Prisoner

by Annika Martin

  The governor’s mansion is illuminated by spotlights that shine upward from the ground, making it look like a castle. The guard inside the little booth at the gate is slumped over, drugged. I can’t help but feel guilty.

  I don’t know why, but my resolve firms when I look at Grayson, beautiful in his woundedness, like an avenging angel, taking justice for lost innocence. The mortal rules don’t apply.

  Down the street, somebody’s sprinkler swishes back and forth.

  We split and rush down the driveway, hugging the shadows, and rush across the lawn. We slip through the shadows to the back of the massive house and crouch in the grass on the dark side of the stone rail that’s held up by carved stone balustrades; it stretches all around the edges of the red tile porch. The plan is that Nate and I keep watch in back. Grayson and Stone and the rest of the guys are going in—through the roof. The blueprints we stole showed the way. They’ll clear the house and let us in.

  Grayson touches my cheek, and then he’s off in the night.

  A soft pop sounds across the quiet. Then another. Disabling the guards. Nate’s fixed a few of the guys up with safari tranquilizer guns. We have intel that the governor and his wife sleep in separate rooms and the wife takes heavy sleep meds, but Nate thinks we should tranquilize her anyway.

  I sit in the dewy grass, barely breathing. Nate eyes me. “They’ll be fine. They’re the best.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ~Grayson~

  The guys scale the four-story mansion with ropes. Stone puts a rope ladder down for me—I can’t hack our usual break-and-enter activities with my shoulder like it is. Nate didn’t want me doing this part at all, but he’s never been able to stop me from shit like this.

  I’ve never killed a man in cold blood before. In the heat of a fight, yeah. Guys trying to kill me, yeah. But not a man helpless. Except the governor can never seem helpless—not to us. And it’s huge that they reserved killing him for me. I remember the dark day Stone promised it to me. I was pretty fucked up, and he grabbed my hair and looked me in the eyes and he said, We’ll hurt him bad, but you’ll get to kill him, Grayson. You’ll get to kill him, okay?

  A few minutes later we lay on the mansion roof, watching the stars and waiting for Calder to give the go signal. I look over at Stone, next to me in his ragged black hoodie, eyes dark with death. Even gazing up at the cool, crisp sky, he looks angry. Hard. Like he hates the stars.

  But he has a good heart—a dangerous heart, but a good heart. I wonder if Abby can see that. I want her to understand him. I want him to understand her.

  “Soon,” Stone whispers.

  I imagine wrapping my hands around the governor’s throat. I play it in my mind like I have so many times, feeling him jerk and struggle as the life drains out of him. While that doesn’t make me feel happy, it gives me a certain comfort. Maybe even some peace. Hurting and killing the governor has always been a substitute for happiness. Because I knew I’d never have the real thing.

  It’s huge that Abby wants to come with me. So huge I don’t know what to do with it, and my pulse races into overdrive when I think of her out there. I don’t like leaving her, but I don’t want her in on the dangerous work of clearing.

  I see people saying shit like their wedding day was the best moment of their lives, or having a baby or whatever, but I can’t imagine anything better than when Abby said she wanted to be there for me killing that motherfucker. Like she’s okay with reaching into the darkest part of me. Like she actually wants to go there. Having a baby or getting a wedding ring or whatever could never hold up to that.

  The historical blueprints gave us gold—a set of vertical tunnels for the old-fashioned hot-blast heating system that stretches up to the roof. That old system was later replaced by a radiator system, but the empty tunnels are still there if you know where to look.

  Which we do, now.

  We did measurements and got the location of an empty tunnel, more like a chute, right under part of the HVAC exhaust array on the west side of the roof.

  Stone’s phone buzzes. Time.

  Prying the motherfucker up without making noise is a little bit of a bitch—we muffle the sound with rubberized blankets and smash through the paper-thin veneer of asphalt topping. There’s a subattic. We knew about that, and that it’s wired up like crazy.

  The beauty of the hot-blast chute is that it bypasses the wired-up subattic. We pop in handholds so we don’t slide all the way to the basement, and go down to the Sheetrock area on the fourth floor. We make a little too much noise punching through, but suddenly we’re in.

