“Do you know how many people say things like that in anger? Without proof of an actual plan, it’s purely conjecture. And, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but you completely destroyed any credibility as a witness when you took your goddamned clothes off in front of the press!”
I studied the vein throbbing in his neck before asking the obvious. “You’re not really a security guard, are you?”
Dean looked at me like I’d suddenly sprouted a second head before sighing, “If you’d just been patient and trusted me—”
“Kinda hard to do when you won’t tell me who you really are, though, don’t you think?” As Killian would have said, I had zero fucks left to give.
“Since my cover’s about to be blown to hell—”
“How? I swear I won’t tell anyone.”
“Once upon a time, I was an officer in the Army and saw a lot of things I wish I could forget. For the last two years, I’ve watched you walk the grounds with that same haunted look in your eyes that I used to see in the mirror every day.”
We passed another darkened classroom, the window decorated in the Bible verses they were memorizing. I had a feeling it was going to be the last time I saw these halls.
Dean stopped and placed a hand on my shoulder before gruffly admitting, “I know you won’t tell anyone because that’s the kind of person you are. But you should know I’m not letting you go back to that hell.”
“Right,” I murmured as we reached an exit that led to the playground, nodding as if his words made all the sense in the world. No one defied Tristan. At least, no one who lived to tell about it afterward.
“I’m serious.”
I’d just opened my mouth when the door in front of us burst open, hitting the exterior of the building with a resounding clang.
Dean positioned himself in front of me, only to lower his weapon with a harsh exhale.
“You’re late,” a female voice stated casually.
“Yeah?” he chuckled. “Maybe you’re early.”
“We’ve got a problem—”
I peeked through the small opening between Dean’s arm and torso. “Tsega?”
“Hey, Ari,” she said, sounding eerily calm for someone who’d lost her entire career.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted, shoving Dean aside to throw my arms around her neck. “You lost your job all because of me—because of my stupidity. If I could fix it for you, I would.”
We pulled apart to find Dean scratching at his temple with a smirk. “Ari, this is Agent Simons. She was working undercover to keep you safe at True North.”
“Oh, you didn’t really lose your job then, I guess. Whew!” I swiped a hand across my brow with a forced laugh, feeling my face heat in embarrassment. It took a few seconds more for it to register, and then my eyes went wide. “Wait, you work for the FBI? Are you Dean’s boss?”
Tsega cocked her head to the side and squinted up at him with a piercing gaze. “Oh, I absolutely am. Come on, we can talk more in the car. There’s been a… development.”
With that, she spun on her heel and marched over to a black SUV with tinted windows parked nearby.
“I can’t believe she’s your boss,” I breathed, as I followed behind Dean. “How lucky are you? So, that must mean you work for the FBI too.”
He grumbled something under his breath before opening the back-passenger door for me. “Just get in, Ariana.”
“Does she still have it?”
I instinctively took a step back, my legs threatening to buckle beneath me. Dean tried forcing me forward, but I tightened my grip on his suit jacket, suddenly seeing past the blonde wig and tortoiseshell glasses, and into the eyes of a ghost.
“No,” I whispered, my pulse hammering in my throat. “It’s impossible.”
Dean muttered a string of curse words. “Does anybody in this family listen to me? I told you to stay away from here, Ashlynn.”
“I told you we had an issue,” Tsega noted wryly from the front. “Get in, before we draw an audience.”
He deftly maneuvered me into the backseat, before taking the front passenger seat for himself. An uncomfortable silence fell over the vehicle as Tsega pulled out of the parking lot and onto the highway. I tried to come to terms with the fact that my sister had not been killed in a traffic accident.
Or, if she had, she’d recovered from the death quite nicely.
Dean’s laptop fired up with a chime and, after stabbing his password in, he shifted his attention to the back seat. “Gonna tell us why you’re here this time?”
She took me by surprise when she matter-of-factly answered, “Ari’s necklace.”
“What?” I wrapped my hand around the pendant protectively and scooted closer to the window. “Not how you’ve been alive this entire time? Or why you’re dressed as a reporter? Just here for the necklace?” My voice rose with each word, leaving me almost shouting toward the end of it.
Ashlynn winced. “I was going to explain everything, but I know what the necklace is, even if you don’t.”
“It was a gift from Tristan after he tried to kill me in a car accident! But if you want it so badly—” I unclasped the chain with shaking hands and tossed it at her. “Here, take it! Now, you have everything you came for!”
My chest rose and fell with a dull ache. It would have been easier to accept she was dead, but the truth was that she’d left me behind without a second thought.
“Do you know how we all grieved for you?” I mumbled, blinking back the tears. “He might have pretended like you never existed, but we never got over it. It changed everything.”
Tsega’s sympathetic eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, but I turned away to watch the cars around us.
Ashlynn didn’t answer immediately and instead, began rummaging through her purse, probably pocketing her new piece of jewelry.
“Ari,” she said softly. “Can I show you something?”
“No,” I replied, petulantly adding, “Tsega, would you mind dropping Ashlynn off at the nearest gas station? I’m sure she can find her way to her home, wherever it is.”
