I didn’t know how to answer him. Most of the time, it seemed like Aiden didn’t believe Mason really existed, and yet, he still wanted to help me, whether it was with nightmares or arguments taking place in my own head.
My mouth, however, decided to be honest with the man touching me in such an innocent, protective way. I immediately blamed hormones.
Actually, I still blame hormones.
“He always gives me a hard time about you. But he just told me I sometimes reminded him of Chloe, Liam’s girlfriend. He’d told me that once before he died and immediately apologized because he hadn’t meant to make it sound like he was comparing us, just that we had some things in common. At the time, it only reminded me that Mason wasn’t quite the same man I’d fallen in love with and that I would always be both the woman he loved and a stranger to him.”
“Damn, Bella…” Aiden breathed. He let go of my arm and ran his fingers through his hair, and I watched his fingers jealously as they passed through those messy spikes of brown tendrils. “That’s probably why it was so much easier for Lottie. She came here for Lydia, and… well, honestly, I’ve never asked her if it was hard to get used to seeing Lydia in Jamie’s body because Jamie was Lottie’s best friend.”
I tilted my head and smiled at him. “That’s right. I forgot Dietrich mentioned that. It’s different anyway though. Liam planned to propose to Chloe one day. I never doubted he loved her as much as Mason loved me.”
I did, Mason whispered. I loved you both so much that I’d travel the universe a thousand times over for you if I had to.
My eyes stung with tears and I headed toward the nightstand. At that moment, I didn’t care what I found inside as long as it distracted me from the pain of losing Mason and from the pain of knowing he’d lost himself.
“Sorry,” Aiden said. “I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
I shook my head as I pulled the top drawer open. A few pill bottles rolled around an otherwise mostly empty drawer. I pulled one out and read the label, offered Aiden a pretend shudder, and shook the bottle. “Give you one guess what’s in here.”
Aiden snickered and closed the dresser drawer. “No porn of any kind even though his underwear should constitute as ‘overly traumatic.’ So don’t die. I owe you a trip to Disney World.”
“I’ll do my best,” I fake-promised, tossing the bottle back in the drawer. I pulled out the drawer beneath it and gasped, falling as I tried to back away from the nightstand. Aiden knelt beside me and asked me if I were all right before looking inside the drawer. He groaned and sat on the floor beside me.
“Told you he’s a sick bastard,” he said.
I just nodded. “Why would he keep pictures?” I whispered.
Aiden gave me a funny look and repeated, “Because he’s a sick bastard.”
Johnson appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame. “How bad is it?”
“I’ve seen worse,” Aiden admitted. “You’ve seen worse.”
“Yeah, because you sent me into that house in Szolnok.”
Aiden waved him off. “Come flip through those photographs. Let me know if there’s anything we need to look into.”
Johnson folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes at Aiden. “No way. You offered to come in here. You do it.” Johnson’s eyes flashed to the nightstand then back to Aiden, and his curiosity must have gotten the better of him. “What does he have pictures of? Animalism? Cannibalism? Neo-Impressionism?”
“No, no, and…” Aiden grunted and shook his head. “Dude, I’ll give you twenty dollars right now if you can even define neo-Impressionism without the help of any electronic or non-electronic device.”
Aiden nudged me and pointed to his partner. “That’s how you gamble, by the way. Make sure you put all the qualifiers on your bet right at the beginning.”
I blinked stupidly at him. “Aiden, he has a drawer full of pictures of the people he’s tortured over the years, and you’re making jokes about art and betting?”
Johnson stepped into the room and glanced into the open drawer. He held his hand out and said, “Late nineteenth century art movement mostly associated with Seurat that focused on a more scientific approach to painting than Impressionism.”
Aiden looked at me. I could only guess he was seeking confirmation as to whether or not Johnson had correctly defined neo-Impressionism. “I still don’t care!” I yelled.
“Sh,” Johnson directed to me then he focused on Aiden again and said, “Google it. I’m right. And I’m not digging through those pictures.”