  Stone, Cruz and I haul ass down the stairs, weapons at our sides. Cruz breaks off at the wife’s room to hit her with the tranq gun, and Stone and I burst into the governor’s bedroom.

  He’s clearly just woken up. He’s cowering in his bed, wearing a motherfucking sleep cap over his gray hair, holding a .357 in his shaking hand. A bedside lamp casts a circle of light to his side. Enough to see the horror on his face when he recognizes me. He scuttles back to the headboard. “I’ll shoot—I will.”

  I’m vibrating with wild energy—maybe it’s rage, I don’t know. I glance at Stone. We don’t need words—we know how to work a man with a gun. He goes to one side of the room, and I go to another.

  “Help!” the governor calls, pointing his piece at me, then swinging it wildly to the other side, to aim at Stone. But he can’t shoot both of us.

  “You don’t get to call for help,” I say. “That sound familiar? Who else didn’t get to call for help, you remember?”

  He turns his gun back at me, aiming at me. He won’t do it. He’s a coward, and he knows the second he hits one of us, the other will kill him. If he was smart, he’d know he’s dead already.

  “Put down the gun and get the fuck out of bed,” Stone growls, standing there all in black down to his massive motorcycle boots. “And take that motherfucking cap off your head. I want it off now.”

  The governor watches him stupidly.

  “Now!” Stone’s fixating on the cap thing. You never know what Stone is going to fixate on.

  “I have money,” the governor says. “I owe you; I understand. I can set you for life.”

  Stone storms to a bookshelf that’s full of framed pictures and fragile-looking things, and with an angry swipe he pushes it all off. Stuff crashes to the floor. He does it to the other shelves, wild with anger. This is what we’re going to do to you.

  That’s my cue to fly at the governor, at his shooting arm, forcing it up and to the side where a shot can’t do damage. A shot goes off, but it’s wild. I twist his gun from his hand and wing it at the wall so hard it cracks the plaster. I put him on his face on the bed and pull his arm behind his back, knee in his spine.

  “You owe us more than money,” I grit out. I grab his hair and jerk his head, jerk his arm.

  He gasps in pain. Maybe I’m breaking something, but I can’t let off, because deep down I think if I let off, he could hurt me.

  How fucked up is that? I’m twice as big as him, and I have my guys here, but the governor still seems like a threat.

  Stone comes up and drives a fist into the man’s jaw with a deafening thwack and force that I feel clear through my body. Yeah, I was the governor’s favorite, but he screwed every single one of us in every sense of the word.

  Stone pulls off the man’s cap. “I said the cap comes off!” He wraps it around his knuckles and brings his fist down on the man’s ear, which blooms with blood.

  I jerk the governor’s head up. “Your ass is ours now, and we’re not gonna make it nice.”

  Stone makes the call, getting our guys in here, and then he puts aside his gun and pulls out a blade.

  “Grayson,” the governor says, craning his head, looking up at me like we’re friends, the look he used to give me.

  Affection.

  This sick feeling comes over me, remembering all those times when I was helpless under him, and he’d give me this look of affection. The worst
thing is that I know he really did feel some twisted affection. “Grayson.”

  “Shut up.” I jerk his arm, make it hurt. “You don’t get to say my name.”

  The rest of the guys have arrived and crowd around the bedroom, all scars and leather and hard edges, making the furniture look clean and toylike. They’ve got guns, blades. We all want a crack at him.

  My heart pounds as Abby slips in next to Nate. Cruz flops onto the couch, one leg over the armrest. Calder pulls a vase off a podium in the corner and hurls it across the room.

  “Looks like everyone’s here,” I say. “What are we in the mood for, Governor?”

  This terrible hush comes over the room.

  The governor’s shaking his head. “No, no.”

  Yeah, he remembers.

  That’s something he’d ask me and the other boys. What are we in the mood for, Grayson? What are we in the mood for, Stone? Like we had some kind of choice.

  I tighten my grip on his hair and arm, twisting harder. “What are we in the mood for? What? Answer!”

