by JA Huss
But I let that breath out, open the door to the car, slam it behind me.
And walk away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - FINN
“Issy!”
Goddammit. I get out of the car, jog to catch up with her, and take her arm. She does some… I don’t fuckin’ know, some martial arts thing on me, and has my arm twisted behind my back as she says, “Go away. I’m done. You had every chance to tell me you were still as crooked as the tree roots in my front yard, and you didn’t.”
I shake her off and she lets go, her small face looking up at mine, anger, and fear, and… anger written all over it. “That’s not what this is.”
“Bullshit! Why do you still have that fucking burner phone then?”
“I can’t say, but—”
“You can’t say? I just told you the most fucked-up thing that ever happened to me. I just told you my stepfather raped me as a child. And you’re standing here telling me you can’t say why you’ve got an extra phone in your pocket?”
I want to tell her, but she’s never gonna understand. Ever.
“OK, then,” she says. “Get the fuck off my property, Agent Murphy.” She turns, walks away, and just when I think she’s never going to talk to me again, she stops. Looks back. And adds, “Great game, by the way. Congratulations. I guess you win.”
It’s like a gut punch. I can’t move. I can’t say anything. I can’t do anything but watch her unlock her door, open it up, step inside, and disappear.
Only then do I find my voice. “But what about Kansas?” I whisper to the cold morning air.
I realize there’s a shitload of people on the sidewalk in front of her house. The streets are filled with AM traffic. There’s sirens, and sounds of construction, and the whoosh of someone whizzing by on a bicycle.
But here, standing in her front yard, sheltered between these two tall apartment buildings, I go unnoticed. I am ignored. I am alone.
No one sees me. No one heard us fight. No one cares.
“Murphy.”
I turn at the both familiar and unfamiliar voice and see him over near the side of the house. He walks out from a tangle of bare bushes, his face familiar, his blue eyes narrow, his head shaved, his body bigger than I remember. Hardened from years of prison-yard workouts.
“Kelly,” I say back.
“It’s good to see ya again.”
And that hangs there in the air like a poisonous cloud. I can’t say it back. Won’t say it back.
But he doesn’t notice. He just walks towards me, smiling, hand held out, like we’re gonna shake. “I just called ya. Ya didn’t answer.”
And then his hand is in mine, and he’s clapping me on the back, and I’m dying inside. He called me?
He. Called. Me?
A scream from inside the house. I hear things crashing. I hear things breaking. But the worst thing I hear is silence when all that is over.
I look at Caleb Kelly.
I’ve known him since I was four years old and he was ten. His father and my father were friends when they were kids. We almost grew up together. If we’d lived in the same city and were closer in age, we’d probably be like brothers now.
I shake my head at him. “No,” I say.
Because we didn’t live in the same city. They moved away when I was ten and he was sixteen. He was in and out of juvie while I was doing my homework and planning for a future that never let me catch up with it.
I never saw him again. I swear to God I never saw him again.
But she’s never going to believe me.
Caleb smiles. “Yes. And, uh… thank you. For delivering her right into my hands.”
I open my mouth to protest, but the pain in my skull sends me reeling to the ground. Blackness, then blurry light, then blackness again.
I feel the blood trickling down my face as my head spins from the blow that came from behind. And it’s only then I realize… I was playing a game.
Different than the one I thought.
Caleb’s Game.
CHAPTER THIRTY - ISSY
I slam the door to my house, looking around at the mess. My eyes immediately go to the floor where the broken frame was, and find it missing.
What the fuck? Did I put it somewhere last night?
I walk over to the kitchen counter, looking. Sift through the debris of scattered papers, and old mail, and some shards of cheap dishes and canned string beans that should be in my cupboards.
“Ow!” I slap my hand to my neck. There’s a stinging, burning pain in the fleshy muscle that stretches from the base of my neck to my shoulder. I grab a—dart?—and pull it out of my skin.
I look at it. At the fuzzy red stabilizer protruding off the end. The chamber, empty now, but presumably once filled with drugs.
And then a man steps out from the hallway.
A man I know. A man I saw on TV this morning. Declan Ivers.
“I will fucking kill you,” I say.
“You can fucking try,” he snaps back.
My hand is on the canned beans and it sails through the air, hitting him in the side of the head before he can even register what’s happening.
I storm him.
One chance. That’s what I teach my students in their self-defense classes. One chance to take them down when you have the element of surprise. I drill it into their heads. I make them practice the moves. And then I make them do it again, and again, and again until they no longer have to think about it.
It’s just instinct.
I chop him in the throat, releasing all the air in my lungs as I scream. He goes down, but someone else has my arms, then another has my legs, and the room is spinning, and my wrists and ankles are bound with zip ties, and the only thing I can think as they carry me through my house, out into the small backyard, into my detached garage, and place me in the trunk of a car is…
How ironic.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - FINN
Consciousness comes slowly, but there is a rhythm that keeps time for me.
My head throbbing. My heart pounding. The ticking of a clock somewhere in the darkness, the sound of footsteps, the ring of a phone.
