Sloane

by V. J. Chambers

  And then—

  I couldn’t move.

  I struggled, but all my muscles were tense and stiff.

  In front of me, the men that I’d shot before got to their feet, turning angry faces on me.

  Behind me, I could hear the other man moving too.

  They were everywhere.

  I was frozen. I couldn’t even yell for Axel, because I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t do anything. I was useless, that’s what I was. I was stupid a fucking idiot, and I wasn’t ever going to be able to—

  “Die, you fuckers!” yelled Axel’s voice, and there was a stutter of gunfire.

  It startled me so much that I could move, and I saw that Axel had picked up the gun that I’d kicked away—the one that had belonged to the guard. He was spraying bullets everywhere, and the men at the door were dancing from the force of the bullets in their skin.

  Axel! I smiled gratefully at him.

  And I whipped up my gun to help.

  But it was too late, because there were two men behind me, and one of them still had his gun.

  I heard the sound of shots explode behind my head and it was loud, so fucking loud, but before I could do anything about it—

  Dark.

  * * *

  When I woke up, I was in a small room with Axel. There was empty shelving on the wall and a light bulb with a pull string hanging over our heads. The floor was concrete, as were the walls. It was cold.

  I sat up. “You’re okay.”

  He was leaning up against the wall in between two of the empty shelving units. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  I crawled over to him. “Did you get shot?”

  He shook his head. “No, by some miracle, no. I shot them all after they got you, and I knew they weren’t dead, but I didn’t know how to kill them. And while I was trying to tie them up before they woke up again, so that when you woke up again, you could tell me what to do with them, they woke up. And they got free and got their weapons and held me at gunpoint while they talked about what to do with me. Apparently, they thought I must be something special if I shot all of them. But all that was special was their guns.”

  “Christa?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I hid her, like you said. I made her get in the pantry in my kitchen. I didn’t tell them she was there, but she was losing a lot of blood, and…” He looked away.

  I bit my lip. Then I shook myself. “No, she’ll be okay. I’m sure she got herself to the hospital after they took us. I’m sure she did.”

  Axel nodded too. “Yeah. Sure, she did.”

  Were we lying to ourselves?

  Possibly, but I couldn’t handle thinking that Christa wasn’t okay. I couldn’t do anything about that right now. I needed to believe that she’d made it. It was the only way I could focus on the other problems at hand.

  I gazed at him. “And you’re okay too.”

  He half-smiled. “I don’t know about that.”

  “You’re here, right?”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “They almost killed me, you know? They had this conversation, right in front of my face about whether some woman would want me alive or not. And they weren’t sure if she even cared about me. She’d never said anything about me before, so they almost shot me to death. But then they didn’t want to make a mistake, so they brought me back here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “I don’t fucking know.”

  “Are we in the secret lab?”

  “They blindfolded me, Sloane. I don’t know.” He shut his eyes. “Whenever that woman figures out that I’m not important, she’s going to kill me.”

  “No.” I touched his face. “No, I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  He covered my hand with his own and slowly opened his eyes. “I didn’t want to let anyone hurt you. But look what happened.”

  “Axel, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ever got you mixed up in this.”

  He gave me a small smile. “It’s not your fault. I did this myself. I’m the one who wanted to help you out. And, you know, honestly, despite the fact that I’m really afraid of dying right now, I don’t regret any of it.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t really mean that.”

  “Of course I do.” He reached over and brushed my cheek with his fingers.

  His touch still gave me shivers, even here.

  His hand slid back behind my neck. He pulled me close, and our lips met.

  I relaxed into the kiss for a minute, enjoying the sweetness of the way we fit together. But then I pulled back. “Axel, we can’t get…” I got up and went over to the door.

  It was big and metal. It had a knob but no lock. I turned the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “I think it’s bolted closed from the outside,” said Axel.

  I slammed my shoulder into it. Ouch.

  “Careful,” he said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. “And I heal fast.” Even though I was pretty sure that I’d just healed with two bullets in my body. Wasn’t the first time it happened, but I was probably going to have to cut them out at some point. Otherwise it was a bitch to go through a metal detector.

  “You still shouldn’t—”

  Axel stopped talking, and I backed up, because the door was opening.

  Jolene French stepped inside.

  I launched myself at her, but she held up a hand.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said, gesturing to the top pocket of her lab coat where several syringes peered out. “I’ll stab you with one of these, and, trust me, you wouldn’t like the results.”

  I hesitated. Could she really be fast enough? Maybe I could get one of the syringes and stab her before she—

  “Who are you?” French was scrutinizing Axel.

  Axel got to his feet. “I’m Axel Whitman.”

  French raised her eyebrows. “That means nothing to me.”

  I took a step towards her.

  She snatched one of the syringes and brandished it like a knife, holding me off. “Really, Sloane, can’t you ever be civilized for even a few minutes? You and your brother are the most bloodthirsty people I think I ever met, but neither of you has any range. It’s just kill, kill, kill all the time.”

