by Tate James
Shuddering at the thoughts, I still wasn’t ready to give up. We’d come the closest I ever had to figuring out what made me different, and I’d be damned before I let the opportunity slip by simply because I was scared. I’d bounced back from a lot in my life; I had to have faith that my luck would continue.
Just as I was about to wear a hole in the carpet, Cole stormed into the room and scooped me up before tossing me onto the bed.
“For fucks sake, Vixen, get some sleep,” he commanded, stripping down to his boxers and climbing in beside me. I wanted to protest, but he clamped an arm over me. It was obviously what I needed because in seconds, the sleep eluding me swept over me like a wave and dragged me under.
34
I woke the next morning alone but resolute. Somehow while I’d slept, my subconscious had come up with a brilliant plan, and I bounced out to the kitchen, excited to tell the guys my idea.
As I entered the room, a heated argument cut off abruptly, and all the guys avoided looking at me. Not even Wesley would make eye contact with me, and I got a sinking feeling. I wished I had been paying more attention coming down the hallway so I might have heard what this was about, but I had been too caught up in my amazing plan to listen.
“Hey guys...” I greeted them, suspicion threading through me. Hard to miss that I was the topic of the argument. “What’s going on?”
Seemingly as one, all of them turned to Austin, who jutted out his jaw stubbornly.
“Ask him,” Caleb ordered while pulling out my coffee mug and filling it for me. Such a nice boy. Austin narrowed his eyes at his twin then met my gaze unapologetically.
“I did nothing wrong,” he glowered. “We all voted and agreed. I simply acted on it.”
“We also agreed to speak with Kit when she woke up, seeing as she wasn’t in the vote,” Cole barked, his neck muscles seeming to strain.
Austin shrugged. “I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to flit around here, batting her eyelashes at you guys, looking like this”—he waved a hand towards me, and suddenly I was aware of wearing only Cole’s massive T-shirt and tiny boyshort undies—“and changing your minds,” he finished, folding his heavily inked arms. He was wearing a T-shirt, and I’d never seen him in anything less than long sleeves before. “I took necessary preemptive action to ensure the safety of our group. An action that we all, as a team, agreed on last night.”
Wait a minute, what the hell…? “What did you do?”
He didn’t give me an answer, the tension in his jaw suggesting he had no intention of giving me one either.
Caleb handed me the mug of coffee and said, “My fuckstain of a brother took matters into his own hands and declined Dupree’s offer for you.” Anger underscored his words, but it didn’t compare to the rage curdling in my gut. They took a vote? They decided my future? And Austin had acted on it
“You did what?” Please tell me I’d heard them wrong.
“You heard,” the asshole spoke. “It was a stupid offer and was only going to get more people killed. We all voted, and it was unanimous to decline the trade.” He seemed smug and confident in the fact that they outnumbered me.
“Give me the phone,” I snapped, holding out my hand.
Austin had the grace to look a tiny bit guilty. “I destroyed it after sending the message. It’s standard protocol not to keep anything that might lead the enemy to your base of operations.”
The ringing in my ears amplified, and I slammed the coffee cup onto the marble counter. I’d pictured Austin’s face, and my beautiful cup shattered with a deafening crack, spewing coffee everywhere. It wasn’t just my cup breaking, but the marble countertop that cracked beneath my fist.
Still furious, I took one look around the stunned men then pivoted on my heel and stalked out of the house.
“Kit!” River, the first to recover, barked after me. “Where are you going? It’s not safe to be alone right now.”
I didn’t bother answering and headed outside to the garden where I plonked my butt on one of the outdoor couches overlooking the empty pool. I wasn’t a total moron; of course I knew it wasn’t safe to be wandering around aimlessly, but I needed some breathing room to process the latest hairpin turn in the train wreck of my life.
It was freezing outside, and dressed as I was in just a T-shirt and panties, it wasn’t long before my teeth were chattering. Still I refused to go back inside and face the guys. How could they do that to me? More, how could I have lost it in there like I did? What if it had been one of them and not the countertop?
