Chapter 22

Twenty-Two

The coffee tasted divine. Dark and bitter, yet smooth and warm. It was, quite possibly, the kindest thing I’d tasted in far too long. I still hadn’t quite figured out how long I’d been missing. Their check-in dates didn’t all line up with the last date I remembered.

Trauma was not always a friend to memory. It could burn some into the psyche so deep that a touch or a smell could set it off. At the same time, it could blur them until the edges melted away and everything ran together.

I really couldn’t decide which of the pair was more disturbing. The fact I could recall some of the tortures in high definition with almost crystal clarity, had me shying away from focusing on them too much.

At the same time…

“Fallon,” Locke said and I jerked, snapping my attention to the room. Sound rushed back in like I’d been tuning out.

“What did you call me?”

Dipping his chin, Locke gave me a small smile without an ounce of his normally cockier attitude. “Fallon. Your name.”

“It’s been a long time since anyone called me that.” The sound of my name on his lips was unsettling as hell. “A very long time.”

“If you prefer I continue to use Patch, I will.” A flicker of disagreement flashed in the way he compressed his lips. “But that said, I like your name.”

Reconciling that name with our current circumstances was taking me a minute. Apparently, everything was going to take me a minute right now. Remy returned with a plate and a fresh carafe of coffee.

Remy had said very little, letting Locke and McQuade do most of the talking. Yet, the weight of his assessment seemed to press in on me. He said a great deal by saying very little.

The plate held a couple of sandwiches. They were thick with cheese and— “Ham?” The question seemed almost inane, yet I was curious.

“Something simple. You mentioned it once.” The precise intonation in his accent was sexy as hell. “I believe you said you could slap ham and cheese on wheat and eat it dry if you had too.”

It wasn’t remotely funny and yet, another laugh tried to break loose from the debris inside. “I’m going to guess it’s not dry?”

For a moment, it almost seemed like he wouldn’t answer then he gave a fairly graceful shrug. “Take a bite. Find out.”

I had set my mug down to take the plate and he refilled it, then his own before he set the carafe down for the others. Adding nothing more to his advice, he reclaimed the chair closer to me.

They were all right there, forming this loose but attentive circle around me. Their presence seemed to elicit confusion even as it aroused a tempest of feelings in me I wasn’t prepared to address.

Frankly, I didn’t even think I was qualified to address them. Their presence compromised me on so many levels but without them, I would still be in that hellhole. Had I gotten out of the cell? Yes. Had I made it to the ground level? Also yes.

But I’d been fading fast and that adrenaline would only take me so far. I had no idea what had been beyond those doors. Exhaustion clawed at me despite the coffee and the hours of sleep I’d already had.

“Hey.” McQuade’s gentle verbal prod shivered under my defenses and I blinked at him much as I had Locke when the latter used my name. “Eat. You look ready to pass out again. You need fuel.”

I did need fuel.

“We need answers,” he continued as I lifted the sandwich to take a bite. As much as the reminder could have stymied my appetite, I didn’t let it impede me taking a bite of the food. I needed the distraction as much for my stomach as for keeping my mouth full so I couldn’t answer.

The first bite was almost too much. The flavors overwhelmed my abused palate. A little mustard, ham, and cheese. The ham was salty. The cheese was cheddar and very sharp. The mustard had a bit of a kick to it. The wheat bread was probably the blandest thing and even it seemed to tease my tongue.

What food I’d been allowed had been tasteless, textureless, and for the most part—disgusting. I’d almost forgotten how good a sandwich could be. I followed the first bite with another. Then another.

I meant to keep the bites small and proportional, but my stomach threatened to cramp. Even chewing every bite thoroughly, I still couldn’t eat it fast enough. Finished with the first sandwich, I reclaimed my coffee cup and forced myself to take a sip.

The IV bags they’d kept me on had obviously rehydrated me. It hadn’t done a damn thing to dampen my appetite. The silence registered a heartbeat later and I found all three watching me with varying degrees of amusement.

“The sandwich was quite good,” I told Remy. “I really liked the mustard.”

“Duly noted,” he murmured, his deadpan expression not shifting in the slightest. “Though if you’d eaten it with that gusto and hadn’t cared for it—I would absolutely go make you something else.”

