Tanner's Scheme (14 page)

She could feel the rock biting into her knees as she tried to find her feet, only to collapse again as her legs refused to hold her up.

It was fear, that was all, she told herself frantically. Her mind had been screwed with too many times, the dark used against her in too many ways. She had survived it then without giving away her secrets; she could do it now. She was stronger than this, she told herself. She could survive this.

But she knew her father’s weaknesses. She had no idea how far Tanner would go, or if he would even return. He could have left her there to die in the dark. To smother in her own fears.

“Tanner, don’t do this to me,” she screamed, shuddering, feeling the chill of the air wrap around her. It was cold. So cold.

It was too dark. She had to find light. There had to be light here somewhere. Appliances. Where was she in the room? Where were the appliances?

Inhaling roughly, she tried to push back the fear. It took what seemed forever, each second filled with the sound of her heart thudding and her gasping breaths.

She could do this. This was a cavern; it wasn’t a coffin. All she had to do was get her bearings.

Still kneeling on the rough floor, she reached out around her, feeling the stone slowly. Methodically. She had to take this a step at a time. She had to be patient.

She was whimpering. She heard her own panicked gasps as her hands found the footboard of the bed. Okay. She was at the bottom of the bed.

She knew this cavern. She had spent days pacing it off, getting to know her territory. All she had to do was make her way across the room to the counter. There was a light inside the dishwasher.

She looked around desperately, realizing that the digital light that had been on the dishwasher before was no longer there.

There was no power.

No power.

“Oh God, Tanner, please don’t do this to me.” She couldn’t scream now. Her voice was weak, and she hated the pleading sound of her voice.

She was not going to do this! Scheme clenched her fists as she bent over, pressing her clenched fingers into her stomach as she fought to hold back the bile boiling there.

She wasn’t going to be sick either.

She should have known she couldn’t trust him. She had been close though, so close to considering it. He had seemed so concerned, so furious for her sake that Chaz had tried to kill her.

And as she had suspected, it was all an act. Just an act. A trick to get the information her father wanted. He needed to know what was on that fax. He had worked decades for that information.

“I don’t know anything.” She keened before slapping her hands over her mouth to hold back the sobbing pleas. She had stopped begging years ago. She had learned to accept that her father was a rabid psychopath; no amount of pleas would change whatever he had planned for her. And no amount of pleas would change whatever Tanner had planned.

But she did know something. She knew too much. She knew David Lyons, Callan Lyons’s son, would be kidnapped. She knew that the first Leo still lived and where he could be found. She knew the rumors of the Breeds mating rather than just loving were true. She knew enough to ensure that her father faced Breed law rather than just federal law.

She couldn’t breathe. Her hands moved from her lips to her throat as she gasped for breath.

It was so dark. She rocked forward slowly, fighting to hold on to her composure as she felt the coffin surrounding her, smelled the scent of her own fear and urine around her.

It wasn’t real. Her hands swiped out around her desperately. There was no coffin. Just a cavern. And there was an exit somewhere.

And Tanner would be back. He would wait, wait until she was completely hysterical before he came back. He would try to soothe her. To make it better. Then while she was weak, broken, he would ask her questions. He would probe.

She didn’t try to stop the tears from falling. She was fucking terrified; hysteria wasn’t that far away—there was no way to fight that. She knew her weakness, and so did her father.

The dark. Complete darkness, restraint, though at least this time her hands and feet weren’t tied. She was mobile. Hysterical, but mobile.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You son of a bitch. You think burying me alive is going to get you something I don’t have to give?”

She laughed. The sound was sharp, desperate and disintegrated into sobs.

She really, really hated the dark.

———

Tanner dropped from the opening in the tunnel’s ceiling before reaching up and pulling the stone cover carefully back into place.

The lights blinked on, activated by the motion sensors hidden in the stone, providing a faint glow to light the way through the tunnels.

The motion-activated lights allowed for greater freedom of movement as well as an early warning system if the tunnels were ever breached.