An image of Finn punching his fist right into a man’s chest flashed across my mind’s eye.
What the hell was happening to me? More and more these days I seemed to be acting on impulse, and it scared me.
A heavy warmth dropped around my shoulders, and I whipped my head up to find Wesley awkwardly tucking a comforter around my trembling shoulders.
“Hey,” I whispered, giving him a grateful smile. He smiled back and sat beside me, saying nothing and simply staring out at the empty pool with me.
“Are you okay?” he eventually asked, watching me from the side of his glasses, and I shook my head.
“No.” There was no point in lying. “How could he do that? It wasn’t his call to make—it wasn’t any of your calls.” Though I was still angry, the cold seemed to have taken the edge off, but I was close to tears.
“I know,” Wesley murmured. “He—we? We decided because we care. He did what he thought was best, because he cares.”
Who was he trying to fool? “Cares? About you guys, sure. Austin couldn’t care less if I got killed in this mess.”
“That’s not true,” Wesley argued, though he lacked any real force in his tone. “He’s saved your life, what, twice already?”
“Three times,” I muttered, remembering the ditch. Ugh, such a dick. “Did you all really vote on this behind my back?”
He shifted uncomfortably, an answer without words. Great. They were just as guilty as Austin. Okay, probably not as guilty but my anger didn’t see well in shades of gray.
“You don’t understand, Kit. The shit they were doing to those other ‘test subjects’... we can’t let you volunteer for that.” A shudder ran through him. He believed what he said.
“It was my call to make,” I said. I’d been the one trapped in the foster home from hell. I’d survived that nightmare. I had these abilities. It was my damn life. “That crazy bitch knows who I am. She knows what I am. You have no idea what it’s like to not know what you are.” Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to shed them.
He shifted closer, easing under the edge of the blanket and giving me a hug.
“I’m sorry.” His whisper carried every element of sincerity. “We will find the information another way, I promise.”
I set my head to his shoulder and hugged him back, grateful for the comfort he offered. His body seemed perfectly built to fit mine, and he squeezed me with just the perfect amount of pressure, making it impossible to stay mad at him. Fucker.
We stayed like that for a while, not speaking, just hugging, until the cold penetrated the thick blanket and I began shivering again.
“Come on,” Wesley said, standing and offering me a hand. “You can hang out in my room today if you want. I’ve got a ton of work to do on my computer, and the others know not to disturb me.”
I took his hand and kissed him on the cheek in gratitude. “Thanks, Wes.”
He blushed scarlet and awkwardly cleared his throat before heading back inside. I hesitated a moment, watching as he made his way back to the house, and noticed for the first time what a great ass he had.
Jesus Kit, all this stress is making you loopy. Quit thinking about Wesley’s ass when you have bigger fish to fry.
35
After I dressed in warmer clothes, I hid in Wesley’s room for a few hours. He worked at his desk, quietly muttering under his breath to himself as he tapped away on his keyboard. I stretched out on my stomach across his bed w
ith a stack of our stolen files in front of me, slowly pouring through them again, hoping to discover something that might make sense.
At one point, Caleb came in with a fresh mug of coffee for me, and I just glared at him.
“Hey, Kitty Kat… peace offering?” he cajoled, holding out the mug to me, but my temper flared and I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought of his peace offering.
“Caleb, maybe now isn’t the best time?” Wesley interjected, smoothly rescuing the mug of coffee and ushering my friend out of the door to the hallway.
“But—” Caleb started to object.
“Look. Kit’s feeling pretty hurt and betrayed right now, by all of us, so just… give her some space. I don’t think anything nice was about to come out of her mouth by the look she was giving you just then.” Wesley was speaking quietly, but the slightly open door allowed me to hear what he was saying. I couldn’t hear Caleb’s reply though, so he must have moved farther down the hall. Wesley returned inside, closing the door behind him.
