There would be no easy answers for me. I supposed there were no easy answers for anyone and that’s just what it meant to be alive.
It beat the alternative.
I shut off the shower and squeezed the water from my hair then wrapped a towel around my body. I had just stepped onto the damp tiles of the bathroom floor when I heard someone knocking on my door. I thought about ignoring whoever was outside, but he knocked again and called my name. “Bella?”
My heart beat against my chest as I clutched my towel and stood stupidly in the middle of the bathroom, wondering what the hell I should do. Yeah, of course, the logical answer would be, “Get dressed and answer the door, dumbass,” but when it came to Aiden, I just couldn’t seem to think logically anymore.
He knocked and called through the door again. “Bella, are you ok?”
“Yeah,” I called back. “I just got out of the shower.”
Silence for a few seconds then he said, “Oh.”
Clearly, we were both master conversationalists.
I stepped gingerly onto the worn carpet and approached the door. Goose bumps erupted on my arms and legs but I hardly noticed. I had to know why he was here. When we’d checked in, he’d told me he’d see me in the morning when we’d all meet to go over whatever plan he came up with to apprehend one of Schultz’s employees so we could get information from him. How could something have changed so quickly? We’d been in our rooms for forty minutes. I doubted room service had even delivered anyone’s supper yet.
I pulled the door open and Aiden’s eyes widened a little as they swept over me. He met my eyes and lifted an eyebrow at me. “Uh… you could have gotten dressed first.”
I glanced down at the towel and remembered that’s all I was wearing.
“Shit,” I muttered.
For the second time that day, I slammed the door in his face even though it was my fault for opening it in the first place.
What the hell is wrong with you, Bella?
I dug through the bags from the mall in Mobile until I found my new pajamas and pulled them on. I imagined Aiden standing on the other side of the door, that sexy grin on his face as he laughed at my imbecility.
Truthfully, I deserved it.
When I yanked the door open again though, he wasn’t laughing at me or even smiling. I stood aside to let him enter and offered him a chair, but he turned around as soon as the door was closed and fixed me with a hard look that made me shrink back against the wall.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he insisted.
God, not this again.
“So you keep telling me,” I responded bitterly.
“No,” Aiden tried again. “There’s…” He took a deep breath and raked his fingers through his hair, causing bits to stand up in those errant, stubborn spikes again. “This is unprecedented because of who you all are. Or what you are. I don’t know. But you’re a civilian and tomorrow, I’ve got to…” He took another deep breath and shook his head at me.
He hates us. He hates all of us for being here in the first place, and he’ll never be able to see me as human.
“To what?” I asked. I placed a hand on my stomach in a useless attempt to quell the nausea starting up again.
“I’ve got to do my job,” he finished, his voice edgy and cold and those goose bumps returned. I had no idea what he could possibly mean by that.
“Then do it,” I told him. “I’ll stay here. I won’t get in your way.”
Aiden grunted at me and crossed the room, pulling a chair away from the table a little too forcefully. It hit the wall with a soft thunk.
“I can’t leave you here,” he said irritably. “You’re supposed to be part of the interrogations. How could I leave you here?”
“Interrogations,” I whispered.
Aiden leaned his elbows on his knees and his beautiful eyes watched me, narrowing slightly as he studied my reaction to this news and the ramifications of what it could mean I would be witnessing… no, taking part in… tomorrow. “What exactly did you think we were going to do here, Bella?”
“I don’t know!” I protested. “Break into Schultz’s offices and steal some shit! Not kidnap people and…” I swallowed because I didn’t want to finish that thought. I couldn’t finish that thought.
“And I told you this was a mistake,” Aiden retorted. “You should have told Dietrich no.”
I shook my head quickly. “No, you didn’t. You picked me up and kept going on and on about how you could use my help. You never said I shouldn’t do it.”
“I didn’t expect him to show up so quickly!” Aiden insisted. He sat back and closed his eyes, rubbing his hand over them and exhaling slowly. “I had to balance looking like I was doing what I’d been ordered to do with convincing you to just tell us to help you disappear. We can take care of Schultz and his guys on our own. We don’t need these goddamn files and the only reason Dietrich is sending us after them and taking these risks is because of his wife. But it’s not too late. You can tell him you changed your mind now that you’re here. Tell him you got scared and we’ll get you out of the city for a while…”
“No,” I said. My answer surprised me, too, honestly. But there was no way I was going to call anyone and tell them I was scared, even if that were true. I’d survived six years of running from these bastards and knowing I wasn’t the only one they’d been trying to murder, that Lottie and her child and Lydia and everyone who knew these women and loved them had been targeted for years as well only reinforced my conviction to do something to help bring the whole enterprise down.
“I can’t back out now, Aiden. I’m sorry.”
“Goddamn it, Bella!” he yelled. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
I flinched and stayed by the wall, but I wouldn’t back down. “You’re right. But that’s not going to stop me from trying. Out of the four of us, I’m the only one who knows what these men are really capable of because they’ve gotten their hands on me more than once.”