Small pinpoints of warning activation would now be lighting through every tunnel, cavern and cave that Callan had wired. The tiny red sensors would emit a pulse of sound, similar to a hum of electricity.

He flipped open the panel at the side of the wall; the fake stone hid a small digital keypad that he punched his password into automatically. The hum would evaporate and the cavern’s motion-activated lights would flip on as he made his way to the main cavern.

Scheme was obviously still sleeping. He had left the sensors active there when he left. If she had awakened and gotten out of the bed, the lights would flip on. Once she got into the bed, they would dim and within an hour extinguish, just as the lights and television had the night before.

He had just spent longer than he would have liked fielding several very heavy suggestions from Callan Lyons that he return to oversee any potentially harmful media that arose from the disappearance of one Scheme Victoria Tallant.

That middle name never failed to make his lips quirk, whether in disgust or amusement he was never certain.

As he turned to the next tunnel, Tanner paused, a growl rumbling in his throat at the sound of an almost animalistic keening echoing from the cavern.

There was no way anyone could have invaded the caverns without him knowing. Jerking the electronic remote to the sensors from the holder at his side, Tanner deactivated the automatic lights before crouching and moving quickly toward the main chambers.

He could smell terror, thick and cloying. Scheme’s terror.

The small, guttural sounds of uncontrolled hysteria sliced through his soul and brought the Bengal lurking just beneath the surface to violent life. Tanner could feel his lips peeling back in a silent snarl as he tested the air, but found no scent other than Scheme and her terror.

His night vision picked up the area, if not perfectly, then with enough clarity to be certain no enemies were lurking or waiting for him.

A frown pulled at his brow as he slid silently into the cavern.

“I don’t know anything,” she sobbed. “Please. Please turn the lights on. Please, Tanner…” Her weeping was strained, exhausted. Hysterical.

“Scheme?” Tanner moved quickly across the room, finding her huddled in the middle of the cavern floor, naked, her hair and arms wrapped around her body as she curled on the cold stone defensively.

Kneeling next to her, he reached for her, his fingers curling around her arms when she erupted.

Clawed fingers raked his cheek as her cry shattered his senses. There was no sanity in that cry. There was only pain, fear and the need to escape.

“Scheme.” He gripped her wrists, jerking her to him, trying to hold on to her as she fought like a wildcat. One small fist found the side of his head, her knee came impossibly close to his sensitive balls.

Fractured sobs echoed around him as he restrained her. He wrapped his arms around her from the back, locking her to his chest as one powerful arm held her and the other reached for the button of the remote at his side.

Soft, gentle light filled the room as she suddenly stilled. And then he got his first look at her face.

Deathly pale, her brown eyes nearly black, her face streaked with tears. The sight of it was heartbreaking. Enraging. This was not a normal reaction to being caught in the dark.

“I don’t know anything,” she cried again as he allowed her to jerk away from him, rising quickly to his feet as she stumbled back to the bed. “Leaving me in the dark won’t change that.”

“You think I left you in the dark to punish you?” he asked her slowly, grief filling his soul at the implications of her hysteria.

“Didn’t you?” Her voice was shaking, hoarse, as she jerked the quilt from the bed and wrapped it around her shuddering body. “The lights wouldn’t come on. There was no power to the appliances.” She was gasping, fighting for breath as she tightened her hold on the quilt and moved to the bottom of the bed. “Do you really think it’s going to work?” she screamed, her expression twisting painfully.

“Think what is going to work?” He wanted her in his arms. He couldn’t bear to see the remnants of terror that filled her expression.

“Do you think turning the lights off here is worse than being tied hand and foot in a fucking coffin? You son of a bitch, you don’t have a clue.”

Rage, uncontained, filled with pain, fear, with the resounding echo of horror, filled her voice and filled Tanner’s soul.

“Someone buried you alive?” It was all he could do to keep his voice calm, to keep the outrage and fury out of his voice.

Her laugh was bitter, cynical. “Oh, really, Tanner. You’ve investigated me. Watched me. For how long? Were you watching me the last time I disappeared for a few days?”

