by Helen Scott
Trying to reason with herself, Robin attributed it to someone having a barbecue nearby. God, it had been forever since she’d had good food like that. Her mouth watered at the thought. It was only when she saw the smoke coming out of a window that she realized how wrong she was.
Something inside was on fire.
She knew she should tell someone, but Robin wanted to see this place burn. She’d known about it for a long time and had hated seeing their “guests” sent there. It was precisely why she wanted to get Aster out.
“Aster, you still awake over there?” Robin asked, more aware of her charge than she had been a moment ago.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good. Listen, I’m going to get you around to the front of the house and then head back. Something is on fire, though, so whatever you do, don’t go inside. And remember to stay hidden!” Robin said in a harried whisper.
As they made their way along the side of the house, she could see how the white paint was peeling, showing the age of the place. She wondered what Mr. Fields would do with her when she started showing her age. Transfer her? Have her killed? The thoughts sent chills down her spine.
They marched onward, Aster’s footsteps becoming surer as they progressed. Robin didn’t dare look in any of the windows. She wanted to look as normal as possible, and peering into windows as they passed would only serve to make her look more suspicious.
Finally, they came around to the front of the house. Robin had expected there to be guards at the front door, but it was all quiet. She didn’t believe for a second Mr. Fields or The Surgeon would leave this place unguarded. What if she had tried to escape? Or what if Aster had somehow tried to escape?
“Can you sit here for me?” Robin said, gently lowering Aster into a sitting position. “I’ll be right back.”
She left Aster next to a bush under one of the front windows. Carefully she walked around to the front door, expecting a guard to jump out at any moment and demand to know what she was doing.
No one jumped.
No one demanded.
All Robin found was evidence of a fight. There were scuff marks on the porch, and the front door had been left hanging open. She edged up the steps slowly. The first thing she saw was a black combat-like boot.
It was a moment later that she realized the boot was still attached to a leg and that leg belonged to a guard. Her heart was pounding in her chest. God, she definitely did not want to find a dead body right now.
Her senses were hyper-alert as she approached the body. Robin knew she wouldn’t be able to defend herself against someone who could take down one of the guards. She had exactly zero fighting experience.
Carefully, she reached out and placed her fingers on the guard’s neck, hoping to find a pulse. Her heart stopped for a moment when she thought she couldn’t find one, but it was there. His pulse was slow but steady. The guard’s buddy was just up the hall from him. Robin tried to move along as silently as possible. She reached down and checked the other guard’s pulse. It was much slower than his buddy’s, but it was there.
Turning on her heel, Robin went back outside. The sight of the outdoors still filled her with joy, even though she knew she might not be able to see it again for a long time. Quickly she made her way back to Aster, her footsteps sure and confident now that she knew there were no guards in the immediate area.
“Hey, sleepy head, how’re you doing?” Robin crouched down in front of Aster.
“Waking up, but I feel like I did about twenty tequila shots last night and got hit by two buses.”
“Well, you’re awake, and your friends are here to rescue you, so you know, yay!” Robin smiled and waved her hands, immediately regretting the jazz hands motion. She just wanted Aster to feel okay when she left to go and check on the fight.
“What?” Aster’s face went pale, the bruises and blood standing out even more than they had before.
“Your friends, some big burly guys, came to rescue you. Two of them are fighting my boss, the guy who brought you here, right now.”
Aster shrunk back from her. “Your boss?”
“I don’t work for him out of choice! He’ll kill my family if I leave, so don’t look at me like that.” Aster’s eyes widened as Robin summed up her situation. She didn’t need to go into details, like how he would tell her what to wear and how to style her hair, and heaven help her if she put on a little weight.
“Sorry,” Aster mumbled. She sighed heavily before continuing. “They weren’t supposed to come for me. I told them not to. It means my sister is going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it if they are already here.”
“Your sister’s going to die?”
“I saw it. I tried to warn them when I discovered I could get into Thad’s head, or at least his visions.”
“Wow, okay. That’s a lot to take in.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, well, let’s see.” Robin couldn’t think of anything she could do to help except try and save Aster’s friends. Maybe they could save her sister? She sighed. She knew she was going to regret this. “I’ll try and get the guys away from my boss so they can save your sister, but you have to stay hidden. If he finds you, I won’t be able to save you again.”
“Really? Thank you so much . . . I don’t even know your name!”
“Robin, my name is Robin Murphy.”
“Well, Robin Murphy, you are literally a lifesaver. Thank you. I’m forever in your debt.” Aster reached out and grabbed Robin’s hands, squeezing them as she spoke, her amber eyes glowing with sincerity.
“You can start repaying that debt by staying put and quiet. I need to get back and hope that Mr. Fields didn’t notice that I was gone.”
“Thank you again,” Aster said as Robin stood up.
Robin nodded at her and started walking to the back of the house. The smoke was billowing out of the window now, making her cough as she jogged past it.
