Some days, I thought Jack’s sheer contrariness would drive me insane. I opened my door and, using it as a shield, covered the area around the Cenotaph with an Eagle. “Jack. Leave it. Get in the car.”
“Yes, Jack,” Two said teasingly from his hiding spot. “Best you do as the little woman says and get in the car.”
I was used to Two’s provocations. Jack was not.
Growling, Jack said, “I’m taking you in, Toomey. You’re going to tell me where Adam is.”
“No.” Two revealed himself and my heart leaped into my throat. “You’re going to leave, or I break her neck.”
He had an arm around Nine’s neck, hand holding one side of her face. The other gripped her shoulder. Nine didn’t move, completely aware of how easy it would be for him to end her life.
“Nine,” I said aloud, but sent silently, “On three,” and aimed for my brother’s head.
“Don’t close with him,” our sister sent, even as she said, “My fault, One-three. Get out of—”
The snap of Nine’s neck was like a bomb detonating. Everything went white and hot and a deafening roar ripped through me. I squeezed the trigger and the roar became the gunshots, became me screaming just to vent the fire searing my blood and brain, burning away the locks I had put on my emotions. All of the frustrations and fears of the past days flooded my body.
I had never used a weapon with intent to kill one my siblings. Not even when my own life had depended on it.
I couldn’t stop firing at my brother as he ducked behind the cover of the Cenotaph.
“Ethan, let’s go.”
Jack.
Jack was here.
Nine was gone, but Jack was here.
The desire to chase Two, to make him hurt and cry, was strong, but I took my finger off the trigger and got back into the car. My hands were trembling with the need to hold a gun, a weapon of any sort, so I curled them around the steering wheel, wanting the calm I usually found there. It didn’t work.
Jack got in, at last and too late, and I slammed the gearstick into reverse and hit the accelerator.
Everything blurred and not because of the speed. I acted on muscle memory and instinct until we hit George Street and I had to focus on the cars around us.
The plan had failed and Nine had paid for it with her life. She had been my sister, my only true companion in this life. Now it was just me.
“Where are we going?”
I wasn’t alone, though. Jack was here and he would do everything he could to bring Two in. And yet, it wouldn’t be enough.
“The last safe place I know.”
At least this time when I surrendered to the Office, they didn’t drug me. They took all my weapons, but Jack’s director, Donna McIntosh, protected Victoria from being pulled apart at least. Instead of a subterranean cell, they took us to a meeting room several flights aboveground.
And I told a pair of Office directors, Jack, and his friend Lewis everything about Two’s presence in Sydney. The words felt sharp and deadly as they came out, leaving me raw inside. Open and hollow. Jack’s presence helped greatly. These were people he trusted, and I trusted him. I left out Dejana and what I’d done for her. That was a conversation best left for a time when she was well out of the country and had fulfilled her promise of severing the Cabal’s hold on me for good.
Finally, enough figurative blood was spilled to satisfy the directors, for now, and they left to debate their next step. Lewis lingered for a moment, but grudgingly departed at an unsubtle hint from Jack. Which left us alone for what felt like the first time in a very long time, not just two days. I wanted to touch him, hold him, assure myself he was whole and safe. I distracted myself by pacing around the large table.
“Is this room secure?”
“Yeah,” Jack said from his seat, “but monitored. They’ll have a record of everything we do in here.” His tone was even but I felt his reciprocal need in the words all the same.
Everything was exposed now. Not that the Office hadn’t been aware of our relationship before, but the polite veneer of pretending they didn’t was gone. And everything hurt so much I simply needed to be in his arms.
“I don’t care.”
Jack stood and caught me as I hurled myself at him. His strong arms wound around me and soaked me in warmth and strength and what felt like love. I finally let myself think about what I’d overheard Quinn say that night.
“Have you kissed him on the mouth, Nishant? It’s not hard to work out why you don’t kiss like that. You have to love a person before you kiss them.”
