Rook and Ronin Company Box Set: Books 6-9 (JA Huss Box Set Series Order Book 2)

by JA Huss

  “Fear, like all emotions, is a weapon I use with skill.” - Case

  I don’t answer her question, just hold her tightly as the drugs take over. She begins to rest against me, her body becoming heavy. After several minutes she slumps down.

  I pick her up in my arms and then lay her down on the table, tying her hands first and then her legs. My fingertips travel up her leg, lingering briefly on the prick marks I made with the knife, as I position myself next to her head. I lean down and whisper, “Are you ready?”

  I can feel her nod, just slightly, but enough to know the cocktail I came up with is working. “OK, then. Let’s start from the beginning again. What happened after I left you out at the cabin eight years ago? When I left you with Garrett?”

  She mumbles but none of her words makes sense.

  Fuck. I gave her too much.

  “Sydney,” I try again. “Tell me everything that happened when I left you with Garrett at the cabin eight years ago.”

  She mumbles again, but it’s a little better now.

  I wait for several more minutes, checking my watch, then ask again.

  This time she answers. “He was nice.”

  Hmmm. I’ve heard this before. She’s said it several times already when under the drugs. So many times, in fact, that I have to assume it’s true. “How was he nice? What did he do?”

  “He taught me to fish.”

  I shake my head and sigh. “No,” I say sharply. “Before that. Back at the cabin. What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He just took care of me. He took us to the Bighorn cabin and we stayed there. It was nice.”

  “Nice?” What the fuck game is Garrett playing?

  “He took care of me. He protected me.”

  I shake my head and have to draw one of two conclusions. The dose was too high. Or that fucker is not what I think he is. I go with the first because the other isn’t even possible.

  My breath comes out in a long huff, a mixture of dissatisfaction and fatigue. I’m tired of this shit. I want this to be over. I want to kill this girl and this guy and move on. I want to go back to my friends and say, “It’s done.” I want to see the look of relief on Sasha Cherlin’s face when she finally gets to put the death of her father behind her.

  But I can’t do any of that until I figure out what the hell is going on. I understand that Sasha was a threat. She was a twelve-year-old trained assassin. She was a wild card that needed to be dealt with. She was a liability and an asset, because back then she had all the answers everyone needed thanks to her father’s big mouth.

  That got him killed. That almost got her killed. But I saved her ass that night and I saved her ass again, over and over since then. She’s grown now. In college. Living a nice, safe, normal life.

  So we won. I tell her that, anyway. We won. And I know she shouldn’t believe it. But normal life makes you forget to be wary. She’s lived normal for too long now. The last time I said it a few years ago, she said, OK. We won.

  And she believed me.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t believe it when I said it and I don’t believe it now.

  We lost. Because we never got the answers as to why. Why?

  I need to know this, and Garrett McGovern is the path to that level of satisfaction. And my only connection to Garrett is Sydney.

  What if I’m wrong? What if Sydney has no answers? She passed the lie detector test when I drugged her up when she first got here. That was ten days ago. She’s been mostly unconscious since then. And she has no memory of it, for sure. That drug is made to wipe your memory.

  I need a different approach.

  I place my hand on her cheek, flattening my palm against her soft skin. She lets out a little, “Mmmm,” to that gesture and leans into my touch. Like she craves me.

  My eyes close at her murmurings and what they might mean, and I take a deep breath to get my mind back on the job. “I want you to concentrate now, Sydney. When was the last time you saw Garrett?”

  She takes her own deep breath, mimicking mine. “Yesterday.”

  “Fuck.” This is not working right, goddammit. “No, Sydney. It wasn’t yesterday. It was a long time ago. Tell me the last time you saw Garrett.”

  “The night before my wedding.”

  “Jesus Christ.” She’s got it all fucked up. She’s got me and him all fucked up. I walk out of the room and close the door behind me. I grab fistfuls of my hair and feel a roar coming up. But I calm myself and walk back out into the main room of the cabin and sit on the couch.

