I look up as a kind-faced woman comes into the room. I think she’s the same woman who brought me here, I remember her face; her striking short blonde haircut. She sits down on the edge of the bed and hands me a mug.
“Tea. Sweet. You should take a few sips.”
“Thank you.” I take a small sip and let the hot liquid slide down my throat.
“I’m Agent Kale. Lydia. I work alongside Gabriel. Special Agent Franks.”
“Gabriel… Is he… is he here?”
“He was there when we found you, Skye. Do you remember?”
I take another sip of tea and draw my knees up to my chest. Was it him who shot Cole Rockwell? Was it his arms around me I first felt? I’m so tired, I can’t seem to put any rational thought together right now. I’m confused and exhausted and… and, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore.
“You can go get cleaned up now, Skye. There’s a shower there in the bathroom, and when you’re done we can get you something to eat. Then you need to sleep. Gabriel’s gonna need to speak to you in the morning. And I know it’ll be hard, but, we need to know what happened to you.”
I look at her, and then I look down into my mug of tea.
They need to know what happened.
Except, I’ve learned how to block all the bad shit out.
And I’m in no hurry to relive it. Any of it…
Theo
“Is she OK?”
“No, she isn’t OK.”
“You want to expand on that?”
Agent Franks leans over the table as he speaks, and his face isn’t angry, as such, but there’s something there in his eyes that tells me this isn’t good.
“I’m not actually obliged to tell you anything, Theo, but I’m giving you the courtesy of letting you know that we got Skye back, because I think you really do care about her. Despite everything she did to you.”
“I want to see her.”
Agent Franks laughs and steps back from the table, digging his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, y’see, I don’t think you have any right to be putting in requests. And as for seeing her… she isn’t in any fit state to see anyone right now.”
“What did he do to her?”
He drags a hand back through his hair and drops his gaze for a second, before he raises it and his eyes meet mine. And I don’t like what I see in there. “We don’t know,” he replies, his voice quiet. Calm. Almost too calm.
“And you didn’t think this was a risk, when you sent her to do this fucking job for you? Did you want us all so bad that you risked her life?”
“I get that you’re angry, Theo, but you don’t get to talk to me like that. We did what we had to do, and Skye – she had a choice.”
“And what choice was that, huh? Work for you, or face prison herself?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“And what happens to her now?”
“That’s also none of your business.”
“I want to know she’s OK.”
“And I’ve told you, right now, she isn’t. She needs to sleep, she needs to eat, and she needs to heal. She isn’t gonna be OK for a while.”
“That bad, huh?”
He doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t need to.
“Can I see her? Please?” If I have to, I’ll beg, but I need to see her, before they take me away and throw me in a cell, and I’m ready for that. I am. But I need to see her first. “I accept that I’m going down, all right? I accept that, and I won’t fight that, but please – please let me see her.”
“She isn’t ready.”
“When she is.”
“By that time you’ll be long gone.”
“I’m begging you, Agent Franks…”
“You want to see the woman who helped put you here?”
“I want to see the woman I fell in love with. I want to say goodbye.”
“We already heard you say goodbye.”
He walks to the door, but then he turns back around and he looks at me.
“You made a mistake, Theo, but sometimes – sometimes the actions you take, mistakes or not, they have consequences.”
Chapter Nineteen
Gabriel
We let her sleep. She didn’t want to eat anything and we didn’t push that, but we needed her to get some sleep. She needed to get some sleep. And so did I, but it was hard. Every time I closed my eyes all I could see was that twisted freak with his dick inside her, and her haunted features as she just let him take her. And it was all I could do not to put that bullet in his fucked up brain, but sometimes these bastards are worth more to us alive than stone-cold dead. But once we’ve got everything we need out of him, I can’t promise anyone I won’t have a word with my connections inside whatever jail we send him to, ‘cause I have plenty of connections. And each and every one of them can make accidents happen.
“She awake?” I ask Lydia as she comes out of Skye’s room, a make-shift bedroom we put together for her here at our offices. We need to keep her safe now, until that new life of hers is sorted. But we need to talk to her first, before we hand her over to the marshals. We need to find out what happened, even though a part of me doesn’t really want to know what that sick asshole did to her. I already had a glimpse, I’m not sure if I’m ready for the details.
“Give her a few minutes, OK? She’s just getting dressed.”
“You get her some decent clothes?”
“Someone went to the house to pick up a few things.”
“Good. OK, well, I’ll try talking to her. See if she can tell us what happened.”
Lydia goes back inside the room and I lean against the wall, taking a long, deep breath before I make my way to my office along the corridor. Phil’s already waiting for me in there, and by the look on his face he isn’t here with the kind of news that’s gonna get my day off to the best of starts.
“What?” I ask him, going behind my desk and switching on my laptop.
“We got hold of Rockwell’s phone.”
I look up and frown. “So? Start pulling all the shit you can off it.”
“There’s something you need to see first.”