The realisation that he was right still hurt. I let the pain roll through me, alongside that of Nine’s death, of Two’s actions, of everything the Cabal had done to me over the years. Compared to those hurts, to the comforting weight and encompassing warmth of his arms around me now, holding on tight and desperate, that pain was nothing. Maybe Jack didn’t quite love me the way I loved him, but what he did feel, what he could give me, wasn’t nothing either.
We talked briefly about Quinn and my reactions to him, and how helpless I felt trying to deal with the emotions his presence sparked. Jack murmured warm assurances, then asked if I would see a psychiatrist. It was only his offer to accompany me that let me agree, even if it didn’t quench the nausea the prospect sparked.
Perhaps in an attempt to delay more discussion about psychiatrists, I was far more honest than I had ever been before. I didn’t feel entirely secure, even within one of the Office’s buildings, but it finally needed to be said plainly.
“Two was both my worst tormentor and my protector.” I had never said these things aloud before and the words were sharp against my already raw throat and heart. And yet, as they kept spilling out, I felt lighter somehow. “He could be charming and sweet, which made his attacks so much worse. I was lost and scared. All I knew was sometimes, he would pick me up and hold me, tell me he wouldn’t let anyone else touch me, and I believed him. Every time. Then he would cut me, or try to burn me, or leave me at the mercy of the others.”
Jack’s reactions as I continued told me that I was right. He did love me in his own way. Especially when he held my scarred foot so gently while his face and words were drenched in anger toward those who let it happen.
“And Two?” Barely contained rage made his voice low and rough. “Was he punished?”
Jack still clung to his ingrained sense of right and wrong. “What for? I was the weak one.”
“Jesus fucking shit. Ethan—” He cut himself off before he exploded.
I had dreaded Jack finding out about my past, hated the possibility that it might change the way he felt about me. The fact that it was showing me how deeply he did care for me, love me, was too much for me right then as well. Too much for either of us while Two was still out there, hopefully keeping Quinn alive as bait for another trap.
“I survived, Jack, and I’m here now. Not quite right, but getting better.” I touched his arm to make him look at me. “And I may know where Two has Adam.”
We left the building without anyone interfering. Director McIntosh had been true to her word and no one had touched Victoria, or the weapons she carried.
I told Jack what Two had said to me about the special place he went to ‘think and cry.’ He thought about it for a moment, then gave me directions to Middle Head. As we kitted out with weapons, I explained about Two’s eyes. They were his only weakness even though it would be hard to exploit in the middle of the night.
Jack took us along a walking trail away from the main path. We worked our slow, methodical way through the old gun placements, clearing each one before moving on. I kept lookout while Jack searched the ruins. While my eyes scanned the surrounding trees, my mind scanned over everything that had happened in the meeting room, everything that had happened over the past days and weeks and months since I’d met Jack.
I glanced down into the gun emplacement he was scouting and was struck anew by how he made me feel. Not just the types of emotions he inspir
ed—because he sparked them all in me, lust, joy, fear, anger, contentment, love—but the simple fact that he made me feel anything at all.
I would fight for that until all the blood was gone from my body. I would fight for him. For us.
The gun emplacements proved to be empty so we moved onto the main ruins at the end of the peninsula. Jack was disappointed that we hadn’t found Quinn or Two yet and as we stood there, silently trying to work out what our next move was, I saw him make a decision.
Jack came to my side and whispered, “I think I know where they are.”
This park meant something to Jack. Something deep and personal, and yet, there was more hurt behind his dark eyes as he spoke now. I connected with the pain in his voice, with the sudden tension in his body, as if he could see the knife poised before him and knew he had to throw himself on it. My heart ached for him.
“All right. Tell me.”
“They’re called tiger cages. They trained soldiers to resist torture in them.”
Each word was an acceptance of the knife and the damage it would cause, and a resistance as well.
“Are they otherwise significant to you?” I prompted.
