by Rachel Caine
Patrick stepped away from Bryn and walked to Mercer. He put a booted foot on the man’s chest, and said, “What do you know?”
“More than you.” Mercer gave him a chilling smile. “If you want a clue, then I’ll give you one for free. The nursing home where they were holding your girl is just a start. Just a tiny little air bubble on the tip of the iceberg, if you will. But to give you an idea of scale, they’ve killed at least fifty people there. Old, sick people. Who misses them? Who cares, when they’ve got nobody left? It’s inevitable progress—they’re dying anyway. But they’re still useful for one thing.”
“Test subjects,” Bryn guessed.
“Oh no,” he said. “Incubators. In a way, you really have to admire their ruthless efficiency, don’t you? And all I had to use were chimpanzees.”
Pat’s expression had gone just a little bit unhinged, and he pressed down hard with his heel, driving the breath out of Mercer’s chest with a pained gust. “Start making sense while you still can.”
Mercer made some wheezing attempts, and Pat finally eased up on the pressure to let him draw in a whooping gasp. “Can’t tell you here,” he said, and coughed. “No time. We need to get out of here and find a safe haven before her tracker starts sending a signal.” He read the frown on their faces, and shook his head. “Idiots. Of course they know about the trackers. They know about the nanites, and the frequencies they broadcast. And they’ll be listening.” He jerked his chin at Bryn. “You’ve got about two hours before that happens, at the most. It’ll start out as a weak, intermittent signal, so maybe three hours for them to get a firm lock. But she’s a beacon, and she’ll pull them straight at us.”
“Pat?” Bryn asked anxiously. “Is he right? Can they track me?”
“It’s possible,” he finally said. “And it’s possible this piece of shit is lying to make us go where he wants.”
“Listen, G.I. Jarhead, if you want to reacquaint yourself with the lovely Jane, just go ahead and—”
Patrick went utterly, completely still, and then he put his full weight on the boot on Mercer’s chest and barked, “What did you just say?”
“Pat! Pat, you’ll kill him!” Bryn blurted. From the sharp cry Mercer let out, a rib had already snapped. And Patrick clearly didn’t care. “Pat!”
Even Liam was looking alarmed and moving toward his boss with the clear intent of pulling him off—until Pat sent him a look that stopped him cold in his tracks. “Mercer,” Pat said. “I’m only going to say it one more time, and then I will stomp on your chest as many times as it takes to splinter your breastbone and get your complete fucking attention. What did you say?”
“Jane,” Mercer wheezed. He’d gone gray with pain, and a good deal of actual fear. “They have Jane working for them. She’s one of them.”
Patrick took his foot off Mercer and took two long steps back, as if he didn’t trust himself not to follow through, regardless. There was something black and totally out of control inside him, something that shocked Bryn down to the core; she’d known he was capable of violence, but this was beyond all that.
This was feral.
“Pat?” she asked. He looked up at her, then down, as if he couldn’t hold her stare. “Pat, who’s Jane?”
“My wife,” he said. “Jane was my wife.”
Chapter 15
My wife.
Jane.
My wife.
It kept running through Bryn’s head like white noise, and she just couldn’t comprehend it. He didn’t have a wife. He couldn’t have a wife, because he’d never, ever talked about it. And if he ever had married someone, it certainly, absolutely could not be Jane.
That was utterly impossible. He was a good man, a decent man, and Jane…Jane was everything foul in the world. A walking toxic spill.
“That’s not true,” Bryn said aloud. “Pat—that’s just not true.” She stared at him, but he’d veered away as if he didn’t dare come close to her now, either. He stalked toward the corner, boots scraping on the dusty concrete, fists clenched.
Lying on the ground, Mercer laughed, but it dissolved into painful coughing. He rolled on his side and spit up blood. “Ask him,” he said, and grinned with bloody teeth. “In case you think I’m making it up, her full name is Jane Desmond Franklin.”
“She’s dead,” Patrick flung back without turning.
