Chapter 28

Ilook over at her again as she sleeps soundly against Wilder’s shoulder.

“Okay, spill. What’s going on with you?”

I look up at Wilder and see him scowling at me.

“Something’s off with Lara.”

“She doesn’t feel well. Of course, something is off with her.”

“Yeah,” I answer, focusing back on the road. I’d probably be sick of all this driving if it wasn’t for Lara. Waking up with her sandwiched between us has made me look at things with rose-colored glasses. Yeah, this might not have been the way I pictured us being with her, but I’m not stupid enough to not seize the opportunity we’ve been given. The problem is something’s wrong with Lara, and I don’t think it has anything to do with her being tired or having a headache.

She was fine this morning, wasn’t she? Or maybe I just saw what I wanted to. Shit, did we hurt her? Scare her in some way? She said we didn”t, but maybe she was just telling us what we wanted to hear. We tried to be gentle with her, wanting her first time to be memorable for all the right reasons, but maybe we made it memorable for all the wrong ones. I knew we’d gotten carried away. I underestimated the effect she’d have on me. I’d seen the lingering bruises on her body when I’d watched her in the pool. I’d felt oddly proud seeing them, like some primal part of my brain was relieved I’d marked her so every other man out there would recognize that she was mine.

Now, though, I’m questioning everything.

As if sensing where my thoughts have gone, he lowers his voice a fraction.

“You think we were too rough with her?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking. All I know is when I went into the changing room to get her, she didn’t look ill. She looked upset and maybe a little afraid.”

He’s quiet for a minute.

“Of us? You think we did something last night that frightened her?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. On one hand, it makes sense, yet on the other, it doesn’t quite fit. She isn’t pulling away from us. If she was scared, I don’t think she’d fall asleep on your shoulder.”

We are both quiet, lost in thought over what could be wrong with our girl, when I spot a black SUV four cars behind ours. “We’ve got a tail.”

“You sure?”

I nod. “Third time I’ve seen it now. How do you want to play this?”

“Keep the same speed, but let’s outmaneuver these assholes.”

“Alright. Stay on the freeway or get off?”

“See if you can put a few more cars between us without it looking obvious, and then take the next exit. As much as I’d like to think they won’t do anything with so many witnesses, we know they have no regard for anyone but themselves. The last thing we want to do is get in a high-speed chase and cause an accident. At least if we get somewhere quieter, we can fire at them if necessary.”

I keep driving, one eye on the road, one eye on the rearview mirror, watching the SUV. When I pass the car in front of us and change lanes to overtake the next, I notice them speed up behind me.

“Not sure putting distance between us is going to be an option unless we give up the pretense and speed up.”

“Just keep going as you are for the minute,” Wilder answers as he nudges Lara. “Lara, I need you to wake up for me.”

She opens her eyes and takes a second to orientate herself before she turns to look up at Wilder. “Huh?”

Despite the situation, I chuckle. She really is adorable when she wakes up.

“We’re being followed. I want you to climb into the back with Rufio, buckle yourself in, and keep your head down.”

“Shit,” she curses, the last traces of sleep vanishing in an instant.

I move my eyes back to the SUV to make sure they aren’t any closer. Thankfully, they’re not. The last thing we need is them ramming us while Lara has her seat belt off.

She wastes no time, leaving her questions for later. She flings herself over the seat and straps herself in next to Rufio, who sits next to her—awake and alert, like he senses the danger.

“Alright, I’m getting off the freeway. Hold onto Rufio, Lara, and keep your head down in case these assholes get trigger-happy.”

She ducks down and grabs hold of the dog. I focus on the task at hand and, at the last minute, cut across two lanes to get off the road, ignoring the angry honking from behind us. I keep my eye on the SUV, but it looks like they weren’t quick enough to take the same exit.

“Looks like we’ve lost them for now, but they’ll just get off at the next exit. It won’t give us a chance to get far.”

“I’m chipped. My father had a tracking device implanted in my arm. They’ll be able to find me anywhere,” Lara tells us.

“We know, baby.” I hear her sharp intake of breath.

“You know? How? I just found out. Wait. Did you know all along?”

“No. Ev found it in your file after you left.”

“Oh.”