Another laugh worked its way free and the heavy pane of glass that seemed to be cutting me off from the world cracked. McQuade chuckled and even Locke laughed.

“To be fair,” I admitted, the coolness in Remy’s hazel eyes almost dared me to respond. The brown was far more amber in color and there were gold flecks in his eyes that seemed to gleam. “Whether I liked it or not, this is almost a five-star meal compared to the last few—I don’t even know if it’s been days or weeks.”

“At least ten days,” Locke told me.

“I am leaning more toward two weeks,” Remy countered.

McQuade shrugged. “Too fucking long is the correct answer.”

Murmured assents came from the other two.

“Agreed,” I said, finally. “I—I don’t like how easily you found where I lived. It tells me I left gaps in my security.” I grimaced. “Not that their breaking in didn’t reveal that to me.”

I still couldn’t believe how easily they’d sprung that trap. It had to have come in via one of my deliveries. How else had they gotten inside without tripping my security? They’d been there when I opened the secure door.

“How many?” Locke asked and I frowned. The sharp cold dump of adrenaline as the fear struck and sent ice racing over my skin had swamped me even in retrospect.

“I don’t know precisely,” I said, trying to reconcile the men in the dark masks and clothes. They’d had on heavy Kevlar. Even if I’d been able to get ahold of my taser, I doubt it would have penetrated.

The moment I’d released the locks, they’d rushed in. I barely had time to hit the lock on my system. Even if they could get in, it would take them far too long to do it there. Nothing was absolute. Too long without my actual password though would kick in a default setting that would erase the drives.

Better safe than dead.

“Six,” I said. “I think. Six men—” I tested the way that tasted on my tongue. All of them had been much taller than me. “Definitely men or very tall women.” I wasn’t precisely short, but I wasn’t really that tall either. I was fairly average.

“Six men to bag you, Patch?” McQuade rubbed at his chin.

“Six men inside the secure perimeter of the house. They shouldn’t have been inside. I had security and redundancies, particularly when I was on the line. I couldn’t afford to be interrupted.” It could cost them their lives if I was.

Even if a delivery came while I was in the secure room, the buzzer wouldn’t ring through. Instead, they’d have to leave it on the porch or follow my delivery instructions to return later.

It wasn’t usually a problem, I scheduled everything to prevent those kinds of disturbances. Eyes closed, I tried to replay those moments following the rush inside. But the only thing I got was acid crawling up my throat.

“I think they must have knocked me out immediately.” My throat went dry and it took a couple of swallows of coffee to ease. “Six men. Moving in pairs. There were two just right there when I started to open the door. They shoved it inward, I stumbled back a couple of steps. I hit the lockout for my system. It was already shutting down for the night, but the lockout requires a series of tasks in order to get back into the drives.”

The only person who could do all of them was me. For the most part.

“Two grabbed me as I hit the desk. One wrenched my arm. Two more came in right behind them and there were at least two in the hall. Six men.” Yeah, that felt right. “I don’t know how they got me out or what they did in the house. The next time I came to, I was in a cell.”

“Did they identify themselves?” Locke asked. “I know they didn’t when they rushed your office, but once you were in the cell?”

“No,” I told him. It was a direct response. It also wasn’t a lie. They never told me specifically who they were, but I had a fairly concrete idea. If not their identities, I knew exactly what they wanted. “They asked questions. A lot of questions. Questions I refused to answer.”

“So they resorted to torture.” Remy’s soft voice belied the subject matter. “How is your stomach tolerating the food?”

The shifting topics didn’t seem odd at all. “Yes and so far, I’m fine.”

Another sip of coffee and I eyed the second sandwich. I kind of wanted to eat it, but I also didn’t want to risk upsetting what delicate balance I’d already achieved.

“Pure torture for torture or were they interrogating you?” McQuade honed in too close on a subject I didn’t want to discuss.

“Both,” I admitted. “There were days when my hosts seemed quite determined to just make me scream. Not that it did much good. If I denied them, they worked harder. If I indulged them, they prolonged it.”

It was a lose-lose proposition.

