I motioned to the distance between us, feeling a stab of guilt at the hurt on his face. He clenched his hands, took in a deep breath, and just when I thought he might storm away, bridged the gap between us instead and just smiled. It was that same cocky grin that I’d first encountered on his face that morning in the kitchen when I dropped the bag of flour. It completely unhinged me, knocked me off balance—and made me want to slap him at the same time. His hands were reaching for my face, and I just stood there, caught in his pearly white trajectory as his fingers trailed along my jaw and down my neck. He was setting me on fire. Rendering me helpless with his touch. The jerk knew exactly what he was doing.
“You’re lying,” he said, as if the words ‘I want you’ were written on my forehead with a Sharpie. “That might have been the case early on, but not anymore. But you go ahead and tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“What would make me feel better is if you stopped hitting on me. I’m taken.”
He grinned madly, the desire increasing in his eyes. “Not yet you're not.”
Ugh. I wanted to scream. He was exasperating. Cocky. So self-assured I felt like kicking him right in the ba—”
“So, scrambled or fried?” he asked.
I gave my head a shake. “Huh?”
“Breakfast. How would you like your eggs?”
I put my hands on my hips and warned them to stay there. “I want an omelet. Tomato and mushroom.” I sounded bitchy. Good.
“Your wish is my command, Princess.”
“With cheese,” I added.
A dog was barking from somewhere and a kid was laughing. The mountains, snow-capped and shimmering, were revealing all their glory in the clear, morning light. The air was cold and clean, and shops opening their doors sent aromas of coffee and fresh baked bread into the breeze.
“I’ll make you breakfast today, and every morning for the rest of your life,” Thomas said.
I gazed up at him, pretending to be exhausted with the topic, while I imagined him doing just that. Laughing with me. Going grey… kids… dogs… white picket fence… the same thing I wanted with Luke. The same thing I would have with Luke.
“Thomas. I am not going to choose you.”
His breath caught, but only for a second. Steely determination and confidence shone in his eyes. “Yeah. You are,” he said with a wink.
* * *
I had a mouthful of the most incredible omelet I’d ever eaten, either because I was starving or because watching Thomas cook made me eager for whatever his hands were working on.
“We can’t stay here any longer,” he said, stirring sugar into his coffee.
I still had Driver Dan’s phone number in my pocket. “I might have a place to stay. That man whose daughter we met is easily bribed.” I said, rubbing the fake diamond ring on my finger and wondering why I hadn’t taken it off.
“And what are we going to do about Luke?” Lisa asked, barely touching her food. “It’s obvious we can’t just waltz in the front door and take him. Did you two figure out anything on your ‘walk’ last night?”
Thomas shook his head. I did the same. Somewhat embarrassed that we’d gone through all that and had come up with nothing.
“Great.” Lisa couldn’t hide her annoyance. “Then what about… Seth? We can’t leave him here.”
The food caught in my throat for a second. “We have to take his body to Regan. Thomas, can we fit the freezer in the back of the truck?”
Thomas nodded.
Lisa pushed her plate away and headed upstairs, phone in hand. “I’ll call Regan and let him know he’ll be getting a delivery. Maybe he’ll have some idea of what we can do about getting Luke back, since we’re coming up with nothing.”
She slammed a bedroom door behind her, but I was okay that she was taking her frustrations out on us. What she had gone through was unimaginable. I was surprised she wasn’t a puddle of muck.
Thomas stirred his coffee idly, something very heavy on his mind.
“And the house?” he asked. “What are we going to do about this place? Our prints are everywhere.”
Easy answer. “We have to torch it.”
Thomas gave me a nod of approval. “You’re one tough cookie, aren’t ya?”
I felt sick at the thought of destroying someone’s property. “Burning this place down doesn’t make me tough. It makes me an arsonist.”