“Stop! I want to show you what you did—”
“What I did?” I snapped, turning back with a flare of anger. “What about—wait, what are you doing?”
“Watch,” she murmured, slipping a silver pin into a small hole hidden in the center of my pendant. It opened with a soft click, revealing a thumb drive.
My mouth fell open. I reached up to pinch my arm as hard as I could, just to ensure I was still awake.
There was a tense moment of silence, during which Dean arched over the console, studying the device like it was a cipher, while my heart flailed helplessly against my ribs.
He carefully lifted it from her palm and asked, “What’s on it?”
“Why don’t you plug it in and find out? If I’m right, there’ll be more than enough evidence to put Tristan away forever,” she stated with more than a hint of bitterness. “Something you could have done six months ago had you not dismissed my theory on there being a second laptop somewhere in the house.”
“Under his bed,” I blurted, before covering my mouth in surprise. Tristan had hidden a laptop in the same place I’d hidden my treasures, but there was no earthly reason for me to have known that.
Unless…
Someone within my own house was conspiring against me.
My stomach knotted, and I licked my dry lips, pushing past the feelings of lightheadedness. Now was not the time to vomit or pass out.
I thought I was running away that night, but I wasn’t. I’d been fighting back. And if Ashlynn had the key to my necklace, it meant she hadn’t abandoned me.
We’d been working together.
My face scrunched up in confusion, everything in me rejecting the idea that I’d been part of a conspiracy to overthrow my father. I wasn’t brave enough.
“I-I don’t understand,” I stammered. “He told us you were dead. Does Matt know? Does Tristan? Where have you been hiding? Ho
w did I get the necklace?”
It was two years’ worth of questions in one sentence.
Ashlynn gave me a watery smile and reached for my hand. “If it wasn’t for Matt and his family taking me in, I wouldn’t have survived. Let’s just say they have certain connections that even Tristan couldn’t break. Agent Simons tracked me down not long after I left, wanting to know if I had any information that might help the FBI build their case, but I didn’t.”
“Tsega.” I was still having some trouble picturing the woman as a federal agent. To me, she was still a tech from True North.
“No, Ari.” Ashlynn gestured toward the passenger seat. “That Agent Simons.”
I inhaled sharply, and Tsega lifted her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. “How are you doing, Ari?”
“Um,” I hedged with a squeak. “I’m feeling a little confused… and nauseated. Mainly confused, I guess.”
Her expression softened, and she cut her eyes to the passenger seat, where Dean was hunched over the laptop. “We’re married. What else do you want to know? Looks like we’ve got some time to kill until this traffic clears.”
My gaze bounced back to my sister. “And what about you?”
“Yeah, Matt and I got married last year,” she explained, her lower lip quivering. “I really wish you could have been there with me.”
An erratic burst of laughter slipped free, and I shook my head. “So, was that what made you decide to get me out? Guilt?”
“No,” Ashlynn insisted, squeezing my hand. “God, no. I’ve spent the last two years trying to free everyone. Have you ever wondered why Tristan made all the upgrades to the wall and brought in an outside security firm?”
“Because of the threats against the church?”
“Me, Ari. I was the threat. I broke into the compound once, but he intercepted me before I got anywhere. After bloodying my lip, he had me escorted from the premises by Brother Caleb.”
Matt’s family must have been pretty powerful if the worst she’d gotten from our father was a fat lip.
Tsega clarified, “We were made aware of the breach and had our plant within the church recommend a specific security firm to Tristan, and he took the bait.”
“But it wasn’t enough to get me out,” I finished for her, ignoring the scratchiness in my throat. The day had been a chaotic and draining storm of revelations that had left me on edge.
I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh anymore.
“Matt was the one who came up with the idea of reaching out to you to find the computer. He had the necklace and a letter with detailed instructions smuggled in, using a fake name. Once you had it, you called the number in his letter and made arrangements to meet at the same diner he’d taken me to when we first met.”
“Then, I got into an accident.”
Ashlynn’s voice was gentle as she asked, “Do you remember any of it?”
“No,” I whispered, while absently chewing on my bottom lip. “But I’ve had this recurring dream since the accident. In it, you say, ‘Ari, what have they done to you?’ Sometimes, you tell me you can help if I come back to you, but the ending is always the same. The monster devours you after you tell me I’m the only one who can stop it. But that doesn’t make any sense if the letter came from a fake name, right?”
She cupped her mouth and lowered her head toward her knees with a pained cry. I unbuckled and slid across the seat, struck with the sudden need to comfort, although I had no idea what was wrong.
Tsega cleared her throat, sounding close to tears herself. “She was there, Ari. When you were in a coma in SICU, we brought her in to see you. She sat by your bedside and just talked.”
An involuntary sound of anguish escaped my throat as I gathered her in my arms, grieving the time we’d never get back.
“Fuck,” Dean muttered in horror, drawing our attention back to the front.
I brushed away my tears and straightened. “You found something?”
