Sloane (6 page)

But there was no reason to think thoughts like that,
because nothing romantic was ever going to happen between Jeff and
me.

I took a deep breath.

I shouldn’t be allowing myself to think about him in
a fond way, anyhow. That would just make everything harder.

A noise. The sound of footfalls echoing through the
parking garage.

I turned to see Jeff as he appeared at the end of the
row of cars.

I smiled at him and waved. “Hey.”

He broke out into a big grin, hurrying closer. “Hey.
You found my car.”

“Wasn’t hard,” I said, reaching back to grasp the
handle of the pistol at my back.

“I can’t believe you called me,” he said. “You know,
back when you were an intern, I always thought you hated me. You
always had this angry look on your face, and I was too intimidated
to talk to you. But today, I saw you, and I figured why the hell
not. Why not give it a shot?”

Damn it, Jeff, stop saying things like that.
I
kept smiling. “I’m glad you did.”

He closed the distance between us. “So, um, what do
you want to do?”

I pressed the gun into his stomach.

His eyes widened.

“Sorry, Jeff,” I said. “I really am sorry.”

“What is that?” His voice was strangled.

“If you do exactly as I say, then I won’t shoot you,
okay?”

He started to tremble. “It’s a gun?”

“I’m going to need your keys. Tell me where they
are.”

“Uh… uh… in my pocket.”

“Which pocket?”

He shook harder. “Why are you doing this? Are you
stealing my car?”

“Keys, Jeff. Which pocket?”

“Left,” he said. “My left pants’ pocket.”

I reached down and fished them out. “Good. Now, I
need you to get in the trunk.”

He gave a me a startled look. Then he turned to look
back the way he came. He took a deep breath.

I could tell he was about to yell. I jammed the gun
into him harder. “Don’t even think about it. If you make one bit of
noise, I will put a bullet in you, got it?”

He moaned.

CHAPTER FIVE

Massachusetts is a pretty heavily populated state,
but even here, I could get out into a fairly rural area within
about a thirty-minute drive from the city. Now I drove out out into
the woods, with a guy in my trunk. I was going to find a nice,
isolated spot to torture him. I clutched the steering wheel hard,
my knuckles white from the pressure.

I hadn’t done something like this…

Well, never.

Not on my own, anyway. Silas had always been there.
He’d always taken the lead. He’d always made me hang back.

But now Silas had been captured and taken someplace,
probably to James Armstrong’s secret lab, and he couldn’t take the
lead. He needed me to rescue him. Which I was going to do. No
matter what it took.

Still, I was worried. I was worried about freezing
up. I was worried about not being able to handle it. I was worried
it would be too much for me. There was a reason Silas had always
kept me back, and maybe it was because I was incapable of doing
what needed to be done.

But eventually, I drove Jeff’s car far enough out
that we wouldn’t be disturbed.

I parked it, took out my gun, and went around
back.

I banged on the trunk. “Jeff?”

A shriek from inside.

“I’m going to open the trunk now, okay? I’m going to
tie you up. If you try anything, if you try to run, I’m going to
shoot you. You got that?”

Another unintelligible noise of misery.

“I need a ‘yes’ here, Jeff.”

“Yes,” came the reply, muffled.

I unlocked the trunk, training the gun on him.

He slowly sat up. He’d been crying, at least I
thought so. He was still shaking. His lower lip trembled as he held
his hands out to me.

I moved forward. “I’m going to put the gun away and
tie you up. But if you make one false move, I’ll have it back out
in a second. And I will shoot you. You understand?”

He nodded, cringing.

I put the gun into the waist of my pants, and I
quickly tied his hands together. Then I hauled him out of the
trunk.

I made him sit on the ground, propped up against the
car. Tears were leaking out of his eyes. He’d really sort of lost
it.

I felt bad. Jeff was a good guy. He didn’t deserve
this. But I had to do what I had to do.

“Why are you doing this?” he whispered.

“I need to ask you some questions,” I said.