“Yeah.” Jack swallowed hard. “I brought Dad here once, after he got sick. I hoped it would help him remember good times. He found the tiger cages and told me that, when I was lost in India, he imagined I was in a cage, being tortured. And he hoped that I was dead instead.”
The roughness of his voice echoed my own from the meeting room. I doubted Jack had ever said these things aloud before. He was cutting himself open before me, letting me see his most inner scars. The trust he was giving me was immense.
I wanted to hold him, tell him I loved him, but this wasn’t the time or place. I could protect him from more pain, however. “I’m sorry. But I think you’re right. Two will have worked out that area is painful for you. Tell me where it is, and I’ll go alone.”
Jack shook his head and firmed up his voice. “We go together.”
Another line of Quinn’s from that night played across my mind as Jack spoke.
“You have to trust them with everything you are before you’ll give them that final bit of your soul.”
It all fell into place at long last. Every last puzzle piece that was this beautiful, amazing, infuriating, stubborn man before me slotted into perfect alignment.
Jack was scared. Everyone he’d loved had left him, whether they were taken by death, ideological differences, a cruel disease, or hadn’t resisted when Jack pushed out of fear. He’d isolated himself. Stopped living. And yet he’d let me—his enemy—in. He’d let me pick his locks one by one and steal into his work, his house, his bed—his trust.
Jack shifted nervously. “What?”
In that moment I didn’t care that Two might be stalking up behind me. Or that we weren’t safe behind a dozen locks and alarms. None of it mattered when Jack was looking at me with that gorgeously quizzical and worried frown.
“I want you to know, Jack, that I don’t care about whatever happened between you and Adam. I lied to you. I should never have done that. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here now and Adam wouldn’t be in danger. I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Me too. About Adam—”
“I don’t care,” I reiterated. “I heard you and him talking. I was there for longer than you thought I was.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Shit.”
I moved our weapons to the side and got closer to him. This was something I had to do now, while I had the courage and before we faced the most able assassin the Cabal had ever fielded. It felt right but that didn’t mean Jack was feeling the same way.
“I understand, Jack, I do. Considering everything I’ve done to you, it’s reasonable. But I want you to know, before we find Two and possibly not survive, that I . . .” This was it. Would Jack push or pull? “That I . . . Oh, blast it.”
I kissed him. On the mouth.
It was . . . one-sided. I pressed my lips to his, feeling his shocked gasp, then nothing as he froze. But he didn’t pull away. Didn’t turn his head or push me back. Just stood there and let me kiss him. It wasn’t a rejection. It was trust. He trusted me to be the one to do this for him. For us.
Then he kissed me back and I was tumbling wildly within the tight hold of his arms. I couldn’t feel my feet or the top of my head. The only parts of me that were real and solid were those he was touching. My waist, back, chest, arms, lips. The rest of me was incidental, shrapnel from the explosion of Jack kissing me. Every moment of pain and laughter and comfort was encapsulated in that one long and far too short moment. It hurt and it healed and when it ended, it felt like a new beginning.
“Just so you know,” I whispered. And then because only the promise of Two’s inevitable cruelty was never far away, I pulled back and hefted my Assassin X rifle. “Shall we get on with this?”
Jack’s somewhat dazed confusion made me want to kiss him all over again. “Sure.” He got himself together quickly, though, and followed me towards the tiger cages.
The plan we made was simple. I would draw Two out, Jack would try to flank him in secret, and we would catch him between us.
“He doesn’t seem the sort of fall easily into a trap,” Jack whispered just before we parted ways.
“He isn’t. But I believe I can provoke him.”
Jack’s teeth flashed in a quick grin. “If anyone can, you can.” Then he melted into the darkness and I already missed his solidity.
Trusting Jack to keep pace as I went openly and he in secret, I approached the tiger cages. Two was surely expecting one, or both, of us, so I moved cautiously but not silently. The area was open and Two would doubtless see me coming. He’d let me get to the position he wanted me in, then spring his final trap.