  I’m not getting anywhere. She’s had too many drugs. She’s had too much trauma since I took her. She’s, quite frankly, not as easy to break as I first thought.

  I consider calling my friend to ask for some insight into how I might’ve fucked her memory up so bad. But I nix that idea. He doesn’t do that anymore. None of them do this shit anymore. I’m the last one. I’m the only one left who’s still in the business.

  I walk over to the other side of the room and pick up my guitar. And then I walk back over to the couch and lean up against the soft leather of the arm, kicking my feet up and cradling my instrument at the same time.

  I begin to strum. It helps me think. Hell—I smile a little as I remember—this guitar got Sasha and me through some really fucked-up times back in the day.

  God, I miss her. She’s gonna graduate from college this spring and I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna be there with a present. A gift of satisfaction. Of retribution. Of revenge.

  And this stupid girl in the other room is my only chance at making that gift a reality.

  My fingers start strumming the song. One I’ve heard Sydney play over and over again since I started watching her. It’s a soft tune, one that Sasha used to like as well, back when she was into that sort of thing. These days she’s all about school. No time for dates, or parties, or music. That kid is a swift-moving arrow with dinosaurs as her target.

  The tension eases out of me as I think of my adopted little sister. Not daughter. My friend the amateur psychologist adopted her as his daughter. He can have that title.

  I actually laugh at that. All those phone calls he placed to me when she was fourteen, trying to ease her back into civilian life after that mess of a final job we did.

  They did, I correct myself.

  They all retired. Life went on. And they went on with it.

  But me? I’m stuck, man. I’m stuck in time. I’m stuck back in the hills between Cheyenne and Larimer. The night Sydney’s father and Garrett tried to kill Sasha and got her father instead. The night I vowed that we’d get those motherfuckers.

  And we did. A long time ago. We got them.

  All but one.

  I need him.

  I need to torture him and make him pay.

  I need to kill him. And I need Sydney Channing to make that happen.

  I will do whatever it takes to get my revenge.

  Whatever. It. Takes.

  Chapter Nine - Sydney

  “When the monster in the dark wants to drag you into the light, just go silent and still.”- Sydney

  I come down off the drugs the same way I did the previous times. Thick, sticky mouth desperate for water. My stomach rumbling. The silence. The bottoms of my feet are warm from the hidden fire. My eyes are blind from the hidden light.

  I sigh. Then I sit up and repeat this whole thing over again. Feet to the floor. Walk to the heat to warm myself. There’s a rug covering the stone hearth. The food slips in, along with that coveted sliver of light, through the plate-sized slit in the wall. Crawl over. Eat. Get up. Drink.

  He does not come in this time.

  Why is he drugging me?

  I go back over to the covered fireplace and sit on the rug. It’s not anything special. But it’s more than what I had.

  So that’s number five. Five things he’s given me to ease my discomfort. What’s his angle? Lure me into talking with simple pleasures?

  It’s working. I am grateful for the rug, the water, the fo
od, the fire, and the fact that I’m not tied up.

  I lie back and stretch out. The rug is not long enough for my whole body to lie across it, but I don’t care. I scoot over to the metal plate that keeps most of the heat and all of the firelight out and press myself against it.

  It feels good.

  I’m not afraid, though I should be. I’m not wishing for anything at the moment. So I think whatever Case is doing, he failed.

  My eyes close, and even though I just woke up from the drugs, this is not the same thing. This is exhaustion.

  I stay this way for a while and then, ever so subtly, I begin to hear sounds from the other room. His boots thud across the floor. They come near me, like he’s on the other side of the hidden fire, then retreat. The heat becomes more intense. He must’ve added wood.

  I smell food. I already ate, so I’m pretty sure this is not for me. But I’m not hungry, so I don’t care.

