She dragged herself together, forced her voice to function. "My father was murdered this morning," she told him.
It felt like someone else was saying the words. Her body was a numb puppet, quacking nonsense into the wailing wind. The words had no meaning, no weight. She couldn't get her mind around them.
Not her father. He was such a presence in her life. Such a mountain, a rock, a powerhouse. If he was gone, there was nothing left to fight against, define herself against. She felt disoriented, adrift.
In spite of Dad's relentless coldness, the world without him was unthinkable. She swayed, and Bruno clutched her elbow, as if she might fall. Swoon away like a southern belle with the vapors.
"I'll try Kev, one last time," Bruno said. "He should know about this." He dialed, waited, shook his head. "Let's go on down."
The walk down the mountain was an exercise in mute endurance. Her legs were numb, her knees jellyish. She kept falling.
When they got to the cabin, she went straight toward Bruno's car. "Let's go. Take me back to Portland. I need to go to my sister."
Bruno looked hunted. "I promised Kev that I--"
"I don't give a shit who promised what to who," she said. "Those promises were all made before my father got shot to death."
"I understand completely, but you're in danger," Bruno protested. "Let me get in touch with Kev first and run it by him before I--"
"It's his own goddamn fault he didn't answer his phone." She was being unfair, but she did not care. She held out her hand. "Give me the car keys."
Bruno's mouth hardened. "I can't do that, Edie."
Well, there it was. The moment of truth. She'd been working up to this the whole way down from the bluff. Trying to find the nerve.
She was done with being controlled, policed. She would not permit it. From anyone. Not from Kev, not from anyone Kev designated.
She leaned down, pulled the Ruger out of the ankle holster, and straightened, locking her wobbling knees. She trained the gun on him.
"Throw me the car keys, or I will shoot you," she said.
Bruno looked somber. "No, Edie."
She swayed, brandished the gun. "Don't try to talk me down. I am not crazy. I am not an idiot child. I am dead serious."
"I know." His voice was low and gentle. "But you're not a killer."
"I can learn," she warned him. "Don't push me."
Bruno took a step closer. Another. She made a show of aiming, but she couldn't pull the trigger. Not even when he reached out, and clasped her hands, swinging the barrel around so it pointed into the forest. Loosening her white-knuckled grip gently with his fingers.
He clicked the safety back on. "Don't do that again, Edie," he said quietly. "Not unless you're willing to follow through."
"Fuck you." Tears blinded her eyes. She felt like such an idiot.
He turned the gun in his hands. "I know how you feel."
She let out a shaky bark of laughter. "How do you figure?"
"My mamma was murdered," he said, his voice flat. "The guy she was shacked up with was a woman-hating psychopath. And a mafioso thug. He beat her to death. I was twelve."
Oh, God. She shoved that information away from herself. She could not take it in. It was too much. "I'm sorry," she said woodenly.
"I'm not looking for sympathy," Bruno said. "I just want you to know. That I know. For what it's worth. That's all."
She squeezed her eyes shut, and nodded. "Thanks."
Bruno crouched, hiked up her mud-soaked jeans, and slid the revolver into the holster. "Kev's going to pound me into hamburger."
"For what?" she asked.
He yanked out the car keys, rattled them. "For taking you home."
CHAPTER 27
Kev was running through a tunnel in the dark. Stumbling, slamming into dead ends, feeling his way. Trying to reach something, but he couldn't remember what. He had to hurry, but he couldn't remember why. Fear, teeth-grinding frustration. A rock sitting on top of his mind, blanking out everything in its blind spot. Crushing him.
Splash. Cold water slapped his face. He gasped, tried to open his eyes. Light pierced, burned. Hurt. He closed them again.
Slap, slap. Someone was hitting his face. He was disoriented. All he felt was pain. Every muscle was locked in a state of unbearable tension. He could barely breathe, his lungs were so tight. Every breath was like lifting a ton of crushed rock with his chest. Eyelids, too. So heavy.
He forced them open, blinked. Eyes stung, burned. A woman's face swam into his vision, along with sparkles, halos, colored lights.
No sound. His ears hadn't come back from never-never land yet.
