by Marni Mann
“Tyler,” I said, taking a step closer, reaching out for her.
She slipped her fingers in mine. Her skin had a slight warmth to it—not hot, but a medium heat, just the way I remembered her temperature being. It was so soft. And her short nails stabbed right behind my knuckles, the way she always did when I gripped her this way.
“I’m really here, Jae,” she promised, as though she could read my goddamn mind. “I’ll tell you everything, but first, we have to get rid of this bitch.”
“Who?”
She pointed at Layla. I’d forgotten she was even in the room.
“Her,” she hissed. “Mina, my old boss.”
“Mina?” I asked. “But her name is Layla.”
Tyler shook her head. “No, my love, it’s not.”
I was shocked as hell that these two women knew each other. But after seeing Layla’s—or Mina’s—tattoo, I knew something bound them together. I just didn’t know what it was.
“Fuck you,” Mina spit in the background.
I didn’t know whom Mina was talking to. I didn’t care. Tyler owned me in this OR. My eyes didn’t want to look at anything but her. My hand didn’t want to touch anything but her flesh.
She was the reason for so many things. Why I hadn’t wanted a relationship after she died, why I hadn’t gone back to the States for such a long time.
I had dreamed about her. Fucking cried over her. I had lost my goddamn mind over her.
And, now, she was back. Here, in my prison, a place I hadn’t ever told her about.
And she was holding my hand, telling me I needed to kill a woman I had been fucking.
I shook my head. This shit was way too much.
“Look at meee!” Mina screamed.
It was a noise I hadn’t been prepared for. Not with Tyler here. Not with her hand in mine.
Her warm hand.
She had started my love affair with the screams.
She was why I had gone downstairs to the prison, in a haze of Valium and sleeping pills, trying to find that noise.
“Tyler…” I muttered.
“I’m really here, Jae.”
She was the only person who ever used my real name.
The last person to say it out loud.
“You’re alive,” I continued.
As she nodded, Mina screamed again, and the memory of that morning came rushing back to me. I had come home from getting groceries when I found her on the floor…
“Tyler!” I shouted as I walked into the bathroom, immediately falling to my knees.
I didn’t try to be gentle when I pulled her into my lap. I just needed to touch her, to hold her, to know she was going to be okay. But, the second her skin hit mine, I was filled with such a coldness. Her flesh was like ice when it should have been warm.
Warm from all the blood that was pouring from it.
It was everywhere. On the floor, on the sink, all over her, and now, covering me.
“Tyler!” I yelled again, shaking her body, waiting for a response. “Answer me, Tyler. Open your eyes, and fucking answer me.”
Her skin was so white, her lips already a faint tint of blue.
I picked up her arm and held it against my shirt, hoping the pressure would stop the bleeding, but I knew it wouldn’t. She’d cut too deep. I was sure she’d hit veins. That was where all this blood had come from.
“Tyler.” I didn’t even recognize my voice anymore. Not with so much emotion in it. But I repeated her name over and over while I pressed my face into her cold cheek. “Why did you do this?”
I just wanted an answer. A reason.
And then I saw it. It was sitting on the floor next to her. A letter, written in handwriting I’d only ever seen once.
A few months ago, she’d left me a note on my pillow, and I hadn’t seen it until I got back from dropping her off. On that small piece of paper were those three words she never let me say to her.
But this was different. This was much longer than three words. This told me why she couldn’t continue living this way. That killing herself was the only way she’d ever be free of them. She didn’t say who the people were. She just said that she loved me more than anything, and she couldn’t keep hurting me and putting my life in danger.
“Tyler,” I said, shaking her again. “Tell me you’re going to be okay. Just tell me something, so I know you’re coming back to me.”
There was nothing.
Just silence.
No gasping for air. No telling me to call an ambulance. No crying out in pain.
Just more silence.
“Scream for me, Tyler.” I pressed my lips on her forehead. “Scream for me, and tell me that you’re fighting, that you’re going to fight for us.”