* * *

six years ago…

I was tied up in the basement, and they were all
there. My parents were there. My mother was brushing my hair away
from my forehead and telling me that it wouldn’t be so bad, that
what I was doing would help out the whole family, that they needed
me, that I should be proud.

But all I felt was ice cold terror.

There were four of them, and they were wearing dirty
jeans and too-tight t-shirts. Cigarettes dangled from their
yellowed fingers. They had dirt under their nails.

I was afraid.

I had struggled when they tied me down. I had sobbed.
I had begged my mother not to do this to me. My voice full of
tears, I had told her just how frightened I was, and how much I
didn’t want to do this. I had pleaded with her to stop it all.

She didn’t stop it, though. She told me it would be
over soon.

The door burst open then, and I saw Silas coming in.
His chest was heaving, and he looked so angry.

My mother went to him. “Silas, what are you doing? We
talked about this.”

And Silas picked up a knife off of one of their
tables. It didn’t look very clean either. It looked old and
stained. But it was sharp.

Silas didn’t say anything to her. He made a slashing
motion, right across her throat.

His face was drawn, his eyes narrow, his teeth
clenched.

My mother couldn’t make a noise, because her throat
was cut. She stumbled around, looking down in amazement at all the
bright red blood that was gushing out of her throat.

My father yelled.

And that was when the rest of them noticed that
something bad had happened. They looked up from their cigarettes
and conversation, looked up to see Silas across the room, the
bloody knife in his hand.

And it was chaos.

They were all running, running for the door.

But Silas had locked it, put a padlock on it, and
only he had the key. And they couldn’t get out.

Silas came to me next. He cut all the ropes that bit
into my skin, and he helped me stand up. There was blood on the
knife he used. There was blood on Silas. On his skin. On his
clothes. Our mother’s blood.

I stood up, but I couldn’t move.

I wasn’t even trying to stop him. I couldn’t.

Even though I didn’t want it to happen, even though I
was terrified of it—more terrified of anything than I’d ever been
in my entire life—I was just standing there, letting it happen. I
kept trying to will my limbs to move.

But I couldn’t. I was frozen.

And they were coming for Silas now, all of them. And
they had knives too. Knives and needles and scalpels and… so many
sharp things.

But Silas moved in a blur. He stabbed and slashed and
screamed.

And there was more blood. It was spattered up on the
ceiling. It was dribbling down onto the floor. It was gushing and
spraying and flowing. The smell hit my nose, sharp and sour.

And I still couldn’t move.

I was frozen, watching it all happen, watching them
all die, watching them all bleed out. Not just my mother, who had
started all of this, but all of the rest of them too.

I tried to take a step, to make a noise.

Nothing happened.

And then there my father was. He was stabbed in the
leg, and he was limping towards me. There was blood all over his
hands. And he was saying something, something about how we never
should have been born, how we were more trouble than we were worth,
how we’d ruined everything, how much he hated us.

And I saw it glittering in his hand. Something sharp
and metal and small. But he was going to try to stick it into me. I
could see that.

Silas was busy.

That was when I could move. I found one of the other
knives. I tore it out of the hand of one of the others, one of the
dead ones, and when I stood up, I brought it up, right into my
father’s gut.

He sputtered. He groaned.

I twisted it. I pushed deeper, and I twisted.

His blood came out over both of us. It was a hot
fountain, a wave of red. It gushed over my hands, sticky and
warm.

I looked into his eyes. He was shrieking, but I kept
twisting. And eventually, his eyes went blank, as if someone had
reached in and pinched the wick of his spirit, snuffing him
out.

He was quiet then.

* * *

For a second, I couldn’t move. I felt like all I
could see was red, that blood was creeping over my vision,
obscuring everything, blocking it all out.

Jeff groaned. “I’ll tell you anything you want to
know. Anything. But please don’t hurt me. Please, Sally.”

I peered down at him, and then my limbs worked again.
“Anything?”

He nodded furiously. “Anything. Please.”

“What do you know about the men who broke in
today?”