Lisa’s voice, slightly muted but higher in pitch, could be heard from upstairs, and I could tell she was talking to Louisa. She was telling the child that she would come home right away and that she loved her. I was so grateful Luke’s little sister had Lisa and was genuinely loved.
Thomas lifted his eyes to mine and inhaled. “You know, this could be a fresh start for you, Kaya. Think of it; all the stuff that’s happened could be gone and forgotten forever. Put behind you. You burn this house down and walk away, leave Banff, leave everything, and just start over. You could come away with me and just be happy. You could choose me, and all your problems would disappear.”
I stayed my temper. “Luke is not a problem.”
“Choose me, Kaya.”
As if he hadn’t even spoken, I lit the horrid smelling jasmine candle on the table. The newspapers scattered all over the house would ignite easily. The flames would catch curtains. Walls. I knew what I had to do. And it wasn’t what Thomas so desperately wanted.
I steadied myself.
“This is what’s going to happen, Thomas; Lisa will look after Seth’s body and go back to Louisa and Regan. I will figure out Luke and Oliver. And you… Thomas… you will look after yourself. This will be your new beginning, not mine. You can be free of me and all this craziness. Because I am officially telling you that you don’t have a chance. Whatever we had beyond friendship is going to burn to the ground along with this house.”
The hope in his eyes disappeared. He opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind. “Yep. You really are tough. Tougher than I ever imagined.”
That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. “How’s that?”
“I mean, hey, look at me. I’ve done everything right. Even took a bullet for you, and you’re still choosing the other guy. You’re turning down this…” He made a sweeping gesture down his body. “No woman has ever been able to resist me.”
“Well, I must admit, it’s, uh, not easy.”
He gave me a smile that could have melted an iceberg. “Well, you’re passing up some quality goods here, so this Luke guy must be something pretty special.”
I gulped so hard it hurt. Luke was everything. But Thomas was everything, too.
From a safe distance we watched the fire. It started slowly, smoke snaking out from the little house, grey fingers crawling into the blue sky. When it became thick, wide plumes of black, that’s when the roof burst into flames. Fire trucks arrived. Neighbors pointed and watched from across the street. Very quickly the little house was swallowed up and turned to black bones.
And I was officially a criminal.
With the freezer strapped down in the back of the truck, we parked behind a motel to say our goodbyes.
“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” Lisa said, hands gripping the steering wheel, still conflicted over saving Luke or going back to Louisa. “But she was crying for me, Kaya. Sobbing. Regan couldn’t do anything to get her to stop. She needs me. But Luke needs me, too. Oh God…”
I put my hand on hers. “I know. But if Luke were here, he would tell you to go to her. Above and beyond everything, he would want his little sister safe and happy with you. Besides, I’ve got this. I promise you, Lisa, no matter what, I will get Luke, and we will all be together again. In the meantime, just look after that little girl. And look after, uh, Seth. Don’t leave any loose ends. We don’t need his cop or biker friends sniffing around.”
“Regan and I are on it. No one will ever know what happened here besides us.”
“Good.” I reached for the door.
Her hand caught my jac
ket. “If you need me—”
“I know where to find you.”
We held each other’s gaze for a moment. I didn’t want to cry and neither did Lisa, so with a mutual nod, we parted ways. The truck ambled off. Then it was just me and Thomas, alone in the parking lot, watching Lisa head for the highway. I adjusted the scarf around my head, making sure it covered as much of my face as possible, hoping to hide my gut-wrenching anxiety of now saying goodbye to Thomas.
“So, I guess this is the part where we go our separate ways,” Thomas said, hands in his pockets, collar flipped up against the cold.
“Yes,” I squeaked out, feeling sick. I twisted the ring off my finger and dropped it into his palm. “You are free, Thomas. You deserve to be happy. I want the best life for you.” The words were like knives in my throat. I meant them, but they hurt to say.
He poked a finger at my chest, then flattened his palm against it. “You really don’t think I, uh, stand a chance of winning your heart, do you?”