Aiden dug some cash out of his pocket and slapped it into Johnson’s open hand. “Take the whole drawer,” Aiden ordered. “We’ll get Mario to dig through them.”
Johnson bent down to remove the drawer but the sound of the garage door opening startled everyone. Barker wasn’t supposed to be home for at least another hour.
“Shit,” Aiden mumbled. “Hurry, before he drives away.”
Johnson ran out of the bedroom and Aiden ran after him. I wanted to run after them both, but my legs felt leaden and my head began to pound with a biting pain in the temples that made it difficult to walk, let alone run. I rested my hand on the wall for support and took a deep breath.
You can do this, Bella. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.
From outside, I could hear shouting and a car door slamming. It sounded like only one voice shouting and it didn’t belong to Aiden or Johnson. The garage door screeched along its metal tracks again and the shouting stopped as a loud crack made me squeeze my eyes closed and repeat Mason’s words to myself: You can do this, Bella.
I dragged my feet into the hallway, listening to the shuffling in the kitchen as they pushed Barker inside and moved a chair away from the table to secure him. Barker made a noise of protest and another loud crack, immediately accompanied by his yelping, ended his protest. I rounded the corner and looked straight into the face of the man from my nightmare, the man who had watched my husband’s torture.
Barker’s eyes narrowed at me and he sucked in a quick, hissing breath. “You.”
That’s how I found out what was making the loud cracking noises. Aiden lifted the golf club he’d set on the table and swung it at Barker’s arm. He howled again and Johnson grabbed his throat and warned him to knock that shit off; he had a lot more bones in his body and we had nowhere else to be.
Barker’s eyes never left me.
After my first introduction to seeing someone restrained and beaten and calling Aiden a monster for it, I had expected to feel more pity, more reluctance and uncertainty about how Aiden and Johnson handled their interrogations, but truthfully, I didn’t. Only Mason had second thoughts. I could almost feel him trying to crawl away from this scene, to extricate himself from what we were seeing, but I glared back at Barker and knew then I wasn’t as good a person as my dead husband. Because I wanted James Barker to suffer. I wanted him to pay for what he’d done to Mason, and I wanted him to die.
“What were you hoping you’d learn from Mason?” I demanded. “Why torture him?”
Barker gritted his teeth and glared back at me.
Aiden swung the golf club at his arm again.
When Barker quit his obnoxious yelping, I asked him for the second time what he’d hoped to learn from Mason. Barker finally looked away from me to glance at the two men who would continue to inflict pain on him for being uncooperative. I thought it was an ironic and fitting twist to the end of his life, and I was relieved he didn’t seem to be a masochist as well. He didn’t look like he was enjoying this at all.
Mason wanted to scold me, but he was too horrified and his admonishments only came out in sputters.
I ignored him anyway.
“Same thing we’ve always wanted to know,” Barker finally hissed. “How these resurrections are occurring.”
“What makes you think Mason knew? And what if it’s something the human body is doing?”
Barker gave me a look that said, “I liked i
t better when women could only speak when we allowed them to.” And I wanted to swing that golf club at his head for looking at me that way. By the look Aiden gave him in return, I suspected he was thinking the same thing.
Barker sucked in another fast, whistling breath and kept his teeth clenched as he answered me. “What difference does it make? He’s both the human and the… alien… isn’t he?”
“How can you fault him for something the human body did to him then?” I shouted.
Aiden glanced at me in what I assumed was a “We’re really sucking at the whole stealth part of this operation here, so keep it down,” look, but he didn’t ask me not to yell at Barker again. If I couldn’t let my anger out through yelling, there was a good chance I was grabbing that golf club from Aiden.
“Look, Bella.” He emphasized my name and it dripped with the venomous contempt men like him held of all women. I hated men like him. I’d known plenty of them back home. Sure, there were plenty here, too, but men like Barker were escapable here. They were scattered among men like Dietrich and Johnson and Aiden.
