Discovering Beauty

by Robyn Peterman

  “Long time no see,” I said in a flat tone as their eyes adjusted to the lack of light. “So nice of you to come. I’ve missed you.”

  “Your sense of humor never failed to amuse,” Sabrina said in her nasally voice that made me want to scream.

  They were armed with tranq guns and pistols. I was unsure how adept they were at using them as they’d always had muscle to do their dirty work. I could smell their fear, but outwardly they were as calm as cucumbers. Impressive.

  Tamping down my desire to run for my life was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I had to keep reminding myself I wasn’t in a cage or strapped to a table under blinding lights. I wasn’t being forced to bear the searing, burning pain—slice after precise slice being carved into my skin while they jabbered about the brilliant legacy they would be known for someday.

  I was not enduring the poisons shot into my body that made me dry heave for days on end while they stood by emotionlessly and took notes. I wasn’t about to be thrown into a pit with hungry feline predators to see if I would come out alive. No, right now I was relatively safe. I was never going to let the horrors I’d been through happen to me or anyone else again. Wenbo and Jarred didn’t need to know this quite yet. I wanted their performance to be caught for posterity’s sake. After all it was an important part of their legacy.

  Don Jarred was quiet. He’d always been the quieter of the two, but he wielded a scalpel like a serial killer and didn’t like to use anesthesia. Just looking at him made my chest tighten in fear and revulsion. His beady eyes were a dull watery blue. His thin lips were turned down slightly in the corners, giving the balding son of a bitch the appearance of always frowning.

  Sabrina Wenbo was a disaster of a woman—overly made up and curvy in all the wrong places. She most definitely had gone a few rounds with lipo and then continued to eat like a horse. Fatty deposits in the oddest places bulged out all over, making her look like a circus freak pincushion. But her goofy appearance belied the unholy sadistic streak she hid from the public.

  To the world they were lauded, brilliant scientists—had even been nominated for a Nobel prize for their work in eradicating certain airborne diseases. I wondered what the world would think when they realized how many people they’d murdered trying to create human animals.

  “So you want to come back?” Wenbo sneered, keeping her hand on her gun. “Got a little hard in the real world for you?”

  “Yes and no,” I shot back cryptically.

  Her hand shook slightly on the weapon and I smiled.

  “You do realize you have no choice,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.

  Jarred leaned over and whispered in her ear. Were they fucking stupid? I could hear every word he uttered. He’d made me this way.

  “I killed him,” I said, startling both of them. “No need to whisper. I can hear you. My friend is dead. I turned on him and killed him. I lost control and tore him to shreds. It’s one of the reasons I’ve reached out to you. I’m a danger to society. I need to be eliminated.”

  Wenbo’s eyes grew wide with psychotic excitement. “In panther form? You killed him as a panther?” she demanded.

  Jarred looked as eager and delighted as his deranged partner. With a careless shrug, I nodded. They weren’t going to leave this barn alive. My lie was for the CIA and Tex, although Tex would know what I was doing. For a brief, sickening moment I wondered if Carter would ever see this, but it was neither here nor there. I’d be gone. He would realize the same thing as Tex. I was going to protect the man I loved until I was no longer able to do so.

  “What do you want?” Wenbo asked feeling more secure that they were going to leave with what they wanted.

  “I want to know why. I want to know why you’ve done this to me.”

  Wenbo shook her head in staccato little jerks and pursed her lips in condemnation. Jarred simply chuckled like I’d made a polite joke at a formal dinner party. They were both batshit crazy.

  “Please,” Wenbo purred and smiled at me like I was a child. “We’re making history. There will be no elimination for you. You will make us very rich and very famous.”

  “You’re killing people,” I reminded her harshly.

  “Collateral damage,” she hissed and then reined it back in. “You’re still alive. You’re our greatest accomplishment—a scientific miracle.”

  “I’m a freak of nature,” I shouted. “You made me into an animal and killed at least forty people that I know of in the name of your fucked up brand of science.”

