I sit on the bed and wait.
To distract myself from any stray thoughts that could put me off the task at hand—thoughts of Connor, for instance, and what he’s doing right now—I start a list in my head. All the US presidents in alphabetical order by last name.
I’m up to Taft when the steel door slides quietly open to reveal a corridor beyond.
Holding on to a post for support, I stand. It’s risky business. The floor swims; the walls waver. When my head finally clears, I release the post and cross the room, careful as an old woman with brittle bones navigating a steep flight of stairs. At the edge of the corridor, I pause and look inside. It’s utterly black, black as midnight at the bottom of the ocean. Light from the room permeates only a few feet in. I see a few feet of floor, glossy as obsidian, and nothing more.
A twinge of panic sends my pulse into double-time.
You’ve come this far, Tabby. Nine years and not a single whiff of him, and now the bastard is within your sights. You can almost touch him. You can’t falter now.
I steel my nerves and step into the corridor. Instantly, the panel closes behind me. I’m engulfed in darkness.
Until I take another step forward.
When I do, blue lights blink on with a subtle electronic snick in the floor beneath my foot. I freeze, looking around. I’m in a tunnel about eight feet tall and six feet wide, stretching out perhaps one hundred feet in front of me. The walls and ceiling are the same bare rock as the room I woke up in. The only light is the blue glow beneath my left foot. I carefully take another step forward, and another square of light appears beneath my right foot.
“Pressure-sensitive LED lights,” I murmur admiringly. “Clever.”
“Thank you.” Clear and cultured, Søren’s voice emanates through the walls.
Unnerved by the sound of his voice, I freeze. When I’m steady enough to speak, I say, “Let me guess. There are hidden cameras in here too.”
“The better to see you with, my dear.”
The laughter in his voice fans a spark of anger inside me. I pull myself to my full height, square my shoulders, lift my chin. “You’re not the big bad wolf in this fairy tale, Søren. You’re the little bitch in the red cape who’s about to get eaten for dinner.”
Silence. Then, with distaste, “You know how much I dislike cursing.”
“Yes. Which is the reason I developed such a dedicated habit of it. I also remember how much you hate being mocked. You didn’t like it when I stabbed you either, did you?”
“Such bravado for a woman armed with nothing more than a vicious tongue.”
His voice is hard now. I’ve angered him.
Good. When he’s angry, he makes mistakes.
I move carefully down the tunnel. The LEDs flicker on and off under my feet as I walk, leaving a ghostly trail of light in my wake. “No armed guards to escort me? That’s quite the dangerous oversight, Søren, considering the last time we saw each other I vowed to kill you. And I will, you know.”
“We’ll see.”
His voice has changed again. There’s a smugness to it that makes me uneasy, a secret in his tone. If Søren has a secret, it doesn’t bode well for me.
At the end of the corridor, I encounter another steel door. There are no mechanics visible, no handle or keypad or optical scanner that might make it open.
So I say, “Open sesame.”
“Going with sarcasm, are we?”
“In my experience, it can crack almost anything.”
Søren chuckles. “Say please.”
He draws the word out to two syllables, singsong style, the emphasis on the first syllable. PLEEEEE-ease.
Pretending that didn’t make all the hair on my arms stand on end, I say, “Oh, excuse me. Where are my manners? Please, you motherfucking cocksucking son of a Dutch whore.”
Blistering silence. Then, softly, “Every time you curse, Tabitha, it’s ten lashings. And if you bring my mother into our conversation again, I’ll be forced to employ the branding iron.”
My pulse ticks up several notches. “Really. And here I thought you’d never harm me. At least that’s what you promised. Do you remember?”
“Like it was yesterday. I had a rather large knife protruding from my chest at the moment. A knife you, darling sister—”
“Half sister.”
“—put there. I promised I’d never harm you, and that I’d always be watching over you, so that if you were ever in peril, I’d be there.” His voice warms. “A promise you must admit I’ve fulfilled quite spectacularly.”