“Thanks,” I muttered, and he just nodded, turning back to his work.
My eyes were just starting to blur over from looking at the files too long when my phone vibrated with an incoming video chat from Lucy. I smiled; my best friend always seemed to know when I needed to hear from her.
“Hey, girl,” I greeted her warmly as the video feed clicked in. The image showing, though, was not what I expected. I sucked in a sharp breath. It was Lucy, but she was gagged and bound to a chair, a dark, heavy-set figure standing behind her with his huge gloved hand wrapped around her throat. Her eyes were wide and pleading as she looked toward whoever held her phone, and there was already a rapidly darkening bruise along the side of her delicate face. Her eyebrow was split open, and blood was trickling past her eye. Wesley turned toward me at the sound of my gasp and must have registered the shock on my face because he yelled for the others.
“Christina.” The voice, which was definitely not Lucy, jarred me as it echoed over the speaker. “I tried to play nice. I tried to give you the opportunity to turn yourself in peacefully, but you rudely declined my offer. This, dear girl, is the price of insolence.” Dupree’s grandmotherly voice was gone and replaced with the cold ranting of a madwoman.
The boys crushed in around me to see the screen, and someone cursed.
“Now watch carefully, Christina. This is what happens when people displease me,” Dupree continued cruelly, and a second dark figure threw a brutal fist into Lucy’s stomach, causing her to cough and gag for air. “If you do not present yourself alone to my testing facility in twenty-four hours, I will go after the loved ones of your precious little boyfriends there.” The shadow man hit Lucy again, this time in the face, the crunch of her nose audible.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, dear.” I could almost hear the dangerous edge of a smile in Dupree’s cold voice. A moment before she ended the call, the big man moved from behind Lucy in order to aid in her beating, but in the space where he had stood I recognized something. I knew where they were.
I dropped my phone and scrambled off Wesley’s bed, flying down the hallway with the shouts of my name echoing behind me. I snatched River’s keys off the hook where he kept them, because I still hadn’t picked up my damn car from school, and pushed a little extra speed as I raced into the garage. Once there, I slipped into his sleek car. Tapping the steering wheel impatiently, I glared at the slow moving garage door opening. Just as it opened enough to let me escape, the passenger door flew open and Caleb landed inside. He barely got the door closed again before I accelerated down the driveway.
“Kit. Talk to me,” he panted, buckling his seat belt.
“I know where they are.” I chewed each word out through gritted teeth. “When that fucker moved, right at the end, I saw a blue unicorn spray painted on the wall behind him.”
“I don’t get it.” Why would he? He’d never been there.
“It’s a stupid picture that some kid used a few years back to mark good locations for parties. There are all sorts of abandoned or private locations in the area with them, but only one of them is blue.”
He nodded but didn’t question me further as I raced River’s baby around the tight corners of the mountain roads at a breakneck speed. His knuckles went white on the door handle, but I couldn’t slow down, I wouldn’t slow down. Not when my sister was in trouble.
36
Screaming to a stop in front of the abandoned auto shop, I burst out of the car without even turning off the engine. The easiest way in was around the back, but I didn’t have time to waste, so I kicked in the front door and broke it off its hinges. The shattered door hit the ground and revealed Lucy still tied to a chair in the middle of the floor with the two massive goons beating the shit out of her.
At my abrupt entrance, one of them took off towards the back door, but Caleb gave chase, leaving me to deal with the other. The asshole actually started to laugh at me, and I lunged at him with a solid kick. He crashed into the wall and crumpled into a heap. I gave it a beat, made sure he stayed down, before I went to Lucy.
Rushing over, I slid to a stop on the floor next to her. I tore the ropes from her wrists and ankles before gently setting her on the floor and removing the tight gag from her mouth. Her delicate, pixie face was almost unrecognizable in a mass of fresh bruises, swelling, and gashes. Her body probably wasn’t much better. There was a sickening, wet rattle in her breathing, which suggested she might have broken ribs. God, what if one was piercing her lungs?