  “Irrelevant,” Jarred said, flatly.

  “What?” I snapped. “Seriously?”

  Wenbo removed her tranq gun from the holster and pointed it at me. “You will drop your weapons and you will come with us. We were so close and you almost derailed the greatest scientific discovery in history,” she snarled with an expression so ugly, I almost laughed.

  “If you don’t come willingly, we will make this very difficult for you,” Jarred said, pulling out a knife from his belt and brandishing it.

  “You guys are like a fucked up B-grade horror movie,” I said, calmly removing the weapons they could see and tossing them to the ground.

  Wenbo’s sigh of relief at my acquiescence was wildly premature, but who was I to correct her misconception? My false actions were the reason for it.

  “However, I do have an ace in the hole,” I said with a smile.

  “You don’t,” she said, with a laugh that made my skin crawl. “You can’t turn anymore without the injections. You’re little more than a human with a few enhancements at this point.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked.

  I didn’t miss the concerned look they exchanged. It would have been humorous if the situation wasn’t so tragic.

  “How about this? Why don’t we chat for a few minutes? I have a few things I’d like to get off my chest before I live out the rest of my life in a cage. You feel me?”

  Nodding warily they stepped closer. Wenbo still wielded her tranq gun and Jarred now had a knife in each hand.

  “Have a seat. I had to look for a half hour to find something that would hold your weight without caving in,” I told Wenbo in a polite tone.

  “What did you just say?” she demanded, her cheeks coloring in fury.

  Ahhhh, my buddy was a narcissist on top of being certifiable. Awesome.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Please sit.”

  They did.

  “So what would you say if I told you I’d hacked into your precious data and have a copy of it?” I asked. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  The silence was golden and their slightly open mouths a true delight.

  “Impossible,” Jarred mumbled. “Impossible.”

  “Right,” I agreed, nodding. “Definitely impossible. But just for shits and giggles, let’s pretend that my hacking skills were so damned good that I was able to weasel my way in there and retrieve all twenty-two years and seven months of your research?”

  “Liar,” Wenbo growled, lifting her gun and aiming it at my face.

  “It will take exactly thirty seconds after the tranq hits me for me to go down. In that time, I can press the remote in my pocket sending your precious, murderous, fucked up research to the director of the CIA. It will also be sent to a really good buddy of mine who would just love to send it to every single news organization in the civilized world… hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  “What do you want?” Wenbo shrieked, standing up and backing slightly away from me. “Money? Name your price.”

  “Such a silly thing,” I said shaking my head sadly. I wasn’t about to share that I’d already sent the info to the CIA—didn’t think that would go over too well. “What would you say, again hypothetically speaking, of course? Or since you two are so brilliant, I’ll change up the terminology to keep it interesting—theoretically or speculatively speaking, if all of your accounts, even the offshore ones, the six that you illegally funneled CIA funds into and the three in
the Caymans were suddenly drained and donated to children’s charities?”

  “She’s bluffing,” Jarred insisted, looking incredibly unsure of his statement.

  “How does she know about the Caymans and the money we stole from the CIA?” she hissed, pointing the gun at Jarred. “You had to have told her.”

  “I told her nothing, you bitch. You had to have said something,” he shouted.

  God, would they take care of each other while I got to sit back and watch? Nothing would make me happier.

  “Prove it,” Wenbo grunted, re-aiming the gun at me.

  “Prove what?” I asked with mocking innocence. “It’s all conjecture.”

  She began to pace, waving the gun erratically. I made sure to stay out of the line of fire. More than likely she’d never even shot it before.

  “Never should have gone with someone so smart,” she said talking to herself and pulling on her bleached hair with her free hand. “This is all your fault,” she screamed at a seething Jarred.

  “She’s the only one who survived it. How is this my fault? It’s your fault,” he growled. “And I still say she’s bluffing.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Definitely bluffing. Nine-four-seven, A-G-V, three-three-two, F-J-O.”