He slides the phone across the desk and I pick it up and look down at the screen. A grainy video is playing, obviously filmed from outside, shot through a window. And as I look more closely I see that it’s a video of me, and Skye, having sex, it’s quite obvious it’s us, and I look back at Phil.
“Anyone else see this?”
He shakes his head. “Just me. So you want to think yourself lucky on that score.” He sits down on the arm of my couch, clasping his hands together. “Listen, Gabriel…”
“No, Phil, don’t start with the lectures, all right?”
“Don’t start with the…? You were emotionally involved with a Federal Witness. Do you know what that could do to your career? Or was it just a onetime fuck, huh?” He shrugs, and I just want to lay him out for being so flippant. “Either way, Gabriel, this gets out and you are done. Jesus, it could put the whole freaking case in jeopardy! What the hell were you thinking?”
I throw the phone down onto the desk and come out front, leaning back against it as I drag both hands through my hair. “You gonna tell anyone?”
“No. Because I’m not just your colleague, Gabriel, I’m your friend, and I don’t want to see you ruined because you had a bad lapse of judgment. I don’t want to see all our hard work come to nothing, because you made a mistake.”
“She wasn’t a mistake.”
“Yes, she was. She was a criminal, she was working for us, and now she’s damaged goods.”
“Jesus Christ, have you heard yourself? She’s a fucking human being who’s probably been through hell at the hands of that asshole, and you talk about her like she’s nothing more than a worthless piece of shit who deserves that crap. Because she, what? She made a mistake, too, Phil. She made a mistake, too.”
“Was it? A onetime thing?”
“No.”
“More than
once?”
“I fell in love with her.”
He laughs a disbelieving laugh that fills me with the kind of anger I haven’t felt in a long time. “Come on, Gabriel. You’ve been going through an emotional time what with Erin leaving and all, was this not just some knee-jerk reaction? A release you needed? Although, you could’ve chosen more wisely.”
“Hey. You wanna watch your goddamn mouth, OK? You didn’t spend time with her, you didn’t talk to her. You didn’t know her.”
“Fucking her a few times doesn’t constitute getting to know someone, Gabe.”
“You’re really pushing me here, Phil. And I don’t appreciate it, all right?”
He looks at me, and he bows his head, and he rubs a hand nervously across the back of his neck before he raises his gaze to meet mine. “I’m sorry… Look, Gabe, she isn’t the same woman she was when you… She’s not that woman anymore.”
“I know. But she will be, she just needs time.”
“You need to think really, really carefully about what you’re doing here. Because if you…”
“It’s out of my hands now, Phil. And you’re right, she isn’t that same woman, not right now, but I still love her.”
“Do you? Because, when we’re highly emotional things can sometimes feel a little heightened, a little out of kilter…”
“I love her, Phil.”
“Then you should step down from this case. You shouldn’t be anywhere near Cole Rockwell. And maybe you shouldn’t talk to Skye, either, I mean, do you really want to hear about the things he did to her?”
“Yes. I do.” Do I? Really? “And I’m not stepping down from this case, because you aren’t telling anyone about me and Skye. Are you?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“I’m seeing this through to the end, Phil. Because I don’t leave jobs unfinished. But once this is done – when this is over, I’m leaving.”
He looks slightly surprised, but I don’t know why. He was the one who said I should think carefully about what I’m doing. But even before he said that, I’ve been thinking about what I have to do next. These past few days, I’ve thought about nothing else. And I know what I’m doing. I know what I have to do; what I at least have to try and do.
“Leaving what, Gabriel? Leaving the FBI?”
I shrug. Because, right now, I don’t know that for sure, I just know I need to leave here. This place. “I was never meant to stay here, Phil. In New Mexico.”
“You going back to New York? Back to Erin? Because, y’know, maybe that’s what you should…”
“I’m not going back to Erin.”
Phil leaves a couple of beats before he speaks again.
“Listen, Gabe. You and Skye… you know she can’t…” He drops his gaze again, but I don’t need him to finish the sentence. I don’t want him to finish the sentence.
“I’m gonna go talk to her.”
“Gabriel?”
I stop at the door and turn to face him. “Yeah?”
“Be careful, OK?”
Skye
I look in the mirror and gently touch the small cut that runs across my left cheek. I don’t even know how I got that, I don’t remember any pain. I broke a rib, they told me that yesterday after they’d poked and prodded and X-rayed every inch of me. But I don’t even remember that pain because I became so good at blocking all the bad shit out.
But at least I look cleaner now. Inside I still feel dirty and violated but I look clean. I smell clean. I’ve tried to scrub all traces of that animal off my skin but I think it’s going to take a while before I stop feeling his vile touch, erase those images of his face right up in mine, laughing like a maniacal monster as he fucked me. It’s going to take a while, but I can feel my strength slowly coming back. And I don’t feel scared anymore.
A knock at the door makes me swing around and I leave the bathroom and go back into the room they’ve kindly put together for me.
“Come in.”
The door opens, and the second he walks in I feel something else take over; another emotion I’m struggling with all over again. Confusion.
