Dark Sins and Desert Sands

by Stephanie Draven

  “What’s it like having family?” Ray repeated, struggling for an answer. “It’s like asking someone what it’s like to have an arm or a leg. You can explain what it’s like to lose it, but you take it for granted when you have one.”

  “They must be so worried about you.”

  Ray was pretty sure that his family couldn’t be more worried about him than he was about them. It had to have been terrible for them when he just disappeared. How much worse it must be now with his picture all over the news, every other commentator calling him a terrorist. “It kills me to think of what my nephews must be thinking about me right now.”

  Layla offered him a sip of her soda and this time he took it. “Ray, I’m sure their parents tell them that you’re a good man.”

  “They don’t have parents,” Ray explained, the familiar ache in his chest. “Their mother died in childbirth.”

  “She was your sister?”

  “My sister-in-law. When Ayisha died, my brother just— He’d never been the most stable guy, okay? He went off his meds and he got it into his head that the boys would be better off without him. So he checked out.”

  “He abandoned them?”

  Ray worked his jaw. “He killed himself, Layla.”

  They drove in silence for a little while, and he thought maybe she’d let that be the end of it, but instead, she said, “Was he in therapy?”

  “You really think that would have made a damned bit of difference? Some people just can’t hack it.”

  “You sound angry at your brother.”

  “I guess I am. I guess I think he was a fucking coward to leave two little kids behind like that…not to mention what it did to my parents. My mother thinks that his soul is burning for eternity. The day of my brother’s funeral, my father said he didn’t believe in God anymore. He said he’d never step foot in another mosque again and he never has.”

  “What about what your brother’s suicide did to you?”

  Ray shifted in his seat. “Stop being a shrink.”

  “I’m not asking as your therapist. I’m asking because I care about you. I want to know.”

  “You want to know what his suicide did to me? It kept me from bashing my skull open against the metal walls of that dungeon. There were days when killing myself seemed like the only way I was ever going to get out of that coffin, but I just kept thinking about my brother and how two little boys were going to spend their lives wondering why they weren’t good enough for him to stick around.”

  “Is that what you think? That you weren’t good enough to keep him here in this life?”

  Ray would have glared at her, but he was too afraid to take his eyes off the road and too afraid she’d see the truth of it in his features. He’d spent his whole life trying to prove he was good enough. A good enough brother and son to keep his family together. A good enough friend that Jack shouldn’t have lost his shit in Afghanistan. A good enough soldier that his country should have loved him, too.

  “Maybe you should call your family,” Layla suggested. “I have a few phones that’d be hard to trace….”

  “Save ’em. We might need them.”

  “What about a pay phone?” Layla asked. “There’s one right there.”

  Leave it to Kansas to still be using old-fashioned phone booths in this age of Hello Kitty devices. Ray could call home. Just one call. It might be the last chance he’d ever have to hear their voices. He could just let them know that what they were hearing on the news wasn’t true. Maybe he could even ask them to look for Missy in case he didn’t find her at the Scorpion Group offices.

  As the silver glint of the phone booth beckoned him to the side of the road, Ray jerked the truck to the shoulder, put it in Park and slammed the door when he got out. If he took the time to think better of this, he might change his mind.

  He was in the phone booth within three long strides and had yanked the door closed behind him before he even knew what he was doing.

  He should have known better.

  As soon as he heard the metal close upon its latch, the air went out of his lungs. It was one of those old-fashioned booths with a phone book on a long chain, but for Ray, he was in the dark, alone and suffocating on the stench of his own sweat and urine. When he’d forced himself to climb into the shower with Layla, he’d been concentrating on helping her. Now Ray couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. He just started punching in a blind fury. He heaved with his shoulder, like some kind of creature bursting out of a shell. Something shattered beneath his fist. Something else screeched and warped, cutting him with its jagged edge. In blind terror he found a fist full of wires and pulled. More glass shattered and the whole frame of the booth creaked in collapse. The next thing he knew, he was scrambling his way out of the wreckage, safety glass crunching beneath his feet as blood dripped down both arms.

