Prisoner

by Annika Martin

  “She’s not a part of this.”

  But I’m the one who did the time. I’m the one who was the favorite down in that hole, and not the kind of favorite you ever want to be. “I want her there.”

  The guys have been with me, of course, but it’s different with her, and suddenly—yeah, I want her there, need her there. I look into her brown eyes, but I’m talking to Stone. “She comes. You said he’s mine. That the job is mine. That means I say how it goes.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ~Grayson~

  We’re in main room, putting the final touches on our plan.

  It’s funny; we’ve been wanting vengeance for so long, but now that it’s near, I don’t feel happy. I look around at these guys I’ve gone through so much with, guys I’d lay down my life for, and I know none of them are happy either. Abby’s sitting in the corner, reading. I smooth a strand of hair that escaped her bun, and I feel happy about that.

  I’ve been spending the last few days recovering, sleeping a lot. I made the guys go out and buy Abby some nice clothes and underwear she picked out of a catalog and a crapload of books, and she’s been by my side nearly the whole time, except while my guys and I were scheming.

  Stone’s polishing bullets at the table. He’s already tasting the governor’s death. Hearing him cry out in pain. Stone will hurt him, and then I get to do the honors. It means a lot that he gave it to me, because I know he wants it bad.

  “Come on.” I pull her hand.

  “Just a sec,” she says. Always wanting to finish a chapter. Always another chapter.

  I pick her up and haul her over my back.

  “Hey!” She struggles, and the book thuds to the floor. I’m always doing that—losing her place. I have her on my good shoulder, but it’s killing my bad shoulder all the same.

  “We’re outta here,” I growl the way that she recognizes. Primal. A little mean. The way a male lion would subdue his female.

  I can feel the eyes of my guys on me as I spin around with her and walk off.

  She squirms, but it’s just for show now. “Grayson.”

  I hear the breathlessness in her voice, the arousal. She gets off on this treatment, like I do. I head down the hall, letting her struggle. I walk into my room and lay her down onto my bed. She looks up, waiting. Mine. So much mine it scares me.

  “How together you guys are,” she says, her eyes intense, “It’s amazing. The way you survived and pulled each other through.”

  I don’t know what to do with that, so I just shove her over and nestle in beside her. She watches my face; then she settles on her side right next to me, tracing the ridges of the scarification symbol on my arm. We lie there like two plants, soaking up the darkness like sunshine.

  There’s this way where I can sometimes sense the direction of her thoughts, and I know she’s going to ask about it before she does.

  “You all have these,” she says, tracing it up and down.

  “Yeah,” I whisper.

  “Two-sided axes in an X. You did them yourselves?”

  I push a bit of hair out of her eyes with my other hand. “How can you tell?”

  A faint smile brushes her lips. Because they’re pretty crude.

  “Battle-axes,” I say. “We found the picture in one of the moldy encyclopedias we used to read out of in the basement.”

  She nods.

  “Through the years, when we’d get in fights down there, they’d put makeup on our bruises and withhold food. We would get in a lot of trouble for getting scraped up or bruised, you know, messing up the merchandise. They had a lot of ways to control us, but we gave each other these a few days before the end. Scraped the hell out of each other’s arms with sharpened nails. We were older—Stone was fifteen and strong as fuck. We’d work out down there. We were going to get out or die at that point.”

  “So that’s what this is? A kind of war paint?”

  I pause, because this isn’t something we tell people outside the group, but then I realize she’s not outside. To me, she’s as inside as you can get. “It’s part of a vow we made up: One blade to protect my brothers, one blade for vengeance.”

  “That’s your vow?”

  “That’s our vow.”

  She traces the lines of the axes with her finger. “If I look back at the newspaper reports for fifteen years ago, will I find a bloody unsolved crime?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She just traces it. I hold my breath, wondering what she’s going to say. The moonlight streams in from the high window, adding a glow to her dark hair, splaying around her head, and her cheekbones, so strong and somehow fragile at the same time. “I think it’s beautiful,” she says finally.

  The breath shudders out of me, and I’m filled with relief. Maybe a kind of peace, even.

  She narrows her gaze. “You lived in this hotel for fifteen years?”

  “Give or take. We took it right after we got out. Except Nate. He bought a guy’s identity and tried to make a straight life. I guess he did.”

  She points up at the dingy, pockmarked ceiling where the lightbulb hangs from a cord. “You put in that light?”

  “Yup. This place wasn’t exactly functioning then, but… It was right after we escaped. I needed to fight with something. We all did. So we made this place into a home.”

  She nods as if that makes sense.

  We couldn’t do everything ourselves though. We took a lot of money with us from the basement, and we paid a lot of money on the black market to wire this place off the city grid. The guy probably retired on what we paid him, but the place is still humming.

  “The fixture still has the price tag on it.”

  “So what?” I say. “It’s a light. It lights things.” I watch her, seeing the Bradford through her eyes suddenly, and my gut tenses. This place isn’t dark and cold like a basement, but it’s not that far off. My room has old furniture that would be nice except for the gouges in the wood. The walls have bright rectangles where pictures used to hang, before we got here. A thick layer of dust covers the lines in the woodwork. We’ve got lots of nice shit, sure. The tech, the cars, old scotch. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to her.