Aiden inhaled sharply and squinted at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Schultz grabbed me and hit me when Mason first disappeared, and they’ve caught up to me once since I disappeared. There were two of them and they dragged me into an alley behind the restaurant where I was working and beat the shit out of me before one of them pulled a gun on me. I’m only alive because a group of guys leaving a nearby club saw them and they apparently decided to take off rather than killing people who were born here and whose deaths would definitely get the police involved.”
Aiden stared silently at me, but I couldn’t read his expression anymore. I looked away from him and busied myself studying the faded blue and green carpet of the hotel room. I wished I’d kept that story a secret. I realized too late how weak it made me seem, how I was always at their mercy. How incompetent.
“What did those guys from the club do?” he finally asked.
I glanced up at him, surprised by his question, but at least it was an easy one to answer. “Brought me to the hospital. Why?”
Aiden took a deep breath then shrugged at me as if my answer didn’t matter. “I thought all of you… immigrants… avoided hospitals because of the risk someone might discover you’re in a body that’s supposed to be dead.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly have a choice, Aiden,” I snapped. “I had a concussion and I needed stitches.”
He flinched and I thought he looked apologetic but he didn’t actually apologize. “And you really think you should be going up against them now?”
I crossed my arms defiantly and retorted, “That was five years ago. And I’m not alone now unless you’re planning on ditching me.”
“No,” he sighed. “Of course we’re not. But this is still stupid, Bella.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But I traveled across the universe for a man that they took away from me. Twice. I know they had to have done something to him and I want to know what and why.”
“God,” Aiden groaned, rubbing his hands over his f
ace. “I don’t know, Bella. Didn’t Dietrich tell you they’ve always insisted they didn’t do anything to Lottie? That it’s some sort of… I don’t know… organic accident or something.”
“Yeah, he told me and neither of us believe that. None of us have a way of communicating with anyone back home, so we can’t warn people it’s a possibility. We can’t threaten their business. I think they’re experimenting on some of us. We’re like their lab rats. But why are they choosing some of us over others? And why Lottie? Why a woman? Believe me, guys like those running this company don’t even like women.”
“I know,” Aiden admitted. “I’ve read all about your planet.”
I lifted a shoulder at him and deflected because like most of us, I didn’t like talking about the planet I used to call home. Each of us who crossed over came here for a reason, and it was usually because we were escaping something. I mean, who would willingly leave their family and friends and home and planet and body behind forever just because they wanted to give space travel a shot?
We were all running from something and this company profited from the desperation of thousands of the most desperate souls.
“I’ve been here long enough to know you humans aren’t any better,” I said.
“Guess not,” Aiden conceded. “But that doesn’t make you prepared for tomorrow and it doesn’t make your involvement here a good idea.”
“What’s the worst that can happen? You do the abducting, and bring me around for the questioning. Once the guys are restrained, I don’t think I can screw anything up.”
Aiden snorted and stood up, his long legs bridging the distance between the chair and the door in only a few steps. He shot one last annoyed glance in my direction before twisting the door handle and leaving my room.
“The worst that can happen?” he repeated. “You’ll think I’m a monster.”
Chapter 7
The house where we waited in a suburb of Atlanta wasn’t in a good neighborhood. I jumped a little every time a car passed or some noise from outside filtered in through the locked doors and windows, convinced I was hearing gunshots and we were the targets. I was also convinced Mario might as well have worn a t-shirt proclaiming LAW ENFORCEMENT in bold, neon letters. Mario had just given me a peculiar look and reminded me he wasn’t in law enforcement and he couldn’t care less if the guy next door was cooking meth in his kitchen.
I told him it was a good thing he wasn’t technically in law enforcement because he would have made a shitty cop.
Mario shrugged at me and gestured to the table. “I like donuts.”
I picked one of the glazed donuts out of the pink box and collapsed grumpily into a chair by the table – the one farthest from the window. “Why is this taking so long?” I complained. “Do you think something went wrong?”
That was really my way of admitting I was worried about Johnson and Aiden without actually admitting it.
But I was also exhausted because I hadn’t slept much the night before. After Aiden’s ominous announcement – You’ll think I’m a monster – I’d lain awake for a long time imagining the gruesome possibilities that could lead me to believing that were true. I didn’t want to think he was a monster. I wanted the sweet and breathtakingly sexy guy I’d met in the parking lot of a Waffle House. Of course, even if he were a monster, it wouldn’t change his physical appearance, but it would certainly change the way I reacted to him.
Why is that a bad thing, Bella? He doesn’t even like any of you long-distance-immigrants. He sure as hell isn’t going to date one.
I’d never even asked him if he had a girlfriend.
I threw my half-eaten donut back in the box and Mario immediately protested. “Hey! Finish it or toss it. But seriously, don’t let a perfectly good donut go to waste.”
“Lost my appetite,” I muttered.
Mario plucked my donut out of the box and put it on a napkin then pushed it across the table toward me. “What? Watching your figure? I got dragged through Dillard’s with you yesterday. You’re a size 2. One donut won’t hurt you.”