“Torture is not an effective way of gathering information or intelligence,” Remy stated. “You could have answered anything to make the pain stop. At least until they could verify it.”

“I presume they could verify it, whatever it was?” There was something eerie in the way Locke picked up on Remy’s lead and followed it so easily. These men weren’t supposed to know each other, yet here they were, working in concert.

While they weren’t quite to the stage of finishing each other’s sentences. They weren’t far off.

“Presumably,” I deflected. “I didn’t break… even when I did, I didn’t. I sang songs and told them stats from high school sports.”

“You know stats from high school sports?” McQuade looked more intrigued than surprised.

“No,” I said, giving in to the smile tugging at my lips. “But they didn’t know that and the numbers sounded good.”

“They went to a great deal of trouble to acquire you,” Locke pulled us back on topic. “How likely are they to try and reacquire you?”

Too damn likely.

That was the other problem. Even with my escape, all we’d done was delay their next attempt at acquisition.

“Is there a chance that they will go for another target to get what they need?” There was care in the way Remy phrased the question.

“There’s always a chance,” I said. What they wanted, however, was not available to anyone else. “Please don’t ask me what it is.”

“Okay,” McQuade said. “For now.” Acceptance and a warning. “Sometimes information is need to know…”

“We need to know,” Locke said. “I’d prefer sooner rather than later. We already know the trouble they went to in order to get you and to keep you.”

“You’ve already done more than I could have asked for,” I told them. Or expected for that matter. I’d been on my own for so long, I knew how to do that. “I should probably go.”

The moment the words left my lips, my stomach sank. Leaving them meant facing the potential hazards on my own—again. Only this time without the preparation I’d taken, the supplies, or even the cover.

Frankly, it was a stupid idea to separate from them. Especially while I was vulnerable. My mind produced a dozen different reasons to reject the plan before I could even formulate one.

“You can go anywhere you want,” McQuade said. “We’ll make sure you get there. However, until we’ve identified everyone involved in your capture, incarceration, and torture, we are going to stay with you—or at least I am.”

“So am I,” Remy said even as Locke added in the same breath, “Me too.”

“It’s not a new cage,” Remy continued as though he’d been the one to begin the conversation. “It may seem like one because we are making this decision for you. We will continue to make it until we’ve dealt with the opposition and are confident that it is safe for you to return to your home or a new location—I’d recommend new location with improved security methods, which we can all vet for you.”

They’d made the decision without even an aside between them. Maybe they had made it before I even woke up. While I didn’t like being “informed” of what was going to happen, I could also respect the need for it.

Hadn’t I nearly made an epically bad decision a few minutes ago? The cognitive dissonance was real. I trusted these men—I should trust them. I knew them well, or at least how they worked and how they kept their word.

That was enough to at least trust them for now. Remy was right, it wasn’t a cage of iron bars, abuse, and pain. It was security and care—with ham and cheese sandwiches made with spicy mustard.

I lifted the second sandwich and took a bite. It lasted a little longer than the first had. The food was a balm to my blasted and battered soul.

“How long before we need to leave?” This didn’t feel like a permanent location and interior decor matched none of the men I knew.

“Soon,” Remy said. “We need to make arrangements, but we have enough time for you to get more rest.”

It was an offer of escape, a life line as I floundered beneath the should I or shouldn’t I question.

“That’s a good plan,” Locke said. “Do you need assista?—”

McQuade had already stood and scooped me up without waiting for my comment. Thankfully, Remy saved the plate before I dropped it.

“I can walk,” I informed McQuade.

“Of course you can,” he retorted. “But your feet need to heal and you need to rest. We can debate the rest of it later.”

He strode into the bedroom and set me down as gently as he’d picked me up. When he took a step back the air seemed colder somehow.

“Get some sleep, Sugar Bear,” he told me, the barest hint of mirth in his grave eyes. “Tomorrow is coming whether we like it or not.”

Well, that was a cheerful way to view it. Pivoting on his heel, he left me alone and closed the door on his way out. Unsurprisingly, the softest murmur of voices penetrated the closed door.

They likely needed to discuss what to do with me and the problem I presented.

Sinking back against the pillows, I put a hand over my eyes.

They weren’t the only ones…