“Well, I think we could all agree, there’s dead and then there’s really, sincerely dead. And Jane’s the former, not the latter. By the way, congratulations on your taste in women. You do run to type, my man. Bryn’s got that same crazy, strong energy, doesn’t she? Doesn’t give up. Just like…Jane. You know, before.”
Patrick turned and went for him, and if Liam hadn’t gotten in his way and deflected the rush, Bryn was utterly sure that Mercer would have been bleeding out his life on the concrete. She couldn’t move. She felt as if she’d been nailed in place, then frozen solid.
Liam shoved Patrick back with surprising strength and shouted, “Don’t play his game!” Patrick subsided, breathing hard, eyes fixed on Mercer’s laughing face. Liam swung around on Mercer himself. “Jane cannot be alive.”
“Ask Bryn about her.”
“Bryn—” Liam glanced at her, and his eyes widened. “Bryn?”
Something inside her had just…shut down, so her voice came out flat and mechanical as she said, “There was a woman. She said her name was Jane. She’s the one who was in charge, who took Jeff, who got me.” Who took me apart. Jane. Jane Jane Jane. Spider to my fly.
“It’s the same woman,” Mercer said. “Freddy saw her.”
“I did one better than that,” Freddy said. “Check my cell phone. Coat pocket.”
Liam knelt beside him and got the phone out. He turned it on and rose to his feet, staring at the screen in disbelief.
Patrick came to join him, took the phone out of his unresisting hand, and what was in his face as he gazed at the picture wasn’t disbelief at all. It was the face of a man gazing into his own burning and inevitable hell.
He turned off the phone and dropped it on the ground, and paced away, head down.
“She can’t be,” Bryn said. “She can’t be your wife.” In no universe did that make any sense at all. Tectonic plates shifted inside, broke open, and lava scorched her soul to ashes. “Patrick, tell me she isn’t your wife.”
Patrick didn’t speak. Didn’t even look her way. It was as if he were trapped in a black, black box somewhere far from here.
It was Liam who said, in a very shaken tone, “She was, once. They were married when both were in the military, then divorced. She was killed in action.”
“They said she was killed in action,” Mercer said. He sounded smug now, and oddly delighted. “I had her file, you know. She went from black ops to so deep undercover even you weren’t read in, Patrick. And she wanted it that way. When she came to us as part of the military program, we were explicitly told you were not to have any information. But then, the restraining order you had against her was something of a clue you might not want further contact.”
Patrick stopped walking, but he didn’t turn in their direction. His head stayed down. “Military program,” he repeated. His voice was soft, but it echoed through the concrete room. “There was no military program. It was terminated before the test subjects arrived.”
“So the records state,” Mercer said. “I only had a couple of successes out of it in any case. And I don’t really consider Jane a success. She was described to me as a diamond in the rough, and I think that was very accurate; the problem with diamonds is that they shatter if cut the wrong way. And Jane shattered. She just…enjoyed it.”
“She was insane long before that,” Liam said flatly.
Fast Freddy laughed. “You know, there’s a rule that says don’t stick your dick in crazy. Should have remembered that one, Patrick.”
Patrick made a sound that Bryn had never heard before—warning, threat, an animal fury that raised the hair on her neck and chill bumps
on her arms. He turned, and there was a shine in his eyes that made even Fast Freddy’s smile vanish. “You don’t know what happened to her,” he almost whispered. “So shut your mouth before I rip your jaw off.” Whatever history there was between him and Jane was…monumental, Bryn realized. Fear, anger, loathing, a complicated kind of pity, horror, maybe even a little damaged and fragile love.
No. No, you can’t. You can’t feel anything for her. What she did to me…Jane had been the one to inflict the damage, to drink up Bryn’s pain and blood and tears, but it was Patrick who cut her now, to the core.
His feelings for Jane, about Jane, were a kind of betrayal she’d never been prepared to feel.
Patrick’s wife. Jane.
It changed everything, tainted everything. If he’d hated the woman, if he’d just purely loathed her, it might have been okay; Bryn could have learned to live with that. But it had been that little flash of compassion, of regret, that had destroyed her.
