by Meli Raine
Why torture myself?
Fully dressed, I shuffle out. Instantly, Drew’s at my side, holding my elbow like I’m some ninety-year-old lady crossing the street and he’s a Cub Scout helping me.
“I can walk without help.”
“I can protect you better if you let me.”
I shut up.
Because he has a point.
Chapter 38
After going home, showering, letting Connie fuss over me and make me a healthy, protein-packed salad, I’m sitting at the granite counter in the kitchen, picking at the pecans and unsweetened tart cherries at the bottom of my salad bowl, musing over my phone.
Jane left with a promise to check in tomorrow. Daddy and Mom texted me from D.C., telling me they loved me. And then there’s a cryptic text from someone at the Island.
It’s a text about joining a famous soft drink manufacturer’s contest, but that’s code. Our secret code. My hacker contact has learned something from the dark net, and he needs to get in touch with me to tell me. No one who reads that text will know that it’s anything more than a spam text.
But I know.
And suddenly, everything has changed yet again.
I need to get out of the Grove, out from under all this scrutiny, and somehow get the information my contact has. He’s learned important details about my attackers, and if I can get that information, I can act. I can exact my revenge.
And revenge has taken on a new importance, given their attempt to kill me.
Or—worse.
That damn text. Welcome back, Lindsay. Ready to play with us again?
I refuse to play their game.
Soon they will have no choice but to play mine.
I’m alone now.
Except Drew and Silas and five other security guys are guarding the house, and about nine other servants are working.
Which makes me almost alone.
“Three days,” I say under my breath.
“Excuse me?” Connie asks, her eyes perky and concerned.
“I’ve been home for three days.”
“You sure do know how to make an entrance,” she says, giving me an inscrutable look. “Any news on the car malfunction?”
I don’t know how much I can tell her, so I say as little as possible. “We’re waiting for some investigators to finish going over it.”
“Thank goodness no one was severely injured. Your head wound is bad enough, but without Drew’s quick thinking, this could have been much worse.” Her breathless comment makes me think she’s just a nice woman.
Those little calculated looks, though...
“Finished?” She asks, pointing to my bowl.
I nod. She takes it away, rinses it, puts it in the dishwasher, and starts the machine. I look at the clock. It’s only one o’clock. Maybe she works different hours than I thought?
“I’ve made dinner in advance,” she explains, as if she knew what I was afraid to ask. “You can heat it up. Directions are taped on top. When your parents are out of town, they ask me not to come.” Connie has a pained look on her face. “And your mother said to just make you something simple for your evening meal. Salmon and spinach and cauliflower.”
“No chocolate ganache?” I joke
Connie looks self-righteously incensed. “I offered! But she—”
“Let me guess. She said I didn’t need the calories.”
Connie winces.
“It’s fine. Not your fault. I know how Mom works.”
“You sure you’ll be okay?”
“I have seven ex-Special Ops men guarding me, Connie. If anyone in the world is safe, it’s me.” I give her an impish grin.
Truth be told, I don’t want anyone hovering over me.
Except, maybe, Drew.
“Stay safe. Be careful.” Her frown deepens. “Nothing is ever what it seems like on the surface.”
Everyone keeps saying that. Before I can ask her what she means, Connie skitters off.
I’m finally alone.
My stomach’s full, my head is ready to explode, all I can think about is having Drew touch me, and someone’s trying to kill me.
Not just someone.
Them.
What’s a presidential candidate's daughter supposed to do in a moment like this?
Nap.
My own bed has become my best friend. I guess Jane is second. Drew’s third? At this point I can’t be choosy.
Bed it is.
Within seconds of settling my cheek on the pillow, I’m out.
Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t move can’t escape can’t anything help help help.
I’m in the darkness Daddy help me come get me oh oh oh stop the pain stop it stop it stop it noooooooo.
Something wet covers my face. It’s sticky and tangy, like blood but thicker. Someone yanks my hair up, so hard each strand tingles, pulled tight until it snaps, making my neck muscles spasm. I crawl into the soft spot inside my mind where none of this happens but they won’t stop touching me, filling me, opening me, making me scream and grunt and cry until I can’t make sound.
And then darkness.
Not enough darkness.
My shoulders can’t move, the bones grinding so hard. It’s a different pain than what they do to me elsewhere. Grind my bones for a thousand years, but please don’t do that any more.
Please.
I open my eyes. Can’t talk, but maybe if they see my eyes they’ll stop. If I say please with my eyes.
But my eyes are covered with one of my scarves.
I don’t exist. They covered my eyes so I can’t see them.
And so they can’t see me beg them no.
No.
No.
“Noooooooooooooooooo!” My own scream shatters the solitude in the house, my voice at the ready, the feeling like a sneeze that won’t execute, an anti-orgasm that won’t release.
I can speak.