  “Ray!” Layla put both hands over her face. “Are you okay?”

  He was anything but okay. He was shaking all over, covered in sweat, yet cold as ice. His attacks were getting worse and worse. What if he couldn’t stop it? What if next time, he was so blinded with panic he hurt somebody—somebody who didn’t deserve to be hurt? Dazed, Ray stumbled to the truck, and Layla was at his elbow steadying him as he gasped for air.

  “Layla, you gotta tell me something…”

  “Count your breaths,” Layla said calmly, her cool hand on his cheek.

  One. Two. Three… Fuck if it didn’t actually help. Or maybe it was her.

  “You gotta tell me, Layla—” he broke off trying to catch his breath.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but not until you calm down.”

  She was steady—steely even—as she got him back into the truck somehow.

  “Tell me about minotaurs,” he said, still panting. “What happens? Do we go psycho?”

  “Minotaurs have violent rages,” she said without looking at him. Something in the ruined phone booth had cut through his T-shirt and tore his shoulder open. Kneeling beside him in the front seat, using only the overhead car light to see, Layla inspected the wound. “Hold still, Ray.”

  “We have violent rages and what?” he asked. “Kill people?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted, probing the wound. “Mostly, minotaurs don’t live as long as the one Theseus killed. Using their powers, they burn out quickly and die. That’s why Seth is so impatient to have you in his clutches. He wants to control you before you’re worthless to him.”

  Great. The expression on Ray’s face must have told her that he’d heard all he needed to know, and that he didn’t want to discuss it further because when she leaned back to look at him, all she said was, “Your cut isn’t too deep. You may not need stitches.”

  “There’s no time for stitches.”

  “At least let me bandage it.”

  “I just need to drive,” Ray snapped, but he was in no condition to take the wheel. His vision was swimming and his hands were shaky. It’d be just his luck to be picked up by the cops for weaving on the road. “We need to get to Missy.”

  “I’ll get us there,” Layla promised. “You just have to trust me.”

  And in spite of all reason, he did.

  Scorpion Group’s office was tucked back on D Street, just past L’Enfant Plaza, and the wedge-shaped gray and glass building was exactly as Layla had described it to him. Now, in the truck beside him, Layla was staring at the building with an expression of unease, her shoulders tense.

  “So this is where you used to work?” Ray asked. “Will they recognize you?”

  “I worked all over the world,” Layla said, her voice a monotone. “Mostly at the compound in Arlington, but I spent some time here.”

  Seth may have wiped her memories to punish her, but Ray wondered if it had been a blessing in disguise. She’d run away from this life to make a new one in Las Vegas. She hadn’t wanted to face these memories and maybe she wouldn’t have ever had to if Ray hadn’t tracked her down. “Layla, you don’t have to do this. You don’t
have to relive your past….”

  “I do have to, Ray. Seth took my memories, but now I think I want them back. All of them. Good and bad…”

  Ray respected her determination, but was rethinking the wisdom of having her with him. “I still think it’s too dangerous.”

  “You’re the only one in danger here,” Layla said, tying her hair back. “Every guard in that building could shoot me full of holes and I’d heal, but if you go in there, guns blazing—”

  “Well, I wasn’t planning on blasting my way in. I was going to use my powers. I just need you to tell me about the security in this building. I need to know how many minds I need to control at once. I’ve never had to do it to more than one person at a time.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Ray,” she said. “Every time you use your powers, it hurts you. I can do this.”

  “How? If Seth is looking for you, don’t you think everyone on his payroll knows your face?”

  “I’m going to riddle them,” she said.

  “You mean like that guy in the Vegas stairwell? The one you left a gibbering idiot after you hit him with the fire extinguisher?”

  Layla winced. “He was trying to hurt me. I acted on instinct. I posed too powerful a riddle.”

