“Someone went dumpster diving,” I said, giving him an appreciative smile.
“Actually, you need to give me a little more credit than that because they came from the vacant apartment complex across the street, so I’d like to believe everything is completely sanitary.” He turned around, producing three small candles in jars, which he set down a couple of feet away from the bed and lit with a match from a book of matches he pulled out of his pocket. The light from the candles produced a glow that made even the confines of our compartment seem charming.
“Why, Ian Grant, is this how you wooed the ladies back home?”
“Nah, who needs romance when booze will do just fine,” he said, grinning up at me.
“You and I both know that’s not true.”
“Yeah, but that’s between you and me.”
“Always.”
“I hope so,” he said as he situated himself on the blanket, patting the spot next to him.
I made my way over to him and sat down, realizing that there was more than just a blanket underneath me. “You found an air mattress, too? Oh, Ian, I love you,” I said, gasping as my own words hit me.
“Yeah, I know, women love me for my air mattress,” he said, laughing. “Lie down. It’s not perfect. There’s a small leak in it somewhere and the air is slowly leaking out from underneath us, but I figured we’d make do.”
“It’s perfect,” I said, lying down next to him.
“It is.” He kissed my ear as he positioned his body firmly against mine. His arm wrapped tightly around my waist.
Tears crept into my eyes, and I did everything I could to suppress them, knowing that there would be plenty of time for them to fall tomorrow, and there was no place for them here tonight. My hand made its way to Ian’s draped around my waist and my fingers intertwined with his while my gaze trailed up to the pallet above us. “Ian,” I said, gasping. Displayed on each individual slat of the pallet, for as far as my eyes could see, were stars drawn with what appeared to be white chalk.
“I figured you’d want to sleep under the stars,” he said, his breath warming the back of my neck.
“You—you’re incredible,” I said. The tears escaped from my eyes and fell down my cheeks. “And damn you for making me cry.” My hand slapped his arm playfully as I sat up to take it all in.
“I try,” he said, rolling over onto his back. He remained silent as I took in the scene above us. “So, how about that wager we made?” he said after some timed had passed.
“Of course, how could I forget? What do you want, a foot rub? World peace?”
“You,” he answered matter-of-factly. “And not in the way you’re thinking right now.” I raised my eyebrow at him, smirking. “Okay, not only in the way you’re thinking right now,” he conceded. “I’m trying to keep my intentions honorable here.” He sat up next to me, staring up at his handiwork along with me. “Look, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, how everything is going to play out, or whether we’ll even get to see what the day after tomorrow has in store for us. But we do get tonight, and if it’s the only night we’re going to get, I don’t want to squander it. So let’s forget about tomorrow and live in the present.”
“I’d like that,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder. “So what are your most honorable intentions for tonight, Mr. Grant? What is it about me that you want?”
“Well, Ms. Stevens, for starters, I’d really like to know your middle name.”
“Guess,” I said.
“Marie. Every girl’s middle name is Marie, or so I’ve experienced.”
“Not even close.”
“Really? Wow. Okay, Celaine not Marie Stevens, I concede defeat.” He laughed as he brushed his fingers through my hair.
“It’s Elizabeth,” I said, directing my gaze at him. The light from the candles played in his eyes, making them sparkle more than usual.
“That was going to be my next guess.” He smirked. “Okay, no, it wasn’t. I wasn’t even close.”
“What’s yours?”
“William,” he answered. “After my father.” He brushed the back of his hand against my cheek. And at that moment, as I looked into his eyes, I could see my entire world changing as though he’d awoken a part of me that had lain dormant since my parents’ and Jake’s death, a part of me that not even Chase had been able to revive.
“Why a bar, Ian?” I asked. “You’re smart, you’re talented. Surely, there could have been other places for you to have found a job.”
“Now you’re giving me too much credit,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know. For a while, I took classes at a local community college and used the money I made in tips to help pay my tuition, but eventually, when I couldn’t afford to attend class anymore, I just decided that maybe mediocre was all I’d ever be. So, I guess, I just kind of gave up on the whole college thing, but couldn’t turn my back on the money thing because, you know, I’d starve and all.”
His revelation deepened my disdain for his mother and her non-existence in her son’s life. And I couldn’t help but wonder what his view of the world would be had his father not died. Had he actually had someone in his life who cared about him and encouraged him, making him realize that he is more than just simply mediocre.
“What did you study in school?”
“Photography.”
Duh, Celaine.
“But I was also taking business courses because I eventually wanted to open my own studio and figured they would come in handy. You know, in a perfect world.”
I closed my eyes, taking in the feeling of his hand against my skin. “If we lived in this perfect world, one where we didn’t have to fight for our lives, where would you see yourself?” I asked him, catching him off guard.
“In that perfect world,” he said contemplatively. “Well, I guess I would be traveling the world with my camera, taking photographs to sell to magazines and living day to day with the woman I love by my side, waiting for the day when I became good enough for her to marry me, eventually have kids, and all that other stuff.” He grew sullen all of a sudden, his eyes trailing down toward the floor. “Of course, we all know that’s a dream, right?”
