The Vanishing Girl

by Laura Thalassa

  I needed to start locking my door starting immediately, because in Desiree’s eyes was a promise—a promise that she would come for me and finish what she started.

  Chapter 32

  Two days later I worked on my weaponry homework with Caden in one of the several study halls when Dane Richards approached our table.

  “Hey Boss,” Caden said.

  Dane ignored him. “Pierce, we need to talk.” His flinty eyes were trained on me.

  I gave Caden a concerned look, and a crease formed between Caden’s brows. I tried not to panic when I saw the distress in his eyes.

  “Sure,” I said.

  With a final glance at Caden, I followed Dane Richards out of the study hall. The walk to Dane’s office was long and awkward. The silence felt like it would suffocate me.

  When we finally arrived and I sat down in a guest chair, Dane still hadn’t told me why he wanted to see me.

  He slid into his seat and rolled his chair forward. He placed his palms on the desk and trained his intense stare on me.

  “How do you know Adrian Sumner?” he asked me.

  My heart stuttered. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Should I lie? Tell the truth? How could I protect us both?

  “Adrian Sumner.” Dane Richards slid a black and white photo towards me. My breath caught. The photo was of me standing on the pier. Adrian stood in front of me. Adrian was looking over his shoulder, gazing at the same something I was. Jacque, when he ran after the suitcase.

  “You do know him, don’t you?” he asked, his inquisitive eyes trained on me.

  I realized in the silence that followed that what I said would matter. If I lied, the truth would come out eventually, and if I told the truth, Adrian would likely be captured.

  I focused on my breathing. In and out. I was already a prisoner here, working for the government, so not much more could happen to me, other than death—and that was already my reality every time I went on a mission.

  I wasn’t sure where exactly things stood with me and Adrian—and I didn’t exactly trust him—but if he told the truth, he was trying to help teleporters like me. And if he lied to me, he was still the enemy of my enemy. That counted for something.

  Inside I was a mess of nerves, but that anxiety never showed up on my skin.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know him.” I gave Richards an annoyed look, just to convince him further.

  He tapped the photo with his index finger. “But you’re talking to him here.

  “Yeah,” I said, keeping my tone annoyed. “He was trying to talk me down. And once I threw the suitcase in the water, he was trying to make me feel guilty.”

  Richards raised his eyebrows. He didn’t believe me. I tried my best to keep calm while he shuffled through some paper on his desk. I knew his actions were for my benefit. He wanted me to squirm.

  From the papers in his hand he pulled out another and slid it my way.

  Shit.

  It was the article about Adrian Sumner that I’d looked up on the Internet. “This article was Googled from your computer.” Richards narrowed his eyes. “The date preceded your mission.”

  Caught. I’d been caught.

  How could I have been so stupid? Of course the facility monitored the sites teleporters went to.

  I opened my mouth, but Richards held up his hand. “Don’t bother Pierce. I went through the entire list of links, so I know how one led to the next.”

  Dane pulled out another photo from the stack. It was a grainy photograph of me flipping through a file in that basement office. In the background I could see my sweatshirt pressed against the foot of the door, which meant the photo was taken during my last visit there.

  “You have two files in your possession that you took from this room. From your actions, I can only assume you were holding them to use in the future as blackmail.”

  I’d been sloppy. So, so sloppy. Just like Caden had told me recently, the facility was looking for defiant behavior. And I’d underestimated them. Now I had to wonder just how long they were watching me. And whether that office was just an elaborate set up—another simulation they wanted to see my reaction to.

  The sick feeling in my stomach told me that it was. And I’d fallen for it.

  Richards rubbed the skin around his mouth. “What I don’t understand is the extent of what you know.”

  The hairs on my arm lifted.

  His stared at me, unblinking. “But at this point, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve proven yourself to be cunning, secretive, selfish, and most of all, dishonest.”

  I didn’t move, didn’t allow my face to give away the screaming inside my head, the pounding of my heart, or the clammy sweat that formed in the creases of my fingers.

  Richards leaned forward even more. “You also gave away your one weakness.” He slid forward another photo, this was grainy, but I could still make out the tangle of naked limbs and my tattoo. From the looks of it, it was taken the last time Caden and I visited the lake.

  Nausea rose at the thought that someone had watched us, photographed us.

  “It’s a physical relationship, nothing more,” I lied.

  He shook his head. “I have access to Debbie’s reports and her recordings of each session she holds. I know with certainty that your ‘physical relationship’ is far more than that.”

  Richard’s brow furrowed as he stared at the photograph. His eyes flicked up to me. “He’s too good for you.” His voice was softer, gruffer than it had been.

  Richards hadn’t figured out that Caden was helping me. If he knew, his tone would be different. Relief flooded through my veins. Caden hadn’t been sucked into this. Thank God.

  “He is,” I agreed.

  The lines on Dane Richard’s face deepened with his disapproval. “We’re at an impasse,” Dane said. “You are too valuable for us to lose, but too deviant to be reliable.”