“We just need to get far enough away?—”

“What if, instead of being hunted, we hunt them for a change?” she says, cutting me off. “You only saw one car, right?

“Fuck that, Lara. Don’t ask us to put you in danger because that’ll never happen,” I snap at her.

“I’m always in danger, Crew. Don’t you get that? My father will keep coming for me.”

“You’re always saying he doesn’t love you, but if that’s the case, why come for you at all?”

Her eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.

“It’s not love. Don’t get me wrong, he has the capacity to feel it. He’s not a psychopath. Though sometimes I think it would be easier if he were. As an empath, he is one of the strongest of the gifted people ever to be born. But imagine feeling everything all the time. Not just your own feelings, but everyone else’s within a mile radius. Now imagine years of that—a relentless beating at your senses that takes and takes and gives nothing back—until, eventually, you’re left with only a few options. You can crack and lose what’s left of your mind, maybe find yourself in a padded cell muttering to yourself. Or you could make it stop. A bullet to the brain will stop it in an instant.”

“That’s it? A bullet or a straitjacket?” Wilder turns to look at Lara, but I’m still thinking over her words.

Her father is, without a doubt, an asshole. But even I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for the man.

“The only way to stop hurting is to stop feeling.”

“That doesn’t just apply to empaths, Lara.”

“No, but take every ounce of pain, grief, fear, and self-loathing you’ve ever felt and magnify it by a thousand,” she says, and we’re all quiet. I can’t imagine what that’s like.

After a few minutes, she sighs. “Being an empath isn’t as rare as you think. A lot of people have low-level empathic gifts. Most will be completely oblivious to it because their gift lies in soothing the psyche of others. Some, though, are able to manifest their gifts in other ways.”

“You’re talking about influencing people.”

“Yes. An empath can soothe the jagged edges of grief, ease the sting of heartbreak, and dull the embers of rage. My father can take that one step further and manipulate people to feel things he wants them to. So he can make a calm person angry or make a shy person get up on a table and dance.”

Wilder nods his head.

Lara swallows. “Or he can make a preacher place a gun against a child’s head and pull the trigger if he really wants to. It all depends on which emotions and suggestions he plays with.”

“Fucking hell.”

“And he’ll never be found guilty, even if he’s caught on video, because all anyone would see is someone else pulling the trigger.”

“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what tipped him over the edge,” Wilder says, making me wonder what I missed.

“That’s my guess, yeah.”

“What is? I ask confused.

“That once he realized that he could literally do anything and get away with it, he embraced it and did the worst thing an empath can do.”

She looks out the window and absently strokes Rufio’s fur. “He severed the thread.”

“He what?” I look at Wilder to see if he gets what she’s saying.

“He shut off his emotions?” Wilder guesses.

“Shutting something off implies it can be turned back on again,” she says, looking back at us with a look I can’t decipher before pursing her lips, like she’s trying to think of how to explain.

“Imagine a piece of thread. Now, imagine that that thread is pulled and yanked a million times. Sometimes it frays, sometimes it becomes knotted, but it’s always there, and it never gives. Some might look at it as a lifeline, a tether to the here and now. But my father saw it as a chain, keeping him captive.”

“So he broke it,” I murmur.

“Yeah, but not the thread to his gift. His gift is a part of him. Its woven into his DNA. He would never stop being gifted unless he had a brain injury or disease affected it somehow. No, he didn’t sever his gift, he blocked his ability to feel his own emotions. He dulls them down to nothing and feeds purely on the emotions of others.”

“But isn’t that what caused him to lose his mind to begin with?” Wilder frowns.

“He found a loophole. He manipulates people’s feelings so he only feels what he wants to.”

“So everyone around him is a puppet?” Jesus, that’s fucked up.

“In a way, yeah, but the thing is, emotions are an integral part of our humanness, and humans weren’t made to only feel certain ones. Pain, fear, love, heartbreak, shame, remorse, guilt—they teach us how to overcome, how to adapt and learn, how to thrive and survive. They teach us how to sympathize and empathize and how to forgive. By cutting off his ability to feel his true emotions he can’t empathize anymore…” her voice trails off.

I suck in a deep breath as the implications become clear.

“What’s an empath who doesn’t feel empathy?”

“Very fucking dangerous.”

“You said he wasn’t a psychopath. But isn’t the absence of empathy and remorse what defines a psychopath?”