Those big brown eyes…I had to inch away. Dig deep. “No.”
His hand fell away and the sadness that overtook him almost brought me to my knees. He swayed, then leaned in and kissed my forehead. Mouth lingering. Our hearts met and crashed together madly for one last time.
“Then this is goodbye.”
All I could do was nod.
He waited. I felt the heat of his gaze but stood firm. He so desperately wanted me to stop him from leaving, but I couldn’t. I had to let him go.
The weight of the world stomped on my heart.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Then he turned and walked away.
Thomas… walked away.
I loved him. My heart was crumbling into pieces. I was doing the right thing. Again. I knew I was. But it hurt. Hurt. So. Bad.
Come back, I yelled at him in my head, denying the temptation to run and throw myself into his arms. Beg him to never leave me… Because now I was alone. More alone than I’d ever been in my entire life.
The tears threatened to drown me. My feet got moving, wandering across the parking lot, to where? I had no idea. And suddenly I couldn’t see through the heartache and longing for the man I had just turned away. The sobs came on uncontrollably, bringing my numb limbs to a dead stop. I tried deep breaths, but the air was too thin.
I had come to the lowest of my low.
This was agony. Sadness. Loneliness serving a most bitter bite. I was denying what was true in my heart, thinking I could just turn it off. But there was no switch for that. No easy out. I wanted Thomas in my life. As a friend. As an absolute best friend. And that feeling of loss was as crushing as if he had died.
I contemplated going and hanging out with Ed under the bridge.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder. Thomas’s voice, full and deep and breathless, stroked my ears.
“I can’t leave you. Not yet…” he said.
He was crying, too. His trembling hands reached for mine. Through tears, he was putting the fake ring back on my finger. “Even if I can’t have you the way that I want, I need your friendship. I need you in my life. So, if it’s cool with you, I am going to stick around for a while. I’m not ready to say goodbye.”
I nodded eagerly, wanting desperately to make us work somehow.
“And besides, I made a promise to you, remember?” his voice broke. “This time I am going to keep it.”
I collapsed against his lean body, feeling his heart thumping in his chest. Nothing could have loosened the grip I had on him. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, either.
“Oh, Kaya,” he said, holding me as tightly as I was holding him. “You don’t know what you’ve done to me.”
“I wasn’t thinking of someone else,” I said, unable to stop this bit of truth from bursting out.
I felt his body tense. “What?”
“At the coffee shop. In the store doorway. This morning on the couch, and then on the street corner. I wasn’t imagining you were someone else. I just wanted you to know that.”
He pulled in a lungful of air, touched his nose to mine, and held my gaze. “I know. That’s why I am standing here.”
This was the eighth time I’d cheated death. Was there a number nine in my dog-eared deck of cards? Probably not. Even though my strength was back and the ointment the Labcoats had applied to my burns sped up the healing immensely, I was half the man I used to be. I felt vulnerable, even with the makeshift weapon in my hand.
“Remember what I told you?” I asked Davis.
He nodded, having been silent since Oliver left. Not even when I handed him a syringe with a foot-long needle and instructed him where to jab it to kill someone did he speak. He just sat on the edge of his cot staring at the iron bars, chewing his fingernails. I hoped that when the time came, he would spring to life.
The cell walls were damp and oozing with the ghostly voices of past occupants, but the others were silent. Sindra was silent, too. We waited for the purple-haired girl, while hoping for anyone other than the purple-haired girl.
But hours drifted off into the abyss, and no one came. The usual check-in time passed, and passed again, and then so did the next. It seemed like once the guards had discovered Luke was missing, we had been completely forgotten.
I kept dozing off, and the scalpel behind my back kept falling out of my hand. The ghosts were sleeping now too, and Davis was snoring—until the sound of footsteps in the stairwell jolted us all upright.
“Remember,” I said to Davis, words coming out in a tangled rush. “Don’t kill the guards unless you have to. The Labcoats are fair game.”