  My heart slammed in my chest. “So what happens now?” I asked. I didn’t want to know the answer to this question.

  “Oh, there are plenty of things that could happen,” he said, frowning at my reaction. “But for now, nothing.” Dane’s words did nothing to reassure me.

  “Can I go then?”

  Richards watched me for a beat. Then he nodded once. “You’re excused.”

  I placed my hands on Richard’s desk as I stood up to hide the way they trembled.

  When I reached for the door, his voice cut through the silence. “Oh, and Ember?”

  I looked at him over my shoulder.

  “You better learn to love the project and its objectives real quick. I wouldn’t want to break Caden’s heart by making you disappear.”

  Chapter 33

  I moved down the hall without really seeing my surroundings. My hands shook. I was in shock, but even now, it was melting way, replaced by a fear that was eating me from the inside out.

  I was a dead woman walking.

  “Ember!” Caden called from behind me. He must’ve waited outside the office. I hadn’t even noticed.

  I pinched my eyes shut. All I wanted was to be alone.

  He grabbed my upper arm and spun me around to face him. “What is it?”

  I pulled my arm away from his grip and kept walking. God, I didn’t want to tell him.

  I wouldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see whatever lay in his eyes.

  “Fuck, Ember,” he said, “what the hell did you two talk about?”

  I shook my head and headed for the doors leading outside.

  Once outside, I began to run, pushing my legs hard uphill until the physical pain drowned out my thoughts and my rising fear. Caden ran next to me, still not speaking. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw his brows furrow, but he didn’t stop me. He knew that if he
wanted to hear anything I had to say, we’d have to get out of earshot. To be honest, I didn’t know if even that was good enough.

  I welcomed the icy air that burned down my lungs and the wild smell of the forest. If there was ever a time I wanted to be one with the earth, now was it.

  We ran several minutes in silence until I’d worked off my adrenaline and my pace began to slow. I’d burned off my mood with sheer exertion. I slowed to a stop somewhere in the middle of the woods and leaned on my knees.

  Caden stopped next to me. “Ember you’re scaring the shit out of me. Please, tell me what’s going on.”

  I took a deep breath. “Richards knows that I know Adrian.”

  Caden’s eyes widened, wary. “And?” he said. “That doesn’t prove anything in and of itself.”

  I breathed in, the cool evening air sharp against my lungs. “I lied to him. I told him I didn’t know who Adrian was. Only then did Dane reveal the webpages I’d looked at—pages I’d looked at before the mission.”

  Caden cursed.

  “Also, I broke into a room in this facility, read files I wasn’t supposed to read, and took two of them back to my room. They have footage of me doing so.”

  Caden’s eyebrows inched up. “You did all that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I gave him a look. “I didn’t want to involve you.” And you wouldn’t approve.

  His jaw tightened and his eyes looked angry. “Ember, I’m putting my entire life on the line for you. This only works if it goes both ways.”

  I swallowed. This was how I loved others. If I kept them uninformed, then the cyclone that was my life might not touch them. To let Caden in on my plans to commit treason would make him just as guilty as me. I wanted to make his life better, not worse.

  He watched my expression flicker, and the blood drained from his face. “You stole two files … What—what are you planning, Ember?” His voice shook. I didn’t know how he did that; how he sometimes saw past everything I put out into the world.

  “Nothing.”

  He stepped in close. “Don’t lie to me Ember.” This close to me, I could see all the colors in Caden’s eyes—blue, green, yellow, and gray. He had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen, and they looked so pained as they watched me.

  I blinked back the moisture from my own. “I’m not—at the moment there is nothing to plan.” All my grand plans had crumbled now that I was being watched. I needed to be on my best behavior if I wanted to survive. But even that might not be enough.

  Caden closed the space between us and cupped the sides of my face with his hands. The look he gave me was deep and loving.

  My throat worked and I glanced away. He hadn’t figured it out. That I might disappear. And I wasn’t sure I had the heart to voice this very real concern of mine.

  Gently he tilted my head so that I was forced to look at him. I knew what he’d see in my eyes. Worry. Guilt. Weakness. Vulnerability.

  Without taking his gaze off of me, his slid his hand down my arm. Once his fingers touched my palm, he brought my hand to his heart. Beneath the thin fabric of his shirt I felt the strong beat of it.

  “This is yours,” he said, pressing my hand more tightly to his chest. “And I don’t give it lightly.”

  The look he gave bared his soul. “I love all of you Ember—the ferocious, beautiful girl I first laid eyes on, the fiery girl who punched me in the face when I threw off her sheets, the penitent girl I found curled up in the shower, the curious girl who questioned a wanted man’s guilt, the brave girl who pushed me down when she saw a gun, and the secretive girl who thinks she needs to carry the world on her shoulders.

  “Ember, the bad comes in with the good. And I want all of it—I want your secrets, your worry, your pain. I love you—you’re not alone in this life.”

  Quiet tears trickled down my face, and then I pulled him to me.