Where the fuck am I?
“Issy,” I whisper. I remember that much. They got her.
No. I brought her to them.
To Caleb, through this stupid fucking game I’m not even fuckin’ playing.
“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Caleb says.
I try to open my eyes. Fail. Then try again and see a sliver of blurry light.
“I’m gonna take real good care of Izett, Finn Murphy. Don’t you worry.”
“Issy,” I say.
“What?”
“Her name is Issy, not Izett.”
“Right. Issy Grey. So powerful. So special. So tough.”
“She could kick your ass.” I get a boot to the face for that, and spit out blood. “I could kick your ass too,” I say. Because fuck it. If this asshole is gonna kill me, let’s get on with it. I’ve been a dead man walking ever since I shot my father a few months ago.
“Not like this you can’t,” he says.
“No shit. So why don’t you cut these ties off and make it fair.”
He kicks me in the back of the head this time. My ears begin to ring. “No one ever said the fight was fair, Finn. You know that better than anyone.”
I don’t answer. Why bother?
“You know what I don’t understand?”
I don’t answer that either.
“Why you didn’t just step into his boots when it was all said and done.”
Now I’m curious. “Who?”
“Your old man. He was handing this over to you on a fuckin’ silver platter. And you walked away.”
I close my eyes, trying to figure out what he’s talking about.
“You came to Denver. You gave it all up to start over, and where did it get ya? Right here, under Declan’s thumb.”
“Obviously,” I croak. “I didn’t realize Declan and my father were basica
lly the same fuckin’ guy.”
“They are? Is that right?” His enunciation is sloppy. They ahhh. Iz zat right. He’s got a prison drawl, I realize. More commonly known as… thug. “You sure about that?” Caleb asks. “Are you really sure about that? Because you sure as fuck came here lookin’ for something, Murphy.”
I sure as fuck did.
“Does it have anything to do with this?” Caleb holds up a phone. My phone. The burner phone. “You don’t need to answer that. I already know. Did it ever occur to ya, Murphy, that you’re not the only one playing this game from both ends?”
What?
He’s lying. This is a trap. Don’t answer him. He’s lying.
“Yeah, I knew,” he says. “I always knew you was dirty, Finn. I always knew you and your old man were playing for the other side.”
What?
“You never fooled me,” he says, tapping the phone to his shaved skull. “I had you pegged as a double the minute I met you back when you was four.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I wheeze.
“Little fuckin’ do-gooder. That’s what you were.”
I laugh. And it hurts. My head, my ribs, my heart.
“Always telling me, ‘Not supposed to lie, Caleb. Not supposed to steal, Caleb. Not supposed to hit people.’ Well, fuck you,” he says, spit coming out of his mouth with his words. “Just fuck you. You think you’re better than me?”
“Honestly?” I manage to croak out.
“What’s that?” he asks, bending down, like he wants to hear me better. “You got somethin’ to say?”
“It don’t take much,” I whisper.
“What?”
“To be better than you.”
He stands back up. Grits his teeth. Sets his jaw. Draws his leg back, the steel toe of his boot aimed right at my teeth when…
Yelling somewhere else—some other room, some other floor, whatever. It’s loud, it’s shrill. “It’s Issy,” I manage to moan.
“Yeah,” Caleb says. And even though I can’t see his face, I can feel his smile. His evil, diabolical smile. “It’s Issy. Let’s go watch, shall we?”
I want to ask, Watch what?
He cuts the zip ties around my ankles, pulls me to my feet, and then I have to concentrate on not smashing my face into the wall, or falling down the stairs and breaking my neck.
When we get down there all the fuzziness fades. The world comes back to me in perfect fucking clarity like a wind rushing across my face in the cold, winter night.
Issy is in the center of the room wearing a white gi with a white belt, facing down a huge man who towers over her like a giant. She’s bleeding from one eye. Her lip is split, and someone has duct-taped wrist and ankle weights to her arms and legs.
“Come on, Issy,” Caleb shouts. He pushes me down onto the floor, steps on the small of my back, pinning me underneath his boot, and yells, “Fight for your life! Fight for your future! Fight for your man!” And then he drops his voice several octaves. “Because if you lose—” Everyone goes silent. It’s like a fuckin’ movie or something. A cross between Children of the Corn and Fight Club. They are desperate to hear his threat. “I’m gonna kill him right in front of you.”
Which is pretty uninspiring if you ask me. How he ever got these assholes to do his bidding, I’ll never know.
But he’s not done. Because he adds to that. “And then you and I will have a little private time together.”
I look over at Issy. Meet her eyes as she meets mine. We touch each other’s souls.
But then we diverge.
Because she nods yes and I shake no, and…
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - ISSY
My body is spinning in the air the moment after I nod my head yes. Because you know what? I’m fucking sick of this Goddamned game. I’m gonna end it. But not only will I end it… I’m gonna win it.
I grab Gargantuan by the neck, slide my body—leg extended—around his back, and push down on his head with all one hundred and fifteen pounds of girl power.
