“Officer Packwood gave me Dr. Terry’s number.”
Her skills in ignorance are top-notch. She continues talking as if I never interrupted her for the second time without a single hiccup. “Then you didn’t call for help after you ‘defended’ yourself against a police officer you believed was a rapist.”
“I didn’t ‘believe’ anything. He tried t-to rape me.” Confident I still have the truth on my side, I say, “They were wearing balaclavas. They did this to me.” I wave my hand over my bruised face and hacked hand.
“Allegedly,” Agent Machini replies, her tone as low as my mood. “With no bodies and no witnesses, it will be your word against the forensic officers who worked alongside Officer Tarrant and Gailter every single day, and let’s not forget the DA who turns a blind eye for the right amount of money.” Her eyes bounce between mine. They’re kind as suspected earlier, but I can’t say they are nice. They’re gutting me too much to ever compliment them. “I’m not trying to scare you, Demi. I simply want you to know what you are walking toward.”
Air whizzes out of my nose when I huff out my frustration. “Why would they do this? W-What benefit would they get from arresting me?”
I answer my question before Agent Machini can.
Maddox. They want me arrested so they can continue to puppeteer Maddox.
Since we only met in passing over a year ago, Agent Machini doesn’t know me well enough to notice when I’m giving in. She continues chipping away at my seemingly hard exterior. “They want to use your incarceration so they can manipulate Maddox more than they already are, and no matter how hard he fights, he won’t be able to escape their clutches because he’d rather walk through hell a thousand times than see you knock on its door once.” As she steps closer to me, the angst on her face is replaced with understanding. “I get that you’re worried about hurting him, Demi, but if you truly looked at him, you’d know he’s already hurting. They are killing him. They’re just doing it in an extremely slow and painful manner.”
Tears flood my eyes when my head replays the video she showed me earlier. Maddox’s cheeks aren’t as gaunt as they were his first month of incarceration, but there’s no denying he’s lost as much weight the past three days as I have. His eyes are sunken, and I can barely see a speckle of blue in them. He is hurting—badly—and once again, I’m responsible for his pain.
“Prove how much you love him, Demi. Protect him as fiercely as he has you.” Agent Machini silently commands my eyes to hers. When she gets them, she pledges, “If you do that, I promise never to stop fighting for him. I will work tirelessly on his case until the truth is exposed, and he is free. You have my word.”
Her promise should mean nothing to me. I’ve been issued them a dozen times before, and very rarely have they been upheld. But she has honest eyes like Maddox and empathy by the bucketloads. Then there’s the fact that every word she spoke was the God’s honest truth. The man I love is dying before my very eyes, but instead of doing whatever I can to fix the tumor leeching him of his soul, I’m encouraging its sucks.
I’m killing Maddox.
I’m destroying the man I love because I put my own selfish needs before his.
So Ineed to be the one who breaks promises to stop it from continuing.
After wiping my hands over my cheeks to dry them, I ask, “Can we tell him about o-our plans?”
I shouldn’t have bothered fixing my face. A new flood of tears threatens to bombard my cheeks when Agent Machini shakes her head. “We need his grief to be real, Demi. If it isn’t, we will hurt him for no reason.”
I understand what she’s saying, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“Can I at least say goodbye?” The last time we spoke, we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. I don’t want that to be his last memory of me.
The absolute despair in my stomach gets a moment of reprieve when she lifts her chin after only a couple of seconds of deliberation. “Give me your word you’ll fully support me with this, and I’ll guarantee your final hours together will be explosive.”
Although I’m certain there’s more to her comment than she’s letting on, I lift my chin. When you’re drowning, you don’t get picky with life jackets. Even if it isn’t ideal, you take the first one thrown. I’m drowning. I just refuse to continue pulling Maddox under the murky waters with me.
24
Maddox
“Ifollowed the script.” When Warden Mattue’s jaw twitches in preparation to deny my claim, I scream, “I followed the fucking script to the wire! I told him every lie written on that fucking sheet of paper.” I point to the crumbled piece of paper the warden ripped out of my hand a nanosecond before he raced out of his office like his ass was on fire. “I did as you asked.”
“There was no mention of Demi on any part of the dossier.”
I work my jaw side to side while shifting on my feet to face Agent Moses, the interrupter. He rocked up at the hole hours after Dimitri left, acting as if he didn’t have a front-row seat to our earlier festivities. His act would have been more convincing if I didn’t hear his ramblings during my guided walk back to the hole. He was pissed he had lost a bargaining chip in his endeavor to rule the underworld. I was relieved.
“I know… but Warden Mattue gave me free rein. His terms, which I’m reasonably sure you’re aware of since you’ve got nothing better to do than listen in on our conversations, was that I was not to mention you, him, or the operation you’re running out of Wallens Ridge at any time.” I hold my hands out palm side up, all pompous like. “I didexactlyas asked.”
“You’re a fool, Ox—”
“Why? Because I found a way to stop you using Demi to manipulate me?” I don’t give him the chance to answer. I step right up close to him until our chests compete for space. “I’m not playing your games anymore, Arrow. To get to me, you’ll need Demi. You can’t get to her without going through Dimitri, and we both know you won’t do that because you’re too much of a coward.”
Like a fool with no wish to live, he laughs in my face. “You saved yourself by handing the safety of your girlfriend to the man who almost killed her, yet you call me a coward?”
I’m about to scoff at his claims, but the blown-up surveillance photographs he shoves into my chest freeze both my words and my heart. The first image is of the canister I saw on the vanity sink in the cabin. It’s behind Demi’s three positive pregnancy tests. The second zooms in to reveal Demi’s name printed on the label, and the third shows the pills inside. They’re not the size nor shape of a vitamin tablet. They look remarkably similar to the images my google search popped up when I put misoprostol into the search bar alongside Dr. Franklin’s name.
