There had been a time when Ben would have hated the idea of having anything to do with the people Gene worked with. Now he owed them for taking care of his girls. It was amazing how many shades of gray Ben had become comfortable living with over the last five years.
“She was picked up off your boat. I took her away from you like you were a meaningless, powerless being who couldn’t protect what was yours. You were nothing. You were smaller than a maggot in the world.”
He rolled his eyes. “Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You went on the news. You made a fool of yourself. No one would have anything to do with you.”
“I promise you, if that had happened, I would remember it.”
“Ben.” He hated the way she said his name. It made his skin crawl. “Why did you decide to take on the Conditioned? Of all the things you could have done with your life, why would you risk yourself and your family for them?”
“Anyone who saw the atrocities would.”
“No.” She slammed her hand down on the table. “They’ve butchered you.”
Madame placed a hand on his forehead. Ben tried to jump backward but felt frozen in his seat. He couldn’t move. His heart pounded hard as his body instantly became paralyzed. What was happening? He couldn’t panic. That was the most important thing.
“Damn.” She shut her eyes as she sighed dramatically. “You’re ruined. Ruined.”
She stood, and Ben could move again. He narrowed his eyes as he surged to his feet. “What the fuck did you just do?”
He almost never cursed, but this crazy woman clearly did bad things to him.
“I gave it one last try.”
Realization dawned on Ben like a bomb going off. “You’re Conditioned.”
She waved her hand as if what he’d said was of minimal importance. “All the leaders of the Institutions are. How else do you control a monster other than by using one? And I am, you know, the worst kind of monster.”
Her face lit up when she delivered that last piece of information, as though she’d practiced it a million times.
“Been trying that out in the mirror, have you? Very well done. Brava.” Ben clapped his hands. “Now, where is my lawyer?”
“You have no rights here.” She laughed. “I may not get the answers I need from you, but by God I will finally get rid of the one person who has been driving me crazy for five years.”
She raised her arm. Ben had one second to wonder what other sick abilities the woman possessed, would use to harm him, before the first gunshot went off.
As his heart practically ripped from his chest, Ben dove for the floor.
Madame whirled around as the door burst open.
“Who are you?”
Only the slightest hint of a tremor indicated what Ben knew must be abject terror. He poked his head out from under the table and tried to hide his grin. His brother had some very powerful friends.
“You have two people here who belong to me.” The man’s name was Paul Mendoza and, like Gene, he had spent most of his life doing illegal things to earn his place in the Mob world that ran certain areas of Louisiana. “I’ve come to get them back.” Paul’s gaze traveled up and down Madame’s figure. “I don’t much care for shooting old women.”
“I could bring you down in two seconds. You’d never get to pull the trigger.”
Paul snickered. “That’s true, I’m sure. But then you’d never see him coming.”
Ben jumped to his feet, grabbing the chair he’d sat in before his feet ever touched the floor. Using muscles he hadn’t flexed since his days playing high school baseball, he whacked Madame over the head with the chair. She crumpled to the floor.
He stared down at the woman he’d just struck. She was evil personified to Ben.
“She’s not dead.” Paul stepped forward. “So whatever guilt trip you were about to give yourself, get over it.”
“Sad truth is that I wasn’t all that concerned about it.”
He wanted her dead. But her words strung out in his mind. Had he been “altered” somehow? Were there memories, life experiences he’d had that he now couldn’t remember?
Still, it wasn’t the time for self-indulgent moralistic questions.
“Where’s Gene?”
“We dragged him out of here a few minutes ago. They beat him up pretty badly. I guess they were going to use his pain to get to you. He’s pissed as hell. We’re pretty sure he’s going to be fine.”
“That’s good.” He needed to see his brother, to make sure he was all right.
Also, maybe Gene could shed some light on what Ben couldn’t remember.
Not to mention, if he didn’t get to see his girls fast, he was going to freak out.