“Lindsay, damn it,” Drew says, running into the room, his hands on my arms. I’m aware enough to realize I’ve done it again. Another damn dream.
“Where are they?” I beg Drew. “Do we know where they are?”
“Yes.”
I’m panting, covered in sweat, and my head wound aches like I’ve been banging my head with a brick. “You’re sure?”
“I have someone tailing them at all times.”
“All three of them?”
He nods.
“Where are they?”
His hands don’t leave my shoulders. “God, Lindsay, you’re covered in sweat but ice cold.” He pulls me to him and lifts the coverlet off my bed to cocoon us both. He’s wearing sweat pants, a tight green t-shirt with a West Point logo on it, and as he hugs me, I feel his gun cut into my hip.
His warmth makes me start to shiver, paradoxically.
“Drew.” Why won’t he answer me?
“You don’t know where they are?” His voice is tight as he asks.
“No. Why would I?”
“Why, indeed, would you?”
What the hell is this?
I’m in his arms. We’re wrapped intimately in a bed cover, but his body is tight with tension. This is not the same caring Drew from last night. Not even from this morning. Some part of him changed after he received that phone call.
“Spill it.”
“Spill what?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“Why are you acting like I’m suspicious? Like you’re watching me.”
“It’s my job to watch you.”
“No. It’s your job to protect me. Not to give me covert glances like you think I’m about to steal all the cookies in the cookie jar.”
He’s a steel drum.
“This has to with that phone call you got.”
He holds his breath.
“Say it, or get away from me. I can’t play this game, Drew.” Especially when you smell like all the relief in the world.
“Not playing games, Lindsay.”
“Then get your hot, strong, incredibl
y enticing arms off of me and leave.”
He doesn’t budge.
“Enticing?” His voice morphs into sensual territory.
“Leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I want to cry when he actually listens to me and walks away. What am I doing?
“Wait!”
He stops in the doorway, the light from the hallway illuminating his body. Broad shoulders, thick with rolling muscles, taper down to a narrow waist, strong thighs in his sweat pants and his ass—
“Yes?”
“We’re not getting anywhere without talking.”
“Then talk.”
“I meant you, Drew, and you know it.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“How’s the investigation going?”
His jaw clenches.
“Damn it. Someone’s trying to kill me. We think it’s those bastards.”
Silence.
“It’s John, Stellan and Blaine.”
Saying their names makes him reach up and grab the doorway with both hands, his arms up high, his lats pulsing.
“Do you have any idea who they’ve become, Lindsay?”
“They’ve becomes soulless—”
“I don’t mean that. I mean who they are.”
“We know who they are.”
He whips around and gives me a look so hard it could crack open a walnut.
“John Gainsborough is now a major league baseball player. Stellen Asgarth is a television celebrity. And Blaine Maisri—fuck, Lindsay. Blaine is running for your father’s old seat.”
I blink slowly, like an owl.
“Don’t you see? They’re not just a bunch of frat boys I need to tail.”
“How?” I gasp.
“How.” He barks out the word, walking back into the room, rubbing his neck in frustration, his jaw grinding. “I’ve asked myself that question since I came back from deployment. How. How the hell did those little pricks find their way to so much success?”
“I don’t understand.”
“And why, Lindsay, would they risk it all to text you a simple taunt?”
“What?”
He moves his head, pursing his mouth, his actions adding up to a pile of nonverbal anger that finally becomes words. “I got the trace report on the phone that texted that message to you, Lindsay. And the fingerprints came back on your brake line.”
I sit up, heart racing.
“And?”
“The phone was traced back to one you bought with your credit card yesterday morning.”
“What?”
“And your fingerprints are the only ones on the cut brake lines on your car.”
Chapter 39
I’ve never had someone look at me like Drew is looking at me.
“What? What are you saying?” I cry out. “It wasn’t me! You were with me all day!”
“I know.” He looks back at my bedroom door and slowly closes it.
Then he locks it.
“We’ve swept the rest of your house. It’s clean.” He sits on my bed, his body pulsating with heat. I can feel his questions, his anxious need for me to give him whatever information he requires to solve this problem.
“You don’t actually think I would cut my own brake lines and then text myself a fake text to make it look like—Drew!” Hysteria rises up. His eyes pierce the clawing, desperate need for him to believe me.
“I know you didn’t do it.”
I’m in his arms, throwing myself at him, bandages and bruises be damned. He’s hugging me and caressing my back, making small sounds of comfort. I sob with relief.
My mind races. Not only did they try to kill me, they taunted me. Worse—they set it up to look like I’m utterly unhinged, and sabotaging myself for attention.
What’s their end game? Where does this all lead? And how will my parents ever believe me in the face of this madness that John, Stellan and Blaine have unleashed?
A politician.
A major league baseball player.
A television personality.
