I rubbed at my arm, then frowned. I hadn't been able to examine my injuries very closely until now. The infection on my arm had spread, with red lines radiating from the central wound like the stingers from a jellyfish. I ran my fingers over the irritated skin and felt something hard and unyielding beneath the surface.
I rifled through the drawers until I found a knife. I ran it under water, trying to clean it as best I could. I braced my arm against the counter and dug the tip under the skin. The pain made my eyes water. I set my teeth and continued probing with the knife until something yielded and broke free.
There was a small scattering sound. A piece of metal skidded over the counter, shedding droplets of blood in its wake. I picked it up carefully. A leaden feeling of doubt was weighing down in my gut and grew heavier as my inspection confirmed my fears. It was a small tracking device. A GPS chip.
“Fuck,” I said hoarsely.
“Michael—oh God—” her eyes landed on my arm “what have you done?”
I showed her the chip. “Give me your arm.”
It might already be too late.
She thrust her arm at me without asking why. That trust. It had taken me years to earn it. I'd never had to work so hard for anything in my life.
And now, due to my own foolish oversights, I'd compromised everything.
I washed off the knife, but it was nowhere close to sterile. “It still might have some of my blood on it.”
“I don't care.” Her face was white, though.
“I'm sorry.” I was apologizing for everything — for the pain that was about to come, for the pain that had brought us here, for my failure. “I'd give you a shot of whiskey if I could.”
“Just do it.”
Famous last words.
She braced herself, but after only a few seconds she let out a hoarse scream. I tightened my hand on the knife handle. My palms were sweating like a teenage boy at prom. And to think my hands used to be among the steadiest. “Almost there.” Focus. I had to focus. “Just a few more seconds.”
The chip popped free. She made a wheezing gasp, pulling away from me. She closed her hand over her arm, squeezing tightly in imitation of a tourniquet.
“Jesus,” she said. “He tagged us — he tagged us as if…as if we were animals.”
“It's always been about the hunt for him.”
Her eyes widened. “He's been following us. Hunting us.” She shot up from the bed, and gave a whole-body flinch. “That's why it was so easy. He wanted us to escape.”
He didn't just want us to escape; he wanted to get us somewhere there wouldn't be any witnesses. As horrific as his treatment of us had been, he'd still been holding back. I'd seen him do far, far worse.
One step removed had been enough. I had no intention of succumbing to the same fate.
I got up, moving quickly but not hastily. I wanted to give a sense of urgency, not panic her. “We need to get out of here now.” I swung open the cupboard and after debating for a few seconds, grabbed a backpack. I shoved in what remained of the granola bars and the two gallons of water. “Grab anything you need.”
She closed her fingers around my wrist. “I have everything I need.”
I shot her a tense smile and opened the door.
Callaghan was standing right in front of it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Last Stand
Michael
I should have been surprised. I wasn't. This was what he lived for: the chase—the hunt—the capture.
The bastard was blocking our escape. He had managed to insinuate himself between both door and window. If we made for either, he'd get us both.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I'm sure a clever boy like you can figure that out.”
He reached into his coat. I tensed instinctively, knowing what that gesture meant. I'd done it hundreds of times myself. He had a gun. Of course he had a gun. He was leaving nothing to chance.
Had he ever?
I ignored the weapon for now. If he had planned to shoot us, he would have sniped us from the window. “Don't play dumb. How did you find us?”
He loaded the chamber with a click. “Easily.”
Christina clapped a hand over her mouth. A muffled sound came through her fingers. A prayer? A plea? A hoarse scream? Her eyes met mine over her tightly molded fingers, and they were full of fear and dread. I knew what she was thinking.
We were in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Camping was off-season and so was skiing. His appearance here was damn near supernatural, considering how far we had wandered before getting this far. Hundreds of cabins littered these parts, each virtually indistinguishable from the last. There was no way he had checked them all already, so how had he found us? Oh, I knew. I knew. That fucker.
“Would you like to know how?”
There was no right answer to that question. I said nothing, looking at Christina, trying to warn her to do the same. She seemed paralyzed by fear. I could see her shaking from where I stood.
“I had one of our surgeons implant a tracking device inside both your arms.” He smiled, pleased. “You might say forewarned is forearmed.”
“Fucking hilarious,” I growled.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “But it worked, didn't it?” He glanced around the cabin, dismissing its contents. “And now here we are. At the end.”
“The moment you've been jerking off to since you first got it into your head to frame me,” I said. “Let's be fucking real, here. This isn't an end. You don't want it to end. You're just getting started.”
He snorted. “As long as you continue to live, you continue to blight this organization with your very existence. It's a right mess I've got to clean it up. You botched years of work, and careful planning. Years of effort, wasted. And for what? A petty cause executed by a band of misfits and traitors?” He nodded at Christina. “A pretty piece of arse? You should have come to work for me when you had the chance, my girl. Then things would have been different. Your mother might still be alive.”
“Don't you dare blame me,” she said. “Don't you dare — not for a moment. None of this was ever my fault. I was dragged into this world, and my only crime was daring to survive it.”