He had been. He nodded slowly.

“Would you like to know where I was?” Her voice was low, guttural.

“You were at your father’s estate,” he said. “You stayed a week.”

“I was buried alive in a coffin, in my father’s basement, because my profile of his favorite Coyote was weak. The Coyote was spying on Father for the Breeds and got away with it. I paid for it. Or did you already know that, Tanner? Tell me, did you know the punishment I would receive when Cyrus found out your Coyote was working for you?”

His hand clenched at his side. That had been his decision, placing the Coyote in Tallant’s camp, using him to gain information not just on Tallant, but on Scheme. But this wasn’t in that Coyote’s report.

“For three days, Tanner,” she snarled. “I was locked in a coffin, my hands and feet tied while a goddamned electronic voice counted down the hours of oxygen I had left.”

The animal inside him roared in rage. A rage so black, so violent, he had to restrain the need to leave, to go hunting for the bastard who would dare to do something so evil to her.

“He took me out two minutes after my oxygen expired,” she said. “You left me air. You can’t die if you can breathe.”

You can die of sorrow, Tanner thought grimly as he felt grief well inside his soul. And he was ready to expire from it.

“The lights are on motion sensors with a remote backup.” He stared around the room, seeing the tangled blankets trailing over the side of the bed, their disarray indicating that she had fallen, or stumbled, from the bed. “Once you move from the bed and actually stand up, they come on. You have to stand up.”

She stumbled again; obviously shuddering so hard she could barely stand.

Fuck this. She was shaking like a leaf, adrenaline and terror still racing through her. He could smell her refusal for comfort, her distrust of him, and that was just too fucking bad.

He had to hold her. If he didn’t hold her he was going to break apart himself.

“Don’t you touch me.” She fought him. He had known she would.

Lifting her into his arms, Tanner ignored her struggles as he wrestled her to the couch, sat down, then pulled her into his lap.

“It’s okay, Scheme,” he whispered against her hair. “It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t need you to comfort me, cat,” she spat furiously. “I don’t need you to touch me at all.”

Tanner tightened his arms around her, burying his face in her hair as he forced back the snarl that tugged at his lips.

God help him, he wanted to kill. He wanted to gut her father and watch him bleed for what he had done to her. The hunger to kill was almost overwhelming, but stronger was the need to hold on to her, to calm the scent of terror still emanating from her.

If he didn’t, then the beast was going to break free, and if it ever broke his control, then it might never be reined in again.

“Maybe I’m the one that needs comforting,” he growled into her hair. “I’m sorry, Scheme…”

“I don’t need your platitudes.” Her fists clenched tighter, the muscles of her wrists tensing further as he held on to them.

The fact that she wasn’t fighting him hurt. Deep inside, in places he hadn’t known existed within himself. She was just sitting in his embrace, unresponsive, fighting to distance herself.

“I don’t have platitudes.” He buried his face deeper in her hair, inhaling the scent of peaches and of fear. He had to get rid of that scent of fear. “I don’t have excuses.” His lips brushed her ear. “It will never happen again.”

“I survived. I always survive.” She jerked her head to the side, and he had no choice but to follow. His lips grazed her neck, and for less than a second, he smelled her response.

“You always survive,” he whispered against her ear. “It was your father’s favorite mode of punishment, burying Breeds alive. He released you. He never released a Breed.”

A low, keening moan left her lips as her head lowered and a tear dropped to his arm.

“You survived, Scheme,” he whispered. “For this.”

———

Long, rough fingers touched her cheek, turning her face to him as Scheme felt the regret, remorse, the destructive emotions that always came with the knowledge that she had survived. She had survived when so many had died.

“I have always survived. Even death.” She stared into his eyes, gold and green, shifting with lust, rage and undefined emotions.

She fought back the sobs that wanted to escape, that wanted to break from the self-imposed exile she had placed them in so many years before. “Sometimes, it’s the only way to succeed. Sometimes, failure
is
an option, Tanner.”