And now he looked at Bryn, and she looked at him, and she didn’t understand him at all, not at all. He was a man who’d romanced Jane. Who’d kissed Jane. Who’d dreamed of a family with Jane.
It didn’t even matter if it had ended in bitterness, divorce, anger. He’d loved her once, and that made Bryn want to die.
“We have to go,” she said. Her voice still had that eerie sound, flat and mechanical, unfeeling, as if the nanites were talking for her. “If they can track me, we can’t hide here. We need to go somewhere safe.”
Liam looked hugely relieved at that, pitifully grateful that they didn’t have to discuss Jane. “The mansion is strong, but not defensible against a genuine assault. This place, on the other hand…”
“No,” Patrick said. His voice was rough and low, but under control again. He blinked, and that animal shine left his eyes. “Can’t stay here. She came here once. She’d know its weak spots.” She meant Jane. Now that his anger had passed, he had that stricken look again, as if he was afraid he’d gone mad.
She was wondering if she’d gone mad. If all this was some dream she’d escaped into, to evade the reality of Jane and her cutting smiles. Maybe none of this was really happening. That would, in fact, be better. It’d mean that she didn’t have to live in a world where Jane Desmond Franklin had been married to the man she loved.
Patrick finally snapped out of it long enough to say, “Everyone in the van on the east side. We’ll leave Mercer’s car behind.”
“Everyone? Including these two?” Liam looked down at Freddy and Mercer, who were struggling against their bonds.
“I’m not leaving anyone for Jane. Not even them.” Patrick, to prove it, grabbed Fast Freddy under the shoulders and dead-dragged him to a door Bryn hadn’t even noticed.…It was small, inset, and he had to hunch to get through it as he shoved it open with Freddy’s shirt collar crushed in one fist.
Liam grabbed Mercer and towed him toward the same exit.
Bryn didn’t move for a moment. I could just run, she thought. I could just run and get away from all this.…
But she needed the shots, didn’t she? In the end, it always came down to that, to one more day of survival. She didn’t want to be in the same vehicle with Patrick right now; she didn’t want to know how all this shook out. She didn’t want to hear about his life with Jane.
She wanted it to not be true at all.
Liam paused in the doorway and looked back at her, and said, “You can’t stay, Bryn. Come on. Hurry.”
“Who is he, Liam? Really?” It burst out of her in a rush, and she wished she could take it back, because the fact was, she really didn’t even want to know. She already knew too much.
Liam shook his head. “Not the time. Come on. Now, Bryn—we have to clear the estate as well. Your sister’s still there.”
That got her moving, finally; the idea that she’d let anything happen to Annalie was unthinkable. She’d done enough to her sister already—and once again, she’d plunged her into something uncontrollable, and dangerous. Mr. French. She thought about her dog, too; she couldn’t leave him behind. Jane would love to find something Bryn loved, just so she could take it apart.
She took a step, and—to her surprise—stumbled. Her thigh muscles felt weak, and trembled unsteadily as she righted herself. Her arms were tingling, too. Bryn knew this feeling all too well; she felt chilled now, too, as the nanites exhausted their power and stopped their very necessary repairs to the ongoing destruction. Death couldn’t be stopped, only delayed, and she could feel it creeping through her body like shadows.
Liam knew it, too; she saw it in his face. “I’ll give you the injection in the van,” he said. “Hurry.”
She stopped and said, “No.” Even Mercer, being dragged, looked taken by surprise. “Give me a shot right now. I’m taking Mercer’s car. I’ll get Annie.”
“And go where?” Liam asked. “If the people who held you have the tracking frequencies…”
“Then I’ll lead them someplace they can’t go,” Bryn said. “Right to the gates of Pharmadene.” It was the only logical choice; if she couldn’t hide, she could make it next to impossible for Jane and her bosses to get their hands on her and Annalie. Let Patrick and Liam find their own hole to crawl in. He lied to me. He should have told me about Jane, about his wife.…
She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to—Liam knew. He opened a pocket in his vest, took out a syringe, and crossed the room to deliver the injection.