“You made your choice.”
“That's not a choice. That's a trap snapping shut.”
“And let's not pretend that this is, or ever was, about money,” I said. “It certainly wasn't a damper on your plans, but that's not why you did what you did. You did this because you get off on it. Causing pain is what you thrive on, isn't it? The money was just a lure to get others to join your psychotic crusade. A means to an end in a long line of means — and it worked. It fucking worked. Until people began to find out the truth. That maybe your head wasn't screwed on as tightly as you liked to pretend. That maybe you were a sinking ship and they were a goddamn orchestra.”
“You think you're an innocent man, Michael Boutilier? You organized the BN, after all. You poached my men. Destroyed my base. Killed God knows how many innocents. How many widows and children, I wonder, can credit you to their fractured household? Does that make you a hero in your book?Is that what she told you? Everyone is baying for my blood because I dared cater to the one desire everyone has but no one dares take ownership for.”
“Kidnapping girls and selling them for money?” Christina asked flatly.
Callaghan gave Christina a flat, amused look.
“And I hear you took to it like a fish to water.”
I took a step forward and Callaghan raised his gun and said, mockingly, “I wouldn't.”
I stilled, fists clenched at my sides. Tension filled the room like natural gas, silent and deadly, a single spark from combustion. “So what now?”
“I kill you, kill the girl, and reap all the glory,” he said. “It's true what they say, Michael. Sometimes the quick, old-fashioned way is best.”
He corrected his aim so the gun was pointed right at Christina. “Ladies first?”
She w
ouldn't have time to get out of the way. And unlike a good ninety-percent of the population, Callaghan wouldn't hesitate before firing. He didn't have the arousal in his sympathetic nervous system required for that. There was no fear, no lingering conscience, no doubts. He was a true sociopath.
I didn't even have to think — I jumped.
The bullet punched me in the chest like a hot fist. At first the shock of the pressure preceded the pain, leaving only dizziness and a rushing in my ears. Then there was plenty of fucking pain and when I looked down the front of my shirt was completely red.
Christina's face … it was stricken. She was shaking her head and her lips were moving in that pale face. I couldn't make out the words, but I could read her lips. No, she was saying. No, no, nonono. Over and over, until the words blended together in a long, silent scream I couldn't make out over the roaring in my ears. I saw her collapse to the floor and as her face got closer, I realized that I had already fallen.
Oh sweetheart, I thought. I am so fucking sorry.
And then everything went black.
Christina
My heart went off like a rocket, and I was pierced with the red-hot fallout of shock and despair.
He'd killed him.
He'd killed him.
I sprang at Adrian. He'd been expecting that, but he hadn't been expecting the force brought on by my commingled fury. With a desperate, clawing gesture I managed to knock the gun from his hand. The gun went clattering across the floor. Adrian lunged for it, but I was closer, and more desperate.
And infinitely more pissed off.
I wrapped my fingers around the trigger, avoiding looking at Michael's too-still form. I knew if I looked at his body, I would lose all my resolve. I would hesitate. And then both of us would be dead.
I met the eyes of Michael's killer, and I knew with grim certainty that this time, only one of us would leave this room alive.
Adrian drew another gun with the leisurely confidence of someone who already believes that he has won. “You might as well give up. Who do you really think is going to win this Mexican standoff?”
I checked another impulse to glance over at Michael. I ached to go over to him — literally ached — but I couldn't. I had to end this. It was all on me.
If he killed me, our resistance would fall.
Angelica was a mercenary through and through. She would find other worthy causes if they paid her well enough and managed to be discreet.
Cliff — well, Cliff was a bit of a coward, as it turned out. Maybe he would slip through the cracks and maybe he wouldn't.
Maybe another resistance group would rise up in our stead to take on the IMA, but it would take a while. Our failure would be grounding for many people: a cautionary tale warning against upheaval.
“You should have accepted my offer when you had the chance, Christina Parker.”
“Because that worked out so well for Suraya.”
“She wasn't as useful as you are.”
“More excuses to kill me when you've finished playing around.”
“And what about you?” he asked. “Betraying organization after organization, whenever it suits you. You can claim the moral high ground but you can't deny the truth—you don't care for your people any more than I care for mine. They're just ends to your means.”
“I'm not going to have a moral argument with a fucking psychopath.”
“You sound like Michael.”
I didn't flinch. “Coming from you, that's a compliment.”
He scoffed, and said, “It's a pity you don't have his aim.”
I had to drop to the floor as he fired the gun. It was close — I felt the displaced air from the shot.
I rolled behind the bed, heart pounding, as he fired off another, knowing that he would shoot me while I was down. It was closer this time. Shit.
I had to get out from under the bed. I was a sitting duck under here.
I struggled out, scraping myself on the rough underside of the mattress. I barely noticed the sting of catching flesh and tearing fabric. Adrian swung over the side of the bed and landed with a heavy thump that shook the walls and rattled the glass in their frames.
“Or his endurance,” he added cruelly.