It was the chick from before. Cheung. She'd changed her clothes. Was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt. Hair down. Shiny, blue black. The black widow spider who stung him. The hellbitch neuroscientist.
She was talking, her tilted eyes sparkling with glee. He couldn't hear her. He tried to shake his head, let her know that the audio was off. Couldn't. Whatever she'd pumped into him had paralyzed him. Semi-voluntary systems barely functioning. He'd smother if his strength ran out. Or if he no longer cared to fight for breath.
Smack, smack. She hit him again, with evident enjoyment.
"Wake up, you lazy slob." Her voice roared suddenly, volume turned up horribly loud. Sonar shock almost made his head explode.
"You should be able to talk by now," she said. "I wanted a chat before I play with my new toy. I like when they know exactly what's happening. The inner resistance gives me a bit more traction."
He formed the word carefully with stiff, trembling lips. "Wh-who?"
She tittered. "Who what? Who are you? Nobody, now. My new toy. Do you mean, who am I?" She smiled. "I am exactly who I said I was. I had no reason to lie to you, honey. You'll never tell. I am Dr. Ava Elaine Cheung, to the rest of the world. But to you, I am God. Get used to it."
He squinted at her. "Os...ter...man?"
Her eyes glittered. "Oh, yes! Dr. O! Your old friend, right?" She patted the scars on his face. "He really left his mark, hmm? Upon me, too, I have to admit. He was my mentor, my guru. Taught me everything I know. I miss him, you know. Since your brother murdered him."
Brother? Kev's mind choked on that. His first thought was of Bruno, but that didn't fit, didn't compute.
Then the blinding realization racked him, like an electrical shock. Too thrilling to be fear, too painful to be joy. "B-b-brother?"
Cheung's eyes widened with mock surprise. "Oh, my. I almost forgot. You don't know, do you? It's the amnesia! Oh, that's so funny." She leaned closer. "To think that I know all about your former self," she crooned into his ear. "Your family. Your history. And you know nothing. How awful, for someone else to have that information...and withhold it. Out of pure spite." She giggled, tapping his lip.
He dragged a breath, and formed the word very carefully. "Name?"
She waggled her finger. "Ah, ah, ah! The dancing bear doesn't get his treat until he's performed his tricks." She leaned close, kissed him wetly. Her tongue thrust deep into his numb mouth.
She was blocking what little air he was managing to get. When she finally leaned back, panting with excitement, he sucked in air, wishing he had enough saliva in his mouth to spit out the strange, bittersweet taste of her. He formed the words more easily now. Motor control was coming back. "Do that again, and I will bite off your lip and spit it on the floor."
Her eyes tightened to glittering slits, as she raised her hand. Smack. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. "Wrong thing to say. You'll pay."
"I'm used to that," he said.
She crossed her arms below her tits, shoving them higher. "Your precious Edie will pay, too." Her voice was a mocking singsong.
Edie? Terror clawed at his guts. His fists were clenching, now that he was starting to feel them again. Where the fuck was he?
His head could just barely turn. He took in his surroundings. The room was bright, white, like a doctor's examining room. Crowded with electronic equipment
, bottles, vials. A table with several syringes was close by him. A pile of plasticuffs. A set of shears.
He was suspended from something, couldn't bend his neck far enough to see what. Hanging by a set of plasticuffs. His hands were cold, numb, but quasi-functional. A short foam-and-plastic-covered bench was under his ass, which took some of the pressure off his wrists. There was a plastic band across his throat. It cut into his voice box whenever he swallowed. He couldn't move his legs, or even feel them, but his balls throbbed, hard. A deep, sickening ache.
She sensed the second that he registered that pain, and reached down to grip his crotch. All he could see as he stared at her perfect smiling face was the grinning skull beneath. A death's head.
"You have me to thank for the fact that your testicles aren't a thin pink soup inside your scrotum," she told him. "Ken was going to crush them. I stopped him, just in time." She waited, as if expecting him to express gratitude. He said nothing. She squeezed his balls until he gasped. "I want you intact, for our games. When we have Edie. Mmm."
He shoved that image away, negated it. "You won't get Edie."