As she rounded the corner, sounds of pain and exertion filled her ears. The fight was still going, and none of them seemed to be showing any signs of slowing down. She edged back to the chimney where she had been sitting before and took stock of the situation.
Broken-nose guy was actually very impressive. He was landing punches and kicks that clearly showed he knew what he was doing. Mr. Fields was grunting with each impact. His nose was bleeding, and there was a trail of blood coming from the corner of his mouth.
His buddy sparred with The Surgeon’s lookalike. They were going at a steady pace, but neither seemed to be going in for the kill or the knock-out hit. It was almost like they were trying to keep each other busy while Mr. Fields and broken-nose guy really went at it.
Somehow the car that Mr. Fields had been trying to get her to earlier was damaged. The driver’s side door was bent and looked like something big and heavy had been thrown onto it. Who could throw someone like that? Plus, how was the person who hit the car still standing? Surely that should have taken them down.
Robin wanted to scream at them, or run away. Either way, she didn’t want to just stand and watch them all beat each other to a bloody pulp. The lookalike swung and clocked the smaller guy right in the side of the head. The guy staggered, his feet seeming to have minds of their own as he looked down at them before collapsing.
The lookalike turned his attention to the other fight. Broken-nose guy was clearly on edge now. His buddy was down for the count, and he was up against two opponents. He looked over at Robin as he circled around Mr. Fields. She could swear she felt like she got punched in the gut, but maybe it was just the pleading look he sent her.
She was going to get herself killed, or worse, get her contract extended indefinitely. As lookalike and Mr. Fields began circling, broken-nose guy was clearly trying to draw them away from his buddy. Robin ran over to the man who was now unconscious on the ground and felt for his pulse. It was still there.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew her banshee side would have taken over if he had be
en dead, but it didn’t hurt to check. After all, there was a lot of weird in this world. She tapped the guy’s face a couple times, trying to get him to come around, but he didn’t even twitch.
The yell that she heard from Mr. Fields brought her attention back around to the fight, which had taken a turn for the worse. Broken-nose guy was not looking so hot. The whole two-on-one thing really wasn’t fair. If she didn’t do something, then he was going to go down, and Mr. Fields would find Aster and Aster’s sister would die. Plus, knowing how ruthless he could be, Mr. Fields would probably give these two over to The Surgeon or have them killed.
Basically, she was their only hope.
Fantastic.
She was going to hate herself so much for this later. The thought skittered across her mind as she stood up on shaky legs.
“Stop!” she yelled with all her might, feeling like a schoolgirl yelling at a bully on the playground.
All the men froze momentarily and looked at her.
“Please, stop! I can’t take watching this!”
“Robin, these men attacked my property and myself. I cannot let this go unpunished.” Mr. Fields ground the words out like he was talking to a child who had pissed him off.
Broken-nose guy was on his knees at this point, with the lookalike holding him by the T-shirt. Her eyes locked with his for a moment, and a shiver ran down her spine.
“Don’t you think they’ve been punished enough?” Robin gestured to the two men. “It’s not like they can walk away right now! Who knows what’s going on with this guy. He’s probably got brain damage or something.”
She edged around the fallen fighter and tried to draw Mr. Fields’ gaze away from where Aster should be.
“Robin, this is my business. I have to protect it.”
She glanced at broken-nose guy again, and he seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open. “From two unconscious men?”
“You don’t understand.” He went to turn away from her.
“Oh, I understand more than you think. Your anger’s up and you need to let it out, just like my father. He never knew when to quit, either. Beating people senseless because he couldn’t stop himself once he threw the first punch.”
The venom in her voice surprised her. She knew she had daddy issues, but that was to be expected when your father was a drunk, a gambler, and a fighter. She’d never understand what her mother saw in him, or why she put up with his bullshit.
“I am perfectly in control,” Mr. Fields called over his shoulder.
“Prove it, then.”
“No. I don’t answer to you.”
Shit. This was not going the way she had hoped. She didn’t have anything to bargain with, or to hold over him. She wanted to smack herself on the forehead to get her brain into gear.
Her mouth started moving before she even realized what she was saying. “I’ll take Katerina’s place for a month if we leave them alone and go back to the office right now.”
Mr. Fields turned around slowly, lowering his arm that had been raised to punch broken-nose guy again.
“What did you say?”
She gulped, her heart pounding in her chest. What had she said? What had she done? Her brain hadn’t caught up with her mouth, and now she was in trouble. It was exactly the same as when she’d first started working for Mr. Fields. Her mouth would get her in all kinds of trouble.
“I said I’ll take Katerina’s place for a month if we leave right now and leave them alive.”
He stalked over to her, looking more like a predator than a man. She was sure her eyes were wide with fear, but she looked past him and made eye contact with broken-nose guy, hoping that he would get the message to stand down. His eyes were wide. She could have sworn he didn’t want her to do it, but she was probably just projecting. It wasn’t like he had any idea what was going on.