Adam, however, spoiled Two’s surprise when he coughed, ragged and painful, the sound rising from the sunken entrance to the cages.
“Oh shoot,” Two said from somewhere in the trees. “There goes the surprise.”
“You overestimate yourself, brother. We knew exactly where you were.”
“Hey? Help!” Adam rasped. He was below my current position, most likely in the subterranean cages.
“Quiet, lover.” Two sounded amused, but I heard the hitch on the last word.
That was how I was going to provoke him into being careless. It was one thing Two and I had in common—we’d never been interested in sex. It was a tool to be used when required, that’s all. I had changed my mind since meeting Jack, but for Two, it was like crawling through mud to reach a target—dirty, wet, disgusting, and purely a means to an end.
“Shut up, Quinn.” I feigned disinterest in him but hoped he got the message to keep quiet. “I’m not here for you. I’m after him.”
“But,” Quinn tried and both Two and I drowned him out with “Shut up.” Our synchronicity made Two laugh, which helped me pinpoint him on the far side of the ruins beyond the tiger cages.
“I’ve missed you, One-three,” he said pleasantly. “We used to have some fun times together.”
I moved slowly toward Two’s position. “Yes. It was fun when you broke my ribs when I was nine.”
“It taught you to watch your six, didn’t it?” Two moved within the trees. “I made you the man you are, baby brother.”
It was the “baby brother” that rankled me. Brothers didn’t do what he did to me.
“You made me a monster, Two.” I had his position fixed, and Jack’s. Deliberately, I angled towards Jack, to make Two think I was off mark. It was time to draw him out. “Jack made me a man.”
Adam gasped in surprise, but it was the vicious snarl from Two that I concentrated on. Yes, he was to my left, but moving now, towards Jack. I tracked him, shifted ahead of his trajectory and fired. Close to Jack to hopefully misdirect Two away from him.
“You used to be a better shot,” Two taunted, and he wasn’t where I thought he was, still back on my left flank. “Maybe you should be a monster again, instead of letting that pri
ck corrupt you.”
“But the way he corrupts me. So much better than anything you ever did to me.”
“Do you know he’s a cheater?” There was a tremor to the words, faint but clear to anyone who had lived with him for the first half of their life. “He fucks other men while you’re at home waiting for him.”
It was working. Another shove and he would make a mistake. I had to say something extra provocative. “I don’t care about that, because it feels so good when he’s inside me.” Normally, I would have cringed at saying something so raw and blatant, but this was just part of the game. “When he comes and I feel his hot spunk flood my guts.” I could practically sense Two vibrating with a need to deny and challenge. “I let him take me from behind so I can’t see him. So I’m vulnerable. I don’t care about my six when he’s pumping into me. All I know is how deep he—”
Two screamed in rage and flew into motion. But the sounds came from different directions and I realised my mistake. He was using speakers to misdirect us. I focused on the violent rustling of foliage and not the growls. Two was right on top of Jack! Then he hit and they crashed to the ground.
The sound of a sharp snap froze me in place.
“Jack?”
I only realised I’d spoke aloud when Quinn demanded, “What? What’s happening?” It broke me out of visions of Nine going limp in Two’s arms and I rushed forwards, rifle at the ready.
Jack emerged from the trees and relief sparked. Then I saw the arm around his neck and the tall figure pressed to his back. Two kept Jack between him and my weapon. Below, Adam moaned a despairing curse.
Too close. It was too close to what had happened with Nine. I was done playing. I couldn’t lose Jack as well as my sister in one foul night.
“Let him go, Two. I’ll go with you if you do.” It was what he wanted, ultimately, to take me back home, where he believed I would be his to control again.
“You’ve said that before.” Two’s laugh was rough and forced. “Why should I believe you this time?”
We traded back and forth, me trying to defuse instead of ignite this time and Two trying to decide which way to move.
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