Equal Parts (33 page)

Hell. This was torture in itself. “A new hammer. One with my name engraved on the side.” Sure, why not?

She sighed happily. “That’s a cute idea. You should get lingerie too! If I had any money, I’d buy lingerie to show Patrick. I’d like to be sexy for him.”

I tried really, really hard to block that image from my mind. “Why don’t you come with me? I have tons of money. You could buy it for him as a surprise, and wear it tomorrow when he comes back.”

She shrugged, and winced at the pain it obviously caused her. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t think I’m allowed to leave, though. Patrick said he’d punish me if I left.”

“Well…” Oh God, I couldn’t believe what I was about to say: “Maybe he means
punish
, like, in a sexy way, you know? I’m sure he wasn’t serious.” Ick. I felt gross just saying it.

She thought it over. “I’ll think about it. You should probably get some sleep, anyway. Patrick won’t like it if you’re tired – he’s always telling me I shouldn’t fall asleep when we have our sessions.”

I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know what the hell their ‘sessions’ were. I was happy being ignorant, at least for the time being.

Trying to ignore the cloud of doom hanging over my head, as well as the lovestruck sighs coming from across the room, I squeezed my eyes shut. Achilles was coming for me. I just had to buy more time.

Yeah
, sneered the voice in my mind,
good luck with that
.

Thanks to the lack of windows in that room, and the constant lighting, day and night meant nothing to me. I knew I’d been brought in during the late evening, and I had to have been unconscious for at least nine hours, judging by the natural light in Molten’s office. After my time with him, I probably slept on and off for a good four hours, meaning that when I woke for the final time, it was late morning.

Great. So about twelve hours before Molten reappeared.

“Sleep well?” asked Skye as soon as my eyes were open. God, the girl never slept. She was like a robot.

“Just super,” I said in a sweet voice. Hah. My shoulders felt even worse than yesterday, and I could no longer feel my hands or feet. Fighting off any lingering exhaustion, I pushed myself up the wall to a standing position and stretched out my aching muscles.

“Oh, you shouldn’t stand up,” said Skye, rather timidly. “He doesn’t like it when you stand up.”

I was so hungry. My stomach growled with every movement, every breath. It was a horrible feeling, but I knew I had to persevere. Twelve hours or so, and I would be facing death. I had to be ready.

“No need to worry, I was only stretching,” I told my roommate, sitting back down, though it pained me to do so. I’d have to watch out where Skye’s loyalty was concerned – if she saw me as a threat, or found cause to alert Molten about something I was doing, I could be dead before I knew it.

“Good.” Her sigh of relief was audible. “I don’t want you to get in trouble. The man before you didn’t follow the rules, and he … well, Patrick didn’t like that.”

“Who was the man before me?” I didn’t really care – what use was it to me? – but it kept her talking while I scanned the room again for some kind of breaking point.

“Oh, some politician, I don’t know. He wasn’t very nice, kept telling me Patrick didn’t
really
love me.” She rolled her eyes. “People don’t understand girls like us, do they?”

Girls like us
. I suppose, to her, we were a lot alike. Good girls gone bad. Girls with homicidal boyfriends. Abductees. Bright young things caught up in a much darker game.

“I think he was the mayor or something,” she added as an afterthought, frowning slightly. “Why does that seem …
sad
? Do I like the mayor?”

I snapped my eyes back to her, stunned by the statement. “Wait, the mayor? The mayor was here?”

It wasn’t possible. Achilles killed the mayor months ago. Around the time Skye went missing…

Oh, sweet Baby Jesus.

“Skye, did
Patrick
kill the mayor? Or did Achilles?” I tried my hardest not to be too aggressive, knowing her mind wasn’t exactly in its right state, but it was difficult. This was
big
.

“Patrick did. Why on earth would Achilles kill the mayor? He’s not man enough to do that.”

I let that one slide, because the revelation overshadowed the insult.

Molten killed the mayor. Not Achilles. And yet the public believed Achilles did it. Hell,
I
had believed Achilles did it. He hadn’t exactly denied the claims.

But all those conversations with him came flooding back to me at once – his dodging of questions about the mayor’s assassination, his discomfort with the reminder, his ambiguous answers about being a public profile murderer.

Maybe Achilles simply wanted it to
look
like he’d killed the mayor. Maybe Molten had instructed him to take the fall. Maybe the two had reached some kind of agreement about it.

At any rate, this changed everything. Achilles wasn’t a totally cold-blooded murderer. He wasn’t guilty of his biggest crime to date.

If I could get Molten to confess, or if I could find evidence of the murder, the blame would shift from Achilles.

My excitement was short-lived, however. Reality made sure of that. I was being kept in an empty room with a certifiably insane girl, in the middle of nowhere, for all I knew. The information wasn’t going to help me escape. It was worthless in here.

“I have to get out of here,” I whispered to myself.

“Huh?”

“Just reminding myself about my anniversary,” I said with a smile. The smile I got in return was too weird to be genuine. Skye was worse than brainwashed. She was like a living doll.

“You really want to get Achilles a present, don’t you?” she asked, rather quietly.

My head jerked up so suddenly it hurt. “Yes! Yes, Skye, I do! It would break Achilles’s heart if I didn’t get him anything. Please help me,
please
.” Yes, I was begging. No, I didn’t care. Not if it meant my freedom.

She sighed heavily. “Well, I guess I could help you – if you promise to be back by the time Patrick returns, though,” she added quickly.

“Of course. Of course I’ll come back.”