I didn't let myself think about that. I ran into the bathroom as a bullet grazed the door frame. He was herding me. Toying with me. If he wanted to, he could have killed me a hundred times over.
And he was so certain that he would that he was drawing it out. If I was smart, I could figure out a way to use that to my advantage.
I leaned against the wall next to the light switch. I held the gun tightly, holding my arms to my chest so it was pointing towards the ceiling.
I couldn't think of a damn thing.
Oh, God. I'm going to die.
“You don't have it in you to shoot me.” His voice was getting closer. “You're a coward at heart. You find the idea of spilling blood far too distasteful. Even a psychopath is eligible for your none-too-discerning sense of morality.”
No. He was wrong about that. Things had changed. Everything had changed.
I'd learned to deal in blood, as with so much else.
Adrian stopped talking. I knew he was approaching the bathroom. Like a cat waiting to pounce he was going to deliver the coup de grace. It was when he stopped talking that you needed to be afraid because it mean that he had already decided to hurt you. Whether it was to maim or kill, he intended to hit me, and I could not let that happen.
My hands trembled. Oh, Michael. A whimper was building up in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down like bad medicine. There was nobody to save me this time. I was all alone.
I crouched down and tried to tuck myself into a little ball. I took a deep breath and rolled out of the bathroom. Adrian had been aiming too high, which gave me several seconds' grace. I missed the first shot, but the second hit — hit me right in the arm.
My eyes watered as the pain sizzled through me. But my hands clenched as they spasmed and by sheer luck, I didn't drop the gun; I fired, instead.
It was a terrible shot. Of course it was. I hadn't been aiming. And yet, because it was reflexive, I'd hit him. I'd gotten him right in the chest.
Yes.
“You're going to die, you bastard,” I hissed.
He dropped the gun when I shot him in the leg. The good one. I kicked his gun aside.
“How does it feel, knowing you're about to get what's coming to you? Are you afraid?”
Adrian said, quietly, “I feel nothing.”
“Let me help you with that,” I snarled, and I shot him in the dick. The sound he made send chills down my spine in the best way.
Still feel nothing now?
“You took everything from me. Everything.” I had to raise my voice to be heard over his moans. It took effort. More than I was able to dredge up. I blinked away tears. “And now, in the last few minutes of your life, you get to understand exactly how much pain you caused me.”
“Do that,” he said hoarsely, “and you'll become what you hate.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I will never be like you.”
I drew in a deep breath.
“Never.”
I shot him until there was nothing left in the chamber. Because if I stopped, even for a moment, Adrian might spring back to life like a sinister wind-up toy. Click. My finger wouldn't, couldn't, stop moving. Click. Click.
Click.
Empty.
Just like my heart.
Adrian Callaghan lay on the ground in his three-piece suit, covered in gore. Blood oozed from the holes dappling his body like a serial killer's interpretation of a Jackson Pollock painting. The illusion of humanity was gone. Finally, he looked every inch the monster he was.
Had been.
Oh God, Michael.
I stumbled towards him. The gun fell from my numb fingers as I dropped to my knees. He was breathing, but very slowly, and his chest hardly moved at all. No. I pushed his hair out of his face, which was terribl
y pale. All the blood that was supposed to be in his body was pooling around him on the floor. A small sob escaped me. I couldn't stand to see him like this, motionless, lifeless.
So unlike him.
Then, he stirred. “Christina?”
His voice. It was so weak.
“Michael,” I whispered. “Please get up.”
He groaned, and tried to shake his head. “I can't.”
This time there was no getaway car. No doctor with his hands tied to contact in a pinch. If I brought Michael to a hospital they would slap him in a cell, no questions asked. He'd spend the next couple of years on death row for all the crimes that he had committed if he pulled through.
I stopped myself, horror filling me as I realized what I'd just thought. If he pulled through
If.
If.
If.
I hadn't meant it. Hadn't even meant to think it.
But once that conditional had entered my head, I couldn't unthink it.
“Get out of here.” The effort it cost him to speak pulled as taut as a wire. “Now.”
I couldn't rescue him, just to see him die. I couldn't save him and then lose him all over again.
“I'm not going to leave you. I can't.”
“Sweetheart,” he said. “Sometimes loving someone means having to let them go.”
“No. I'm not going to let you go. I won't.”
I pressed my lips to his and, as though that were the key to unlocking my sorrow, tears spilled down my cheeks, splashing his face, mixing with the blood and the dirt to wash down his face like messily-blended watercolors.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said hoarsely. “And that's why I want you to live. Don't die with me.”
I sniffled. “You're not going to die.”
“We all die eventually.” His eyes shuttered. “Now. Quickly. My pocket…reach into…my…”
“Pocket?” I whispered.
Michael exhaled slowly, and I waited, heart pounding — please, please, please — for a response, but he was still. So terribly, deathly still.
With a shaking hand, I reached into his pocket.
There was a piece of paper, folded into a tight square. Between the creases a phone number was written. That was it. Nothing else. No other clues.
Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) Page 30
