by CJ Lyons
Faith. How could I return to him anything less? The most difficult act of courage I’ve ever performed.
That’s when I realized Devon was wrong. I wasn’t free because I was dying. I was trapped. Bound and gagged by mortality. Whatever I decided—no, whatever I did, whether I decided it or not—this moment, here and now, was my legacy. An entire lifetime forced kicking and screaming into one frail, too-tiny moment.
Kicking and screaming. I liked that. I might not have much else to leave behind, but at least I could make my passing unforgettable. All I needed was to get the knife into my hand.
Ryder climbed to his knees. Petrosky hauled him up the rest of the way and shoved him against one of the iron columns. He ignored her and the gun pointed at his face. “I know you get your kicks from torturing helpless women,” he taunted Leo. “How’d you like to try it on someone your own size?”
“You think I tortured my specimens?” Leo shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You don’t understand anything. I might have primed the pump, so to speak. You see, my formulation works best when the fight-or-flight response is already at its peak. All those catecholamines and stress hormones filling the synapses, leaving them ripe for the PXA to block their reuptake.”
Leo nodded to Petrosky to stand guard over Esme, while he took a small leather box from the table. He held up a syringe, its needle sparking in the light as he drew clear fluid into it. Then he turned to me.
The memory of Allie’s pain flooded me with fear. I stepped back, bumping into a large pot, rocking it. Leo shook his head as if admonishing a child. “Stay still and take your medicine like a good girl,” he said. “Unless you’d rather I gave it to the child.”
A symphony of soul-rousing music hit me, drawing me into a fugue. Violins this time. Kicking and soaring up and down the scale before leaping into a jig. Music filled with hope and promise. Even if it had hit at the worst possible time.
“Leo, stop,” Devon shouted. He’d seen what had happened to me, was trying to distract Leo. I was thankful but hated being powerless, needing protection. “I’ll give you a show you won’t forget. That’s what you really want, right? To get back at me for all the time and attention your father spent on me and my mother. Time away from you.”
Leo grabbed my arm. I couldn’t resist him, frozen by the fugue. My only hope was that it would pass quickly, before he saw how vulnerable I was.
“This magic potion is my crowning glory. The one that will leave my mark on history.” He plunged the needle into my deltoid.
Somewhere, in the dark recesses of my memory, aided by the fugue state, I dredged up the molecular structure of the chemicals he’d mentioned. Realized that by having them flood the brain and then blocking their absorption, he could keep a person in a perpetual state of pain and terror. Creating a positive feedback loop that basically fed on itself.
But those same chemicals were also tied to endorphin production as well as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Start playing with those, and you could produce a virtual zombie, someone so dazed and overwhelmed by pain that their own mind would betray them, leaving them vulnerable to suggestion.
The perfect instrument of torture and interrogation, combined into one deadly drug. Worth billions to the government, not to mention other parties.
“I didn’t torture those women,” Leo continued in a casual tone, his fingers on my pulse, monitoring my response. “They did it to themselves. The right dosage of my new formulation, and a person will do anything I ask them to—anything to stop the pain. One of them chewed her own fingers off when I suggested they’d make a tasty snack. I told another that burning the nerve endings was the only way to end the pain. Then I handed her a blowtorch.”
He laughed, a sound that echoed over and over in my mind, replaying itself like feedback from a bad amp. “Wasn’t much left of her by the end. Surprised me how long it took her to die. I recorded it all for posterity, of course. In the name of science.”
My flesh burned with fever, and my pulse raced, galloping out of control. Pain seared through me. If I could have moved, I would have screamed, been writhing on the ground. As it was, all I could do was fight past it, concentrate all my senses on anything that would help us escape.
A stray draft tickled the plants near Esme, and I realized Flynn had found her way in through one of the windows. Only the slightest rustle gave away her position. Ryder was also working his hands down his back, reaching for the handcuff key concealed in his belt. I stretched my hearing and could sense Tyree closing in behind Devon. Was he suspicious of Devon? Getting ready to hurt him? No, there was the click of Devon’s handcuffs being unlocked. Tyree was on our side. Good to know.