  “This place is ours. It’s a good place.” I turn, lying on my good shoulder. “Safe from everyone,” I whisper, sliding a wisp of hair off her forehead even though I’m not supposed to be moving my arm.

  “A bare bulb with the price tag on it, from fifteen years ago.”

  I lean my head to her ear. “You know I can’t let you leave.”

  She slides a sly gaze to me. It’s different when I say it now, but it’s still true. I can’t let her leave. My heart pounds as she looks back at the ceiling. “You deserve a nice place, that’s all,” she says. “I mean, it has beautiful features, but it feels kind of abandoned still. Temporary.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” I grate.

  She turns to me. “Right, but you can’t decorate it with nice things?”

  “Decorate it?”

  She snorts. “Guys.”

  She wants to make it nice. A strange feeling comes over me, like when somebody gives you the last burger even though you’ve been an asshole all night.

  “It wouldn’t be hard,” she says. “A decent fixture. Some paint for the ceiling or something. Pictures on the wall. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  My breathing starts to feel funny, a kind of soft heaving, because somewhere back in the cobwebby part of my mind where I never go, I remember somebody, a foster mom, maybe, caring about what was on the ceiling. Hanging toy things from the ceiling, like it mattered what the fuck I saw.

  She’s studying my face. “You could have anything nice you want. You could have a thousand-dollar chandelier up there.”

  I look away, feeling too exposed. “A thousand-dollar chandelier in a room in a boarded-up hotel?”

  She turns on her side now, pursuing. “You deserve to have things nice.”

  And suddenly I’m wondering if Stone is a little bit right—if m
aybe she is too dangerous to me. Because I feel all broken apart, her saying that. And this fucking place can never be nice. She doesn’t belong here. And that one fact destroys me.

  I pull on her collar. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Grayson,” she says.

  I pat my belt buckle. “Sit up here and take off your shirt.”

  She gives me a look. I give her one back. She knows what it means.

  She gets up onto my rock-hard cock, straddling me.

  “Take it off,” I say. “Slow.”

  I read the hesitation in her eyes, and I push. I don’t know why; I just do, like the pain of her kindness is too much. “I said, take it off.”

  She pulls her shirt up by the hem—slow and shy, unaware how hot her reluctance is. She’s so fucking prim, it gets me hard. She pulls it over her head. I reach up and grab her shirt before she can untangle it from her wrists, and I twist them up extra hard, yanking her arms to the front of her. Then I undo her fly and I press my thumb to her clit, holding her, stroking her.

  She watches me with those brown eyes as I move my thumb up and down, getting her off, keeping her wrists tied in her shirt, twisting a little more to let her know who’s in charge.

  She hisses out a breath and starts rocking against my cock.

  “That’s good, baby.” I press my thumb deeper. “You’re wet for me,” I say, holding her gaze, showing her there are no secrets between us.

  “Yeah,” she whispers.

  She leans down on her shirt-tangled arms and kisses my chest. It’s like heaven, and I close my eyes. It’s all I can do not to flip her over and fuck her right there, but I just take her in, her kisses, all the tenderness that I don’t deserve.

  “Pants,” I grate. She rolls off me and stands, pushing down her pants and wriggling out of them.

  I watch with a funny feeling in my gut; she’s so bright and good, and for a second I think maybe I could just stay with her. Maybe I don’t need revenge. But the thought slips away, because killing the governor has always been mine.

  Then she gets back on me and rides me sweet until I can’t see or think or hear.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ~Abigail~

  The library is on the other side of Franklin City, on a dark, gloomy street, thanks to half the streetlights being out. The buildings are run-down and the sidewalks are strewn with trash, but it’s not a complete and utter wasteland like the neighborhood around the Bradford Hotel. There are actually people and cars going by.

  It’s late. The library is closed, but Grayson walks me right up to the door like he owns the place, grip hard on my arm. Does he think I’ll try to escape? I know Stone still thinks I want to.

  It’s the first time I’ve been out of the Bradford for days. Time has gone by in a blur; it seems like I spent half my time lying in bed with Grayson, reading while he slept and recuperated—and staying near him, not entirely trusting Stone and the guys not to take me out and shoot me or something, as much as Grayson insists that danger is past. Once he was well enough, he was holed up with his guys, cleaning weapons and running scenarios, preparing to hit the governor.

  And while he was with his guys, I spent the time in a no-man’s-land, not really a captive but not exactly free to go. And I don’t know what I’d do out there, anyway. My picture is on the national news, and I’m wanted by the police. I could be in a lot of trouble. Even though I was a hostage. That should count for something.

  I’ve been doing what I always do—hiding in books. One whole afternoon and evening was taken up in a Victorian mystery. After that, it was pirates. After that, Italian travel essays. There’s this turret at the front of the hotel with amazing light, and the guys don’t even use it. I swept it out and cleaned it up, and that’s where I’ve been reading while Grayson had his head down with his guys, which is often. They’re obsessed with getting to the governor—they’ve been waiting for it their whole lives.

