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I reach for the paper and read over it. Barbiturates. Ketamine. PCP. Xanax. Some drugs that I can barely even pronounce or have ever heard of. I shake my head. “You gave me something,” I frown.
“We gave you a fast acting sedative that wouldn’t show up in any tests after forty-eight hours. That’s why we use it.”
“So?” I peer down the list. “Ketamine? That’s a hallucinogenic, right?”
“Hallucinogens can also make you more susceptible to suggestion,” Conor says.
“You’re saying I’ve been drugged?”
“That’s what the results say,” Shane replies. “Unless you took them willingly?”
“I don’t do drugs,” I snap. “And besides, this could be falsified. How do I know I’m not drugged now and you’re making this shit up to confuse me?”
Shane lets out a long breath and shakes his head. “Forget the drugs then. Why would we hand you over to the Wolf, Jessie? Discounting the fact that he has disappeared and nobody has a clue where he is, I offered you your freedom, remember? The car and the money and you told me to stick it up my ass.”
I stare at him because I don’t know how to respond. None of this makes any sense. Except that it does, doesn’t it? The zavarka in the car on the way to Connecticut. All of the tea and soup I was constantly given to make me feel better when I assumed I was coming down with the flu. Shit! The rational part of my brain is telling me that it all makes perfect sense, but I’m not ready to acknowledge it just yet.
“We put your fingerprints in our system. You weren’t a fucking prisoner here. We made you one of us. Why the hell would we do any of that? And selling you? In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got plenty of money already,” Shane snaps.
Tears run down my cheeks as my brain forces me to confront the reality of what has been going on for the past week.
“Did you think that everything we did and told you was a lie?” Conor asks.
I look up at him through tear-filled eyes. “Did you?” I sniff. “Because you were just as quick to assume I was working with the Russians.”
He sits back in his chair and runs a hand over his jaw and all four of them stare at me as my world comes crashing down around my ears once again.
“All I know is my father was standing in front of me, asking me to go with him and telling me that I was in danger and you were betraying me. I was confused. I…” I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s not your father, Jessie,” Shane says again.
“Then who is he?” I say. “Because he looks just like him. He has the same voice. He even feels like him.”
“Red,” Mikey says softly and suddenly, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.
“My brothers were twins.” I put my head in my hands. “They run in my family and I still didn’t think. I just saw his face. And he was so convincing. He swore he was my father.”
“Perhaps he is?” Shane suggests. “Just not the one you know.”
“So you’re not planning to hand me over to the Wolf?”
“We’re not planning on handing you over to anyone, Angel,” Conor says, and my heart starts beating so quickly that it feels like it might burst out of my chest.
I sit there, blinking at them as tears stream down my face. I don’t even know what to say or where to begin, but I don’t have to, as the sound of an alarm pierces the air.
“Shit! We got company,” Conor shouts as Liam and Mikey jump up and go to open the huge safe on the wall.
“Looks like your daddy has come to take you home, Hacker,” Shane raises an eyebrow at me.
“Then you’d better give me one of those guns,” I say as I wipe the tears from my face and nod toward the array of weapons that Mikey has started laying on the table.
“Not a chance,” he shakes his head, but Liam tosses me one anyway and winks at his older brother.
“If she wanted to shoot you in the head, she’d have done it weeks ago,” Liam grins.
“You know how to use that thing?” Conor asks.
“Sure do,” I reply.