I say sourly, “Try not to break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
“But you knew I’d come for you, didn’t you? You knew I’d come.”
His voice echoes around me, filling my ears, filling my body, staining me from skin to marrow. Yes, I knew he’d come. He might be a criminal, a murderer, and a complete psychopath, but he is a man of his word.
“That does raise the question, however.”
“Hmm?”
“The Bank of America job? That did me some harm.”
His laugh is indulgent. “Don’t be ridiculous. That was a minor inconvenience that made you stronger in the end. I did you a favor, Tabitha. I taught you what bumbling incompetents are running the circus.”
I snap, “It taught me not to trust anyone. Along with everything else you did.”
“Which is the greatest gift I could ever give you. Trust is for children and fools. We are neither.”
With a sharp pain in my chest like a knife twisting, I recall Connor’s words.
“Trust is better than anything else.”
That memory makes me miss him with a feral ache. But he’s not here, and I have to stop thinking about him or I won’t be able to do what needs to be done. I won’t be able to put one foot in front of the other if I think too long about the possibility that I’ll never see him again.
Søren says, “What we have is stronger than trust, Tabitha. It can never be broken. We have blood. We’re family—”
“You murdered my family!” I say suddenly, loudly, the words unexpectedly raw in my throat. My head is finally clear, and fury has arrived along with the clarity. But I have to control it, or I’ll lose my edge. And when Søren is involved, losing an edge means losing everything.
I drag in a deep breath, let it out, do it again and again, ignoring the trembling in my hands.
“I set you free,” he says gently, as if by killing everyone I loved, he’d done me a great kindness.
My hands stop shaking and curl to fists. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. You know why I’m here.”
“You’re here to kill me,” his disembodied voice replies, matter-of-fact. “Or at least that’s why you think you’re here. But how will you justify it to yourself? You’ll have blood on your hands. Won’t my death make you just like me?”
“I’m nothing like you.”
He sighs. “Your relentless denial bores me. You’re exactly like me, Tabitha. If you’d only embrace your true nature—”
All at once my patience snaps, and I’m shouting. “Open this fucking door!”
“Now, now,” he scolds lightly. “That’s another ten lashes.”
“I’m not afraid of your threats, Søren! I told you nine years ago that eventually I’d finish what I started, no matter how long you tried to hide! You’re a rabid dog who needs to be put down! You could whip me a thousand times and I’d still find a way to kill you!”
That smug, silken laughter again, stoking my rage. “Oh, dear sister. I never said I was talking about whipping you.”
On silent tracks, the steel door slides open. What I see on the other side makes me gasp in shock.
“No,” I whisper, realizing too late what he means.
Thirty-Four
Tabby
The cave the tunnel opens into is vast, the ceiling so high above it’s wreathed in shadow. The walls are bare rock, rough-hewn and craggy, a dark gray color veined with pale mineral dep
osits that glimmer in the dim light. The floor is made of the same rock, polished to a mirror sheen. A long bank of computers sits along the wall to my left. The monitors cast a dim blue glow, which matches the blue glow of the LED strips circumnavigating the room a few feet above the floor. On the opposite side of the room is a sitting area, a modern sofa and three chairs in white leather, a white bearskin rug. Above me to the right is a large, elevated platform with a spiral steel staircase at one end, leading down. The air is warm and still, and smells strongly of sulphur.
Directly in front of me, suspended from a thick woven steel cable attached to a leather collar around her neck, is Juanita.
She’s gagged. Her wrists are bound behind her back. She’s barefoot, dressed only in denim shorts and a T-shirt with the MMA wrestling logo on the front. The cable from which she’s suspended is measured perfectly so that she has to stand on tippy-toe to avoid being strangled by the collar.
When she sees me, she starts to cry uncontrollably. The sound is muffled by the ball gag in her mouth.
I cry out and lunge forward. I’m instantly flanked by four of Søren’s guards, pointing high-powered rifles at my chest. They’d been standing just inside the door.