  “Is that what happened to Dr. Jaffe too?” He tried to ask it gently, but maybe there was no way of asking it that wouldn’t hurt her.

  “I didn’t kill Nate Jaffe,” she said firmly, getting out of the truck. “Seth did that because he’s a jealous maniac. He wanted to spook me and to make me feel guilty, but I’m not groping around in the dark anymore. I know how to ask questions more like…”

  “More like what you did to Missy when you made her cry,” Ray finished for her. “More like what you did to me in Syria.”

  She nodded without meeting his eye. He saw her swallow, her fingers folding in her lap. “You have your monstrous powers, Ray, and I have mine.”

  When he thought she was a mortal woman, he’d been haunted by her. Obsessed with her. Now that he knew she too was afflicted with strange abilities, it only deepened the connection. He’d thought they were so different. His hot temper clashed with her cool reason. His brawn versus her brains. But the monster in her was someone else’s creation, and he understood her struggle on the deepest level. She didn’t want to riddle anyone, but she was going to do it for his sake. For him.

  “Well, if we’re gonna do this thing, then we’re gonna do it together,” Ray said.

  At the front desk, Layla flashed her outdated badge for the security cameras, not for the guards. One of them seemed to recognize her and started to pick up his radio, but Layla wasn’t about to let that happen. “A maze without walls, turns or hidden doors. No map can chart it, no ship can sail it and only reflection can banish it.”

  Confusion. That would keep their minds working for a while. The guard with the radio sat back down in his chair as if lost in concentration. The other guard blinked, his eyelids drooping.

  With that, she and Ray walked right into the building. She didn’t like Ray seeing her use her sphinx powers, but there was something exhilarating about what they were doing together as a team, and a look passed between them that made her melt. She’d never felt as if she had a partner in anything before. Now Ray knew her secrets, and he was still at her side.

  Layla navigated the hallways quickly, threading her way to the storage room. If Seth was holding Missy prisoner in this building, he’d be keeping her there. When they reached the clerk on duty, the woman’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Dr. Bahset?”

  Now it was Ray’s turn. He took one look at the woman, latched onto her mind, and said, “Push in the pass code.”

  “Just do what he says,” Layla told her, but the woman’s hand was already lifting and punching numbers of its own volition.

  “Who are you?” the clerk asked Ray. “How are you doing this?”

  “You don’t know who I am,” Ray replied, staring into her eyes. “You didn’t see us come in and you don’t remember punching in any access codes.”

  Layla winced. It was one thing for Ray to force people to his will—quite another to see him toy with their memories. Seth had done it to her and she wasn’t sure she could bear to see it happen to anyone else. The blood would follow, she knew. From his nose or his eyes or his ears. Minotaurs were short-lived creatures and she didn’t want him to spend any more of his life than he needed to, so she didn’t even ask him if he could undo the damage.

  Meanwhile, Ray shoved the industrial door open. “Missy!”

  But there wasn’t anyone inside. Instead, the room was filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes. As the disappointment passed over his face, he asked, “Is there anywhere else they’d be keeping her?”

  Layla shook her head.

  “What about in Arlington? You said there was another facility there. A compound?”

  “It’s more private than this office, Ray, but it’s also more secure.” If Seth really had kidnapped the girl, she could be halfway around the world on a private jet to Dubai, but Layla didn’t want to get Ray more worked up than he already was.

  “What the hell is all of this?” Ray asked, pointing to the boxes.

  “Notes from contractors in the field,” Layla said.

  “You think there’s anything here about Missy? Maybe about my case?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But we don’t have time to look. We have maybe five or ten minutes.”

  “Let’s make the most of them,” Ray said, yanking down the nearest box and riffling through it.

  Layla wanted to tell him not to bother. It was the needle in the proverbial haystack. On the other hand, she remembered one salient fact about her master. Seth’s guise as an officious government contractor alone proved that he believed in security through obscurity. “If there’s something here about your case, Seth would’ve mixed it in with something mundane, something that he thinks is clever.”