“Lucy!” I fluttered my hands over her face, wanting to check her out but not wanting to hurt her. “Jesus, fuck, Lucy. I’m s-so sorry.” Tears streamed down my face. “Luce, p-please be okay. I’m so so s-sorry.”
She didn’t move, and my heart shredded. How the hell did I drag her into this mess? Why hadn’t I kept her out of it? If she died, it would be entirely my fault. Why did I keep pushing for more information? Why couldn’t I have just looked the other way at those stupid goddamn files?
Get your shit together, Kit! Lucy needed help, real help. Forcing my breathing to slow down, I glanced around the room. I needed a phone, and mine was at the house.
A rush of motion near the door had me leaping to my feet, ready to defend my broken friend against a new threat. It was the rest of the team who poured in, and I dropped back to Lucy’s side. Wesley took her other side, checking her over with practiced skill.
Austin checked the goon I had kicked into the wall and declared him dead. Good. He deserved worse.
Wesley’s motions grew more frantic. “We need to get her to a hospital. Cole, help me get her into River’s car; it’s the fastest. We don’t have time to wait for an ambulance. Let’s move.”
Cole gently lifted her tiny body in his massive arms before striding out to the car and carefully placing her across the back seat. Wesley climbed in with her, sitting in the foot well and holding his fingers to the pulse in her wrist. I ran around the car and slid into the passenger side as River took the wheel and smoothly accelerated out of the parking lot.
The drive to the hospital was tense, and no one spoke except for Wesley giving us updates on Lucy’s vitals every few minutes. River’s hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles white, while I stared ahead, tears flowing silently down my face as I willed the vehicle to go faster.
We were still too far from the hospital when the wet rattle of Lucy’s labored breathing stopped, and Wesley began to swear.
“River, you need to get us there now!” His scream echoed the wrenching in my heart, and I twisted in the seat to watch as he tried to resuscitate my best friend.
River tossed me his phone. “Call ahead; let them know we’re coming.”
Of course. It made sense to alert the hospital. I called and managed to answer all of the nurse’s questions in a mostly clear voice. She assured me that they would be waiting, and a minute later when we screeched to a halt in front of the emergency room doors, I was relieved to find she was right a
nd a team of doctors waited with a gurney ready.
River helped them carefully lift Lucy onto the bed, and Wesley rattled off everything he had observed while another nurse took over the resuscitation. They were a blur of motion, wheeling her into the hospital and towards an operating theatre as Wesley ran alongside, continuing his report. I stood in the doorway, frozen, watching them get farther and farther away.
I was shaking, and I knew on some level that I was in shock, but I couldn’t move. It was like my muscles had shut down and I was just an observer, looking out from behind watery eyes.
River wrapped his strong arms around me, then led me over to the waiting area. He murmured words in my ear that were no doubt meant to be comforting. When he pressed me into a chair, I obeyed, too busy drowning in a lake of guilt to argue.
He continued talking to me, but his words had no meaning. His lips moved, but all I heard was a sharp ringing in my ears. The intensity on his face suggested he wanted to tell me something important, but I didn’t care. My best friend—my sister might be dying because of me.
At some stage, the rest of the team arrived. Caleb swept me into a tight hug, kissing my hair and rocking me back and forth. For some reason, his actions snapped me out of my daze, and the paralysis caging me burned away under my anger.
Breaking free of his hold, I shoved him away then glared daggers at all of them. He stupidly reached for me again, and I swatted his hand away from me, hissing a little in anger.
“Do not fucking touch me,” I spat, sparing none of them my wrath as I glared at each in disgust. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t turned down that psycho bitch’s offer, none of this would have happened!” I recognized how unreasonable I was being, but the fury kept building in me, and I needed to blame someone other than myself. They had made a unilateral decision about me without me there, and then Austin had run with it.
“Kit.” River layered a command in how he said my name and demanded my attention. “Now is not the time. You need to calm down before you burn out.”