  They’re going to kill him. Slowly. Grayson hasn’t said it outright to me. Some things you just know.

  “Closer,” he says, shoving me to the fake pillar at the side of the big double doors, pressing against me, being a little rough, the way I enjoy.

  I close my eyes, soaking up his heat, his force; the intensity of his focus on me feels like a caress. He won’t ever let me go—not ever.

  He’s moving his arm beside me.

  “What are you doing?” My voice comes out breathy, but then I open my eyes and realize he’s picking the lock. I’m his cover.

  The crew is around, watching from shadows. Even knowing they’re out there, I can’t see them.

  “What about the alarm?” I ask, nodding my head at the alarm warning sign.

  “City stopped paying that contract years ago.” The latch clicks. He loops an arm around my neck. “Wait,” he whispers, holding me close. You would hardly know he was shot a few days ago—he’s strong as a bull. There’s no pain in his expression when he looks down at me with something like…tenderness? Affection?

  Something more?

  He pulls me in, and his chest feels solid and strong, a wall against my wildly beating heart. It feels good. Maybe I can’t leave. Maybe I don’t want to. I grin up at him through my nervousness. We’re about to break into a library. It’s nothing to Grayson. Over the past days it has really hit me how much crime Grayson and his tribe of guys are responsible for. The expensive cars and the rest of the guy toys and all that nice scotch they drink.

  As soon as the street empties of traffic and pedestrians, he leads me in.

  Stepping into the library feels like going home, even with all the craziness of breaking in and Stone wanting me dead and Grayson being…well, Grayson. It’s as if we’re on some kind of nerdy outlaw date, picking out books together.

  Grayson flicks on a flashlight, keeping it pointed low. The cool metal racks are filled to the brim with old, dusty books. I relax a little, infused with a sense of safety. Books were not quite an escape for me.

  And they were never my friends.

  They were so much more than that—utilitarian and unbreakable. They were my armor, my wall against the world. Until I had Grayson.

  “Where are the floor plans?” Grayson sounds grim. Impatient. Does the library make him nervous?

  I like that. It makes me feel powerful. “I’m not sure,” I answer. “Every library’s laid out differently.”

  “Well figure it out,” he snaps. “I’m not about to get thrown back in jail because you couldn’t figure out the fucking Dewey decimal system.”

  “I’m surprised you know about the Dewey decimal system.”

  He snorts. Then after a minute he adds, “I can read.”

  “And write.”

  His sideways look threatens punishment if I continue. So of course I do.

  “I mean that in the best way. You can really write. The way you threaded that story with your ideas for the escape. The way you knew exactly what to write so I’d feature it. Just enough truth to make it real. Just enough fiction to get a message to your friends.”

  He gives me a wary look. “Are you mocking me?”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m being serious. You made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. That project meant a lot to me. But what you wrote was really good.”

  He looks away. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

  “I don’t understand—you guys were so young when you ended up in that basement. I saw the milk carton. You were five. And it sounds like you were all in there together. You were in there six years, and they weren’t sending you to school, so…”

  “Perverts who keep boys in basements aren’t real likely to send them to school.”

  “And then when you got out of there, you were eleven?”

  He runs his finger over a leather-bound ledger. “And the other guys were fourteen or fifteen by then.”

  “And you ended up at the Bradford.”

  “Yup. Checked into the Bradford Hotel,” he says sarcastically. Because there’d be
no checking in. I imagine them prying up the boards. Just kids. And that’s when they started their life of crime.

  “So how did you learn to read?”

  “Nate taught me,” he says. “Most of the guys were seven or eight when we went in. They mostly knew how to read by then. Nate is brilliant, though. He taught me, and he made the rest of us keep it up. It was a basement, you know? There were musty boxes of books down there. Some encyclopedias from 1920. That’s what I learned on.”

  “Oh,” I say. It explains a lot. The holes in his understanding of things.

  “Nate made up a lot of guessing games out of reading that stuff. Not exactly an education, but it felt like fighting back. Like saying, you can’t take everything from us. Not much of an education, but—”

  “It’s amazing,” I say. “Because you fought for it and it’s yours. And it’s amazing how you guys got each other through.”

  He slides his finger along a metal shelf.

  “Why didn’t you go back to your foster family?”

  “They never felt like mine the way the guys did. When you’re in something like that for so long, you can’t get a bond fiercer. It was us against them, against everyone in the world.”

  His pain pierces me.

  “That’s a gift that those perverts gave you. Brothers who are more than brothers. More than a family.”

  “Don’t candy coat it. Those animals that took us, Abby…they took a lot.”

  “No,” I say.

  He looks away, and this image comes into my mind of a time I was up north with my mom. We were in this slummy neighborhood and all night the sirens were going—from a house burning down, we learned the next morning. We walked over to look and it was this massive blackened shell, hung with icicles like diamonds against the blue, blue sky. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  Grayson is like that house. Stunning in his destruction.

  He studies me with haunted eyes. “Maybe they took too much, you know?”

  I put my hand on his arm, over the battle-axe scar. “They didn’t, Grayson. Don’t say that.”