Tristan had been willing to kill his own wife to keep the contents of the thumb drive from ever getting out. Whatever it was had to be something truly evil.
“No,” he admitted, cutting his eyes over to me. “We found everything, Ariana. You did this—”
I laughed hoarsely. “And here I thought I ruined it all.”
Dean’s jaw hung slack in disbelief. “I think you may have just saved everyone.”
29
Ariana
“I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I tightened the belt on the fluffy robe I’d found hanging in the hotel bathroom and settled back against the pillows, trying to warm up. My skin had been scrubbed until it was raw in places, but nothing could take away the horror of what had been on that thumb drive.
After being reunited with Killian and Morgan in a five thousand square foot Presidential Suite near Tanglewood, I’d stood under the showerhead for as long as possible, letting the steaming water turn my skin red.
Inside, I was still ice cold.
Murder. Attempted murder. Conspiracy to commit murder. Coercion. Bribery. Fraud. Human Trafficking.
It was worse than anything I could have ever imagined.
The FBI was calling it one of their biggest busts—celebrities, politicians, billionaires—the list of people involved could have filled every seat in Eagle Lake, and probably had at some point. Millions of dollars were siphoned from the church and into Trident Holdings, Tristan and Brad’s fake company.
My sisters had been auctioned off like property to the highest bidders, but the corruption hadn’t ended there. Urban Mission and the various other outreach programs meant to aid at-risk youths had been used to identify and exploit potential targets.
Convinced he was above the law and would never be caught, Tristan had kept meticulous records detailing their crimes. Tsega believed they were his trophies, or perhaps an insurance policy should Brad ever decide to turn him in. As it was, the two of them were going to be spending the rest of their lives locked up.
My mama’s original autopsy report was among the documents found. There’d never been a brain aneurism. She’d loved him—enough to try to stop what he was doing—and in return, he’d drugged her into permanent silence.
We’d probably never know whether her death was accidental or not, but it didn’t change the fact he’d stolen her from us.
Killian slipped into the bedroom, carrying a large plastic bag. “Hey, Dean grabbed dinner. Morgan’s still asleep, so I thought we’d eat in here. We’ve got—” He began pulling out containers and lining them on the credenza near the foot of the bed. “Potstickers, egg rolls, wonton soup, chicken fried rice, and beef and broccoli.”
My chest heaved with a sudden sob. I brought the back of my hand up over my mouth, trying to smother the sound. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
He let the empty bag drop to the floor, before pulling me off the bed and into his arms. “I’ve got you, girl,” he murmured, stroking my damp hair. “You’re safe now.”
“What if I’m broken?” I buried my head against his chest with a loud hiccup. “I think I might be broken. I can’t stop shaking, Killian. Why can’t I stop shaking?”
Grief and rage blurred my vision, tinging my voice with hysteria.
“Baby.” His hands over my hair and down my back, grounding me. “You’ve gotta try to eat something. Dean said you hadn’t kept anything down since last night. Just tell me what sounds good.”
“I’m not hungry.”
His eyes blazed with something I couldn’t quite identify as he led me back over to the bed. After pressing a kiss to my forehead, he left the room, returning a minute later with a small glass of amber liquid. “Drink this.”
“What is it?” I took it from his hand
and sniffed, only to recoil immediately. “Alcohol?”
Killian sat down beside me and took one of my feet in his hands, stroking along the arch. “Whiskey. You need it. You’re in shock—hell, anyone would be if they’d been through what you have in the past seventy-two hours. C’mon, drink up.”
I took a hesitant sip, shuddering as the liquor burned its way down to my belly. My face scrunched up, and I croaked, “How do people drink this stuff?”
That earned me a small smile. “Practice—lots and lots of practice.”
I forced a little more past my lips until my limbs flooded with heat, and the world didn’t feel like such a dark place. “What do we do now?”
“Whatever we want.” He passed me a container and some chopsticks, before reclining against the pillows. “But first, you have to eat something.”
After a brief struggle, where I only managed to snag a single grain of rice, I groaned, “How do you use these damn things?”
“Here. Like this.” Killian snagged a piece of beef and brought it to my lips. “Open.”
A ripple of pleasure spread throughout my body and down to my core, warming me faster than the alcohol had. Before I’d finished chewing the first bite, he was there, offering me another.
“Open,” he murmured, his voice gruff.
I obeyed, keeping my eyes on his as I licked the salt from my lips. There was something sensual in being cared for and fed by this man.
The last three days had been shrouded in a fog of adrenaline and self-preservation. But here, in a safe house fit for a king, it all fell away. Killian was right. Love silenced everything else.
And the one thing my starved and broken body needed more than anything right now was to feel loved.
“More,” I begged, pouting when he raised the chopsticks to my mouth again. I felt as though I was dying of thirst, and he was giving me mere drops to drink. “Please.”
Killian paused, his throat moving in a swallow, before setting the container aside and reaching for my foot. He watched me through hooded eyes before pressing his thumb against the arch of my foot, turning the simmering warmth between my legs to lava.
Through The Water: Fairest Series Book Two Page 35