"Oh, certainly I will," she said. "She's on her way home right now, as we speak, to the bosom of her family. Des told me. He was there when she called them. Edie's little sister was sobbing on his shoulder."
He hung there, air frozen in his lungs, staring at her triumphant smile. "What does Marr have to do with this?"
"Everything," she said. "He's my partner. My lover. Des is offering emotional support to the bereaved Parrish family right now, in their time of shock and grief. Oh, wait! You didn't know, did you? How silly of me! You were asleep for that part! Charles Parrish is dead. Foully murdered. Poor Edie is now an orphan." She clicked her tongue. "Sad."
He tried to breathe, to fight the sickening waves of fear. "Dead? How? Who...who--"
"Who killed him? Oh, it's an incredible story. It starts eighteen years ago. This mysterious amnesiac with a grudge, one of Osterman's victims. He fixated on the CEO of Helix as the author of his woes, and boom." She mimed shooting a rifle, and shook her head sadly. "It's tragic," she mused. "I mean, who is really to blame, here? That poor man never got any help. The system failed him, and everyone else, in a tragic chain reaction. A sort of modern Hamlet. Everybody dies." She giggled. "Or will die, by the time we're through with you all."
Kev shook his head. "You can't pin that on me."
"He kidnapped and raped Edie Parrish, too," she went on. "He brainwashed her, sequestered her, and then he set himself up in a construction site, and waited for his chance to take Parrish out with a sniper rifle. And today, he succeeded. Thank God poor Edie was spared. Who knows what sick, twisted stuff was happening in the poor guy's brain. It makes one just shiver to think of it, doesn't it?"
"You won't get Edie," he repeated, desperately. "She's gone."
"We already have her," she taunted. "She's on her way home, to comfort her sister. When she gets there, Des will be there to greet her."
"No." Denying it made it no less true, but he couldn't stop bleating out the word, pushing that truth away from himself.
"Don't worry," she said. "Des will be gentle. He'll hold her while she cries. If she needs comfort, maybe he'll even fuck her. Lucky Edie."
That made his muscles tighten up with a jerk. He regretted his lack of control when her eyes lit up, thrilled to get a reaction.
"That wouldn't bother you?" he asked her, hoarsely.
"Oh, not at all." She petted his crotch again. "I give Des free rein. We have space in our relationship. Just as long as he brings her to me eventually. Like a dog, bringing a dead rabbit back to his master."
"Let her be," he said. "Forget about her. I'm the one you wanted, right? Nobody gives a shit if I disappear. She's a Parrish. The whole world's looking at her. She'll be nothing but trouble for you guys."
"Oh, you're wrong, you're wrong. Oh, where do I even begin." Cheung waved her arms. "Edie's special. Like you. Like me. She'll be my missing link. We have something in common, you know. We can take an X-Cog slave interface more than once without dying of brain bleed. And it's my hypothesis that Edie can, too, based on her Haven test results and MRIs. I'd bet an exclusive X-Cog contract that she's got the stuff."
His soul shrank from the thought. "And...if you're wrong?"
She shrugged. "If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. She dies in twenty minutes, bleeding out her orifices, and so much for that fantasy."
"And they'll be after you to the ends of the earth."
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If she works out, we'll control her completely. She'll do anything we want, and when we don't want to play anymore, she'll conveniently drive off a cliff, or swallow a bottle of bleach. Whatever tickles my funny bone."
Kev stuffed the fear into a small place in his mind, and fished everything she'd said out of his memory, looking for the sense, if there was any to be found. "Your missing link. Like you were for Osterman," he repeated slowly. "You said he left his mark on you, too. Were you one of those kids that he experimented on?"
"The only one who survived." Ava Cheung's face froze into a mask. "I am a distinguished, prizewinning neuroscientist. I publish in professional journals, I produce multimillion dollar patents. I am the reason Helix stock is sky-high. Everyone in my field knows of me."
And you mind-rape and murder people for fun. He thought it, but years in the kitchen with Tony Ranieri had taught him those moments when smart-ass sarcasm was not called for. Hanging from the ceiling with your balls in somebody's fist was definitely one of those times.
"What did Osterman do to you?" he asked.
Ava Cheung's brow tilted up. "You want to know? You can watch me do it to Edie. She'll be my obedient, docile whore. And so will you."