“Hey,” I said, tilting his head back up towards me. “Tonight, remember? We’ll worry about tomorrow later.”
“Right, tonight,” he said, his mood brightening.
I traced the outline of his lips with my index finger, finding myself entranced by their curvature. “Here’s one for you. Now, this may take you a while because it’s a pretty complicated question, but one that we all must answer in our lives at some point in time, nonetheless.”
“Oh, I’m bracing myself for this.” His lips moved to kiss my finger.
“What’s. Your. Favorite. Color?” I asked, adding an ounce of drama to my voice.
“Oh, now you’ve gone too far,” he said, trying to suppress a laugh. “In fact, I’m so appalled by the audacity of that question that I don’t think I can answer it.” I laughed as Ian pulled me into his body, his lips touching my forehead. Stubble from his chin scratched the bridge of my nose. “It’s funny,” he said softly, “because if you would have asked me that a year ago, I would have said green. But it’s not green anymore, it’s brown.”
“Brown? I asked, my face contorted in disgust. “Why brown? That’s like the ugliest color of them all. It’s what you get by accident when the rest of the colors in the pallet all mix together and you have to throw it away and start all over again.”
His hand cupped my chin as he rolled his eyes. “It’s not just any shade of brown, Celaine Elizabeth, it’s the shades of brown in your eyes. Mahogany and sepia. Colors that both contrast with each other, yet play off one another so beautifully that they’ve left an indelible impression in my head that I will never be able to forget, no matter how hard I try. To me, that makes brown—your brown—the most beautiful color in the world to me, royally kicking green’s ass any day.”
Without hesitation, I touched my lips to his in a k
iss that I wanted to last the entire night. Ian’s hand brushed through my hair until it reached the back of my head where he held my mouth to his as though echoing my thoughts. “I want you tonight, too,” I said, parting my lips away from his just long enough to speak. “Except my intentions aren’t honorable.”
He lowered me down onto the mattress, keeping me locked in his arms as he hovered over me. “Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” I agreed.
He pressed his lips to mine in a kiss that contained more passion, more need, and more hope than any we had shared before as we gave in to each other without fear of tomorrow.
*****
I jolted up from the mattress, a commotion from off in the distance awakening me.
“What is it?” Ian asked, sitting up. He moved his mouth to say something, but stopped before the words could come out. He’d heard it, too.
I reached over the side of the mattress for my clothes and quickly threw them on, practically falling over my own two feet as I struggled to pull my pants on in the dark. Nearby, the commotion grew steadily louder, allowing me to make out the distant voice of a woman.
“Please, I need to find her,” she pleaded. “I need to know if Celaine Stevens is here. Please, it’s urgent.”
In the darkness, I could hear Ian fumbling around for his boots. Without waiting for him, I ran over to the edge of our compartment and began the climb down, jumping the rest of the way to the ground when I reached the halfway point. The moment my feet hit the ground, I took off in the direction of the woman’s voice who had spoken my name, knowing that it could only belong to one person. Behind me, I heard Ian’s feet strike the ground.
To my right, through the entryway we’d come when we first arrived at the warehouse, I saw a light and shadows reflected on the walls.
“What’s going on?” Nicholas asked.
“We found her snooping around outside,” Aron said. “She said she needs to speak to Celaine.”
“Please, if she’s not here, I’ll be on my way. I mean none of you any harm,” the woman said again.
“That sounds exactly like something Brooks would say,” Aron sneered.
“Let her go,” I said, running down the hall. At the sound of my voice, Kara whipped around, her eyes widening and tears falling down her unusually unkempt face. The front of her jacket and the knees of her blue jeans were smudged with dirt as though she’d been crawling over the ground. Most likely, she probably had. “Let her go now,” I repeated more sternly.
Aron released her after some reluctance, eyeing me suspiciously as Kara tore down the hall and collapsed at my feet.
Chapter Thirty-One
Revelations
Ian and I helped Kara along the hallway and into the warehouse where she collapsed on one of the pallets. I sat next to her, doing my best to console her. Her body shook heavily from fear, from worry, from relief, from the burden of words that so desperately wanted to make themselves heard.
“I—I never thought I’d find you,” she said, throwing her arms around me in an embrace. Dirt smudged her face, blending in with her smeared mascara. She rubbed the tears from her eyes, only smudging the combination of dirt and makeup across her face that much more. “When I saw the fire on the news, I knew this side of town would be my best bet. I just kept telling myself that you were still alive.”
Despite my best attempts at consoling her, her body still shook. With her sobs growing louder, a few of the others, including Jill, made their way out of their compartments to see whom the frightened voice belonged to. “When I got closer to the city,” Kara continued, practically hyperventilating, “I ditched my car down a side street and ran, crouching in alleyways and dumpsters every time I heard the sound of footsteps coming my way. I spent the majority of the day searching through buildings and hiding in the shadows until I ran into people patrolling the streets around this place. When I saw they weren’t in uniforms, I figured I could trust them.”
“You can,” I said, rubbing her arm. “Everything’s okay now, Kara.”