I jerk to a stop. The guards slowly move in front of me, keeping me in their sights.
Twisting on the cable, her bare toes slipping over the polished floor, Juanita softly sobs.
From above comes Søren’s voice, floating down like gossamer. “Welcome home, Tabitha.”
I look up and see him leaning over the metal railing of the platform, smiling down at me. He’s holding a coiled bullwhip in his right hand.
My pulse thundering, I shout, “Let her go!”
His smile grows wider. Light from behind him haloes his golden head. He’s dressed in perfectly fitted black trousers and a white button-down silk shirt, the cuffs rolled up his forearms, the collar open at his throat. Like mine, his feet are bare.
He moves away from the railing and begins to descend the spiral staircase, his movements graceful and leisurely, one hand trailing along the staircase rail. He’s taller than I remember. More muscular too. His shirt stretches across broad shoulders and the planes of his chest, highlighting a balance of form that would be impressive if only I didn’t know what horrors lurked beneath.
And yet for all Søren’s polished beauty and grace, it pales in comparison to the sheer, rugged, masculine perfection of one Connor Hughes.
Connor. My heart does a somersault inside my chest.
Don’t think about him. Don’t think!
When Søren reaches the bottom of the staircase, he pauses for a moment, looking me over. A mad light shines in the depths of his frozen blue eyes. He opens his fingers so the whip unfurls to the floor in a sinister, slow-motion slither.
Rage crackles through me like electricity, as if I’ve been plugged into a socket and juiced with twenty thousand volts. Every muscle in my body tenses. I growl, “Let her go. Don’t make me say it again.”
He walks toward me slowly, smiling, rolling his wrist in an expert motion so the whip seems to be a live thing moving before him, gyrating and spinning, the tip slapping lightly against the floor. Beautiful and menacing, he stops about ten feet behind Juanita.
“Or what?” His tone is playful.
Bristling, I answer, “Or I’ll make you wish you were dead long before I grant you that wish.”
One of the guards takes a step toward me, the bore of his rifle leveled at my heart. “Back down.”
I’m staring at Søren when I answer. “I don’t know how to back down. I only know how to stand up. So if you want a piece of me, come and get it. But you better be ready to learn your own limits, because I don’t have any.”
Søren laughs. It’s a gorgeous sound, rich and warm, filled with delight. “God, how I’ve missed you!”
I look at Juanita, trying to convey to her with my eyes that she shouldn’t worry, that I’ll get her out of this. Trembling all over, she stares back at me, her brown eyes huge, her cheeks wet.
“The feeling is definitely not mutual.”
He ignores that. “Even staring down the barrel of a gun, you’re fearless! You see, that’s exactly why we’re so perfect together.”
“You disgust me.”
“Oh, come now, it must have been tedious living all those years among the peasants. There must be a part of you that’s relieved you’ll finally have someone of a superior intellect to interact with. Admit it.”
I say bluntly, “Sorry to burst your bubble, Satan, but you’re not the smartest man I’ve ever met.”
He chuckles. “Now you’re simply being ridiculous. Guards.” They turn to look at him. When he motions with his head, they retreat, but only to a distance. I’ve still got four guns trained on me, just from farther away.
“Where were we?” Søren muses.
I take a careful step toward Juanita. Søren allows it, a smile lightly playing around the corners of his sculpted lips.
“Ah, yes. You were demanding I let your little friend go, and I was about to give you a lesson in the quality and craftsmanship of Corinthian leather.”
His arm snaps up. I realize what’s about to happen a fraction of a second before it does.
“No!” I scream, leaping into motion, but it’s too late. Søren’s arm comes down with a sharp stroke, the whip cracks, Juanita’s entire body jerks, her eyes fly wide open, and her anguish-filled scream pierces the air.
I reach her just as her head drops forward and her body starts to sag. She’s going into shock.
If she loses consciousness, she’ll asphyxiate.