  I let my mind slip to Garrett, then replace those thoughts with Brett. I should be thinking about Brett. He’s good. He’s sweet. His family is nice. And I hate that he will find out what a shitty person I am if they ever find my body.

  All the questions that will come out about me. All the answers that will follow.

  I swallow down the shame. I’ve seen a few therapists in secret over the years. Appointments when I’ve been out of town for some reason or another. Set up in advance. One-time-only things. I mean, I tell them I’ll come back, but I’m never in the same place twice.

  And I tell them all the same story. Made up, of course, but close enough to the truth so I can glean a little bit of help from their responses.

  And they all say the same thing. I’m not responsible for my father. I’m not responsible for being related to him. You can’t choose your family, isn’t that what they say? I do not have to be ashamed for things he’s done.

  But what about the things I’ve done? The things I’m doing?

  The door opens with a creak again.

  “You don’t know why I left,” I tell Case as he steps into the room.

  “No?” he asks, taking a seat on the wooden table. It creaks from his weight. “Tell me why you left then.”

  I could refuse. It’s none of his business. And I’m not required to have light conversation with him. This has nothing to do with what he wants. It’s plain old curiosity. But I’m not going to refuse. I want him to know. “Because I love them. They’re good people and I knew you’d be back. I heard your words. I knew what they meant. And I knew you were just waiting for some big moment to appear back into my life.”

  “You came to me, Syd.”

  His use of my familiar nickname unsettles me in so many ways. “I ran from them. To save them from you.”

  “You came to me. I was waiting out there on the road because I knew you’d come.”

  “How the fuck did you know?”

  “Because you told me.”

  I laugh at that one. “OK.”

  “You told me with your actions. I wasn’t even sure if I’d show up that night.” He pauses for a moment, like he’s thinking back on a memory. “I mean, it was definitely a trap. But it went off easy.” He flicks on a small lantern. The little battery-powered bulb inside the glass is just enough to illuminate his face as he talks. “Too easy, Sydney.”

  I have not seen his face in years. And I don’t see it now, either. I see his eyes. His deep, yellow-brown eyes that remind me of honey, or amber, or a subdued sunset painted in warm ochre watercolors. “What was?” I whisper, transfixed by his stare.

  “You.” He stands up, letting the lantern drop, and then I only see his legs as he comes towards me. He sits down on the hearth next to me and I can feel the heat of the fire coming off his body. I can smell it too. He smells like the memory of the woods on a summer night.

  “You were too easy,” he continues. “Maybe Garrett is on his way here right now. Maybe he’s outside, ready to break in and kill us.”

  I snort. “You mean you. Not me.”

  Case lifts the lantern up again, only this time it’s so he can see my face. “Why?”

  “Why what?” I ask back, annoyed.

  “Do you love him?”

  I squint my eyes from the light, and then swat his hand away, making the lantern sway for a second. I half expect him to smack me for that. But he doesn’t. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He laughs and I can just barely make out the smile.

  Jesus fuck. Why does my killer have to look like this? I glance down at his chest and see that he has no shirt on. His gaze follows mine and then when I look up he shrugs.

  “It’s hot out there,” he says with a smile, nodding to the other side of the fire that I don’t get the pleasure of experiencing. I open my mouth to say something, but he beats me to it. “Do you like?”

  “Like what?” replaces the words about to roll off my tongue.

  “My chest.”

  I close my eyes and smile, laughing as I do it. “You did not just ask me—”

  But then his hand is around my neck and he’s pressed his face right up against mine. “Yes or no?” He fists my hair, pulling it and making me wince.

  But I don’t answer him. Fuck that. I’m not telling this murderer that he’s hot.

  And then he’s on his feet, swinging me over his shoulder. He slams me down on the wooden table hard enough to knock the breath out of me. My hands are tethered to the wall again, this time not spread apart, but both together, wound up with thin leather strips that were not what held me before. I bring up my legs and kick him in the chest. He steps backwards from the force, and then he growls as he takes one still-kicking leg and clamps a leather cuff on it. He repeats this with the other leg and then there it is.

