And today we’re gonna make it even.”