Rhys

by Adrienne Bell

  He could stay in the car as a lookout while she destroyed everything inside the unit. That way he wouldn’t technically know anything else about Project Exodus. He wouldn’t be putting himself at any more risk than he already was.

  And she might actually have a snowball’s chance of surviving this hell.

  Which was more than she’d allowed herself to dream yesterday.

  For good reason, Tessa reminded herself. This wasn’t going to be over the moment she set fire to everything in that storage unit. Boyd was never going to give up on her, not with everything he had on the line. She was still going to be on the run for the rest of her life.

  However long or short that might be.

  But hiding out another day in this fool’s paradise with Rhys wasn’t going to change anything. It was time to take a risk. It was time to act.

  Tessa dressed as quickly as she could, trying to outpace her fears and doubts. She hurried down the hallway, fully expecting to find Rhys in the kitchen, just like he had been every morning, but he wasn’t there.

  He must have stepped out for a second to talk on the phone. The office had probably called with their daily update.

  Or then again, maybe not.

  Tessa saw his phone sitting on the countertop, right next to his key ring.

  Tessa started as his phone suddenly buzzed loudly. She glanced behind her, but Rhys didn’t appear. He must have run to the bathroom or something.

  Well, this was awkward.

  Tessa clasped her hands in front of her as she slid toward the phone. She knew it was none of her business, but she just couldn’t resist sneaking a peek at the illuminated screen.

  Her regret was immediate. Bile rose up in her throat as her stomach tightened, as though she’d taken a fist right in the center of her belly.

  No. The thought repeated over and over in her head as she stared down at the phone. It couldn’t be true. But the name was there, clear as day, displayed on the screen.

  Dylan Murtry.

  Tessa’s mind turned over and over again, trying to think of a reason, any reason, that Rhys might have Dylan as a contact in his phone. Any reason that wouldn’t turn everything she’d believed about Rhys Vaughn into a lie.

  She couldn’t think of a single one.

  Tessa picked up Rhys’ phone and opened his call log. All the proof she needed of his deception was there. Dylan had been calling for days now, since the moment they’d arrived at the safe house.

  Wait. That wasn’t exactly true.

  There were calls from him before that. During the time Dylan had her down in Boyd’s basement.

  He offered me a job. That’s what Rhys had told her when she’d asked what he was doing at Boyd’s house that night. It looked like that might have been the only thing that he’d been honest about.

  And she’d just been seconds away from revealing everything to him.

  Without hesitation, Tessa swept up Rhys’ keys and flung open the door. She flew down the steps and headed toward the garage.

  She refused to think of how just a few days ago he’d carried her across this lawn. How he’d taken care of her, helped her heal both physically and emotionally. And she’d let him in to her head and her heart. She’d wept in his arms. She’d slept by his side, for God’s sake. All because she’d trusted him.

  She’d been a fool. A gullible, needy fool, she chastised herself as she hurried across the grass. Tears pricked her eyes but she didn’t even lift her hands to wipe them away. She stayed focused on one thing—getting the hell out of there.

  She threw open the door of the barn…and crashed into Rhys’ chest.

  His hands came around her shoulders steadying her, but Tessa quickly wrenched away.

  “Tessa,” he said, with open concern showing in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  He glanced behind her when she didn’t answer, but his gaze was back on her face a second later.

  “Wh-what are you doing out here?” she asked, stumbling back a step and then another.

  “I needed to grab something from the garage.” Rhys’ face turned into a cold mask as his gaze moved down to the car keys dangling from her fingers. “Tell me what’s going on, Tessa.”

  Damn her luck. Well, if she couldn’t make it to the car, it meant she only had one choice left. Run like hell.

  Tessa spun around and took off.

  It was no use. Rhys had her before she’d taken three steps. His arm wrapped around her middle and suddenly her legs were floating above the ground. He snatched the keys away from her.

  She drew in a sharp breath and screamed, but that was short lived too. His hand clamped over her mouth. She tried kicking and flailing, but it was like raging against a brick wall. He carried her effortlessly back to the living room and deposited her on the couch.

  But Tessa wasn’t giving up that easy. She dove for the back of the couch as soon as Rhys let her go.

  A heartbeat later, she was back in his grasp, her hands pinned next to her head. Tessa struggled against his hold, but it was no contest. He was just too strong.

  But unlike Dylan, Rhys wasn’t hurting her, just immobilizing her.

  Still, she couldn’t stop fighting. She kept up her futile struggle until her strength and the fire started to wane. She should have known that Rhys was too patient.

  When she was down to fumes and gasps, he eased his grip and pierced her with the force of his gaze.

  “Now,” he said, his voice preternaturally calm. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  She glared up at him. “How about you tell me why Dylan Murtry has been calling you every day for the last week, instead?”

  A flicker of emotion—remorse, shame maybe—flashed over his face.

  “Because we know each other,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Tessa spat at him. “That part I put together all by myself.”