Which left me to distract Leo. He caressed my arm, releasing wave after wave of pain in his wake, and leaned to whisper in my ear, “You will obey my every command. If you do, the pain will recede. If you resist, it will grow a thousand times worse.”
Then he stood back, glancing at his watch. “Won’t be long now. Once the pain reaches her threshold, she’ll be mine.”
“Stop this,” Ryder said. “There’s no need—”
“There’s every need. This is science. My legacy, my chance to prove to my father that I can accomplish greatness on my own. I don’t need anything from him.”
“Your father’s dying. Wouldn’t your time be better spent at his bedside instead of this ridiculous demonstration?”
Leo’s face flushed with anger, and he raised his hand with the knife, ready to stab Ryder. Tyree handed Devon a pistol and edged back, out the door. I wondered at that. Wasn’t he here to rescue Esme? Then I remembered what Flynn had said, something about Tyree stealing a ring from Leo. Daniel’s ring? Did we have this all wrong?
I blinked, finally free of my fugue, but now feeling the full effects of the PXA. Agony doubled me over, knocking me to the floor. Petrosky stepped forward, away from Esme. Through the tsunami of pain, I sensed Flynn sliding behind the table where Esme lay as Leo turned his attention from Ryder onto me.
What I’d felt with Allie, it had been a pale reflection of the real agony she’d suffered. Pain so intense I couldn’t describe it, give it any flavor. It was searing and freezing, electrical shocks and choking, wrenching, twisting, breaking… The terror I’d felt lost in Devon’s mother’s mind would have been infinitely more bearable.
Leo hauled me to my feet. “Stand,” he commanded.
Despite the pain filleting me from the inside out, I obeyed.
“Good girl. Now you have a choice.” He placed his knife in my hand and folded my fingers around it. “Stab the girl or stab the cop. Now.”
His final word blazed through my body, jerking it forward like a puppet on a string. I tried to resist, used every ounce of my strength to fight his command, but the pain grew so intense it felt as if my every cell was exploding, sending fragments of twisted, broken, searing agony across my body. The only things that felt real were my grip on the knife and Leo’s voice.
I looked to Ryder. He nodded, his lips curling in the saddest smile I’d ever seen.
I stumbled toward him, Leo following me, while I hoped I was providing enough distraction for Flynn to save Esme, leaving Devon to tackle Petrosky.
Then I was in front of Ryder, my chest pressed against his, my hand holding the tip of the knife to his left rib cage. Over his heart.
Leo practically danced with excitement. Somehow, I managed to take a step back, away from Ryder. Leo blocked my path. He circled one arm across my shoulders as if we were lovers bound for eternity. “Do it. Do it now!”
And I did.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Stabbing someone in the heart isn’t like what you see on TV. First, you have all those layers to get through, jackets and shirts and all. Then, the heart is actually well protected anatomically. There’s a reason the chest cavity is called the rib cage. Makes it tough to hit, especially when you’re aiming blind.
No, if you want to stab someone to death, the heart probably isn’
t your best bet. Especially if that someone is directly beside you, on the opposite side of your body from your hand with the knife.
Leo had been so wrapped up in his sadistic games that he’d forgotten not everyone responds to a drug in the same way. Especially not someone like me, whose brain is filled with millions of tiny holes interrupting the synaptic connections loaded with the neurochemicals he was relying on to keep his drug active.
I pulled my elbow back, but instead of plunging my knife forward into Ryder’s chest, I arced it to my left, directly into Leo’s left femoral region. He jerked up in shock, wrenching the blade. I kept my hand on the knife, slicing downward, pushing it in deeper.
“You bitch!” Leo shouted, pushing me away.
Big mistake. I took the knife with me, leaving a gushing wound behind. The femoral artery is one of the largest in the body. Slice that, and you have blood jetting out with each heartbeat. Get the femoral vein as well, and you’re dead within a few minutes.
Leo pressed his hands against his groin, slipped in his own blood already puddling on the floor, and fell, writhing as he fought to stop the bleeding.