  “I have a wife,” he pants. “A daughter.”

  I catch the glint of metal from the corner of my eye. Nate flashes a scalpel and advances. “Are you trying to humanize yourself? Are you honestly trying to humanize yourself to us after what you did to us?” he asks.

  “Her name is Alana.”

  Nate sighs and looks at the ceiling.

  I wince. Nobody brings out Nate’s dark side like the governor. And he’s just done it. Things could get bloody. “Calder, hold open his mouth,” Nate says. “I need to cut out this man’s tongue.”

  The governor’s whipping his head back and forth, best he can, anyway, being that I’m gripping his hair.

  Calder shoves his nine into his waistband and grabs the guy’s face, readying to force his mouth open.

  The governor pleads, “It wasn’t me. Wasn’t me running that operation.”

  Anger surges through me. “You think we’re stupid?”

  “It’s bigger than me. They have other boys,” the governor mumbles. “Right now…”

  I feel sick. It can’t be true. But I have a bad feeling it’s true. Something about the way he says it. I jerk him by the hair. “Answer me. You think we’re stupid?”

  “No. I think you care. I can help you find them,” the governor pants. “I didn’t want it to keep going—I swear it. I have a contact. William Fossey…”

  My gut wrenches. He says it like we should know that name. I look around. Stone looks wary, but he might just believe it too.

  “Federal Judge William Fossey?” Abby says.

  “Under the pictures.” Dorman points.

  Nate is at one of the bookcases, picking up pictures in shiny frames. “What are you talking about?”

  “In the drawer under there. Me and the judge. There’s one…look at the backgrounds…”

  Nate jerks open the drawer and roots around. Then he lifts something out. “Shit,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  Nate brings a photo to Stone, who takes a look and swears.

  “Where?” Nate asks the governor. “The other boys are where?” So Nate believes him too.

  “Let me go, and I’ll help you!”

  Nate tosses the framed photo, stalks to the bed, and shoves a blade deep into the governor’s thigh with a viciousness I haven’t seen in him in years. Dorman cries out in pain.

  Here it goes. Nate’s gone dark.

  “Where?” Nate asks calmly.

  “Where are they?” I growl, jerking him hard. “You tell us now.”

  “I don’t know!” he gasps. “I got orders. It wasn’t all me. You can use me to find them. I’ll help you…I can help you…please!”

  I exchange glances with Stone. Yeah, we both know when a guy’s given us everything he’s got.

  “Take off his pants,” Stone says to somebody. “Let’s do this.”

  “Grayson,” he begs. “Please, Grayson…” I catch that hint of affection again, and this hot rage surges up in me and I lose it, and all I can do is hit him again and again, knuckles cracking bone. I can’t stop myself; it’s like I won’t survive if I don’t feel him breaking apart under my fists.

  “Kill him,” Cruz shouts.

  The governor shields his face, but my fist is as unstoppable as a fucking freight train. I haul him off the bed and hold him against the wall with one hand and punch the fuck out of his face with the other. Over and over, my fist connects with his bloody jaw, his bloody lip. His head jerks.

  I feel my stitches ripping open, wound on fire. I don’t care.

  I can hear my guys, encouraging me to kill him, and I hear the love in their voices as I hit him, fist on fire, knuckles slick and hungry.

  But then I remember Abby, and my arm slows. What the fuck? I should’ve never brought her. She thinks I’m a caveman, less than human.

  She’s right.

  I pause. Shaking.

  The governor looks at me with those blue eyes, the bright squinch he used to get when his emotions were supposedly hurt, like when you didn’t act right or seemed to be rejecting him.

  The look is like a fucking bolt of chaos in me, and suddenly I’m back at it, hitting him, smashing out his teeth. I can never get enough of hurting him. He took everything good from us. Everything that could make us good men. Everything that could make me worthy of a girl like Abby.

  The sounds change and evolve. I need to crush every bit of him with my fist. He took everything.

  “Grayson!” Abby.

  “Get her out of here!” I hit him again.