  “We were in the same Ranger unit years ago.” He slid his hands from her wrists but stayed right by her side. “He was the one who invited me to Boyd’s house the night I found you.”

  “Are you working with him now?” Tessa narrowed her eyes as she fumbled to lift herself up into a sitting position. “Is that what all this was about? Some kind of elaborate trick to get me to spill my secrets?”

  Hurt, plain and simple, flashed in his eyes.

  “I haven’t once pressured you to talk,” he said. “More than that, I have protected you from everyone who wanted to force you.”

  “Why is that?” she demanded. “I get why everyone wants me to open my mouth. There’s a lot to gain if I do. But there’s nothing in it for anyone if I keep my mouth shut.”

  “I told you.” His voice dipped down low. “I understand you.”

  Tessa threw her hands in the air. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “It means I know what torture is like. I know what it does to a person.” He said the words slowly, letting them sink in. “In a way no one else does.”

  Tessa’s mouth fell open as she stared into his steely eyes. “Because you’ve been tortured.”

  “No.” He gave a single shake of his head. “Because I was the one doing the torturing.”

  ***

  It was killing Rhys to hold Tessa’s gaze, but he refused to look away. He would face her scorn, her anger, her pain. All the things he’d been hiding from this past week, he’d face them now. He would do it without flinching, without turning away. No matter how deep it cut, no matter how badly it hurt.

  He owed her that much. He might have been truthful with her, but he’d been far from honest.

  He watched as one emotion after another flashed across her face—disbelief, anger, then horror.

  It was that last one that cut him the deepest.

  “Get away from me,” she demanded.

  “I can’t do that, Tessa,” he said, shaking his head. Just like he couldn’t let her run headlong into danger.

  Rhys knew he was no angel, but that didn’t mean he was a monster like Boyd and Dy
lan. They were still out there hunting her down, and God only knew what they’d do if they got their hands on her again. Even the thought turned Rhys’ stomach. He wasn’t going to let that happen. No matter what.

  Even if it meant enduring Tessa’s hatred.

  Her eyes turned hard as she glared up at him. She pulled her knees into her chest, and tucked herself into the far corner of the couch. As if that wasn’t space enough, she picked up a pillow and clutched it in front of her like a shield.

  “What do you mean that you tortured people?” she said.

  It was killing him to look her in the eye, to watch all the fearful emotions pass over her face, but through sheer force of will he kept his gaze steady.

  If she could bear to ask, then he could bear to answer.

  “When I was in the Rangers with Dylan, we all received training in how to coax information out of hostiles. The training was basic and the methods were crude, but the techniques were effective. I recognized the hallmarks of that training in your injuries.”

  Tessa’s knuckles turned white as her fingers tightened around the pillow.

  “What Dylan did to me was basic?” she asked.

  “Very,” he said. “Soon it became clear that I had a talent for making people talk. It didn’t take long for those talents to come to the attention of my superiors. After that, I was recruited into Special Forces, where I learned a more sophisticated skillset.”

  “And by sophisticated you mean more painful?” she said without blinking.

  It was time to stop skirting around the issue.

  Rhys leaned closer. She didn’t pull back, but she didn’t let go of her shield either.

  “I learned how to break those who refused to be broken,” he said. “I learned the limits of human endurance. How to manipulate emotions. How to prey on people’s hopes and fears. How to coax a reaction with words or silence. And I learned how to do it quickly and efficiently.”

  Tessa’s eyes went wide with understanding.

  “That’s why you were at Anders’ house that night,” she said.

  It wasn’t a question, but Rhys nodded anyway. “Dylan couldn’t break you. Boyd needed someone who could.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

  “Could you have done it?” she finally asked.

  “I never would have. The second I drove up to that house I knew something was off. I—”

  “That wasn’t what I asked,” she said, cutting him off. She sat up straighter. Her shoulders squared. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, Rhys realized. She should be, but she wasn’t. “I asked if you could break me.”

  Rhys’ jaw tightened. “Easily.”

  Defiance lit up her eyes. She had no idea how quickly he could extinguish that fire if he tried. “I didn’t give up anything to Dylan.”

  “I’m not Dylan,” Rhys said. “I wouldn’t have made the same mistakes. He expected you to be weak, to cave with simple pain, but I can see in an instant that whatever you’re holding back, it frightens you more than pain.”

  Tessa recoiled, and Rhys knew he’d hit his mark. She didn’t like the idea that her most deeply held emotions could be used against her. No one did.

  “But I didn’t take the job,” he said. “And Dylan has been calling me every day since, trying to convince me to bring you back to him. But I haven’t Tessa, and I never will.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So what if you’re not working for Dylan? You are working for Carter Macmillan, and I know what that man thinks of me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Carter thinks,” Rhys said. “He’s far more concerned with what Anders Boyd has planned than with you.”

  “Even if that’s true, you’re still gathering information for him.” She looked away, shaking her head. “The kind words, the patience, chasing away my nightmares—it was all an act. And the stupid thing is I nearly fell for it. I was about to come out here and tell you everything. I was going to bare my goddamned soul.”

