Chapter 33

Ipretended to sleep most of the way. Not only did it stop them from talking to me, but it also made them feel comfortable enough to talk among themselves.

They argued quietly, mostly Bill and Phil. Turns out the driver’s name is David, not Will, shattering my dreams of a rhyming kidnapping dream team.

David seemed to be the strong, silent type, but Phil and Bill clashed like siblings fighting over who used all the hot water. Bill is still a dick. He’s the kind of person that makes you realize why birth control was created. That, and I always had the urge to dip him in hot tar.

Phil, on the other hand, didn’t seem so bad, but only in the same way a woman seeing her friend’s husband cheat might stay with her own neglectful asshole because he wasn’t as bad. I don’t usually grade on a curve, but henchmen don’t tend to be very nice. Go figure.

They talked about how pissed my father will be, according to Phil, for my rough treatment. Bill argued back that my father was only interested in one thing from me, and that was my ovaries.

I kept my opinion to myself. Nobody in this car knew anything about my father. Nobody but me, that is.

The worst kind of monsters are the ones that know how to humanize themselves. They wear kindness as a second skin, blinding people to the evil beneath it.

When I was seven years old, I failed to stop a moving car with my mind. My father had thrown a ten-year-old boy, who’d been brought in by the Division for just this purpose, in front of the car. The idea was that my fear would kick in and my gift would flare to life, thus saving the boy.

It didn’t, of course, and the boy died in front of me before being discarded like trash. He wasn’t gifted. He meant nothing to my father or anyone at the Division, but that boy changed my life in the most profound way. He made me realize there was no line my father wouldn’t cross, no boundary he wouldn’t obliterate to reach his goal, and all the while, I had no clue what the hell that goal was.

Now, after saving Bella from falling off the playset, I wish I’d been smart enough to try to move the boy instead of the car.

When I feel us slowing down, I let the memories of that boy drift away and crack my eyes open.

We seem to be on a large farm of some kind. I can see what appears to be a main house, similar to the one at Apex. Beyond that, there are huge barns and a variety of fields in various stages of growth. A quick look around shows that there are no other buildings visible in the vicinity. That doesn’t necessarily mean there are no neighbors, but I’d put money on there being none within a ten-mile radius.

I see a few people wandering around outside. I don’t recognize any of them. When the car stops and Phil pulls me out with his hand wrapped around my bicep, none of them seem surprised. They might not know who I am, but they clearly knew to expect someone.

My boots kick up the dust of the parking area as I’m pulled toward the main house. Nobody says a word. Phil and Bill are as quiet as David, and I don’t think it has anything to do with respect and everything to do with fear.

I look around as we walk inside the house, which is dated. But not dated in a way that says it needs renovating, just that it’s a family home from a time gone by. I can see a huge pine table and chairs in the kitchen that looks like it would sit twelve. Instantly, I think of the guys back at Apex sitting down and laughing together through meals, the soft giggle of the kids, and the women teasing their men. I wonder if this place holds memories like that—ones filled with love and respect that take the bones of a house and turn them into a home by filling it with life.

A tug snaps me out of my thoughts and leads me away from the kitchen down a long hallway to the back of the house. We stop outside a wooden door. Bill leans over me to knock, his groin brushing against my ass. I lift my foot and stomp down on his foot with my boot, delighting in his bellow of pain.

The door is yanked open just as Bill reaches for a handful of my hair. My father’s hand is around his throat an instant before Bill’s hand makes contact. A second later, Bill collides with the wall he’s thrown against.

I’m not stupid enough to think of it as a father protecting his daughter. He just doesn’t like people breaking his toys. He’s capable of that all on his own.

“Somebody want to explain what the fuck happened to her face?” my father asks, his voice devoid of all emotion.

“It was Bill. He never was good at keeping his hands to himself,” David says, surprising me.

I turn to look up at the man in front of me. He’s a handsome guy, but I must take after my mother. Other than our eyes, I see nothing of me in him.

“Hello, Father.”

His eyes flash as he addresses the others. “Leave us.”

They don’t argue. Phil and David simply turn and walk away, leaving me with the person I spent half my life loving and the other half hating. It didn’t matter that he never loved me back. As a young girl learning about relationships from movies and stolen books, I tried so hard to be the daughter I thought he wanted. In his own way, he taught me the most valuable lesson of all—that you can love someone. You can love them from the width and breadth of your soul, but you cannot make them love you back. You can keep giving them pieces of you and watch as they get casually discarded like a used tissue, or you can glue your remaining pieces together and reshape what’s left into something different.

I’ll never be the person I was before. There are too many parts of that girl missing. Parts that got stepped on and lost along the way, but that doesn’t mean that I am less now. If anything, I’m more because, even at my weakest, I didn’t break. A part of me will always feel the echo of sadness for the girl who just wanted her daddy to love her. But the woman in me is proud that I learned to be strong and to survive when this man buckled and broke.

“Lara.” His voice is cold, stern even, but it doesn’t make me tremble like it did before.