He drops to the floor and even though the weights on my ankles and wrists were supposed to make this difficult, they sure do come in handy when they connect with his ribs and his face.
I get his nose first. To make the blood flow, clog his breathing, and make him weak. Then the eye, because the eyes swell up so pretty if you hit them hard enough. Then the teeth. Just because I want him to remember what I did every time he looks in the Goddamned mirror.
A sick feeling floods my body when I hear the crack of breaking enamel.
Blood spatters everywhere. He’s moaning, and rolling over on the ground, and I’m just about to turn and take out the next guy when I’m slammed down onto the hardwood floor, face first—so the mud and melted snow tracked in from outside coats my cheek when they bind my wrists and ankles again.
I turn my head, find Caleb’s face, and spit in his direction. “There’s your show,” I say, smiling at him. “I hope you got a kick out of it.”
He doesn’t smile back. I don’t get the brave face. I don’t get the attitude, or the jokes, or the threats.
I just get that look. That look I know so well from my memory. The one that said, Go to bed, Izett. I’ll be up to tuck you in later.
The look that would make me go directly to the upstairs hall bathroom, sit in front of the open toilet, and throw up.
Every. Single. Time.
And it takes every fuckin’ ounce of strength I’ve built up over the past eight years not to puke right now.
I think he’s going to rape me.
“Aw, come on now, baby. Don’t be afraid.” Caleb bends down right next to me to grab my hair and pull my head up off the floor so I can look him in the eyes. He strokes my cheek. “Izett,” he whispers. “Don’t worry. We know just how you like it. Did you know that your boy here sent his boss a text last night? And do you have any idea what he said in that text?”
My heart skips. Remembering Finn, sitting in his car outside my house, texting on his phone.
“It said you thought you were playing a game. And do you know what kind of game he told his boss you thought you were playing?”
I close my eyes to shut him out, but he yanks my head back so far, I can’t breathe.
“Open your eyes and look at me, bitch!” And then his other hand is wrapped around my throat, squeezing until I have to. I have to obey and do what he says because I want to breathe again.
“He said you had a fantasy. You wanted to be fucked in front of other people. Well, baby girl”—I close my eyes and whimper a little—“I’m gonna make your fantasy come true. Right here. Right now.”
While all this is happening, Finn was picked up, walked over to where I am, and he’s thrown down next to me. His face bloody, just like mine. One eye almost swollen shut.
But one eye is fully open.
And it winks.
“What?” I breathe, not even making a sound. Just lips moving.
He winks again.
I squint back at him. Tilt my head. Is he fucking with me right now? Is he trying to tell me this is all part of the game?
But he’s not smiling. This is no joke.
Before I can fully imagine what is happening here, the door bursts open and a man walks in.
A man I recognize. A man who should not be here, but is.
He’s older. He has short, white hair. Clean-shaven—in fact, I can smell his aftershave as he walks past me on the floor. I turn my head to follow him. Take in his expensive suit, black trench coat, and American flag pin on his lapel.
Senator Walcott. Chella’s father.
And this is how I know we’re not playing a game.
This is how I know Finn’s wink—blink, whatever it was—wasn’t saying, Be cool, Issy. You’re fine.
It was saying, See you on the other side, babe.
“What in the ever-loving fuck is going on here?” the senator bellows, looking around from face to face until his intent gaze rests on Caleb’s.
&n
bsp; Caleb is still kneeling down, holding my hair, hand squeezing my neck, his threat of rape still echoing in my head. But he lets go now. My face falls, hitting the floor, my eyes on Finn and his on mine.
He doesn’t wink again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - FINN
I know this man. Walcott. Senator Walcott. A part of me is relieved to see him. It puts things in perspective. It all adds up. It almost makes sense.
“Do you know how fuckin’ close you came to being arrested tonight, Senator?” Caleb says.
“What are you talking about? I told you to keep your fuckin’ head down after you got out and what did you do on your first day of freedom? You go and kidnap a girl.”
“Is that what I did?” Caleb says. He starts pacing the floor, making a wide circle around the senator. “Is that what you think this is about? This girl? I didn’t take her,” he sneers. “She was just there when I took him.”
He points at me.
The senator’s gaze lands on me. He squints, confused.
I sigh. Close my eyes. Open them and look at Issy. She’s confused too.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“This?” Caleb says, kicking me in the ribs. “This is Special Agent Finn Murphy, Senator. The guy they sent here to bring you down, motherfucker!”
I’m still looking at Issy. She’s still looking confused, so I shrug, close my eyes, shake my head, and shrug again.
But then the senator comes to stand between us, severing our connection. “What?”
“What?” Caleb mocks. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ. Do I need to spell it out for you?”
The senator doesn’t answer.
So Caleb continues. “About four months ago there was a raid outside DC, remember that?” He kicks me again. Right in the same place as last time.
“Drugs?” the senator says.
“Good guess, but try again, you goddamned elitist idiot. Payoffs, asshole. You remember what those are, right? Bribes? You should,” Caleb says. “You took enough of them.”