I grab her, lifting her around the waist so the pressure is off her neck, and pull her against my chest. She’s light, hardly a weight at all, her small body motionless in my arms. Her head drops onto my shoulder. From behind the gag, she lets out a soft, animal whimper of pain.
Beneath my fingers on her back, I feel the torn cotton of her T-shirt and the slippery warmth of blood.
“No, no, no, no,” I whisper, cradling her against me. I look over her shoulder at Søren. He’s watching us, smiling that awful smile. All the light has been extinguished in his eyes. I’m no longer looking at a man. I’m looking at the monster that lives inside him.
The monster hisses, “Time for hard choices, Tabitha,” and raises his arm again.
“Promise me you won’t hurt her!” I blurt, hating the crack in my voice. “Promise me if I stay here with you, you’ll let her go! You’ll take her back home, and she’ll be safe!”
His lip curls to a faint sneer. “And there it is. Your one fatal flaw. The thing that makes you so utterly predictable. Sentimentality. You have my word.”
He jerks his head, and one of his guards comes forward. He slings his rifle over his shoulder, unhooks Juanita’s collar from the cable that extends so far into the murky gloom overhead I can’t see where it starts, takes her from me, and carries her away. I watch her lying limply in his arms, her long dark hair caught up under her neck, her skinny bare legs swaying as he walks. Everything inside me snarls like a pack of wolves.
Søren lowers the whip to his side. We lock eyes. His faultless face hardens. Victory rings in his voice as he commands, “Now, let’s begin again. On. Your. Knees.”
My own voice is flat with hatred. “You better learn to sleep with one eye open, you sick son of a bitch.”
“Guard!”
Across the echoing space, the guard carrying Juanita turns back, waiting. Søren gazes at me. One elegant eyebrow slowly lifts.
There’s an interval of excruciating decision. I hate him. I hate him with my whole being, with every cell inside my body. And yet I know without doubt what will happen to Juanita if I disobey his command.
And so, with my heart bleeding, I grit my teeth, bend my knee, and slowly sink to the cold stone floor.
Thirty-Five
Connor
It’s thirty klicks to the target, which is just under nineteen miles. We’re about to do a nineteen
-mile hump over rugged mountain terrain wearing a fifty-pound ruck, in full body armor, carrying an M16, in temperatures in the thirties, with a good chance of sleet.
In the dark.
We could’ve gotten closer if we parachuted in, but then we ran the risk of not only announcing our presence but being shot from the sky like clay birds. There’s no telling what Søren’s got up his sleeve. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to have his location surrounded with surface-to-air missiles or even an armed regiment of sniper lookouts in the trees.
Which is actually the good scenario.
The bad scenario involves the aforementioned plus antipersonnel land mines.
So we flew into Fairbanks on the C-130, switched over to a Black Hawk to take us into the LZ, and now we’ve got boots on the ground as the sun sets over the jagged ridge of the North Slope. An icy wind whips the boughs of the yellow cedar and Sitka spruce into dark, snapping waves. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the lone, plaintive howl of a wolf.
I take a moment to check the compass. I glance at my watch. Then I look at the group of men standing in front of me, Ryan and four steely-eyed Marines named Kasey, Murphy, Reid, and ‘Big Swingin’ Dick.’
“This should take roughly five hours, boys. We’re gonna do it in three.”
After five wordless nods, we set off.
Thirty-Six
Tabby
For long moments, neither one of us moves or speaks. I feel Søren’s gaze on me, feel the pleasure he’s enjoying at seeing me kneeling at his feet. Submitting.
Outwardly submitting. Inside, I’m a horde of barbarian soldiers with their swords drawn and their teeth bared, foaming at the mouth.
He steps forward. He stops beside me. I hold myself motionless, looking at his bare feet from my peripheral vision, thinking how vulnerable the arch of a foot is. I feel a caress on the top of my head, a stroke of his hand over my hair, and instinctively recoil, jerking away as if his touch burns.
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