He wasn’t an anxious man, but even he could be pushed too far.
“Let’s go.” Paul shrugged. “Don’t mind the dead bodies on the way out.”
Now that was something Ben had never thought to hear in his whole life. Maybe he was a little sick in the head, because it made him smile. “You guys are amazing, did you know that? What are we going to do with her?”
“Leave her. The boss said to try to avoid killing her if we could. She’s got friends in high places he’d rather not piss off if he doesn’t have to.”
Ben stepped over her body. Maybe she would get a brain bleed and spare them all the trouble of having to deal with her again.
“You should see your face. Gene said you had a hidden bloodthirsty side, but I didn’t believe it. I’ve always thought of you as being Mr. Strait-Laced.”
Ben nodded, following Paul out the door. “Up until five years ago, I was.”
The question of why he had changed was one he was going to have to figure out. Eventually. He ran out of the building after Paul.
Life had certainly gotten really, really strange.
Ben strode into his house behind Gene, who was being supported by two of his underlings. “Put him on the couch.”
“I’m awake, Benedicte. I can certainly decide where I want to be placed,” Gene snarled. “Plus, my legs do work, so all of this carting me around like an invalid is a waste of time.”
“All right, where would you like to be?”
Eugene fell silent for a moment. “The couch.”
“Uh-huh.” Ben shook his head. “You always were a surly bastard when you were hurt or sick.”
“Jerk.”
Ben looked at the guard—Raul—who stood by the stairs.
“Are the girls upstairs?”
“Yep. They’ve been quiet tonight.”
They were probably freaked out. For all that Gene’s group kept them protected from the outside world, the men were a bunch of gossiping old women amongst themselves. There was no way the girls didn’t know he and Gene had been taken.
Ben took the stairs two steps at a time.
“Daph? Ella?” he called out as he approached their bedroom. Pretty soon they wouldn’t want to share anymore.
It dawned on him suddenly that they might not be able to stay in the house. When Madame woke up, she was going to come after him again. There was no way she’d let the fact he’d whacked her over the head go unpunished. He might need to take the girls on the run for a while.
They didn’t answer him, and he knocked loudly on their door. They were eleven now, and as Ella always told him, “in need of privacy.”
“Ladies?”
No response. Screw their personal space. He flung open the door.
Their room was empty. The only movement came from the wind that floated through the open window, blowing their green-and-white curtains gently as it flitted through the room.
Sheer and utter dread invaded Ben’s soul. He couldn’t hear anything except the sound of his own breath coming in and out of his lungs. This was his terror; this was what had kept him up at night. The girls. Someone had taken the girls.
He didn’t realize he’d shouted until he heard the sound of pounding footsteps trampling up the stairs. Raul p
ushed past him into the bedroom.
“What the fuck?” Raul cursed. “No one got in here tonight. No one, boss.”
Ben wasn’t their boss, but he wasn’t going to correct him. Not now. “Obviously, someone did. They got them from right under your nose.”
He didn’t want to imagine what Madame was having done to them right at that moment. Red filled his vision. This was rage. He would murder whoever touched his babies. Kill them—torture—maim.
“Hold on.” Gene’s panting breaths came from behind him. Ben watched his brother stumble into the room and sit down on Ella’s unmade bed. “Let’s look at this.”
“Look at it?” Ben hollered at Gene. “You can’t even walk up the stairs. You want to pretend you’re some kind of CSI unit?”
“Fuck off for a second, Benedicte.” His brother rolled his eyes at him. “There’s no signs of struggle in here, nothing to indicate that anything went awry at all. I promise you, one of the girls would have yelled. Ella has no problem screaming like a banshee anytime she feels threatened.”
Ben stared blankly at Gene, trying to make sense of his words through the haze of anger, fear and guilt that threatened to overtake him. What was his brother saying? If they hadn’t been taken, then what? Had they left?
