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I felt his fingertips dig into my back ever so slightly when he said the words. He was — comforting me? At least, that’s what he was intending to do, but it was just weird for someone who didn’t want to be touched by another Executioner as long as my life went on.
I stood there and watched in horror until the moment that Jersey snapped, and his body thrashed up out of that chair like something otherworldly had taken over his movements. I jumped again when I was suddenly a little concerned that he was actually about to break his own arms to try to escape those restraints. Memphis sniffled about the same time that I started to just fucking sob while the video went on for entirely too long.
“Neither of you need to watch this,” Utah said quietly. “Just turn it that way and I’ll watch it.”
Neither Memphis nor I said anything but we both shook our heads. Jersey was enduring this on behalf of both of us. I didn’t really know Memphis well enough to think I could speak for her, but I absolutely felt like I needed to be part of this with him in any way that I could. Right through watching Bryson free Jersey’s nearly limp wrists to have two other people toss him into the corner of what looked like a room that was nothing but concrete. And the camera zoomed in on them from where it was across the room to show Bryce take a hammer and some giant fucking nails right over to Jersey. The two other men held him by the arms while Bryce put one of Jersey’s feet where he wanted it on the floor just to drive one of those big ass nails right through the top of his foot. I closed my eyes and hung my head when he moved to the other foot.
“Can’t have you going anywhere,” Bryson said to Jersey, who looked nearly lifeless by that point. His whole body looked like it was shivering, but his eyes weren’t open anymore. And the moment that the other two men released his arms, he slumped to the side against the wall. Bryce came back to the camera to tell us that we could end this much faster for him if we just went to Nate’s house. If we wanted to prevent this from getting worse for Jersey, all we had to do was say we were heading that way and they’d stop.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
trista
Memphis closed that window on the screen as soon as the video ended. Utah pulled the stool beside Memphis out away from the island and gently pushed me toward it to get me to sit next to her. Then he just waited, with more patience than I imagined any man ever having, while Memphis and I tried to get our emotions back under control about what we’d just watched.
“Everybody still there?” Indy asked through Memphis’ phone.
“Hush,” Utah said instantly. He paced around to the other side of the island to lean back against the countertop on the far wall to just wait.
“What now?” I asked, looking straight at Utah for some unknown-to-me reason. He looked from me to Memphis and back to me again.
“If you want our help, I need to know what this is,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I said and shook my head.
“We’ve all heard The Retirement rumors. We’ve all got our own theories about what happened, about who you might be,” he said. “What’s the real story?”
I hesitated and looked at Memphis. She knew exactly what I was asking her.
“Everything,” she said quietly. “Just tell them everything. We’re going to need them.”
Everybody stayed terribly silent while I told them about Jersey snatching me out of that motel in Washington all the way through meeting Utah earlier today.
“I’m not interested in that part so much as I am what came before all that,” Utah said. “Who are you to the President? And don’t just tell me you’re his stepdaughter. That’s not helpful.”
“She had another stepbrother who did terrible things to her,” Memphis spoke up quickly. “Things a young girl shouldn’t just have to live with. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she killed him, and she ran. You can’t ask people for details when it comes to things like that. She broke down part of the President’s weapon organization to cause enough of a distraction for her to get out. He’s pissed. He wants her back. That torturous demon,” she waved a hand at her laptop, “has been after her for years because he just wants to kill her himself.”
Utah looked from Memphis back to me. We both noticed how upset she sounded about a story that wasn’t hers. He chewed on his bottom lip for a second while he stared at me, like there was a moment of concern that maybe we were just fucking with him to get him to go along with what we needed. It was easy to imagine that everyone who worked in a business like theirs would be suspicious of every other human they ever encountered.
“Jersey asked me to find everything that I could about the President,” Memphis said. “So, I did. But I didn’t get the chance to tell him that I started by looking at his own life. Indy and I talked about this some already. It was the only way that I could convince him to send you to help us,” she said and nodded to Utah. “I don’t know what awful backgrounds you guys came from, but I know what happened to me to get me into this organization. And I know what happened to Jersey. I’m wildly uncomfortable telling his story to all of you, but if it means you’ll help us get him out of there, so be it.”
She stopped for a second to lean forward with her elbows on the countertop and laced her fingers together in front of her mouth. Utah stepped back up to his side of the island to put his hands on it and lean forward. He was studying every move she made, like some sixth sense would spring up to tell him if she was lying or putting on a show.
“I’m listening,” he said, so gently that it almost made my heart hurt.
“I think the President played a significant role in getting all of us into his organization. And I don’t mean he just sought us out because we were broken people who needed work. I mean, Jersey’s wife, his daughter, and his parents were killed,” Memphis said and paused. I stood from the stool in a heartbeat and started pacing around at the way that she’d worded that.
“The story that was told was that his wife, who already had a history mental health problems, finally snapped the last time that he was deployed and that she killed all of them before she killed herself. But when you look as hard as humanly possible into what happened, there’s just no way that’s how it went. I haven’t found what I need to feel like I can prove that yet, but I will. I think the President sent someone to murder his family with the intent to send Jersey’s life into a pit where he had nothing and no one, and he was in a prime position to accept a fucked up job with other fucked up people. Us.”
How Utah didn’t even react to her words blew my fucking mind, because I felt like somebody dropped a damned anchor directly on my chest. He glanced in my direction while I paced back and forth like a crazy person, trying to breathe and failing miserably. At some point, I’d started crying again? I think I almost pulled some of my own hair out. And it shouldn’t have even been that surprising. Nate was a terrible human. The worst kind, even. I already knew that. He spawned small versions of himself and raised them into extra antichrists to do his bidding. It should’ve been blatantly obvious that he’d destroy lives just to manipulate people into his employment. He’d end lives to manipulate people into his employment. Not even a four-year-old little girl would be off limits to a man who had no soul. And no doubt Jersey had spent all this time being pissed at his wife for doing such a thing, pissed at himself for being gone while it happened. God, I still couldn’t breathe.
“She have anxiety?” Utah asked Memphis and nodded toward me.
“I’d say she does right now,” Memphis said.
He chuckled and chased me down to stand in front of me, but he was blurry. Like his body was somehow vibrating. He grabbed both my wrists and put my palms flat against his chest and then he moved his hands to hold onto my elbows. His mouth was moving, and he looked at me like he was expecting me to say something back to him, but I hadn’t actually heard anything he said. Everything in my head sounded like the deafening white noise of rushing water. I could very easily imagine it was the sound of my blood coursing through my body with the fury of hurricane, because that’s what it felt like was happening.
“What’s your name?” He asked. I heard that one. But he knew my name?