I rolled my eyes at him and his assumptions that just because I was a woman, I was worried about my weight. “I know the government has a deficit and all, but seriously, you can’t afford better motels than a Comfort Inn and you can’t rent a house for interrogating people that isn’t part of some drug lord’s kingdom?”
“We’re not in a Comfort Inn now,” he pointed out. “And places like this raise fewer questions. Believe me, nobody cares who comes and goes from this house because they don’t want anyone to pay attention to what’s going on in their house.”
I blinked at him and moaned, “God, we really do have a meth lab next door, don’t we?”
Mario shrugged and searched in the box for the last raspberry filled pastry. “Probably. Like I said: not our problem.”
I tilted my head at him and watched him as he happily plucked his pastry from the box and onto his plate. “What is your problem then? Besides aliens and the shady company that transports them here.”
Mario had just opened his mouth to stuff half the raspberry pastry in it. He glanced at it and sighed, resigned to the fact that it would have to wait or he’d have to be the asshole who ignored the woman he was stuck babysitting until Aiden and Johnson returned with whomever we were supposed to be… questioning.
“We’re the CIA, Bella. What do you think our problem is?”
I snickered and teased, “Faulty intelligence that leads your country into a disastrous war?”
He pointed the donut at me and his dark brown eyes narrowed. “That was… not my doing.”
I nodded and put on my best I’m-totally-serious-and-not-just-fucking-with-you face. “Perhaps you were busy with the Contra Affair.”
“I was a baby. Try again.”
I smiled at him and crossed my arms. I had little to do with my time except read. I could keep this up for a while. “Robert Levinson.”
“Not sanctioned.”
“Does it matter?”
Mario waved me off. “Of course it does.”
“You haven’t gotten him out. That matters more to me than whether or not he was ever officially on the books for the CIA.”
Mario stuffed half the raspberry donut in his mouth and gave me a petulant look.
“Fine,” I hissed. “Guantanamo?”
“Military,” he answered through his mouthful of fried, raspberry-filled dough.
I tried to give him my “How stupid do you think I am?” look but a car door quickly followed by a second made me leap from my seat instead. “They’re just going to drag him in here?” I squeaked. “In broad daylight?”
Mario lifted a shoulder at me and swallowed. “Told you. We don’t call the cops on the neighbors, they’ll pretend they don’t see anything here.”
I pushed the curtains aside and exclaimed, “They’ll pretend they don’t see a man bound and gagged?”
Mario just lifted a shoulder at me again and opened the door that led into the carport. Aiden pushed their captive inside and Johnson quickly followed them both in.
“Small world,” Aiden announced. “Turns out this asshole knows you, Bella.”
I tried to make out his normal features through the red and green-blue marks on his face, but I didn’t recognize him. “I guess all of Schultz’s employees know who I am if they’ve been looking for me.”
Aiden shook his head, his gorgeous features set in a stony, unreadable expression as he continued to glare at his prisoner. “No, he claims he knows you.”
“Well,” I shot back, “who is he?”
“Noah Miller. If I were going to make up a fake name, that’s the kind of name I’d make up,” Johnson provided.
“It is a fake name,” I mumbled. And then recognition dawned on me. “You’re the asshole who wouldn’t stop hitting on me!”
Aiden punched him and Noah stumbled backward into the stove. He let out a muffled groan, but Aiden didn’t let him fall. He pulled him upright again and shov
ed him into a chair.
I almost told Aiden I hadn’t meant he literally hit on me, but something told me he already knew that.
Johnson pulled the tape from his mouth and I flinched and looked away. It made a sickening ripping noise and I didn’t want to see how the adhesive had marred his skin.
“Spit it out,” Johnson ordered.
I didn’t want to see what he was spitting out either.
I heard Noah’s voice, still grating and irritating after six years of not having to deal with his thinly veiled suggestive comments. “My nose is bleeding again.”
“He’s an arrogant bastard, isn’t he?” Johnson asked.
I glanced at Aiden to see if Johnson was actually asking him or if that were a rhetorical question. I decided to answer him anyway. “Every single one of them who works for that company is an arrogant bastard. Starting with Jackson Garrett.”
Aiden snorted and finally let his eyes drift toward me. “Jackson Garrett is a dead arrogant bastard.”
I think some noise seeped out of my throat, but I’m not sure. “But…” I stuttered. “Mason. How will we find out what he did to him?”
“You don’t like that Garrett is dead then take it up with Dietrich. Dude isn’t coming back though. But we’ve got him,” Aiden said, pointing to Noah Miller.
“He’s an accountant!” I protested. “What does he know about how Garrett experimented on people?”
“Garrett didn’t experiment on people,” Noah interrupted.
Aiden stepped closer to him and I jumped as the sound of his fist connecting with Noah’s face broke whatever bones and cartilage hadn’t yet been broken in his nose.
“Try again,” Aiden told him.
“Son of a bitch,” Noah screamed. He spit the blood from his mouth and I backed away, nauseated and dizzy. I regretted eating even half of that donut now.
“I don’t know anything about any experiments!” Noah insisted. “As far as I know, Garrett just took care of newcomers. Made sure they healed and were going to make it.”
The Chosen: A Resurrected Series Novel Page 6