She hardly felt it at all. Her scale of pain had widened quite a bit.
When it was done, Liam smoothed his hand gently over the injection site, a gesture of comfort, but even that made her flinch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Be careful. I’ll tell him—something.”
“He should have told me something, too,” Bryn said. “Liam—thank you. For everything.”
Then she turned and walked away.
The one shot that Liam had given her helped her maintain, but healing was at this moment beyond her reach. Bryn drove fast and recklessly, and swore under her breath at her lack of a cell phone with which to call ahead to Annie. She’ll be all right.
She’d better be all right, or I’ll kill Jane for that, too. Over and over and over.
Upon her tire-screeching arrival, the mansion looked the same as it ever had—gates shut and locked, everything right and proper. The gardeners were finishing for the day, and rolling the plastic bins down toward the pickup point on the street; they waved to her as she drove in. All very normal.
Except her skin still looked gray and slack over her muscles, and she could feel the wrongness inside her. The big industrial refrigerator in the kitchen held the lockbox with the last of Manny’s special-formula shots; she’d grab those, inject two, and take the rest with her. And the box of inhibitors—she and Annalie would need those if they were to rely on the Pharmadene formula of Returné. The idea of being under the control of those built-in Protocols didn’t sound like something Bryn could handle. Not now.
Her self-control was like a thin, fragile crust over a vast abyss of betrayal; she tried not to think of what was going to happen when she finally broke through it and fell into that boiling cauldron of emotion. She’d loved Patrick, really loved him, and the damage he’d done to her was as great, in its own way, as Jane had managed.
Bryn parked Mercer’s sedan and ran up the front steps—or tried. Her legs felt clumsy, as if the nerves were making only partial contact with the muscles. It took three tries to fit her key into the locks on the door. She heard Mr. French barking on the other side.
As she stepped in, his glad rush toward her skidded to a stop, and he backed up a couple of tentative steps with a whine of puzzled distrust.
“Oh, sweetie,” Bryn said. “It’s okay. I’m still me.”
Mr. French took another step back, still whining. From the library doorway, one of the house’s Rottweilers—Maxine, Liam’s favorite—advanced stiff-legged and growling.
“Annie!” Bryn yelled. “Annie, get down here!”
Maxine was steadily advancing on Bryn, who stood very still, trying not to look like any more of a threat than she already did. The Rottweiler was normally very sweet, but she was in guard mode now, and Bryn no longer smelled like someone who belonged here.
She smelled like danger.
“Call her off,” Bryn said. “Hurry.”
Mr. French had backed all the way to the stairs, clearly torn by confusion—he wanted to protect her, but his instincts were all in conflict with his senses. Maxine wasn’t conflicted at all. She just wanted Bryn gone.
Annalie hurried breathlessly down the stairs. “Maxine!” She clapped her hands sharply. The Rottie didn’t even glance her way. Liam was her master, and the others were just tolerated guests. “Maxine, stop!”
She grabbed the dog by her collar just as Maxine’s growl dipped down to a truly menacing range. Maxine, surprised, tried to lunge forward, but Annalie held on and dragged her back over the slick marble floor, into the library, and blocked her way out until she could slide the door shut and trap the dog inside. Maxine wasn’t one for barking, but she did then, deep-throated and vicious sounds of alarm. The scrabble of her claws against the wood made Bryn wince. “Jesus!” Annie said, and backed away from the door, then turned to look at her. “Oh. Oh God.”
“I need shots,” Bryn said. Her throat felt horribly dry, and her voice sounded thin. This was happening much faster than she was used to, but then, she’d been through a lot; the stabilizing influence of the single shot Liam had given her was wearing off incredibly fast. “Mr. French—”
He was huddling against Annie’s leg. Her sister knelt and petted him, then picked him up. Mr. French didn’t generally like being carried, but he didn’t resist this time.
And he never stopped watching Bryn with that dark, confused, betrayed stare.