  “You gave her the code?” she screamed at Jarred, aiming the gun at his head in irate fury. “You stupid fuck.”

  Without a sound, Jarred jerked his body to the left and threw both knives at Wenbo. His aim was as impeccable as his surgical skills. Both knives flew and embedded themselves into Wenbo’s eye sockets. The sound was horrifying and her scream of shocked agony was one I would never forget.

  She dropped to the ground and began to writhe around as she bled out. Jarred stared at her dispassionately and then as her body stopped jerking and the life drained out of her, he turned his attention back to me.

  “Neither one of us is going to leave this place alive—and that’s not conjecture,” he said flatly. “Wasn’t that your plan?”

  “What’s my name?” I asked him.

  “What?” He squinted at me in confusion.

  “My name. Do you even know my name?”

  He paused and tilted his head. “Why would I know your name?” he asked, completely perplexed. “You’re not a person—you’re number sixteen. You were a means to an end and now you’ve destroyed that. Are you happy?” he shouted, showing his crazy.

  I really hoped he was out of knives.

  “You win, number sixteen. Nothing you’ve said was even remotely hypothetical. Never should have used one so smart. I was hoping seven would live, but he was worthless and just up and died one day. I had my hopes pinned on him.”

  “He was a person, a human being,” I said, pulling a pistol from the back holster I was wearing. “He had a name. All of us had names.”

  “Irrelevant,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling. “All of you were nothing. I could have made you into something special, but you ruined it.”

  “No, you’ve got it wrong. You ruined me. You killed… God, I don’t even know how many others.”

  “Three hundred and thirteen,” he said with a smile that was so disconnected, I felt physically ill. “Two died this morning after we put them into the pit with a lion. Such a shame. Such a mess. So much wasted energy, money and time on them. Just terrible.”

  “And I always thought I was the monster,” I whispered, trying to see if there was even a speck of humanity in this man.

  If there was I couldn’t find it.

  “If you’re the monster—and trust me you are—I’m Dr. Frankenstein and she was Igor,” he said, pointing at the dead body of the woman who had been his partner in crimes so heinous they were almost unspeakable.

  He began to laugh at his horrendous analogy. His pasty face turned a mottled red and his bellowing grunts of joy overcame him. Don Jarred rocked back and forth in his hysterics and staggered over to the body of Sabrina Wenbo. He removed his knives from the eye sockets of her slain body, cleaned them off with her dress and slid them back into their sheaths. My hatred for him was so intense I was shaking. Nothing was funny about any of this. I knew what I had to do, but as much as I wanted the man dead for what he had done to me and so many others, I couldn’t. I was trained to kill and I despised it. He was a murderer. I wasn’t.

  Or was I?

  I had the poison, but that’s what I was going to use for myself. I felt like I was a million years old. I was going to hell, if it existed. What was more death on my tally sheet? I’d offed three men yesterday and several when I’d escaped my prison.

  As I raised the gun and aimed, Don Jarred held his hand up and grinned a vacant grin at me.

  “No, no,” he said. “Let me. Much more fitting.”

  In a flash of movement so quick I almost could follow it, he pulled a pistol from his holster, put it in his mouth and fired. The back of his head blew right off and splattered all over the dead Wenbo. He fell with a thud on top of her and I turned away and vomited.

  This was not what I had planned. I dry heaved until my stomach was empty. I had no intention of recording myself drinking the poison. I never wanted Carter to have a chance to see that. But I’d sent the proof to the CIA to ruin Wenbo and Jarred and in doing so I’d made myself one of the biggest targets in the world. My death needed to be recorded as well.

  I knew I would have a few seconds to hit the remote before the poison incapacitated me. It was all I needed.

  “I meant to make you a cake,” I said to the camera. “I’m a really good baker—but I told you that already. I love you and I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “I want chocolate. I want a fucking chocolate cake with chocolate icing. If you even take a sip of that shit, I will take you over my knee and spank the living hell out of you. Not really into that crap, but I’m going there.”