Kev tried to listen to her with his body. To see past his fear and revulsion, to catch a flash of the girl that she had been before she'd been broken, twisted into something barely human.
That girl was as lost to Cheung as his own boy self was lost to him. Even more so, because he had protected himself. He'd blocked that part, kept it safe. Safe even from himself, ironic though that was.
This woman had been wide open. Gutted. She was dead inside.
He looked into her eyes without wavering. "He hurt you," he said. "He used you. That was wrong."
"Don't pity me. Or I'll rip your entrails out before your eyes."
"All right," he said quietly. "All pity withdrawn."
"I'm a million miles beyond that stupid puling shit," she told him. "I'm a different order of human being. I've been forged in a crucible."
He didn't respond. There was nothing to say that wouldn't result in testicle squeezing, or a tooth-rattling slap.
The wild glow was fading from her eyes. What replaced it was trapped, confused. Frantic. "How did you do it?" she blurted. The words sounded like they were forced out under tremendous pressure.
He stared into her eyes, feeling his way. "Do what?" he asked.
"Get away from Dr. O, and Gordon. Nobody got away from them, except for you. And your brother. Your goddamn, fucking brother."
Gordon. The name conjured up nightmare flashes, rapid and elusive, but horrible. A thick, reddened gloating face, pale blue eyes close to his own face. Helplessness, humiliation, terror. Pain, as the red-hot-tipped iron came closer, closer...and--
Oh, Jesus. He winced away from the harrowing inner scream echoing through his memory, and grasped on to another thought, the only one that could keep him afloat. "Tell me about my brother."
"Shut up! You're never going to see him! You'll never see anyone! Answer my questions! How did you do it? How did you break away?"
He considered his very limited options in that split second, and concluded that the truth couldn't hurt him. No more than lies could help. Though he could very well be wrong. "I don't know," he said.
She slapped him. Sweat stood out on her forehead. Her eyes were wide and staring. "You lying bastard! You prick! Tell me!"
"It's true.
Those memories are blocked," he confessed. "I did something to myself to block them, but I don't know what it was. I blocked my own self out, too, in the process. I've never gotten back in."
"Did you break the dominance?" Her voice rose to a shriek.
"I don't know," he repeated quietly. "Swear to God."
She panted. "Don't do that. I am God, for you. I'm a jealous, vengeful God. I'm going to make you crawl and lick the bottoms of my feet." She socked him, splitting his lip. He licked it, tasting blood.
"I don't know," he repeated, having nothing else to say.
"Fine, then." The whites of her eyes showed all the way around. "We'll move on to the next item on my agenda. Maybe this will jog your memory." She held up a syringe. "New, improved X-Cog. You've already tried some, at the Parrish Foundation. I wanted to see how you took it, and I'm pleased at the results. Just a supplemental dose, nothing like what I gave Parrish today. His dose would have felled a bull elephant. Probably had hundreds of broken blood vessels. Good thing his brain was liquefied, or the autopsy would be a big puzzle for the coroner."
He stared at the syringe as if it were a venomous insect.
"You'll be amazed, how much more effective the drug is now," she said. "Dr. O worked hard all those years. It was X-Cog 2 or at most X-Cog 3, back in your day. This is X-Cog 19. There's a world of difference. I'll show you the trick you'll be performing today. Wait here."
As if he could wander away. He followed her as far as his head would turn, which wasn't far with that hard plastic band cutting across his throat. A few minutes later, she reappeared, pushing a wheelchair.
A girl was in it, her hands plasticuffed to the arm rests, her ankles to the footrests. Gagged. Young, no more than eighteen. She wore a gray sports bra and shorts on her slender, curvy body. Her face would have been beautiful if it had not been distorted by terror.
The sick feeling of creeping horror intensified. Whatever she had in mind for him and that girl, it was sure to be bad. There was no end to how bad it could be. He knew about bottomless pits. He lived in one.
"Kev, meet Yuliyah. Fresh out of Latvia. She's a musician. Plays the oboe. I have her audition CD in my car. I listen to it every day. A Mozart concerto. Stunning. She is going to be your new little friend."
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