  “Like a yellow box?” Ray asked, yanking a banana-colored container from the shelf. “For Ray of Sunshine, since I’m such a sunny kind of guy?”

  “Something like that,” she answered, meandering down the rows looking for boxes with place names. She found one from Crete—home of the more famous minotaur. Another one from Spain, which was famous for its bullfighting. They dumped records all over the floor, and the more files Layla opened the more horrified she was. Ray wasn’t the only man that Scorpion Group employees had tortured. He wasn’t even Seth’s only pet project.

  It was Layla who found the file first. Plain manila with a black sail upon it. Just like the one that the hero Theseus mistakenly flew after having slain the Minotaur of Crete. “I think I found something,” she whispered, flipping it open and gasping at the contents. “Ray, we have to get out of here now.”

  “What the hell is in that file?” Ray asked, trying to snatch it from her, but Layla was already at the door. She started at a full run and he chased her as she retraced their steps and exited the building before Seth’s security team roused themselves from their puzzled stupor.

  “Do you need to unriddle them, or whatever?” he asked, glancing at the men who still sat behind the marble security desk, still as stone.

  “They’ll come out of it on their own,” she said. “Now hurry!”

  “What’s in the file?” Ray asked, running by her side. “Is there anything about Missy?”

  “No, nothing,” she said, her boots pounding on the pavement as she raced to the truck.

  Ray wasn’t sure how many more dead ends he could come up against and retain any semblance of sanity. “Then why the hell are we running?”

  “Because there’s a note inside,” she said. “In Seth’s handwriting. It says ‘Keep looking, Rayhan.’ He knew you’d come for it.”

  They flung open the vehicle doors and leaped inside. As Ray peeled out of the parking spot and sped away, Layla kept her eyes on the rear window, as if convinced the dark god of Egypt was going to come lashing his chariot out into traffic. Instead, they b
oth saw blue lights of security cars racing toward the Scorpion Group offices.

  “So it was a trap,” Ray said, grinding his teeth. Between the security footage and eyewitness accounts of their breakin, they’d gambled and lost. There was already a manhunt in progress for him—and now the authorities would have an even better idea where to look. In fact, he half expected to see a helicopter hovering overhead.

  “No,” Layla said, her knuckles white as she gripped the folder in her hands. “If it was a trap, we’d both have been caught. He’s toying with you. He doesn’t want to capture you in an office building in the middle of the city where people might hear you scream. He’s egging you on, trying to lure you somewhere else.”

  “Like where?”

  “Like the compound in Arlington,” Layla snapped. “It’s a little out of the way. He has medical facilities and panic rooms and all sorts of places he could torture you some more and no one would hear you scream. It’s a good place to hold prisoners.”

  “Prisoners like Missy,” Ray said. “Maybe we should have gone there first.”

  Layla twisted toward him in the passenger seat. “You’re not going to break into Scorpion Group’s compound in Arlington.”

  “What the hell other choice do I have?”

  “Ray, I don’t think Seth has Missy. Look at this note. He didn’t think you’d come after the girl. He thought you’d come after a file. He thinks the most important thing to you is finding out who the informant was who turned you in.”

  “It is,” Ray said, emotions roiling. Well, it was anyway. Ever since he’d found Layla again, his priorities had shifted.

  “Ray, you can’t fight a god. Neither of us can.” Even over the roar of passing traffic, he heard the quaver in her voice. She was scared.

  When he’d been down in that hole, Ray had forgotten other people. They’d kept him in darkness so long he wasn’t sure he could even remember his own mother’s face. He’d started to think only of himself, only of his survival, and only of his pain. They’d turned him into this, and he’d let them. These rages were making him more of a minotaur every day, but he wasn’t a monster. Not completely. Not yet. Making love to Layla had reminded him of that.