Davis tensed like a cat about to pounce. The door knob turned. I readied the blade behind my back.
Into the hallway came a maid, and I recognized her at once; Ella. Young and meek, shoulders rounded, and a very childlike face that matched her petite body. Dammit. What was she doing down here? Where were the Labcoats? A guard followed her in, beefy and intimidating with an unreadable expression. He stopped a few feet behind her, eyes darting once to the others on his right, and then to me and Davis on his left. He was young. Maybe only twenty. The adrenalin surging through my blood stopped and curdled into a sick sludge. There was no way I could hurt the maid or this young guard. Davis eyed me, sharing the same dilemma.
Ella set down the dinner tray she was carrying and slipped it under the bars, nudging it gently toward us with her foot. When her eyes met mine, she shuddered. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like, but now I knew that it wasn’t good.
“I would bring your dinner in for you, but I was not given a key. I hope you enjoy your meal,” she said nervously. “It’s compliments of the chef.”
She turned to leave. Was there no food for the others?
“Wait…” I was about to say her name, but thought better of it. “What’s going on with—”
She spun around to face me, eyes darting up and to the left only for a second. I understood; a camera had been placed in the hall. There was nothing more she could say.
“What’s going on with the, uh, bread?” I said, feigning anger. “I said no butter on it!”
“Oh. Sorry,” she said sweetly. “I’ll tell the chef to be more careful next time.”
The guard faced me, and I was shocked when his gaze held. “They won’t get away with it again,” he said, voice rippling with rage.
My heart skipped a beat; he was referring to Henry. To the torturing. To the inhumane treatment of the people stuck down here in the cells. Disgust was all over this guard’s face until he reined it in, and his subtle nod at my understanding almost made my knees buckle in relief. Not all Lowen security guards were brainwashed or easily bought. Some still had morals. He was one of the good ones.
Ella and the guard headed for the stairs, past the quietly suffering group of souls locked up in the cell across from us. When they were gone, I practically lunged for the supper tray. Compliments of the chef was not lost on me. I’d been putting in strange food orders, hoping to signal Wi
lliam somehow that I wasn’t killed in the security room fire. Every meal was exactly what I’d asked for, so I was fairly sure it was William cooking because nobody made risotto the way he did. If tonight’s dinner was three poached eggs with tomato relish and creamed spinach—what I’d requested—then my message wasn’t getting through because I hated spinach. In fact, if the purple-haired girl really wanted to torture me, she could have done away with the whip and pliers and force fed me some of that dirt-tasting, Popeye-touting garbage.
I lifted the plastic dome off the plate. There before me, were three poached eggs with tomato relish, and mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy. No. Flippin. Spinach.
William knew I was here.
And to confirm it, there was a note, wrapped neatly in plastic and placed under one of the eggs. I almost fainted at the sight of his beautiful hand writing.
I know where you are. Working on a plan. If you get out before I can rescue you, get to the south kitchen. Refrigeration room seven is disabled and in it is everything you need. You’ll be safe there, I promise.
Be careful, my love—W
A key for the refrigeration room was at the bottom of the mashed potatoes.
The best meal I’d ever eaten was nourishing, tasty, and full of hope.
For hours we rested. Davis remained on the edge of his bed with the massive needle in his hands. The scalpel I’d planned to use had never left mine. When the stairwell creaked again, we were ready.
Two Labcoats were followed by the young guard that had accompanied Ella. They had come to check my burns and administer injections for healing. I recognized the first Labcoat by his smell; cheap, spicy cologne mixed with unmanageable body odor and chronic garlic breath. I remembered him laughing when The Girl pulled off my fingernails—he thought it was rather funny—and I had gagged on his odor in between screams. The second Labcoat was more robot than man. His eyes were soulless, blank discs, and he never uttered a word or flinched no matter what horrors unfolded around him.
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