  His cheek rubbed against mine. “Promise me you won’t forget that,” he whispered against my skin.

  I cried harder at his words. He was turning the knife in my heart further. I wasn’t worried about being alone; I was worried about getting killed and leaving the man in front of me alone.

  “Promise,” he repeated.

  I brushed a kiss across his cheek. My salty tears mingled with the taste of his skin. “I promise.”

  I felt a part of me break as I spoke the words. Yet something had also been lifted from my shoulders. Caden loved all of me—every screwed up, scarred piece of me. And in that realization was its own kind of freedom.

  The next evening I went over the mission with Caden. Well, correction: Caden sat at his desk, going over the mission. I lay on the floor of his room, flipping through my weaponry book.

  When I woke up in bed this morning, still alive and healthy, I wondered if my talk with Dane Richards wasn’t as bad as I assumed it was. My day went exactly like all others—classes and training. Nothing unusual had happened, and the project was still sending me on this mission.

  I glanced over at Caden, whose eyes moved across his laptop screen. He still had no idea how precariously I clung to my life here. Why worry him unnecessarily?

  “We’re going in at the same time, but in separate locations,” Caden said, flipping through his email message on the mission.

  This was part two of our drug lord distract-and-extract mission. Only tonight, instead of showing up at a museum in Mexico City, I was going to Emilio Santoro’s estate in Columbia, where I’d distract him once more.

  “Unfortunately, unless the evening gets violent, I’ll only be placing a mike on him,” Caden said. He actually looked bummed that he wouldn’t get to pound anyone’s face in to extract information. “And I’m sure you’ll do more than enough to distract him from that, Angela.”

  I cringed. My fake identity. I’d spent all week memorizing it. If I went over it one more time I knew I’d confuse my facts. Which was precisely why I was distracting myself with my weaponry textbook instead of cramming.

  “You’ll be careful, right?” Caden’s voice was gruff.

  I looked up from my work. Caden’s troubled expression made my own heart rate increase.

  I closed my book and set it aside. “Of course I’ll be careful—I promise.”

  He nodded to himself, his eyes unfocusing. “The thought of losing you …” He trailed off.

  His eyes refocused, honing in on me. “I thought having a partner would be the best thing in the world,” he said, leaning back against his chair. “Someone you were close with, someone who had your back and you had theirs—that’s pretty appealing to a boy whose family abandoned him.”

  I swallowed, not sure where he was going with this.

  “Then this happened,” he moved his hand between the two of us, “and it was better than the sweetest dream.” His smile was wistful, but it faded quickly.

  “I never listened to those who told me about the dark side of loving your pair. The jealousy you feel when you see another man touch them. The sheer terror that locks up your limbs every single time you know they’re in a dangerous situation. The anguish you feel every time you see that haunted look in their eyes, and the dread that it will only get worse with time.

  “But all of that pales in comparison to my ultimate worry,” he said, shaking his head. “So many people—” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “So many people have died doing this.”

  I couldn’t look at him, not now that he’d come so close to voicing my own fears. “I know,” I whispered, staring blankly at the book in front of me.

  He stood from his chair and knelt in front of me. He cupped my cheek and his mouth pressed against mine.

  I kissed him urgently and felt the hot rush of passion rise within me. Nothing was guaranteed but the present.

  His hands caressed the sides of my torso,
warming my flesh wherever they touched. I grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled it over his head while he tugged off my jeans.

  His thumb stroked the skin of my stomach as I removed his pants. His hands dipped under my shirt and he pushed the thin cotton tank top up my torso and over my head.

  Frantically we stripped off the rest of our clothes. I wrapped my legs around Caden as he picked me up and moved us to his bed.

  I wound my arms around his neck and blinked away the wetness in my eyes as my body shook. This felt too much like a goodbye. The unfairness of it all choked me up; I’d only just gotten a taste of being in love. I hadn’t even considered telling Caden the scariest secret of all: that he’d become my everything.

  Chapter 34

  My heart pounded the next evening as I was escorted to one of the many hospital beds.

  “You all know your roles; you’ve done this before,” Dane Richards said, pacing around the front of the sterilized room. “Now it’s time to wrap this up.”

  My eyes slid to Caden. He gave me the thumbs up as the crook of his arm was swabbed.

  No one else looked as nervous as I felt. Were they just good at hiding their nerves?

  Dane discussed the mission’s objectives and each teleporter’s role. I studied him while he did so. He didn’t live at the facility, but he’d been here quite often since I arrived. Maybe he always visited this often. But perhaps this was unusual. Perhaps something else was going on.

  His eyes met mine, catching me staring at him. The lines on his face deepened, and I looked away.

  A woman in a lab coat came over and wiped a damp cloth across the skin of my inner arm. My nostrils flared at the antiseptic smell.

  As she did so, the first set of teleporters disappeared. A short while later footage of the estate blinked up on the wall of screens. I scoured the screens until I found a figure that had to be Emilio. He stood out on the back patio of the estate talking with someone. Still as good looking as ever.