I had no time to think about what I’d just done. The PXA still had me in its grip—not totally, but enough so I couldn’t move, not without pain sizzling down every nerve ending. I stood, frozen, my jaws locked as I fought against a scream.
Across the room, Flynn grabbed Esme from the table, aiming a pistol at anyone who tried to stop her. No one did.
Petrosky whirled, ignoring Flynn, to point her pistol at me. On the other side of her, Devon snapped free of his handcuffs and raised a gun as well.
Too late. Petrosky fired. At me.
Before I could react, Ryder lunged forward—not at Petrosky, she was too far away—pushing me aside and putting himself in the line of fire.
I’m not sure if it was the drugs or remnants of my fugue state, but I saw the bullet race across space as if propelled by slow-motion special effects from a movie. Watched it hurtle and spin, while I was unable to move fast enough to stop it before it hit Ryder.
The sound of the gunshot was quickly followed by two more stacked on another two as both Flynn and Devon fired on Petrosky. Her body jerked right, then left, before she slumped down, her pistol sliding from her slack grasp.
Ryder stumbled against me, off-balance with his hands cuffed behind his back. Blood seeped through his shirt. I caught him with my own cuffed hands and lowered him to the ground.
“I need some help here,” I shouted, choking on the smell of gunpowder and blood. At least, I think I shouted. My mind was exploding with the roar of a thousand gunshots echoing, while my body felt each one tear through me, ripping me apart, over and over again. Every time I blinked, I expected to see my own guts and blood pouring out of me.
I tried to focus. I pressed both my hands against Ryder’s wound. Not my blood. His. And no guts. Hit in the right lower quadrant, not the worst place to be shot, as long as the bullet didn’t fragment and nick a blood vessel or tumble up into the liver.
Flynn grabbed my wrists, unlocking the handcuffs, then freed Ryder as well. Esme lay on the other side of Ryder, still unconscious, thank God. She had enough bad memories without witnessing this carnage.
“I called 911. They’re on their way. What do you need?” Flynn asked. Leo moaned beside us, one hand flailing at her ankle, but she kicked him aside.
Devon had disappeared, the sound of gunfire coming from the roof marking his progress. Had he figured out the truth about Tyree as well?
“Hold pressure here.” I positioned Flynn’s hands over Ryder’s entrance wound while I checked his flank. Found an exit wound not far from the entrance. That was good. Very good. I bunched his jacket over the top of it, using his body weight to apply pressure. He gave a little sound, choking back a moan.
I turned to him, one hand at his neck, the other at his wrist, assessing his pulses. Both strong. Breathing regular. Pain still rampaged through my body with each movement, but focusing on saving him kept it at bay. One more gift Ryder gave me—besides saving my life.
“You’re going to be okay,” I promised him. “Except for the psych eval I’ll be ordering. What the hell were you thinking, jumping in front of me like that?”
His eyes crinkled with a smile as he held back his laughter. Time rushed past us, leaving us in an oasis of calm, a feeling not unlike my fugues. Except I was free to move, free to do what I wanted. So I gave in and kissed him.
I stroked his hair with my fingers, taking care not to snag the staples I’d placed there last night when we’d first met. Was it only twenty-four hours? Felt much shorter, like an instant, yet also ages and ages.
Swiss-cheese brain of mine, I had the feeling I’d best get used to more strange time warps. But I saw the gleam in Ryder’s eyes and knew he felt the same way.
Then he frowned, his gaze snagging on Leo. Still breathing, but unconscious, barely any blood left to ooze from his wound.
“Help him,” Ryder said.
I jerked back. “He’s gone. It’s too late.”
“No,” Ryder insisted. “We need to know where he stashed the PXA.”
He was right. There was no way in hell we could risk anyone else gaining control of Leo’s formulation.
Reluctantly, I turned my back on Ryder and crawled to Leo’s side. His lips were ashen, his breathing agonal. He was as close to dead as you could get. Without immediate access to an OR and a dozen units of blood, there was no way I could save him.