Mr. Fields was in front of her then, blocking everything else out, much like he did in the rest of her life. His face was much more bruised and bloody than she’d thought. The right side of his face was swollen, and his eye was forced almost completely shut.
“You would take Katerina’s place for them?”
“Yes.”
Suspicion filled his features. “Who are they to you?”
“No one, but I can’t watch you kill them. They probably didn’t even know who they were attacking. This place doesn’t look like much from the outside, after all.”
He looked at her, his left eye piercing her, and she did her damnedest to stare straight back at him.
“A year.” Robin gasped involuntarily. “You take Katerina’s place for a year. Not just her weekly appointments, but whenever I would have normally called her.”
“Six months.”
“A year or I kill both of them right now.”
She wanted to cry and scream and rage at him. He had her over a barrel, and he knew it. She knew he was a ruthless negotiator in business, so really, she should have expected this.
She sighed. If she didn’t accept this deal, then she would be responsible for their murders. She couldn’t live with that. Plus, the fact that she wasn’t tempted to scream for either of them meant this was always how it was going to happen. Destiny was a bitch sometimes.
“Fine. A year, but we leave right now, and they stay alive.”
Mr. Fields stuck out his hand, and Robin reluctantly shook it. Sealing her fate.
“Well, Norman, it looks like it’s time for us to go. You may release him.”
Mr. Fields grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward Norman and broken-nose guy.
“Hold her while I retrieve Ms. Porte.”
He placed Robin’s hand in Norman’s, which was sticky with drying blood. The man looked too much like The Surgeon for them to be anything but brothers. The thought made her shudder. The last thing the world needed was two of these psychopaths. She looked down at broken-nose guy, and blue-green eyes stared back at her with an unfathomable emotion inside.
Robin tried to pull her hand away.
“Ah-ah, now remember what you promised.” Mr. Fields leered over her. “I’m going to have so much fun breaking you when we get home.” Her stomach twisted and bile rose in her throat. “Did you know I have spare bedrooms in the penthouse? Maybe I should keep you close at hand.” He stroked the side of her face, making the need to vomit that much more intense.
He turned away from her and strode over to where Aster should be. With a scowl, he spun back around.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know! I was watching the fight, I swear!”
“Find her,” he growled at Norman as he grabbed her hand again.
“The deal was we leave right now. If you take the time to find her, then the deal is off.” Robin snatched her hand back from Mr. Fields and crossed her arms over her chest.
There was no way she was going to give in and let him find Aster. If he did that, then she wouldn’t be doing a damn thing for him.
He watched her as though evaluating how serious she was. “Fine. We will go back to the office right now and get started. I’m sure the guards will find her, or the bears. One way or another, she will be taken care of.”
Robin felt herself pale at the prospect, but she could survive it. She would survive it, and doing this meant that many more people would live. Their lives would not be on her conscience.
Mr. Fields walked away from her and Norman before he started whispering to himself. A huge wall of swirling fire opened in front of them, the flames spraying back onto the house and the heat making her face warm. She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.
The flames spread out into a ring, revealing a black empty center. Robin could see the smoke from the house was getting exponentially worse since the fire ring appeared. It was like it was feeding into whatever was burning in the house.
“Time to go.” Mr. Fields stood in front of the black circle and held his hand out to her.
“What?”
“Usuall
y you’re not this slow, Robin. It’s part of why I keep you around. This is a portal that will take us back to the office. Take my hand and we will step through. Norman, follow directly after us. You don’t want to miss the portal and be stranded out here, do you?”
“No, sire.”
Sire? What, like Mr. Fields was his king or something? That wasn’t weird or anything. Robin had no idea what was about to happen, but she had the distinct feeling that going through this portal, or whatever he wanted to call it, was going to be uncomfortable.
“Come on, Robin, unless you want me to go and search for Ms. Porte?”
“No, sir,” she said, emphasizing the sir. There was one thing she was not about to do and that was call him sire.
Taking a deep breath, Robin glanced back at broken-nose guy, who was fighting to stay conscious, before stepping forward and placing her hand in Mr. Fields’. Then they stepped into the blackness together.
Chapter 25
Cin hurt. Every ounce of her skin felt like it was on fire. When she had jumped the flames in the medical room, it had been her last-ditch effort to save her skin. Now it felt like her skin had given up.
The flames in the room had just been the beginning. Cin didn’t know how the fire had spread so quickly or so far, but it looked like everything was burning, even the floor, which was tile.
Her eyes stung from the smoke, and the heat was making her sweat. This was not going well for her. Every time she took a step, the flames seemed to get higher and hotter. The only way open to her was going back through the house.
Flames licked at her, almost like they were alive and were trying to peel her skin off her body. She kept pushing. Cin knew she would be scarred after this. There wouldn’t be any way to avoid that, but scarred and alive would be better than dead.
Her coughing was getting worse even though she had tied her shirt around her head to stop breathing in smoke. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep this up. The smoke was getting so thick and dense, she couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her. What if she was going in circles?