  I’m ready. I’m ready to be raped.

  Case takes a breath, like he needs it, and I internally smile that I kicked him hard enough to cause that pause.

  “He called you wildcat for a reason, I guess.”

  That word stops me. Like instantly. I lie still, unable to move.

  “Hush,” Case says.

  It comforts me and I settle, so he reforms his question. “Why did he call you wildcat?”

  I’m so confused. “Who?”

  “Nice try,” Case says with a smirk. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but we’re gonna sort it out, wildcat. We’re definitely gonna sort it out.” And then he pulls a feather out of his jeans pocket and flicks the tip against my bare nipple.

  I feel it bunch up from the touch and close my eyes, shaking my head at the same time.

  He leans down in my space, right next to my ear, and whispers, “You like it, don’t you?”

  “No,” I answer.

  “Liar.” He takes the feather and traces it over my ribs. Down one. Up the next. Down again. Up again. Stopping in the center of my stomach. “Why do you carry that acorn in your pocket?”

  I’m biting the inside of my lip when he asks that question, and when I let go of it to draw in a breath to speak, I taste blood. It sets me back a moment.

  “Why, Syd?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Because only one person calls you that, wildcat?”

  “Don’t call me that either.”

  “Because that’s not really a pet name, it’s something so much more?”

  “Who the fuck are you talking about?”

  Case laughs. “Take one guess, sweetheart.”

  I know it’s Garrett. I know this. But what Case is saying doesn’t make sense. So I say nothing.

  Case lets out a breath. But then his feather travels down my stomach to the dip between my hips. “Brett likes you bare?”

  I fume inside. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Have you ever fucked him?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I know you haven’t. I’ve heard him complain about it before.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “He’s afraid you’ll be a huge disappointment in bed.”

  I close my eye
s to block him out.

  “But he’s got nothing to worry about in that department, does he, Syd?”

  I remain silent. But Case doesn’t remain still. His feather dips down between my legs, to my sex. He tickles my clit a few times, making me cry out with humiliation. “Stop,” I say.

  “Stop?” Case asks. “I don’t think you really mean that, do you, Syd?”

  “Stop,” I say again. “Stop now, and you won’t have to add ‘rapist’ to your resume.”

  He chuckles under his breath, like I’m so funny. “I’ll stop if you say it again.” I open my mouth, but he clamps a hand over it before I can get the words out. “Hush,” he says.

  My mind spins with that hush. Something is there. Something weird.

  “Hush,” he says again, like he knows. “Hush, Sydney. Because I think I know why we’re not getting anywhere with the drugs.”

  I look up at him. Past the hand that’s still clamped over my mouth. His amber eyes hold me like that. Completely in his grasp. Completely under his control.

  “Say yes and I’ll tell you the question that’s on your mind now. Say yes and I’ll stop the confusion. Say yes and I’ll ease it out of you in a way you might enjoy. Right here on the table where I killed your father. I’ll tell you my little secret.” Case pauses for a moment. And then he lifts his hand away from my mouth. The no I’m screaming inside is trapped there in my mind.

  Case exhales, releasing the tension he was hiding. He’s not as in control as he wants me to think. And then he resumes his play. The feather tickles my clit once again and I close my eyes and shake my head.

  “Say no, then.”

  But I don’t say no.

  Because hush means something, I just can’t quite place it. Hush. It’s a soft word. A soothing word. Not a mean shut up. Not a harsh be quiet.

  Hush.

  Case leans over my parted legs with one hand on the inside of my knee. His touch is soft and soothing. He gives me a slight squeeze and then dips his mouth down to my inner thigh and kisses the marks he put there with his knife.

  I close my eyes and shake my head. My legs tremble. I want to speak. I want to say no so bad.

  But I want to say yes much more.