  She was wrong. Her soul wasn’t damned. His was.

  “I never did anything with the intention of manipulating you,” he said. He had to make her listen. “I knew what you needed and I wanted to give it to you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Right,” she said with open skepticism in her eyes. He couldn’t blame her, but he also couldn’t seem to tamp down his frustration. “You did all this out of the kindness of your heart, the one that tortured without regret.”

  “No.” He inched forward, closing the gap between them. “I know regret more intimately than most.”

  “Is that supposed to make it all better?” The pillow fell from her hands as the fire reignited in her eyes. She leaned toward him. It was strange that he would rather feel this closeness, even if it came at the price of her anger, than the chilly distance between them. “Should I be relieved that I’m just another one of your regrets? At least it explains a lot.”

  “Explains?” he asked.

  Her gaze became more pointed. “How you could sleep with me every night, but never touch me. I figured you thought of me as a sister, but I was wrong. I was just another job.”

  “You are not another anything to me, Tessa.” He found himself moving even closer. “If you were, we wouldn’t be here. I would have pounced on you the moment I’d found you, while you were weak and vulnerable. I would have never protected you. I would have never fought for you.”

  She looked up at him for a long time, studying his face.

  “So why did you?” she asked finally. “What made me different than anyone else?”

  It was a simple enough question, but Rhys hesitated. The answer was more complicated than the standard guilt and remorse that he was so used to living with.

  But he owed her the truth, even if it was the first thing in a long time that frightened him.

  “When I was a soldier, I did what was needed,” he said. “The people I interrogated were terrorists, bombers, murderers. I knew they were bad people, Tessa, but they were still people. I listened to their screams and their pleading. I watched their defenses shatter one by one, knowing that I was every bit the monster that they were.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her brows pulling together.

  “There is a cost of getting into someone’s head,” he explained. “Of seeing what they see, what they fear, what they love. All that comfortable distance that soldiers keep in battle between themselves and the enemy, that sense of otherness, disappears. I’ve seen through hundreds of eyes. I’ve felt their fear, their pain, their anger.”

  Tessa stared up at him with unblinking eyes. Her mouth fell open.

  “But everything was different when I looked inside you, Tessa,” he went on. “You were hurt, and you were scared, but there was so much more. You were filled with determination, and drive and hope. You made me want those things too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “I know what people think of me,” he said. “They think I’m cold and distant to protect myself from the reality of what I do, but they have it backwards. I do it to protect them from all the crap I’ve taken on over the years.”

  “Rhys—”

  “You think that I held you every night because you were my job?” he cut her off, knowing that if he didn’t get it all out now, he never would. “I slept next to you because you were scared and alone and I know what that means. But I held you because I wanted to. Because you felt right in my arms. But I didn’t go any further, because you deserve someone a hell of a lot better than me.”

  Tessa leaned forward, slipping her hand over his. “That’s not true, Rhys.”

  He wrapped his fingers tight around hers, keeping her from moving any closer, but not pushing her away.

  “Tessa, your emotions are running high. I don’t think you—”

  His words were cut off by a loud knock on the front door.

  Tessa froze instantly, every muscle in her body tensing. Fear filled up her amber eyes.
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  “Is it Boyd?” she asked in a frantic whisper.

  “He wouldn’t knock,” Rhys tried to reassure her as he turned his head. “Probably just someone from the neighborhood. If we’re quiet, they’ll go away.”

  The knock sounded again.

  “Police,” a voice called from the other side of the door. “Open up.”

  Or maybe they wouldn’t.

  “Stay here,” Rhys said, squeezing Tessa’s hand.

  He got up from the couch and cautiously went over to the door. He wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t think that it was Dylan or his men. A careful entry just wasn’t his old friend’s style.

  Rhys slowly put his eye up to the peephole and saw two male officers in blue uniforms outside. They looked legit enough.

  He slowly turned the knob and cracked open the door.

  “Hello officers,” he said, wedging his body in the small open space. “Is there a problem?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us, sir,” the taller cop said. “We got a call from one of your neighbors that they heard a disturbance from this house.”

  “A disturbance?” Rhys asked.

  “Screams,” his partner said. Rhys couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind his reflective sunglasses, but he could feel the intensity of the man’s stare.

  “Must be some mistake,” Rhys said, keeping his voice flat and even. “There’s no disturbance here.”

  “Is there another person in the house with you, sir?” the first cop asked.

  “A woman?” the other one chimed in.

  There was no sense in lying. They already knew from the neighbor’s call that there was, and Rhys really didn’t want to give them an excuse to try to search the house without a warrant.

  Rhys turned over and looked at Tessa. Her eyes were just barely poking up over the back of the couch. If it wasn’t for the expression of terror hanging heavy on her brow, she would’ve looked downright adorable.

  He nodded toward her, silently telling her it was all right.

  Tessa slowly stood up and walked over to him. Rhys swung the door open another couple of inches, but was careful to keep his arm out in front of her as a barrier, just in case.