by Hanna Peach
The memory of her fragile body still clings to me like she did. She’s a beautiful, innocent looking girl. No wonder Jacob is obsessed with her.
As I drive my car from the police station my phone on the seat next to me rings. I frown when I see Michelle’s name come up. She never rings me anymore. Over the last few months we’ve settled into a nice little routine where I pick up Lily from her so I can have her on the weekend. Then I drop her off to the apartment that Michelle has rented in the city on Sunday night. I don’t hate her. And I think she has stopped hating me. We just don’t belong together.
I answer the call and tuck the phone between my neck and shoulder so I can indicate a turn. “Michelle?”
But it’s not Michelle’s voice that answers. “Detective Harper Boone.” The cold deep voice sends a shiver down my spine even before I hear everything he has to say. “We have your wife and daughter. Do I have your attention?”
I veer sharply to the left and park on the side of the road, my heart thudding in my ears. Please tell me this is some kind of sick joke that one of Michelle’s new boyfriends is playing on me.
“Who is this?” I demand.
He laughs. “You forget me so quickly? Our paths crossed just this afternoon when you took something important from me.”
My mind whirs, trying to place his voice. Then it clicks. “Jacob Tyrell.”
“Very good. Now here’s the deal. You bring her back to me and I will let you have your wife and daughter back − alive. If you don’t…”
He wants me to trade her for them. “You know I can’t do that. Just let them go.”
“Too bad. How ‘bout I let you tell them yourself why you can’t save them.”
There’s a rustling and I hear a scream in the background. Michelle!
“Say hello, honey,” I hear faintly.
“Daddy?” My little girl’s voice on the phone makes my stomach clench with pain. My girl. She is my light. My sun. My world.
I inhale and force myself to speak normally. “Hey there my little LiLu.”
“I don’t wanna be here anymore, Daddy. I’m scared. Mommy won’t stop crying.” Every word stabs me right in my heart. I can’t let them die. I can’t.
“I know, baby. Daddy’s going to come get you real soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you, kiddo. Stay brave for daddy.”
“I lov−”
But the phone is snatched away from her and Jacob’s voice comes on the line. “Did you finish saying goodbye?”
“No,” I yell. “I’ll do it. I’ll bring her to you.”
“Good. Don’t involve anyone else. No other police. You have ‘til dawn.” And he hangs up.
* * *
I creep towards the back door of the safehouse where I know they’re keeping her, trying to ignore the guilt gnawing away at me. The woman inside is just a girl, barely a woman, and I’m condemning her to death. I shake my head. I can’t think that way. I’m not condemning her to death, I’m saving my daughter’s life. But the guilt doesn’t go away no matter how much I justify it. I push away the memory of holding her in my arms as I carried her body out of the warehouse. I try to replace it with memories of holding my daughter. Yes, little Lily in my arms, her tiny arms bent around my neck. I’m sorry, I repeat in my head, but I have to save my daughter.
The lock on the back door is easy to pick. I creep inside and lightly close the door. Further inside, in the living room one of the cops on guard is asleep. The other is watching some late night rubbish on TV, his head occasionally lolling, telling me that he is close to sleep.
He has his back to me, which makes it easy to sneak up to him and cover his mouth with a rag doused in ether. Yes, ether. The movies lie to you about chloroform. It takes at least several minutes for chloroform to work and it leaves unsightly burns on someone’s face.
The guard struggles briefly before he slumps where he sits. The sleeping guard is even easier to knock out.
I pause briefly at the door of her room as my chest tightens. I prepare myself for the horror on her face as she realizes I’ve betrayed her. I wonder if she’ll recognize me as the one who pulled her out of the warehouse.
I turn the door handle slowly and push open the door. She’s sleeping, a small crumpled figure in bed. She doesn’t wake, not even as I step inside and shut the door. I ready my rag as I approach her figure. Then I lunge for her. But my hands grab only pillows. They’ve been positioned to look like a sleeping person.
Shit. Where is she? The bathroom?
That’s when I feel a breeze blow across me and I notice the open window. When I run to it I see the two fresh footprints in the mud under the sill. Oh my God. She’s gone. And with her is all my hope.
* * *
“She’s not at the safehouse.”
“You’re lying to me,” Jacob snarls at me through the phone.
“I’m not, I swear.”
“Where has she gone?”
“I don’t know. She just took off. It’s not my fault. Please just let my family go.”
“You lost her? Harper Boone, you’ve made me so fucking angry. I am not a nice person when I’m angry.”
“I’ll find her. I’ll get her back to you. Just let them live.”
“That’s not the deal. The deal was, you bring her to me, I let them live.”
I hear sounds of a woman and a girl screaming in the background. The noise shreds through me like a knife. “Please, no, don’t hurt them.”
“You give me no choice, Harper. It’s a matter of principle, see. What would people think if I just let people go without getting my end of the deal? They would stop believing how fucking serious I am. Kill her.”
Over my begging and yelling I can hear Michelle’s screams. I can hear Lily crying.
“Just remember, you did this to her, Mr. Boone.”