“No, you don’t understand, everything is not okay,” she said, tears streaming down her face at a more pronounced rate than before. “That’s why I’m here.”
Ian’s face radiated concern, and his eyes were transfixed on Kara as though he wanted to say something, but feared what her response would be. “What is it?” I asked, watching as her face grew even paler before my eyes. Then a thought occurred to me, one that should have hit me the moment I saw her standing in the hallway. “You were able to get into Victor’s office, weren’t you? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
She glanced up at me, her eyes wide with tears. The nod that followed a second later was all the verification I needed. “What did you find, Kara? Please, tell me.” I grabbed Kara’s hand while Ian sat on the other side of her. “Was it Cameron? Did he let you in? Were you able to find anything? Did he tell Victor? I’m so sorry for asking you to be nice to that little—”
“He’s dead, Celaine,” she said, trying to control her breathing. “Cameron’s dead, and it’s my fault.”
“What?” Ian asked, shocked. “How?”
“He shot himself in the head, right in front of Drew and I, after we found out—after we found out—”
“After you found out what?” I asked, squeezing her hand.
Her breathing increased, and a sudden anger emerged from her unlike I’d ever seen in her before. “It’s been him all this time,” she said softly as though the secrets were fighting with her to stay hidden. “We’ve been working for him the entire time.”
“We’ve been working for whom—” I asked, my voice trailing off the instant the answer struck me. “No,” I said demandingly. My feet hit the floor as my body stood up, but my mind was too detached from my physical form to realize that I’d changed positions at all. I was numb from head to toe. “It’s not him, it’s not,” I said to her, my voice pleading. “He’s not The Man in Black.” I took a couple of steps back. It felt like I was floating instead of walking. Tears clouded my vision. “I’ve not just spent the last year training under and eating dinner with the man who killed my family. Tell me I’m misunderstanding you, Kara. Please.”
“There was a room,” she began again without correcting me. “A hidden room inside his office. Drew found it while I was going through Victor’s files. We found bombs and a suit—his suit. It was unmistakable, and Cameron confirmed it,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m so sorry, Celaine. I had no idea about any of it.”
“Damn it,” Ian yelled, his voice pained. He jumped up from the pallet and paced the floor of the warehouse with his hands on his head. “That son of a bitch murdered my father, and I was living under the same roof as him all this time.” His face reddened from a fury I never thought he was capable of showing. “And to think I was grateful to him for choosing me. I was grateful to the man who burned my father alive. Grateful to the man who ruined my life.” Ian walked away from me, letting out a sick, guttural yell, resembling that of a mortally wounded animal that refused to quit fighting for its life. Furious, he punched one of the shelving units, splintering the wood where his fist struck it. From where I stood, I could see blood dripping from his hand. The wood fell to the floor, leaving a bloody trail in its wake. Perhaps too numb to notice or care himself, his injury didn’t seem to faze him as he collapsed to the floor and rocked back and forth with his arms hugging his knees.
“That’s not all,” Kara said nervously.
“What do you mean, ‘that’s not all’?” I asked. “How could there possibly be more?” Ian looked up at us from the floor, blood still dripping from his hand.
“Victor knew your father. They were both doctors at Hope Memorial.”
As much as I tried to get my mind to process what she’d said, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Instead, I stood in front of her, staring at her until my brain would finally allow my thoughts to connect with my lips. “How do you know that?” I asked.
“In
your file, there were photographs and newspaper clippings spanning your entire life. Celaine, it was eerie to say the least. In one of them there was a photograph of your father and Victor together.” She looked over at Ian, who was making his way back over to us. “There was also a photograph of a Phillip Grant.”
“I had an uncle named Phillip,” Ian said. “He and my dad had a falling out when my dad and my mom began dating. I never met him, and my dad rarely spoke of him. All I ever knew was that he was a doctor who died in a car accident.”
“He was a doctor at Hope Memorial,” Kara said, “along with George Stevens.”
Stunned, Ian and I exchanged glances with each other before turning our attention back to Kara. “That can’t be a coincidence,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “I don’t think it is.”
“We weren’t chosen by random,” Ian said, disgusted. “We couldn’t have been. Something must have happened, some rift must have taken place between them. That sadistic psychopath chose us to fulfill some twisted vendetta he had against them and their bloodline, and what better way than by enslaving us and using us as tools while he slowly picks us off, too.”
“Celaine,” Kara said just loud enough to jolt me out of the trance I found myself in. “In your file, I also found this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping. With a shaky hand, she slipped it between my fingers.
An unexplained feeling of dread consumed me as I unfolded the clipping. Dread that reached its climax when I saw Chase staring back at me from the photograph in my hands. “A wedding announcement?” I asked, my stomach suddenly turning in knots. “Why? Why would this be important to Victor?” Confused, I scanned the announcement, stopping near the end at the printed wedding date. “He’s getting married today.”
“Cameron didn’t give me much to work with,” Kara said, “but before he took his own life, he mentioned that Victor had him gather information on Chase and that he left a few days ago with enough bombs to blow up a small town.”
Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) Page 25