“About them?” He was hysterical. “Nothing. Why would
you think I knew anything?”

“Did you see them?”

“I saw them when the guards took them out,” he said.
“They were sedated. I couldn’t tell anything about them. I don’t
know who they are. I really don’t.” His voice was getting louder
and louder, his words tumbling over each other.

Well. I had a feeling things weren’t going to have to
get so bad after all. I thought that I’d have to torture Jeff, hurt
him in some way to get him to give up information. But he didn’t
seem to need much of a nudge at all. I was relieved. It wasn’t that
I couldn’t have done it—if I had to—but overall, it was much nicer
this way.

I knelt down so that I was eye-level with Jeff.
“Okay, I believe you.”

“You do?” There was so much relief in his voice.

“But let’s talk about this secret lab of
Armstrong’s.”

Anguish flicked over his face. “But I don’t know
anything about that either. All I know is that he’s got one. Come
on, Sally, when we worked together, you were the one who got access
to that place. They wouldn’t let me in.”

That was true. They’d let me in pretty much anywhere.
French was right about me. I was practically invisible. I was quiet
and unassuming. People at the lab talked in front of me freely,
never thinking that I was listening in. They let me accompany them
all over the place, and only seemed grateful when they saw me,
because I was there to do whatever menial task that they needed
done.

I got closer to him. “But that lab burned down, Jeff.
I lost my job because there was so much damage, and they couldn’t
fit all the staff into the replacement space while they made
repairs. So, is Armstrong’s secret lab still in the same
place?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s off site. He moved it
someplace. Everyone in the building knows that he leaves and goes
there, but no one knows where it is. No one knows what he does
there, not really. We all guess.”

I stood up. “Damn it.”

He let out a mewling sound. “Don’t be mad. Please. I
didn’t mean to make you angry.”

I glowered down at him. “You really don’t know
anything, do you, Jeff?”

“No.” His voice quavered.

“Then you’re goddamned useless.” I stared up at the
sky. “What am I going to do with you?”

* * *

I had to get a new room. I couldn’t stay in the hotel
where Griffin and I had been, not with Jeff in tow. I had to check
in to a motel somewhere, because the doors opened out onto the
parking lot. It was a lot easier to get him inside without anyone
seeing him.

That didn’t mean it was easy, though.

I sat in the parking lot until after midnight,
waiting for the coast to be clear. Jeff was still in the trunk. He
was gagged now, but I could still hear him making moaning
noises.

I knew that it would have been easier to kill him.
Then I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. But I couldn’t
handle doing that. He didn’t deserve that. And I didn’t think even
Silas would have done that.

Of course, Silas sometimes did things…

But only if he had to protect me. Or maybe Christa.
Or maybe Griffin and Leigh. He wasn’t cold-blooded. He was my
brother. If he did bad things, it was only when he had no
choice.

And I had a choice. I could hide Jeff in my motel
room.

I’d go back to the other hotel tomorrow and
officially checkout. We were all registered there, under our names
and with our credit cards and everything, which was bad, now that
I’d kidnapped someone and was holding him against his will. I
needed to be flying under the radar as much as possible. So, I’d
paid for the motel room in cash.

Once I got him inside, I took him to the bathroom,
and I locked him in there. I didn’t take the gag off, because I was
afraid he’d start making a lot of noise and drawing attention to
me.

That done, I sat down on the bed in the room. It was
a pretty crappy little hotel. The bedspread was was this horrible
puke green color. The TV was like something from two decades
ago.

I lay back and looked up at the ceiling. There was a
brown water stain spreading out over it. Great.

My phone rang.

Silas? Had they managed to get free?

I answered it.

“Sloane, where is he?” said a female voice.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Christa, damn it. Now why the hell isn’t Silas
answering his phone?”

Shit. I rubbed my face. “Um, Christa, we might have a
little bit of a situation here.”

“A situation? What does that mean? I’ve been trying
to call him for hours. He promised me that he would check in. But
every time I call him, it just goes right to voicemail.”