I hear a gunshot. Michelle’s screaming halts. In its place I hear my little girl shrieking. Tears well in my eyes and I beat my steering wheel with my fist letting out a short sharp blast.
“I’m giving you one last chance to hand her over to me.” He doesn’t think I’m serious. He thinks that I have her and that I’m just refusing to hand her over.
“I swear to you I don’t have her. She’s gone. She’s on the run. But I can find her. Please, leave my daughter alive. I will find her for you.”
“This conversation is over,” Jacob snarls. “Your family’s blood is on your hands.”
I hear a clatter as the phone is dropped. Then one final gunshot sounds. The sound pierces my chest and I feel my heart shatter. The sound tearing from my lungs is wild and feral and fills the car.
I failed.
My daughter, the only ray of light in my dark world, is dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The present…
Kitten
My skin prickles as his confession sinks its claws in. Jacob killed Caden’s wife and daughter. Because of me. My head is spinning. Caden was going to hand me over to Jacob. He couldn’t because I ran. His family died because I ran.
“He sent men after me…” Caden says. His hand reaches up and his fingers brush his chest. “They tortured me and branded my chest with his crest as a warning. I could never work as a cop again. I could never tell the law about what he’d done. It was our dirty little secret. Before I passed out, I recognized the voice of one of the men who came for me as someone on my team.”
I inhale, realizing that I stopped breathing, my lungs desperate for oxygen. “I’m so, so sorry that happened to you. I…” I try to push my way through every piece of information I’ve learned. But it all crowds me and I feel short of breath. Caden was going to hand me over to Jacob. But he didn’t find me. I ran. Saving my life. At the cost of his family. I… I can’t even begin to understand what I’m supposed to feel. What the hell am I supposed to feel? “I need some time to process this all. I need to think. You need rest. I’ll come back later.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
> I sit in the love seat in my bedroom, staring out of the window. The sky is streaks of grey, and there’s such a wind that the leaves are being plucked off the trees outside and tossed about.
My head is so full of voices and thoughts, shouting over each other like Sunday market stall keepers, that I can’t hear myself. My heart is torn.
On one hand, I hurt for Caden, for the tragedy that befell him. For losing his family, not once but twice. I think about what I would have done if Jacob had taken away my grandparents. I would break. Or the guilt would crush me into nothing. Or perhaps I would become something else… perhaps I would turn into something dark. Perhaps I, too, would fill a room with photos and maps and documents to feed my obsession of killing the man who took everything from me.
My heart fills with such bitterness when I think of Jacob, the monster who broke me and who also broke Caden.
On the other hand, could I forgive a man who admitted that he was going to turn me over to the very monster who once destroyed my life? Could I look at Caden the same again after this confession? If I look at Caden now, will I see Jacob? This is exactly what Caden feared, exactly why he protected me from seeing him naked or from touching his scars.
But wouldn’t I do the same thing he did to save my family? Wouldn’t I hand over a stranger to Jacob to save my family?
God… when will this questioning stop? It hurts my head. It makes me dizzy. Stay. Go. Trust him. Don’t trust him.
It feels so familiar.
My blood turns cold. It feels so familiar…
I feel unbalanced, like my gravity has shifted to the top of my head, making me easily swayed. So side to side I totter. I love him. I hate him. I need him. I need out.
No. I shake my head to dislodge these thoughts. Caden is nothing like Jacob. Nothing. But I can’t keep swinging back and forth. I have to decide once and for all to trust him completely. Or to leave forever.
My grandfather told me once not to listen to the shouting in my head. That the only things that shout are fear and pain and anger. The truth is not a voice at all but a feeling, a subtle sense of rightness waiting patiently underneath the noise.
As I sit I push past all these voices, peeling them away like layers to find my truth.
It’s a simple yet pure feeling. One I recognize without trying.
I love him.
When I enter Caden’s bedroom again he’s pacing the floor.
“You’re up,” I say. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
He stops his pacing to stare at me standing by the door. “The wound is barely a scratch. And my hangover won’t kill me.” He takes a tentative step towards me, his face scrunching in worry. “Are you… Have you thought about it?”
I nod.
He doesn’t ask but his eyes do. Do you forgive me? Do you still want me? After everything I’ve confessed?
I step up to him and slip my hand into his. “I’m staying.”
The pained, guilty look on his face doesn’t slip away. “…I would have turned you over to Jacob if you hadn’t run.”
I nod. “I know. And because I ran, your wife and child died. It was a cruel twist of fate. But it has led us both here. We can both choose to keep feeling guilty or we can both decide to let the guilt go.”
“How do you just let something like that go?”
I lick my lips as I study his face. “I don’t think you can ‘just let it go’. I think only time can wear the guilt away to nothing, like wind wearing away sandstone. But you have to open yourself to it.”
He nods. “What about my scars. Can you live with them?” His fingers reach up to graze his shirt. I understand. I understand why he couldn’t have me look at him naked. Or touch him. I’d feel the scars.
“That’s why you never wanted me to touch you… or see you…”
“How could I let you look at me when the reminder of your past is blazed across my chest? How would you ever be able to make love to me if you had to look at this?”