I stare into his eyes and shut my emotions down tight, letting him gaze into the void of nothing. He wanted a daughter just like him. Well, there is a reason people warn you to be careful what you wish for. I don’t speak. I wait for him to step back and let me in so we can get this stupid show started.

He eventually does, moving to sit in a chair next to a large oak desk under a window that has a view of a small yard with flowers. I look around the room and take in the bookcases on one wall and a leather sofa on the other that looks worn but comfortable.

“Take a seat.”

I do as he asks and sit on the sofa, glad he opted for the chair. It’s hard to be close to someone when you’ve fantasized about clawing their eyeballs out.

“I’m glad you’ve returned.”

My calm goes out the window. Everything I left behind flashes in my mind. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

“Your place is here beside me.”

I roll my eyes. “We both know that’s a lie. What do you really want?”

He stands and paces in front of me, his air of calmness disappearing into a cloud of agitation. Interesting.

“You are my daughter. The fact that you just announced that to my men when I’ve tried to keep your identity a secret is a testament to that. Of course, your place is with me. Much has happened in your absence. Our research and medical files have been largely destroyed. We kept most things in old school files, not wanting to leave a digital footprint.”

I laugh to myself—if only he knew—as I think about the flash drive at Apex. He might not have believed in leaving a digital footprint, but thankfully Bella’s mom Emma did. She scarified herself to get that information to me Apex.

“Hmm…such a shame that trying to hide your criminal activities led to you losing everything. I guess you’ll have to start from scratch.”

“We didn’t lose everything. We might have been narrow-minded, but we were not stupid, something you’d do well to remember.”

I cross my arms and lean back. When he doesn’t get more of a response, he runs his hand through his hair, reminding me of a normal frustrated parent, not the robotic dick he was the last time I saw him. Even more interesting.

“This location is better anyway. More secluded. More space. It will be easier for me to achieve my vision.”

I know I should keep my mouth shut, but I’m curious to see if he drank the Kool-Aid he’s been selling. “Your vision? The one where you enslave as many gifted people as possible?”

He whirls on me. “I’m not enslaving anyone. I’m freeing them. This place could be a utopia for us. We could all be safe here.”

“Too many gifted people in one place would make this whole operation vulnerable. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe your delusions or not, but your idea of utopia is another person’s version of hell.”

“You know nothing.”

I jump up, pissed off beyond words. “It’s you who knows nothing. You’ve become everything you hated.”

“I’m saving these people.”

“These people? We are these people, Dad.” He jolts at the moniker I normally never use. “You’re not saving us. You’re condemning us.”

“You’re—”

“I was happy,” I whisper.

He freezes at my tone.

“For the first time in my life, I had a family. I was loved.”

He hisses like I’ve struck him. “I’m your family,” he grits out, but it sounds weak.

“No. You’re not. I didn’t know what it was like to have a family. I didn’t know that love was given freely and without conditions. I learned that there is no such thing as perfection, that people mess up, sometimes big, sometimes small, but families forgive you. They love you through the good times and the bad.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until I see him stare at my cheeks in confusion.

“You don’t understand. I’m doing this for you and your sister. I’m doing it for us, for all of us.”

“You take terrorized kids and traumatize them further.”

He frowns in confusion. “How? I gave them a mother. I gave them you.”

There is something almost childlike in his lack of understanding. In another life, it might have softened me to him, but I’ve seen too much.

“What about me?” I hit my chest. “Where was my mother?”

He snaps his mouth shut.

“What you’re doing here is hunting people and then caging them with threats and coercion. That’s not freedom.”

“The government would lock us up and make us lab rats. I’m building an army, so when they come, we’ll be ready for them. They won’t take another one of my children, not again.”

I ignore the tear in my heart his words cause, knowing instinctively it’s Salem he’s talking about, not me though she was better off without him. He talks about losing her but he made no effort to reconnect until he could use her for his grand plan. He’s just another deadbeat father that likes to blame everyone else for his failings.

I laugh instead, the sound mocking and cruel. “You are the government, you fool. You thought you could bring the establishment down from the inside, but instead, you ended up becoming one of them. You’re the boogeyman to these kids, not the government.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah? So I’m free to go then?”

He moves to the door, blocking it. “You’re a child.”

“Wrong again. I know it’s hard to keep track of your daughter’s birthdays, but I’m now a legal adult.” I can practically see the wheels in his brain turning.

“There are some people I want you to meet. They understand the vision I have. Then you can see the beauty of it. One of them, Tony, has requested to court you until you are comfortable?—”

“No. I know where this is going. I will not let you pimp out my womb so that you can grow your cult of wonder kids.”

I move toward him, hoping he’ll listen to reason, but any emotion I might have caught on his face was fleeting.

“You’ll adjust. You enjoy being a mother. Children love you. We just need to bring the others home. Tell me more about Apex.”

“No.”

He grabs my arm. His grip is hard and unyielding, and he’s bound to leave bruises. “Where is your loyalty?” he roars in my face.

“Fuck you.”