And Mason.
And this asshole had murdered the best person I’d ever known and had the balls to sit there and patronize me now. My fingers clinched into fists as I waited for him to finish.
“I’m a lackey,” he claimed. “I followed orders. Mirowski wanted him interrogated then killed. Surely, a woman of your background understands following orders.”
I snatched the golf club out of Aiden’s hand and swung it at James Barker’s head. Both Johnson and Aiden were too surprised to intervene. Johnson stepped back as blood spurted from Barker’s mouth onto the dirty yellow linoleum floor. Part of my brain registered the stinging pain in my palms from the impact, but I gripped the golf club and lowered myself so that I was eye level with this bastard.
“I saw you,” I told him. “I saw you enter that room and watch as my husband was burned. You were giving the orders to Andrews, so why is he your boss now? He took Mirowski’s place, didn’t he?”
Barker spit out a mouthful of blood… in my face.
I wish I were making any of this up.
Aiden pulled the golf club from my hands and pointed me toward the bathroom. “Go clean up. We’ll make sure this asshole thinks twice before doing anything that stupid again.”
It wasn’t until I was alone in the bathroom scrubbing my face with soap and water that Mason spoke. I’d forgotten he was with me, honestly.
Bella, what are you doing? These men have to die. What they’re doing… what this company has been doing for hundreds of years, they can’t keep operating. But this isn’t you. Beating him? Provoking him like this? You’re better than them, Bella.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror and whispered to it, “Says who?”
I say you’re better. I know you’re better.
I pushed my damp hair away from my face and tied it back into a ponytail. “No,” I told my reflection. “You were always better, Mason. And you made me better because I knew you.”
I turned the water off and wiped my face on my sleeve as I walked back toward the kitchen. As my footsteps approached, the noises inside that room stopped, and I slowed my pace to give them time to finish whatever they’d been doing. I didn’t really want to know.
When I turned the corner and Barker came into view again, I noticed they’d taped his mouth shut. Aiden grabbed a corner of the tape and ripped it off, but Johnson held his jaw closed so he couldn’t scream. I should have felt something, but I only felt anger and even that anger seemed lost in a vast pit of emptiness.
“Why is Andrews the new Mirowski and not you?” I repeated.
Johnson let go of his jaw but stayed right beside him. Barker kept his eyes on the floor.
“Because I failed,” he muttered. Blood dripped from his mouth as he spoke but only Mason felt disgusted and even a little sympathetic. That was my Mason. Perhaps that had been Liam, too. It had been both. This world had never deserved someone like him.
“You failed to get Mason to make up some story just so you’d stop torturing him?” I asked.
“I failed to get any of them to talk. I got nothing from any of them,” he spit out.
I thought back to the drawer filled with pictures of tortured men and gasped. “How many?”
He lifted his eyes and made a choking, laughing noise. “I’ve been hunting these bastards down for thirty years. I get rid of one, and a new one pops up. If they think Andrews can do a better job then let him. Lottie’s weak. I could break her in minutes if it weren’t for her goddamn husband.”
Aiden and Johnson both flexed, ready to strike him for threatening their boss’s wife, but I stopped them. He couldn’t hurt Lottie from here anyway. I’d never met her, but I hated that he assumed she could be easily broken because she was a woman, that she was inherently weak because of her sex.
“Bullshit,” I told him. “She’s going to bring your entire world down around you, and I’m going to help her. And I’m starting with you.”
I pulled the Beretta Aiden had given me a few days before from the holster by my side and three seconds later, I ended James Barker’s life.
Chapter 13
“I’m just saying,” Aiden repeated, “that a little forewarning next time would be nice. That’s all.”
I yawned and held my hand out for the phone Mario was holding. It was my turn to try to rescue Princess Peach. “When they stop pissing me off so much, I’ll let them live longer,” I retorted.
“Great,” Aiden mumbled. “We’re never getting the chance to ask any of these assholes questions.”