  My nostrils flared. As always, she knew just what to say to get to me. She had to bring Silas into it. She knew Silas was my weak link. “Where is Silas? What have you done to him?”

  “Oh, he’s here.” She waved off into the background idly, but she was still staring at Axel. “But let’s talk about you.”

  Axel smirked. “That happens to be my favorite subject.” He glanced at me. “I guess this is the bitch psychologist you told me about?”

  I nodded.

  French made a tsk, tsk noise. “Sloane, Sloane, you really need to work on your manners.”

  “So I keep telling her,” said Axel. “Look, lady, you don’t know what it is that you’ve got yourself into here. My father owns Whitman Industries and half of the city. You don’t want to get messed up with me or my family. Because I guarantee, whoever you are and whatever you’re doing, my father has the power and the connections to destroy it all, and when he finds out—”

  “Whitman.” She tapped her chin. “You’re one of those Whitmans.”

  “That’s right,” said Axel. “Bitch.”

  French just chuckled under her breath. “If you’re trying to make me angry, don’t. I don’t get angry, I get even.” She looked him over. “And I have to say, there’s nothing about you that’s really worth my ire. You wouldn’t even be useful. You’re far too high profile to be an assassin.”

  “Assassins?” I said. “But you don’t have assassins anymore. We stopped you.”

  She rounded on me. “Stopped me? Oh, I don’t think so, Sloane. You and the rest of your little rag tag group of neglected children and sexual abuse victims certainly haven’t done anything like stopping me. You’ve created a few setbacks, it’s true. But right
now, I’m fixing everything.”

  “What do you mean? What are you up to? Why did Leigh try to kill me?”

  French threw her head back and laughed. “You’re so adorable when you get angry like that, little one. Careful, though. We wouldn’t want anything to remind you of the time you had to watch your brother kill your mommy, now would we?” She smiled. “Then you’d just freeze right up, wouldn’t you?”

  The hell of it was that just her words made me tense. I choked trying to answer her.

  She leaned close. “You could never be a threat to me, Sloane. You’re broken and pathetic. I never even would have kept you around if it weren’t for Silas. I knew he’d never do what I wanted if I killed you. But you’re useless.”

  “Hey,” said Axel.

  My whole body shook, but I couldn’t speak.

  She tucked the syringe back in her pocket, clearly not expecting me to be any kind of threat anymore and turned to Axel. “And you? You probably have rich daddy issues.”

  “Just don’t talk to her that way.”

  “No.” She sounded surprised. She pursed her lips. “Probably something with your mother, then. You have an overblown sense of trying to protect women you care about. I guess that’s why Sloane here is attracted to you. The only man she was ever close to was her brother, and he did the same thing. But it’s ridiculous, can’t you see, Axel? You always try to protect women in a way that guarantees you’ll fail. You’re no match for the kinds of enemies that Sloane has. And I rather imagine your mother would never accept help from her own son. Probably just beneath her. You’re useless too. Such a pretty boy, but impotent as a man. Really, it’s not going to be any kind loss if I have you disposed of.”

  No. But I couldn’t move.

  Axel’s jaw worked, but he was silent too.

  French tapped her chin. “Oh, but when will I do it? And who will I send to do it? Would you like it if Silas did it, Sloane? Would you like Silas to kill your boyfriend? He probably wouldn’t like him anyway. No one’s good enough for his sister.” She turned on her heel. “Have fun waiting, you two.” And then she swung open the door and left us both there, motionless.

  LEIGH

  Silas was inside the bathroom stall. He was still trying to make a tunnel. I’d gone back to look at his progress, and there wasn’t any to speak of. He’d managed to chip away at the wall, but there was nothing more than a small circle of chipped concrete. At this rate, it was going to take years for him to have anything resembling a tunnel.

  “Why are you doing that?” I demanded.

  “Trying to keep busy,” he said.

  “They have Griffin.”

  “They had him before.”

  “French has Griffin, and we don’t know what she wants.”

  Silas used the spoon to dig at the wall. “I know that.”

  “But you’re just sitting in here, doing this stupid thing that isn’t going to help us at all, and I don’t even know what’s she’s doing to Griffin.”

  Silas set down his spoon. “Don’t yell at me, Leigh. I know you’re tense, but don’t take it out on me.”

  “It’s just this tunnel—”

  “Stop it,” he said. “I have to try something. I can’t sit out there doing nothing. At least you have him here, you know? I don’t know where Christa is. I haven’t talked to her in a long time. When I left I really thought I’d see her again. I knew it might be bad, but we’ve been through bad before, and we always came out on the other side. But now… hell, I don’t know if I’m ever going to see her again. And there are things I didn’t say, things I didn’t do. We haven’t even had a whole year yet. We’re supposed to have so much more. And… But I can’t think about that, all right?”

  “Silas.”

  “I can’t. I have to think about something else. So, I’m going to think about this tunnel. And you’re going to let me do it, okay?”