  “No!” She grabs the back of my shirt. “Stop it. Don’t let him win like this.”

  I stop moving. It’s a fucking miracle that I can, but I’m a rabid animal, and I don’t want her to get bit. “Go,” I pant. “You can’t be here.”

  “Grayson,” she says. I can feel the guys waiting for my cue, waiting to see if I really want her gone after dragging her here. It feels like a test. Revenge or failure. Them or her.

  I’m shaking, holding Dorman to the wall while he stares at me with those bright, hurt eyes, blood pouring from every hole in his face, including a few that I made.

  “You’re better than this,” she says from behind me. “You’re a good man, Grayson.”

  I turn toward her, hauling him around with me to face her, holding half-conscious Dorman up by his shirt between us. His head bobs forward, chin to his chest.

  I let her look at me, knowing I’m covered with his blood. It won’t be the first time I’m coated with his fluids, and it feels like a dark, desperate glory, like hate, like war paint. Like oblivion.

  I don’t know what anything is anymore, but I can tell from her eyes that she’s frightened as fuck, and she should be.

  “I’m not better than this,” I growl. I drive my knee right up into his face. It’s a fucking piston and there’s a sickening crack. He lets out a guttural cry. That would be his nose.

  “No!” Abby’s sobbing.

  “I’m not a good man. I’m not even human.”

  “You’re wrong, Grayson. You can’t kill him.”

  “You can’t change your mind!” I say. “You said you were with me. You said you were strong enough.”

  “I am strong enough,” she says. “Strong enough to tell you no. Strong enough to know you’re better than this. Strong enough to motherfucking love you.”

  It’s too much, that last, and too much that I can never have. I knee him in the chest and feel the crack of a rib. He coughs, and it doesn’t sound normal. He’s broken. Because I’m fucking breaking him. I’m tearing him apart with my bare hands. “Get her the hell out.”

  The guys spring into action as I fling him onto the bed and pound him some more. They’re taking her out—I can hear her fight them. I used to love how strong she was, how much of a fighter she was, but she can’t fight me. Can’t fight me and win, anyway.

  I can hear her voice down the hall. I hit him again, even more pissed now. He’s moaning
. He’s really hurt, but I can’t stop myself.

  I don’t know how many more times I hit him, but there’s this one point where I’m changing angles and I catch him looking up at me with those fucking eyes, but they’re different now.

  I pause, fist cocked, with this weird feeling in my gut. They’re not those fakey hurt-feelings eyes. They’re not those what are we in the mood for? eyes.

  They’re human eyes. Half-dead, yeah, but human. Suffering.

  And I’m fucking shaking.

  Because for a wild second, I see through his eyes to a hurt little boy, and I don’t know if the hurt little boy is me or if it’s him.

  I’m shaking. I might throw up. And just like that all the killing energy drains out of me.

  I roll off him and lie on the bed, panting, listening to Dorman’s uneasy breath. Broken-nose breath. Maybe punctured-lung breath. Probably both.

  Stone flops down on the other side of me and puts his hand on my heart like he always did.

  Calder comes up, looming over me and the governor. “Want me to finish him?”

  “We have an hour left at least.” Stone says. “He’s not going anywhere. It’s Grayson’s call. Whatever you say.”

  Meaning who kills him. It goes without saying he needs to die. The dragon needs to be slain.

  But I’m not so sure now. I can’t shake that look in his eyes. He’d never seen us as human; that was his crime. But I’d never seen him as human either. I’d never seen a lot of people as human. “Is Nate with her?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Stone says. “He’s taking her off the grounds.”

  Of course it would’ve been Nate who took her out. He’d want to get away—his dark side was emerging. The amount of darkness inside Nate is as stunning as the amount of goodness inside him.

  I shake off the guys and sit at the side of the bed. Of all the times to see the governor’s humanity. Of all the times to think there’s some fucking good to come of any of this.

  Fuck.

  “Fucking hurting and killing him. What does that make us?”

  Stone sits up and glares. “Fuck no.” He points an accusing finger at me. “No way.” He’s pissed, and he’s looking right through me at Abby, like she fucked me up.