“Okay then. We’ll have to be super quiet about it, because some of Patrick’s friends aren’t very nice to me. They’ll come around when he marries me, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I agreed. I would agree to anything if it got me out of this cage.

Crawling to the door, she banged on it loudly. A moment later, it opened.

“What?” grunted one of the thugs.

“Can we please use the bathroom?” asked Skye, batting her lashes sweetly. Extra,
extra
creepy.

“Keep fluttering them lashes, doll. Doesn’t mean you won’t end up in pieces on his floor,” said the guard in a dark tone.

Skye visibly recoiled, but, to my surprise, she didn’t back down. “Patrick wouldn’t like to hear you talking to me like that. I’ll tell him about it when he gets home.” With that, she nodded at me and glided past the huge man, like an absolute natural.

I scrambled to my feet, thinking this was too good to be true. The guard followed me out, telling me on the way, “A few weeks with that freak and her mind’s totally melted. I tell you, it’s getting goddamn weird in here.”

Well, at least we could agree on that.

Skye led me down a corridor to a bathroom. When we were both in the room, she turned to the thug: “Give us five minutes, and we’ll be out.”

“Why the hell d’you have to be in here together?” His eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I thought we were busted.

“Our hands are tied, bozo,” she snapped, wiggling her hands behind her back at him. “How are we supposed to do anything like this?
Men
, honestly.”

I almost laughed. I kind of liked this Skye. At least she wasn’t going on about how much
Patrick
loved her.

“Five minutes,” growled the guard, shutting the door behind him. Big mistake.

Skye fumbled with the faucet at the sink, until water rushed into the ceramic bowl. I was already looping my hands under my behind, under my legs, until they were in front of me. She followed my lead, and together we pushed open the smallish window by the toilet.

“Just hang on!” said Skye loudly. “Your zipper’s stuck!” She giggled at me. Wow – I’d underestimated just how good she was at this kind of thing.

“Look away, I can’t pee with you watching,” I replied in a similarly audible tone, right as the window squeaked. Thankfully my voice covered the noise.

We slipped out of the window, into the garden, and I saw that I’d been right – we were definitely on some kind of community property, with a small parking lot out the back and a well manicured garden at its front. Fresh air slapped at my face, just enough chill to keep me on my toes.

“Come on,” I hissed at Skye, who was struggling to get her other leg over the window’s ledge. I helped her through, and we hobbled down the side of the house, towards the street. Freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom.

I could hear cars. And children laughing somewhere nearby. This was a neighborhood – a real neighborhood. With
witnesses
! I never thought I’d be so happy to be surrounded by people.

As soon as we were close to the corner of the house, about to break out into the front yard, a lone figure stepped up in front of us, stopping both of us in our tracks.

“Well, I must say, I expected better from you, Miss Eastwood. Predictable, predictable.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The Happiness Factor

Crappity crap with double crap on top.

“It was her, Patrick,” babbled Skye, suddenly cowering against the house as though he’d moved to strike her. “Please, please don’t hurt me! It was her idea! Please, I love you!”

“I know,” said Molten, still looking at me. “I won’t hurt you, Miss Hollioake. Not yet.”

“Thank you,” she sobbed into the wall, and a more pathetic sight I’ve never seen.

“Did you really expect me to just take whatever you dished out,
Patrick
?” I sneered, in Achilles mode once more. In my head, I was counting the seconds until I kicked him between the legs and made a run for it. Ten … nine … eight…

“It saddens me, but yes, I did expect it. Which is why I came prepared.” He suddenly raised a gun straight at my temple, and the countdown clicked on
zero
right at the same time.

My knee came straight up into his groin and my head swiveled to the side, just as the gun went off, nearly deafening me in the process.

Molten went down. The gun skidded out of reach, but I knew it was only a matter of time before his goons – or worse, Skye – grabbed a hold of it. Suddenly he kicked my legs out from under me, and I came crashing into the ground beside him. His hands immediately went to my face, shoving up against my eyes, my nose, in my mouth. So, I did the exact same to him.

“
Stop this
,” he ordered me in that creepy voice.

I had no sunshine left to fight the pull – I’d given it all to Achilles last night. So, of course, the order went straight through me, and I stilled instantly. Oh
crap
. He had influence over me.

“
Pick up the gun
,” he told me. As though I was being strung along by invisible ties, my hand reached towards where the pistol had fallen. I shrieked in frustration at my own lack of willpower.

My other hand was still mushed against Molten’s face. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to find a source of happiness in his body, somewhere,
anywhere
, to grab hold of.

“Felicity!” roared a weirdly familiar voice. I ignored it.
Bigger picture, darling
, said Achilles’s voice in my head. I had to deal with the big things first. Molten – he was my most immediate threat.

I could sense a wisp of happiness, dark and slick like oil, in Molten’s person. Using all the strength at my disposal, I gathered it in my mental arms and
heaved
.

Pull, pull, pull, just a little farther, just a little more…

There
!

We flew apart, as if I’d ripped the very soul out of him. Sunshine raced through my veins, soaking into my cells. Molten, meanwhile, let out a keening groan that had my hairs standing on end.

I didn’t hesitate – I used the sunshine on myself to block Molten’s instructions, and the haze he’d cast on my mind evaporated.

A car skidded to a halt somewhere on the street, the squeal of tires seeming almost musical to my ears. I got to my hands and knees, the world around me tipping left and right before my eyes.

“Felicity!” The voice seemed closer now – was it coming from the car? I looked up, frowned at the confusion around me. The driver’s side of the sports car opened and out stepped…