But I could find the PXA. I hauled in my breath, squared my shoulders, making sure Ryder and Flynn couldn’t see my face. Only hoped I wasn’t frozen so long that they’d have to pull me out. I wished Devon was here. He’d know what to do if—when—Leo died and I was still with him.
How quickly I’d accepted this curse. So typical of an ER doc—make that former ER doc—to improvise, twist a death sentence into some kind of blessing.
I lay my hand on Leo’s neck. His pulse was thready, barely palpable.
The music hit. Different this time, probably because of the PXA still in my system. Painful. Roaring. Buffeting me as if I’d been sucked into an F5 tornado.
At its center, Leo. Larger than life, radiating with a fierce, white-hot brilliance.
I know what you want. You’ll never find it. He raised a hand, swatting me aside, sending me reeling, falling into the darkness that swirled at the edges, devouring the light, closing in on both of us. Pain sliced through me as if he’d hit me for real, and not with a hand but with a machete.
I was on my hands and knees, gasping, my body blazing with agony.
Scream, he commanded. I like it when they scream.
No. I climbed to my feet and faced him. Tell me. Where’s the PXA?
The darkness had collapsed the circle of light that held Leo and I into a small whirlpool, winds buffeting us, waves of light crashing against us. I staggered, fought to keep to my feet. Leo merely laughed, absorbing more of the light to grow taller, towering over me.
Scream for me, he said, raising his hand to strike me down. A death blow.
This was how he saw himself, I realized. Just as Allie had seen herself as a concert pianist, had created that reality that we shared. Leo wanted to go down fighting, conquering, all-powerful. Deciding not just his own fate, but mine. As he had with all those women he’d tortured. How many more had he killed in his twisted search for the ultimate torture device?
Power and control. That’s what he wanted with his drug. And now with his death.
I wouldn’t let him. Instead, I opened my mouth and screamed. Not a scream of surrender or anguish. A rebel yell of defiance, letting loose all the pain the PXA had brought me, all the pain and suffering Allie had experienced at his hands, even the pain Devon’s mother had lived through for so long.
All of it. A tympani of pain crashing down, burying us both in our shared reality. His cries pierced the roaring that filled my mind—his mind—our mind.
And suddenly I saw. Knew w
hat I needed to know.
As the pain swept him away into the dark, he reached out a hand. Save me!
I pushed away, a rush of fever heat forcing me back. He vanished in the darkness.
And I blinked, back in the here and now of the greenhouse. Leo’s body lay before me. No pulse. Not breathing. Gone for good.
I shook myself. Pain, but not as intense, nothing I couldn’t handle. I spun around to Ryder. It was obvious I hadn’t been lost in the fugue for more than a minute or so, though it’d felt like all of eternity had collapsed into one soul-sucking black hole.
“He’s gone,” I said. “I couldn’t save him.”
The gunfire outside had died down. “I’m going to see if I can find some first aid supplies, Flynn. Stay with him and Esme.”
“Take this.” She handed me Petrosky’s service weapon. I held the gun. It was heavier than I expected. Felt powerful in my hand.
I stepped over Leo’s body—funny, he seemed shrunken, inconsequential. I’d basically just tortured him to death, and there’d be hell to pay for that, but I’d deal with it later. I went outside. The roof was empty except for Devon and Tyree.
Devon was on the ground, face bloody, glaring up at Tyree. Tyree had one hand braced against the waist-high balustrade, using it as leverage as he swung his leg to aim a vicious kick at Devon.
“Stop!” I shouted, raising the gun. Tyree froze. Devon rolled to his feet.
“Do it, Angela,” Devon said. “It’s because of him that Jess is dead. Think how many people he’s killed, how many lives he’s ruined, all those innocent girls he delivered to Leo. He deserves to die, just as much as Leo did.”
I could do it—kill Tyree, end this here and now. Just as I had with Leo. Free the residents of the Tower from their reign of terror. Odds were I was dying anyway.
Which meant there was nothing to stop me.
“Do it. Pull the trigger,” Devon urged.
Freedom coursed through my veins, energizing me, as if the universe were suddenly much, much larger than I’d ever imagined. Larger than the law or the rules or penance. Justice personified.