He backhands me, striking me on the same side of the face Bill and Giles did. What the hell is it with men? Do they take a special class in school that teaches them this shit?

I manage to keep my balance, but I feel the skin of my cheekbone split open and my eye throb in time to my heartbeat.

“You will learn your place,” he spits, grabbing my arm.

“I already know my place, and it’s far from you.”

He pulls the door open and drags me down the hallway to another door, this one leading down to the basement. It’s dark, but he doesn’t turn on a light before he yanks me down the wooden steps.

I somehow manage not to fall. When my eyes adjust to the darkness, and with the sliver of light coming in from the open door, I see a row of large cages. And not all of them are empty.

I don’t fight him as he shoves me inside the closest empty one. He pulls a chain from around his neck with a key on it and uses it to lock the padlock on the door.

“Yeah, it’s a real Garden of Eden here, Dad,” I say sarcastically.

“You just need the children back. Everything will be back to normal then.”

“How? Are you going to stick bunk beds in here? Maybe throw in a couple of coloring books for when they get bored?”

He looks at me, but he says nothing as I appeal to him again. I might have my pride, but pride won’t save my Lost Ones. “They can play now. They can run and climb and swim and get to do all the things children should get to do.”

“They can do all those things here. They’ll grow up happy here and have babies of their own. There will be so many gifted people that nobody will ever see us as weak again.”

“We were never weak,” I say firmly.

He shakes his head and climbs up the basement stairs.

“It’s you who’s weak,” I whisper.

I wait until he closes the door before I move to the padlock. I think of the boy and the car. I’m not strong enough to break the cage, but God help me, I can break the damn lock.

I study it before I bend down and pull the cell phone from my boot. I turn it on. Remembering the feature Salem told me about from when she crash-landed in the jungle, I press the SOS button on the side of the phone. I make sure the sound’s off before shoving it back into my boot.

“Umm… Hi. Anyone else awake?”

“You think we’d sleep in a place like this?” a voice replies.

“I’m not sure what to think anymore,” I admit before I take hold of the padlock and close my eyes.

I picture what the inside of the padlock looks like. I spent years looking over specs for a million different kinds of locks in preparation for a moment like this. It’s not easy. It takes what feels like hours, though it couldn’t have been that long.

My head feels like it’s been put in a blender, and I can feel blood running from my nose. None of it matters, though, when I hear the click of the lock as it gives way in my hand. I push the door open, cringing when it creaks loudly.

“Hey, what’s going on?” another voice calls out.

I don’t have enough energy left to open all their locks, but I won’t leave them down here. “I’m going to try and get you all out. When I was tossed in here, he used a key to lock my cage. It was around his neck. Is there a master key for all the cages, or are there others?”

“How the fuck would we know?” another voice answers, this one rough sounding.

“I’m just asking, asshole.”

“Ignore Jack. He’s a dick,” a soft voice tells me.

“I get it. I don’t want to leave you behind. I’ll try and get the key. But if I can’t, I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

“Sure, whatever,” the sarcastic voice of who I’m guessing is Jack replies.

I bite my lip to stop myself from cursing him out. I’m pretty sure I’d be a dick too if I was trapped down here.

I creep up the stairs. When I reach the door, I give the knob a gentle twist, hoping it isn’t locked. When it opens, I let out a relieved sigh. With the cages padlocked, he obviously felt comfortable not locking this door, too. That also tells me he’s not worried about anyone else accidentally stumbling across it. They probably already know what’s down there. Resting my head against the wood, I send up a prayer, hoping I get out of this in one piece.

Taking a deep breath, I gently ease the door open, and when I see the coast is clear, I slip out. I go in the opposite direction of my father’s office, and instead of heading for the front door like my instincts are telling me to, I sneak upstairs. I check all the rooms, which are mostly empty, and use the windows to get a better view of the property.

It’s big, but there doesn’t seem to be many people here. I’m not sure what to make of that. I know that most of the medical team was wiped out in the explosion, but that still left plenty of people. Only me and the children lived on-site, with a small staff to see to our needs and act as security.

Maybe this is just the skeleton crew.

I haven’t seen any children yet, which is a relief. As much as I think I have the mental capacity to deal with whatever happens today, I know I’m lying to myself. Dragging a kid into it means one more person with a lifetime of nightmares in their head.

I close my eyes, open my senses, and see if I can use my gift to sense how many people are close by. I feel my mouth drop open when the connection hits me bright and clear. I never thought to use it this way, and part of me is pissed at my father all over again. If he had been a good dad, I could have gone to him for advice. We could have worked things out together. But instead, I’ve come here to kill him in cold blood.

My eyes open on that thought. Seeing him again didn’t change how I feel about the man. Instead, it reminded me that, as much as our gifts are alike, we’re not the same. Killing him will turn me into someone I’m not and will set me on the same path he’s currently walking.

No, I might be able to kill to protect myself, but I don’t think I could murder someone. Not if I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror.

An overwhelming sense of desperation washes over me as my options dwindle to nothing. I have to bring the Division down one way or another.

But murder isn’t the answer.

Not today, anyway.