No one will believe me. Ever. Their word against mine?
I am so screwed.
“I know you didn’t, Lindsay. I’ve had someone tailing you the entire time. That means this is some kind of inside job.”
“Inside job?”
“Someone who works for your father is setting you up. Probably has been all along.”
“No! Who?”
“I have no idea. I had my suspicions—have had them all these years.” His hand touches my jaw, fingers stopping at my lips. “I’ve gone over this a thousand times in my mind. The pieces don’t fit together. They never did. Nothing about four years ago makes sense, and this new turn of events is even more crazymaking.”
There’s that word. Crazy.
Except Drew’s not calling me crazy.
“What do we do?”
“We? We do nothing. I have to get my team to figure this mess out, all while protecting you.”
“From John, Stellan and Blaine.”
“And your father and mother. And the press.”
“Daddy and Mom? Why? Oh......”
The full implication of his words hits me, hard. I get it. They’ll think I did this to myself.
They’ll think I’m that unhinged.
“I can’t go back to the Island. I can’t.”
“That won’t happen.”
“But—”
“Do you trust me?”
“I—”
The room closes in on me.
His face hardens. Drew’s eyes narrow. In the dark room, he looks menacing.
“Four years ago, I couldn’t stop it.”
“You wouldn’t—”
“Couldn’t. Could not. I could not stop it, Lindsay.”
“But I saw the tapes—”
“You saw what they wanted you to see!” he whisper-shouts. “Just like they want your parents and the media to think you sabotaged your own car and set yourself up for that threatening text, damn it!”
I stop breathing.
The world stops turning.
Everything just...pauses.
And all that exists is Drew.
“Oh, my God.” My stomach flips, a full three hundred and sixty degree spin. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” I can’t say anything else. Can’t think anything else. My mind races over and over, my mouth saying it in a chant.
If what Drew is saying is true, then I have spent four years living an even bigger lie than I ever imagined.
“You mean you—I d-d-don’t understand.” My words come out halting, like I stutter. “What do you mean you couldn’t stop them from raping me? From doing that to me.”
He grabs my arms, hard, so hard I want to yell at him to stop. The pain is the only thing holding me in place, though.
“I couldn’t stop them. What you don’t see in that video is the gun one of them is holding to my head. And the gun that the third is holding to yours. Both are off camera.”
I go numb.
And yet, even then, I wince. Because how could he just watch me being violated like that and not try to stop it all?
“There’s more.”
Of course there is.
“Blood tests later showed some kind of drug in me.”
“Drug?” I gasp. “Like the roofies they slipped in my drink?”
“No,” he says slowly, transfixed on a spot behind my shoulder. “Something different.”
“Different?”
“An immobilizer. Meant to keep me awake but unable to move.”
“What? I don’t understand.” But his words slowly make a horrific kind of sense. “They paralyzed you?”
“Something like that.” His face closes off. I can tell there’s more to this, but frankly, what he’s told me is already too much to handle.
“Drew, this is all crazy!” I say, a sick form of laughter bubbling up from my gut. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You expect me to believe you didn’t tamper
with your own brakes even though your fingerprints are all over the hoses?”
We stare at each other.
A standoff.
All I can do is blink, my head a roaring freight train.
“You—you didn’t just sit there and watch it—a-a-a-and let it happen?”
“I can’t believe you thought that. I can’t fucking believe that you would think that I would ever, EVER let someone do that to you! Defile and debase you in front of my own fucking eyes while I couldn’t—”
“WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO THINK?” I roar.
“They said they would blow your head off if I moved. Not that I could move if I wanted to,” he huffs. “I didn’t care if they killed me, Lindsay. I’ve spent years wondering if I’d have been better off if they had.”
“Me, too. I wish they had killed me.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!” he says savagely, shaking me slightly.
“Why now?” I whimper. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because they’re doing it again. This time, you’re the target again. And I don’t know why. Just like last time, I don’t know why.” His eyes are brooding and intense. “But unlike four years ago, this time I have tools. Weapons. Skills. And a network of people who have been carefully cultivated to make sure that what happened before never, ever happens again.”
“You didn’t just let them.” I can’t stop saying it.
“No, I didn’t.”
I close my eyes.
“They got away with it.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll get away with it again.”
“Fuck no, they won’t.”
“You said they’re famous. A baseball player, a celebrity, and a politician. How did that happen? How deep does this go?” I pluck one of Daddy’s favorite phrases from my memory. “How high up the chain of command does this penetrate?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.”
“Liar.”
His eyes widen with shock, then narrow, his head tilting down, hands still burning his fury into me. “I don’t lie to you, Lindsay. I might not always tell the full truth, but I don’t lie. I don’t do that to you.”
“Then what do you do to me, Drew?” My breath quickens. Suddenly, every inch of my skin is extra-aware of his body, so close to mine.