“I don’t think psychopath is a strong enough word for what my father is. He’s shut down his emotions, but like I said, that doesn’t stop him from playing with other people’s. He thinks he’s God, and the rest of us are merely his playthings.”

She’s quiet after the discussion about her dad. Sensing that she needs time to emotionally recover, Wilder and I don’t bother her with the million questions we both have. We drive through the night, me and Wilder taking turns while Lara sleeps, on and off, before we finally decide to stop.

Ev sent the details for a rental property that belongs to an associate. It’s just been cleaned after the previous tenants left, ready to go back on the rental market, but they are more than happy to let us use it for a few days.

As we pull up, Wilder lets out a pained noise. “A cornfield, really? Does Ev not watch horror movies? Nothing good ever happens when a cornfield’s involved.”

“What are you talking about? It’s just a field.” Lara laughs, and it’s the first time she’s relaxed since her swim.

Wilder counts using his fingers. “You say that now. But just you wait until we get attacked by a cult of demonic children, a scarecrow who comes back every twenty-three years, or a group of hostile aliens that leave crop circles to terrorize us.”

I turn to look at him as Lara covers her mouth to smother her laughter. “I think you might want to stick to cartoons for a while.”

“Oh, sure, laugh it up now. But don’t come crying to me when Freddy and Jason come chasing after you.”

“Freddy and Jason? Are they cats or something?” Lara asks innocently, but I catch her eye and know she’s fucking with him. Now that she’s eighteen and I’m not freaking out about her age so much, that doesn’t mean lines like that don’t make me feel old.

Wilder grabs his chest like he’s been mortally wounded. “I don’t even know who you are anymore,” he grumbles before opening his door and climbing out.

As soon as he slams the door closed, Lara lets out the laugh she’d been holding back. “Is he serious?” she asks through her giggles.

I like seeing her like this after how down she’s been. For that alone, I’d kiss the fuck out of Wilder if I swung that way.

“We all have our things.”

She chuckles some more as she unfastens her seat belt. “I can’t quite figure out if he likes horror movies or if he’s scared of them.”

“Honestly, I think it’s a bit of both. He was teased as a kid for being scared of them, so he did a sort of exposure therapy. Now he can watch them without screaming like a girl. I think he even likes them to a degree. But I swear he’s watched so many they’ve fried his brain.” I get out and open Lara’s door. Rufio jumps out first, and I offer Lara my hand, which she takes as she climbs out.

Wilder is standing a foot away from the cornfield with his hands on his hips, staring at nothing as the breeze stirs the field. We both walk over to him as Rufio sniffs around.

“Horror setting aside, it’s kind of peaceful here,” Lara says, looking across the field that stretches out before us.

Wilder lets out a long-suffering sigh, which has me looking over at Lara with a conspiratorial wink.

“I suppose it could always be worse,” he agrees.

I nod and head toward the house. “Like a cabin in the woods.”

“Or an underground bunker,” Lara adds.

I look over my shoulder at her and grin as Wilder follows behind us.

“A haunted house,” I throw out.

“An abandoned insane asylum.” Lara grins.

“Ooh, that’s a classic.”

Wilder huffs, but he’s not hiding his amusement. “You guys suck.”

“Nah, that’s a different kind of movie altogether,” Lara jokes before she squeals and finds herself tossed over his shoulder.

“Put me down, you ass,” she yells.

I look for the hidden key under the fake rock. With how out of the way the house is, I’m surprised they bothered to even lock it at all. Most people don’t when they live in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.

“Nope. I don’t think I will. Not until I know you’re sorry.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Too quiet.

I bite my lip, knowing Little Miss Troublemaker is far from remorseful.

“Fine.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Enough to sing for you.”

I open the door with a cough to hide my amusement. “Really?” he asks.

“Yep. Are you ready?”

“Hit me with it,” Wilder grins and looks smug as hell as he walks past me into the house.

Lara looks up at me with a grin before she starts singing, adopting a creepy little girl voice. “One, two, Freddie’s coming for you.”

He tosses her on the sofa, making her laugh as he stands over her. “You are evil,” he complains before popping open the button on his jeans. Her laugh cuts off immediately.

“Fortunately, I have just the thing to keep you quiet.”