He stormed over to the window and looked down. It wasn’t that far up but they would have hurt themselves if they’d tried to jump. Beneath them were Ella and Daphne’s top bed sheets, tied together in a heap on the grass in the backyard.
“Hell.”
Gene spoke over Raul. “Ben?”
“They climbed down.”
Ben whirled around to look at Gene. His brother lay back on Ella’s bed, his eyes, which were practically swollen shut from his beating, closed in pain. “I knew it.”
A million possibilities flew through his mind, including the very real need to get his older brother to a hospital. “Where would they go, and why would they do this?”
Gene’s eyes cracked open. “They’ve probably had a contingency plan for years. An idea of what they would do if we both vanished. I bet you it was Ella’s plan. The girl is so much like me.”
That might have been true, but Ben had no clue where they’d gone or who they’d go to for help. He sank down on the floor. How could he protect them if his mind was missing all sorts of information he needed?
Ben had never felt so ineffective in his life.
“We’ll start a search pattern, boss. We’ll get them.”
Raul sounded desperate. He probably didn’t want Gene to kill him for losing his nieces.
“Sounds good.”
He’d already lost… who? Who had he lost that made him know he could never stand to lose someone again? Not Dana. Yes, he’d lost her, but this was different. Madame’s words resonated deeply with him. He knew in his gut that the Institutions had already taken someone from him. No way, no how were they getting anyone else. Not while there was breath in his body.
Fourteen
Shiri stepped off the plane in the New Orleans airport feeling very proud of herself. She had successfully used her fake identification to travel all the way to New Orleans without setting off anyone’s radar as to her true identity. Guy was really, really good at hiding them. If she hadn’t been so terrified the entire trip, she might have enjoyed her first couple of airplane rides. Instead, she’d wanted to puke the whole time.
Her good mood lasted only until she’d stepped out into the humidity of a New Orleans summer. She lived in the Caribbean; it was ridiculous that the heat of Louisiana could affect her so deeply. Maybe it was a sense-memory thing.
A car pulled up in front of her by the curb, beeping its horn to get her attention. She bent over to regard the driver, and after a moment of staring blankly at the person inside, she couldn’t help her grin. Addison Wade Lewis, fully disguised so even her grandfather might not recognize her, smiled back. If she hadn’t known Addison would meet her at the airport, she’d have had no idea who the woman was. Shiri opened the car door and got in.
“Addy, look at you with dark-brown hair! What does Spence think?”
Addison’s blue eyes, covered now with brown contacts, danced with laughter.
“He only saw me like this for about ten minutes before we separated. He’s in Arizona.”
“And what did he think?”
“He liked it even less than I liked seeing him with red hair.” She scratched her head. “I guess we both like each other as we are.”
Shiri stared at Addison. “And the baby? Are you still sick?”
“Frankly, it’s amazing either Spencer or Guy let me come on this mission. Don’t you start, either. I haven’t been sick in weeks. I feel good. The baby is growing just fine, and all I’ve been doing is watching and reporting. As soon as I get you set up, I’m going back home, and then I’ll put my feet up and pretend I’m a lady of leisure.”
Shiri laughed. She loved Addison Lewis like a sister. “Yeah, right, I’ll believe that when I see it. You’ll be all over Jeremy and worrying yourself sick until Spencer comes home.” Addison loved Jeremy, her nephew, like a son.
“Come on now, Shiri. Let me live in my own fantastical delusions of doing nothing for a while, won’t you?”
Shiri sighed and leaned back in her seat. “Only if you let me pretend I can actually get this done successfully.” Only if you let me pretend Ben will be at all glad to see me and not hate me forever for hiding for five years…
“Of course, you can.” Addison patted her on the leg as she pulled the car into traffic. “The girl called out to you, right? Guy’s message was, I believe, deliberately vague. That means she needs you. You’ll take care of this.”
“I hope so. I’ve never lived out in the open. I don’t really know how to handle myself in the real world.”