  I bit down on my lip.

  “Okay?”

  I backed away.

  I went into the middle of the floor and wrapped my hands around my knees. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. So I just sat there, my body curled up.

  It was quiet except for the noise of Silas’ chipping.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I started to pace, clutching my head. “There’s got to be something we can do. Something we can try. I won’t let it end like this, I won’t.”

  Axel looked around. “Okay. Let’s think.”

  I pounded my fist against my forehead. “Oh, what does it matter? I could come up with the best plan ever, and then I’d just freeze again. I’d ruin everything. French was right when she said I was useless. Everyone knows that about me.”

  “I don’t know that about you.”

  “I’m getting you killed!” I said. “You of all people should know it.”

  “You’re not, though.” He took a deep breath. “We’re going to figure this out. We can do it.”

  I shook my head. “Who am I kidding? I can’t do this. Has anything gone right since I started this? After everything I’ve tried, we’re locked in this room, and she’s going to kill you and brainwash me, and it’s not fair.”

  He took a deep breath. “Look, Sloane, there’s no reason for you to freeze.”

  “I know that.” I dragged my hands over my face in frustration. “It doesn’t happen because there’s a reason. It happens, and I can’t fight it, no matter how hard I try. Don’t you think that while I’m standing there, unable to move, I’m telling myself that that there’s no reason for it to happen?”

  “I just mean that I think you freeze because you think you’re useless. I spent a lot time with therapists as a kid. My parents thought it was a good substitute for parenting. So, I’m pretty good with the psycho-babble by now. I’ve picked up a lot about the way people’s brains work. And I think that feeling useless is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think you’re worthless, and then you make yourself worthless. And I think you do it because it’s easier to face the idea that you might be worthless than it is to face the idea that your brother is a psychopath.”

  I gave him a sharp look. “My brother is not—”

  “Okay, he’s not,” said Axel. “But he’s no good for you either. It was his idea to kill your parents. You had to watch, you had to participate, but you didn’t start it.”

  I swallowed.

  “And then you ended up as an assassin, and you had to keep doing it.”

  “She recruited us because she said we were naturals,” I said. “We were supposed to go to jail, both of us, but they intercepted our transport vehicle and took us to Op Wraith.”

  “Did you like being an assassin?”

  “No,” I said. “But neither did Silas. He never wanted—”

  “But because of what he did, you had to kill people again. How many times has he forced you to kill people, Sloane?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “He always has to intervene for me, because I can’t handle it. He protects me. He does all those horrible things so that I don’t have to.”

  “But if it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t have to.”

  “No.” I wouldn’t look at Axel. “You don’t even know him.”

  “That’s true.” He ran his hand through his hair and turned to face the shelves. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t understand. Maybe I can’t understand. Maybe if there was someone that I cared about in as much danger as you were in, then I’d feel like I needed to kill them all too.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So maybe it’s not that he’s a psychopath, but that you blame him. And you feel guilty for blaming him.”

  “I don’t blame him. He had to.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  I gulped.

  “He says that he did it for you, but did you ask him to do it?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “Did you ask him to protect you?”

  “No, but I don’t see why—”

  “But he did it anyway. And now, you feel worthle
ss. You feel like you can’t take care of yourself.”

  I pressed my lips together. Axel was right about that.

  “You feel like you always rely on him, and his solutions are always violent.”

  “We have violent lives.” My voice cracked.

  “But you told me yourself that you don’t like it that way. You don’t want to be in danger. You don’t want to have to hurt people. And yet here you are doing it again. For Silas.”

  “For Leigh and Griffin too,” I said in a tiny voice.

  He knelt down next to me and grabbed hold of my hands. “Sloane, you are the opposite of worthless. You are capable and strong. You have no idea what you might have done if Silas hadn’t started killing the people in that basement. You don’t know if you would have found a better solution. Silas made you freeze. He exposed you to something horrible. That’s why you froze. Not because you’re not good. Because you’re a normal human being, and you couldn’t handle watching all that carnage.”

  I gazed into his eyes. Holy fuck, he was right. I remembered a conversation I’d had with Leigh a few years ago. She’d asked me about torturing people, and I’d gotten so uncomfortable, because it had reminded me of killing our parents. What Silas and I had done, it had horrified me. It still horrified me. But it had never horrified Silas. If anything, it had made him harder and more closed-off. I thought that my horror of it was weakness. I’d told myself that I was less than him because it bothered me. I parted my lips. “It’s normal to think that killing people is horrible.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s normal.”

  “I’m not useless,” I whispered.

  “No.”

  I was quiet, letting that wash over me. I couldn’t explain how, because it didn’t quite make sense, but somehow, I felt better. It was as if I’d been running away from a simple acceptance, and now, having made it, I felt soothed. I felt strong.

  I squared my shoulders. “Okay, Axel, let’s figure out how to get out of this room.”

  He grinned at me. “That’s my girl.”