“How’re you feeling today?” he asks as he comes over to me.
“OK. I think. I’ve managed to eat something so, y’know. I’m getting my strength back.”
I don’t want him too close to me, and I know that sounds odd, considering I was in his arms yesterday, but that was different. I didn’t know it was him holding me, and at that time I just wanted to feel safe, any arms would’ve done. But now it’s over and I’m here, I don’t want anyone too close. I don’t want anyone touching me.
“Good. That’s good. Listen, Skye…”
“You want to talk to me. Right?” I sit cross-legged on the bed, clasping my hands together in my lap.
“We need to know, baby. We need to know what happened.”
“You recording this?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s just you and me, I promise you.”
“But you will need to tell people? What I tell you?”
“Yes, Skye, I will.”
I look down, and I start pulling at the sheet on the bed, and I feel him come a little closer, although, he still keeps a distance. He guesses I need that.
“If you’re still not ready…”
“He raped me.”
I look up, and I can see how hard it is for him to keep his face expressionless.
“I don’t know how many times, I lost count, and it wasn’t just that. He didn’t just do that. He made me do things to him, and I let him. And I hate myself for it… for being that weak…”
“None of what happened was your fault, Skye.”
“Yes, it was. Because I should have said something sooner, but I lied, to you, to Theo, I made everything so much worse…”
“None of what that bastard did was your fault, do you hear me?” He comes closer still, but as he reaches out to touch me I flinch away from him, and he pulls his hand back. And it breaks my heart, because there was a time, just a few days ago, when all I wanted him to do was touch me.
He backs off and sits down on the chair by the bed, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees.
“Did anyone else touch you?”
I look down again, and I shake my head. “He wouldn’t let anyone else near me. He’d let them watch…” I raise my gaze and my eyes meet his. Kind eyes. Eyes that used to make me feel safe. “He got off on having an audience.”
“Jesus, Skye…”
Gabriel
“I learned how to shut myself down, become a robot, almost. It was the only way.”
And I don’t think she’s quite come out of that state, not yet. Her eyes are still dead, her face still carrying that weary expression. He’s sucked any life she had left right out of her, and that kills me.
“He’s gonna go down, Skye, you know that, don’t you?”
“I did my job, huh?”
I drop my head and sigh heavily. I don’t want her to feel this way, to hate me or what we made her do, even though she has every right to feel those things. She has every right to hate me.
“Did they give you the morning after pill?”
I have to ask. I have to make sure. If that bastard came inside her then I don’t want her having to deal with any extra shit, and hopefully we got her out of there in time to make sure we can prevent that from happening. She was only gone for a couple of days, but even so, to her that ordeal must’ve felt like a fucking lifetime.
“Yes. They did.”
She lowers her gaze and I watch as her fingers pick away at the sheet she’s sitting on, an absent minded, somewhat nervous reaction, and my heart breaks all over again.
“Skye? You know we’re keeping you here, don’t you? Until…” I trail off, because I don’t actually know what’s going to happen to her yet. Yes, she’ll be given a new life somewhere safe, somewhere away from here, but as to what shape that new life is going to take – we don’t know what that’s going to be. It isn’t our job
to sort that out, it’s all in the hands of the marshals now.
“Until I have a new life to go to,” she whispers, without looking up at me. She can barely meet my eyes, and that tears me apart. But I understand why this isn’t easy for her.
“Yes. Until you have a new life to go to.”
She stops picking at the sheet and draws her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly to her as she stares out ahead.
“Thank you,” she says quietly, keeping her gaze focused on the wall opposite. “For saving me.” And then she turns her head to look at me. “You said you’d keep me safe.”
“But I didn’t, Skye. Did I?”
She smiles, and even though it’s a thin smile, and one that barely reaches her eyes, at least it’s a smile. “You came for me. That’s all that matters. You came for me, Gabriel.”
I smile back, and even though I want to take her in my arms and hold her tight and tell her I’m not ever going to let anything like that happen to her again, she doesn’t want that. She might never want that again, and I have to deal with that. I have to deal with what we did to her. “I was always gonna come for you, baby. Always.” I want to tell her I love her. I want to hold her and make her feel safe and I want to tell her, that I love her. But I can’t. What good would that do? It wouldn’t be fair, on either of us.
Tears start to fall slowly down her cheeks and she turns her head away from me, once more staring at the wall in front of her, and I get up to go. I can’t do any more right now, and I think she’s had enough.
“Where’s Theo?” she asks, and that stops me in my tracks.
“He’s still being questioned. They all are. Mack, Sam, Cole…”
“I don’t care about them. I care about Theo.” She turns her head and she looks at me as she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Is he OK?”
“He’s fine. Physically. But he’s having to deal with everything that’s happened, too.”
“One stupid mistake…” she whispers before trailing off, and it’s like something just switched off inside of her. She’s shutting down again, and there’s nothing I can do about that. “I want to see him, Gabriel.”
Bound (Soldiers of Darkness MC Book 3) Page 20