  Carter’s voice boomed through the empty warehouse and I dropped the vial in utter shock at his arrival.

  “How did you…” I started only to be cut off by a pissed off kiss so passionate it made me dizzy.

  “Tex chipped you, thank fucking god. I am so mad at you,” he snarled, taking in the carnage in the vast room and pausing in surprise for a moment. “Did you do this?”

  “Umm… no. They kind of offed each other. Made it really easy on me,” I told him, unable to meet his furious gaze.

  “Holy shit,” Caleb yelled, entering the warehouse at a clip. “This is a fucking mess. Great work.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I told him as I saw Nancy enter behind him.

  “I call bullshit,” Caleb said.

  “No. Seriously I didn’t do it. They did it.”

  Nancy checked the pulses of both of them. It was slightly unnecessary since Jarred was missing most of his head, but Nancy was thorough. “Are those my clothes?” she asked with a smirk and a raised brow.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I borrowed them.”

  “You mean stole?” Carter asked, not letting off me for a second.

  “Borrowed,” I corrected him with a tiny giggle even though we were standing in a warehouse with two dead bodies. “And I left cash in her closet. And umm… while we’re or rather I’m coming clean… Caleb, I also borrowed some of your cameras. All of this was recorded.”

  “Where’d you send it?” he asked wildly impressed.

  “Nowhere yet,” I admitted. “It’s set to remotely go to Tex and the head of the CIA. Should I send it?”

  “No, not yet,” Carter said. “Caleb pull down the cameras and let’s take them with us.”

  “Roger that,” he said and then froze.

  We all froze.

  Just when we thought we were home free, the shit show increased to epic proportions.

  Thirty men in black stormed the warehouse. They were armed and surrounded us with military precision.

  “Drop your weapons. Hands in the air,” one of them yelled.

  Following orders, we did what they said.

  “Motherfucker,” Carter muttered. “Could this
day get any worse?”

  “Yep,” Nancy whispered. “Here comes the big guy.”

  “Is that the head of CIA special ops?” I whispered as my eyes went wide.

  “Fuck,” Caleb said.

  Well, at least I knew Carter loved me and I was sure he knew I loved him. I was glad for that because I was pretty sure none of us were leaving the warehouse alive.

  “What’s your middle name?” I whispered to Carter.

  Biting down on his lip, he tried not to laugh. “Are you serious?” he whispered back, keeping his eyes on the enemy.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I really want to know.”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Norbert.”

  I was silent. It was worse than Norman. It took all I had not to giggle in the face of the sure death we were facing.

  “You happy?” he hissed between his teeth.

  “I am. I love you Carter Norbert Davis.”

  “I love you more, Georgia from Georgia. I still want my cake.”

  “Umm… okay,” I said. “Not sure I can make that happen.”

  “Oh, I am,” Carter said with a grin and a wink.

  He was nuts. I was nuts. Nancy was nuts and Caleb was definitely nuts, but we were outgunned and outmanned.

  If we got out of this mess, Carter could have a cake every day for the rest of his life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Georgia

  I only knew him as The Reaper. I’d never laid eyes on the man, but if it was who Nancy thought it was, we were in a shit ton of trouble. He was huge, even larger than Carter and Caleb who were by no means small men.

  He was too harsh to be considered good-looking but there was something scarily arresting about the man. The shit load of trouble we were in increased with his very presence. Not to mention we were completely surrounded by armed lackeys ready to fire on command.

  “Beauty,” The Reaper said, acknowledging Carter.

  “Asshole,” Carter said in return greeting.

  Confusion didn’t begin to define what was going through my head. Carter knew The Reaper? Was that why he thought I was going to be able to make him a cake? I was pretty sure that being acquainted with The Reaper wasn’t going to get us out of this deadly mess.