Johnson snickered from the driver’s seat and I quickly smiled at him as I sent Mario – the character in my game, not the guy sitting next to me – down a green pipe. “Why do you always drive?” I asked him. “Are these other two really that bad at it?”
Johnson nodded and Aiden flipped him off.
Mario ignored them both. “You just warped. Watch out for the beetles on this level. You can’t pick them up.”
I focused on the screen while Aiden pouted. “He might be a better driver in situations where we need to evade pursuers.”
“Even when we’re in the Dodge Caravan? Who are we evading? Soccer moms?”
“Especially when we’re in the Caravan,” Johnson said. “Have you ever been to a kids’ soccer game? Those moms are vicious. Like honey badgers on crack.”
I laughed and handed Mario his phone. Apparently, I did not have a future career in video gaming. “Are we driving to New York or what?”
“Or what,” Aiden answered. “Too many of those guys in New York. It’s a lot easier to have Andrews brought to us.”
“Then where are we going?”
We’d left Orlando over an hour ago, and other than north, I had no idea where we were heading.
“Back to Atlanta,” Aiden said. “Schultz’s offices are still in Atlanta, and that was our original assignment, remember?”
“Yeah, but aside from knowing the layout of his warehouse and some of his offices, I’m still not sure how I’m supposed to help you find files that may or may not even be there. For all we know, what he’s hiding is a shitload of money. Or weird animal porn.”
“Not it,” Johnson said immediately.
“We’ll flip for it,” Aiden pretended to compromise.
“You still owe me for Szolnok.”
“I got you drunk, didn’t I?” Aiden offered.
“This… is heading in a direction that’s making me a little uncomfortable,” I teased.
“Now you know why they give Dietrich and Eric a hard time. They’re projecting,” Mario joked, but as usual, he didn’t bother looking up from his phone.
I nodded seriously anyway. “Makes sense.”
“I hate you,” Aiden told Mario.
Mario just shrugged at him.
Johnson pulled off the interstate and slowed as he approached the end of the exit ramp. The shifting and thumping noise as the box in the back of the car sl
id around reminded me of the photographs we’d taken from Barker’s house and what we’d left behind in Orlando.
But Mason hadn’t forgotten.
You have to talk them out of breaking into Schultz’s office. What good will it do anyone to gain access to a file that no one even knows exists?
For some reason, I looked behind me toward the trunk of the car as the box slid to the other side when Johnson turned into the gas station. There were most likely pictures of Mason in there, and every time I was reminded of that, I wanted to lead my own vigilante war against every last one of these bastards – no matter how big or small their role in his death was.
“Hey,” Aiden said quietly. He touched my hand and I turned around again. It hadn’t been the first time he’d had to reorient me. “It won’t help you. In fact, it’ll only make things much worse for you.”
I blinked at his hand where it still touched mine and whispered, “I know.”
It hadn’t been the first time I’d told him that either.
I caught Mario looking at me so I smiled at him, but it didn’t feel genuine anymore.
Johnson stopped the car by a gas pump and gave us a serious look. “If you need the bathroom, go now, because we’re not stopping for another three hundred miles.”
I waited until the door closed and crossed my arms stubbornly. “How much you wanna bet I can get him to stop in a hundred?”
“You can threaten to pee in the car all you want. It won’t work. Trust me,” Mario said.
I arched an eyebrow at him and smirked, “Men. I’ll have him off the interstate in fifty. And if I’m right, you can buy me a new laptop because my old one broke but I’m broke.”
Mario’s hand paused on the door handle as he considered my proposition. “But if you’re broke and I win, what do I get?”
“Doesn’t matter because you won’t.”
“Told you you’re really bad at betting,” Aiden said. “I’ll cover her. She gets him off the road, I’ll pay you whatever that laptop costs.”
Mario snorted and shook his head. “You suck at betting, too. Should have clarified what kind of laptop first. Get ready to hand over two grand.”
The Chosen: A Resurrected Series Novel Page 14