“Sure you do. You just took two airplanes to get here. There’s nothing more intimidating than an airport. If you can do that, you can do anything. You have cash—which will open a ton of doors if need be—and a whole support system of hidden people to help you.”
Shiri wished she had Addison’s optimistic nature. Somewhere on the flight from Puerto Rico to Miami, Shiri had started to doubt everything she hoped would happen. Maybe Ben would want nothing to do with her.
“I’ve got some news on Benedicte Lavelle.”
Shiri had almost never heard his full name used. She hadn’t even known it until she’d started writing to him. When the guard had first taken her to him, she had simply thought of him as a client even though she was sure someone had said his full name. He’d called himself Ben. He was listed in the Louisiana Bar Association using his full name, which was how she’d discovered it. “Oh yes? Did we find out where he’s being held?”
By nature, Shiri wasn’t a violent person. Not at all. But she would hurt anyone who’d harmed Ben. She knew that as intrinsically as she knew anything.
“He’s out. Roman texted me an hour ago. Apparently, Ben’s brother’s people shot up the place and got him out.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” Tears spilled from her eyes, and she wiped them away, not caring if she looked snotty in front of Addison. Besides, they’d been through a lot together and the other woman wouldn’t care.
“It’s good. Yes.”
Shiri could hear the hesitation in her voice. “But?”
“Are you ready to see him?”
She had been ready to see him for five years. She’d never wanted to stop seeing him. But she didn’t want to lie to Addison. “I’m anxious.”
“That’s natural.”
“What if he hates me?”
Addison shook her head. “He’s devoted himself for five years to taking on causes for you. I don’t think a person who hated you could do such a thing.”
“He thinks I’m dead. That’s why he did that stuff. Trying to tell the world about what happened all but destroyed him. For that, he might hate me.”
Her friend exhaled a loud breath. “He might be a little… mad. But once you explain t
hat you weren’t allowed to contact him, I think he’ll just be relieved you didn’t die.”
Shiri hoped that was all he felt. She could handle mad. She hoped.
Seven.
She gasped. Daphne hadn’t tried to contact her telepathically since the first attempt. Shiri turned to Addison to explain what was happening.
Are you coming for us, Seven?
“Are the girls not with their father?”
Addison turned the car down the next street. Shiri had no idea where they were and was glad she didn’t need to drive the car. She had enough going on.
“Apparently not. I’ve never been so frustrated in my entire life not to have a particular power before.”
We’ve gone into hiding. Can you hear me? Sometimes I think I’m crazy that I think this actually works. Maybe it just works with Ella. I don’t know. We’ve gone to the boat, Seven. Please come find us there. Please.
Daphne sounded so forlorn, even telepathically, that Shiri could hardly stand it.
“Addison, I need you to take me to Ben’s boat.”
Her friend shook her head. “I don’t know where that is.”
“I bet Roman does. He knows everything.” It was always a little bit scary just how much her friend was capable of doing. Shiri pulled out her phone and texted Roman for the address of the boat dock.
She could remember everything about the boat—she could even remember what the place where Ben kept the boat looked like—but she had no idea how to get there. A sense of direction had never been her strongest ability. She could get lost walking around the island, and she had been there every day for the last five years.
Her phone beeped. She looked down. “That’s not what I asked.”
“What?” Addison stared out at the road in front of her.
“According to Roman, Ben moved the boat a few years ago to some place called the Bonnabel Boat Launch.”
“Still doesn’t help me.” Addison swore. “Roman can never be easy. Obviously, we need an address. I swear, he might be Spencer’s brother, but they’re like night and day in terms of handling them. Spencer always shares too much.”
Shiri had always found Roman to be really easy going and nice. But everyone else either ran from him or complained about him the few times he showed up on the island. Either way, they weren’t in a position to criticize him right now.
Illicit Connections (Illicit Minds Book 2) Page 14
