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“I don’t know. He just will.”
“That’s it? You must have some idea.”
“No, I really don’t. He’s smart, he’s determined, he’s got resources, he cares about me. He’ll find us.” How can she not understand that he’s listening to us? Just because there’s no camera visible doesn’t mean that it isn’t here. A man like him would be watching us constantly.
“So you don’t know shit!” Heather’s voice rises, shrill and angry. “Damn it, Tamara! I’m here because of you! This is your fault! Tell me how he’s going to save us, tell me! I need to know what he’ll do to get us out of here!”
I make myself sit up, very slowly and painfully, so I can turn to face her. My back screams as I brace myself on the bed. I put my finger to my lips and tap my ear, to tell her to be quiet because we’re being spied on.
“Why are you telling me to be quiet?” she screams. “He’s not in here! Tell me how the hell Joshua will get us out, tell me, tell me, tell me!”
Months of living with Joshua have toughened me up considerably. Once I would have agreed with her, and I would have wept and tortured myself with guilt over what’s happening to her. Now I’m much less patient and I’m nobody’s emotional punching bag.
“Heather. It’s not my fault that Micah is a fucking lunatic. It’s not my fault he kidnapped you. And I’m not going to talk to you unless you calm down and lower your voice.”
In response, she glares at me and starts screaming wordlessly at the top of her lungs. She’s gone completely over the edge.
Very carefully and slowly, I turn my back to her and lie down on the bed again. Eventually, she runs out of breath. Then after a while, she starts crying, big gulping, heaving sobs.
“I’m sorry,” she wails. “I’m sorry. I know I’m acting crazy. I don’t have access to my meds here, and I’m going fucking crazy. You don’t know what he’s done to me. I’m so scared, Tamara. I’m scared all the time. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I tell her gently. “I’m going to try to sleep.” I close my eyes. The pills are starting to take effect again. Weariness sweeps over me, and I struggle to fall back to sleep again. I know that Joshua will tear the world apart to find Micah, but after this morning’s session, I wonder if I’ll still be alive when he gets here.
CHAPTERSIX
JOSHUA
It’s been six days. I’m woozy from lack of sleep, and from the effort of maintaining my focus, a task that was once as effortless as breathing.
I’ve relocated to California, to a very expensive and isolated rental home in Mendocino County. I’m expecting some guests, and while I wait, I’m searching through property records. Carter is here too. He’s taken a leave of absence from work and is staying half an hour away at a hotel I’m paying for.
It’s just as well that he’s not staying with me. Carter wouldn’t approve of my guests.
I desperately hope I’m in the right place. Carter managed to identify Charlemagne’s rental car, the one he drove out of the parking garage in Boston after he ditched his van. He gave me the information, and I hacked into traffic cameras and traced the car to a private airport in upstate New York.
Garrett kidnapped the owner of the airport and brought him to me, and I cut pieces off him until he told me where the airplane went. Northern California, where the Blackthorne Institute is located. Where Dr. Barnard and his family live. Apparently Charlemagne has been flying back and forth between Northern California and New York every week for the last six months.
Finding this out took time. Two days. Time I don’t have.
Every morning I get videos from Charlemagne. He’s killing her bit by bit. Killing her spirit, her hope, her soul.
This morning I got one that showed him cutting his initials into the bruised flesh of her chest with a box cutter. He’s using the initials MS—apparently he’s taken on the new name Micah Smith. That’s what he announced when he started cutting. “Property of Micah Smith,” he said from behind that mask. Tears leaked from her eyes and ran down her cheeks, and she sobbed, making horrible, hopeless noises. She’s as white as a ghost, with dark circles under her eyes.
He’s sent me videos of himself branding his initials into her left butt cheek. Raping her anally. Whipping her until she passes out.
Thanks to a lifetime’s worth of brutal self-denial of my feelings, I don’t even break a sweat as I watch. My heartbeat actually drops a little. An observer who didn’t know better would think I was watching a corporate training video. But there’s a part of me that’s an enraged, screaming animal, torn away from its mate. I am still walling that part of me away for now, but it’s coming at a cost. I can feel it. I spent an entire lifetime of moving through life fueled only by anger and revenge and lust. Now I realize that many other emotions were living inside me the whole time, raging and hurling themselves against the prison bars of my mind.
Sorrow. Terrible grief at the loss of my mother and my brothers, at the loss of the childhood we never had.
Burning, corroding hatred of my father.
Tamara’s kidnapping broke some kind of dam inside me. All those emotions are bubbling up like hot lava. It is taking more and more mental effort to keep them suppressed, and soon there will be a reckoning. An explosion that will tear me apart.
But to save Tamara, I need to keep those emotions locked away, because I must think with a clear head. Panic and rage are not useful to me; those emotions cloud the senses and muddy the thinking. Until she’s safe, the bad feelings and dangerous thoughts will stay right where they need to, festering in a toxic sludge that’s eroding my sanity.
My heartbeat is speeding up.
No.