He beats his palm to his chest. The pain in his eyes tears at me.
“Is that what you were trying to do when you cut yourself? To get rid of it?”
“Yes. No. Maybe partly. It became an outlet for me on the anniversary of Lily’s death. One cut for every year that she has been gone. This would be the third year.”
“Jacob tattooed his crest on my ass,” I blurt out. “He wanted everyone to know who I belonged to.”
Caden blinks several times. “He what? But I don’t remember seeing it.”
“You wouldn’t have. I had it removed a few years ago. If I hadn’t had it removed, if it was still there, could you still make love to me? Could you run your hands lovingly across my skin, across his mark on me?”
“Of course. What he put on your body says nothing about what’s in your heart.” He pauses and a look of realization comes over his face.
“I don’t care what’s marked on your chest. I still want to be with you.”
He nods, but he looks uncertain.
“You don’t believe me.”
He shakes his head slowly.
“But if roles were reversed you’d be okay with it.”
He nods.
“Can’t you see how unfair that is? That you’ve given one set of rules for yourself and another for me?”
He still looks uncomfortable. He doesn’t reply. The only way I’ll be able to convince him that I’m telling the truth is if I show him.
“Let me see it?” I ask.
He’s silent for a moment. I can see the flash of emotions running across his face; worry, fear, sadness, uncertainty. I refrain from filling in the silence.
Finally he says, “Okay.”
With that single word my heart starts to thud − hard. Slowly he unbuttons his shirt, one button at a time, until it hangs open, revealing the lean hard line of his stomach and the bandage over his chest. He grips the edges of his shirt then he shrugs it off his shoulders and lets it drop to the floor. My mouth goes dry as I suck in air. Even with the bandage hiding part of his chest, he’s so beautiful it hurts. He’s my golden-skinned warrior. My broken hero. My beautiful Caden Thaine. From the edge of the bandage I can see white scars curling across his body like lace.
I sense him watching me and there’s an expectant anxious look in his eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” I say to him.
“You haven’t seen all of it yet.” He pinches the edge of the bandage and I hold my breath as he slowly peels it off.
I suck air in. Across his bare and sculpted chest is the scarred outline of the Tyrell crest. I can faintly make out the eagle behind a shield with a halo made of leaves above its head. Lashing through it are two white scars, the first two years after Lily’s death. Finally a raw, new wound that he made earlier today. It’s scabbed over, but it still looks red and painful.
A flash of memory of when I was marked by Jacob goes across my mind.
I hear a buzzing noise and the feel of gloved fingers against my ass. Then it begins. It stings, but it is nothing like the squeezing pain in my chest. Jacob is marking me. Branding me. Like cattle.
“You understand, don’t you, baby? Why I have to mark you. So that everybody knows. So that everybody knows that you’re mine and if they fuck with you then they fuck with me… Because I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
My heart hurts for Caden. I know what it’s like to be branded like an animal, like a piece of property. Like something with no soul. I remember the bitterness of humiliation rising to my throat.
I tear my eyes away from the brand to look up at him. I sense he’s waiting for my reaction.
“I don’t care if you have a hundred scars,” I say, “You’d still be the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
I step towards him. He flinches and takes a step back as if he is a foal backing away from a wild animal. God… he’s almost scared of me.
I wonder if Caden has allowed anyone to touch him since then. My heart weeps at the thought. Everybody needs t
o be touched, to be loved, cared for.
He’s ashamed of his body. Yes, I can see the way his chin ducks down as he tries to avoid my eyes as I stare back at him. He thinks I may not want him now that I know this… now that I’ve seen him.
I need to take this slowly. Like he did with me. I walk towards the far side of the bed. At its side I slip off my shoes.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice laced with suspicion.
“Will you lie down with me? Just lie down. Nothing else.”
I lay down, facing his side of the mattress. “You don’t have to touch me if you don’t want to. Just lie with me, here.” I wipe my palm along the space on the mattress in front of me. “Please.”
He moves slowly, unsurely at first, walking towards the edge of the bed. His fingers flinch and I see his shoulders aching to curve in. I know he wants to hide himself. He turns and sits on the bed, his palms pressing flat against the sheets, like he could push away at any moment. I know he could. I can see from the pinch of his eyebrows that he’s on the verge of bolting. So I don’t dare move. I barely breathe as I wait.
He shifts, pulling his legs up onto the bed, and lies down. Slowly, he rolls aside to face me. We lay, not touching, and I realize we’re facing each other like this for the first time.
In the movies those big moments are always punctuated with crescendoing drums and swelling violins. Not this. Not here. This silence contains a bigger moment than appearances allow. This is the moment when I realize there is nothing between us. No shield to hide behind, no secrets, no wall to climb. I see him. And he sees me.
I can’t help but blink back tears.
“Why are you crying? Are you sad?” He frowns as he reaches out to wipe the side of my nose with his finger where a stray tear has fallen and betrayed me.
“No, I’m not sad. I’m… happy.”
“You’re crying because you’re happy?”