I heard a noise behind me, and I squeezed her even tighter. It was like I was a fucking animal, protecting its prey.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
“It’s just me.”
“Me who?”
“Gary,” he said, his face popping into the doorway of the bathroom. “Jesus Christ.” He looked at all the blood and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s worse than I thought it would be.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He shook his head, and I knew.
“She told me what she was going to do,” he said. “She didn’t want you to dispose of her body or for you to call the police, so she asked me to come here and help.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I snapped.
“No, man.”
“She planned this? And told you about it?” I couldn’t let her go, but I wanted to get up and punch the guy in the goddamn face. “And you let her do this? You didn’t fucking stop her? How could you let her kill herself? She’s someone I love. She’s someone who thought of you as a friend.”
He shook his head again. “I tried. There was no way to stop her. She’s been planning this for a long time, and nothing I said was gonna change that.”
I put my lips on hers. Nothing passed through. No heat. No kiss.
He knelt down beside me and reached out his hands.
“What?” I asked him.
“I have to take her.”
“Like hell you are.”
His fingers went to my shoulder, and if any of mine were free, I would rip his off by the highest knuckle.
“Trust me, man. You don’t want to see this any longer than you need to. She’s not coming back from this. I’m going to take her and do what I need to with her. It’s what she wanted.”
What she wanted?
She always told me, one day, it would end. But she never told me it would end like this.
I felt a lightness on my arms as he lifted her, her body weight no longer on me, and I watched her legs dangle and blood drip from her hand. I saw it hit the floor and the splatter it left behind.
“I’ll come back in a little while to check on you.”
I looked down at my fingers. Everything was red. My clothes. My boots.
My vision.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I won’t be here.”
“No?” He turned around to face me.
I looked up at him, knowing if he didn’t leave my place right now, there would be two dead bodies I needed to get rid of. “No,” I said, “and I’m never coming back.”
“Tyler!” I shouted as I shook my head, glancing all around the room to get my bearings.
She squeezed me. “I’m right here, Jae.”
“I’m right here, too,” Mina snapped.
That fucking accent. It had come out of nowhere.
“Tyler, I’m going to kill her,” I said. “I promise you, she will suffer. I’ll drag it out so long, she’ll be begging for me to take her life. But, first, I need some answers.”
Now, she held both my hands, and with her standing so close, I could feel the warmth through her clothes.
“Okay, I’ll tell you everything. I just have to do this first.”
She reached up and wr
apped her arms around my neck. Her cheek pressed against mine as she hugged me, and I felt her breath. It was the best thing that had ever been exhaled on my skin.
I closed my eyes just as she said, “I love you.”
Thirty-Seven
Tyler
Now
I squeezed Jae as hard as I could, and I closed my eyes as I inhaled his scent. I hadn’t forgotten it, but the memory wasn’t as crisp as it had been, and now, it was all coming back to me. Fall nights in Kansas—part nature, part cold, and completely man.
God, I’d missed him. It felt so good to be back in his arms, a place I never thought I’d ever return to.
It hadn’t been easy to get here. In fact, it was harder than any job The Achurdy had ever given me. I’d treated it just like a job, too. Mina had been the item up for bid, and Bond had been my mark. Once I’d tracked him down and put together all the information he needed to see, I had known I could eventually get what I wanted. But finding Bond hadn’t been as easy as I’d thought, especially with him being in San Diego, the city where I had to be the most cautious.
Fortunately, I’d found him, I’d converted him, and now, I was here.
It was amazing, the things I had been able to find when I faked my own death and stepped away from the organization. The Achurdy was careful. They covered their tracks well. I’d just figured out where to look, and I always kept a close tab on Mina. She was my answer, and ultimately, she’d led me right to where I wanted.
When Jae had held me in his bathroom, when he had begged me to scream, I’d hoped that, wherever I ended up, I would be able to watch over him and protect him. I had done just that. Only I had done it from afar. And the minute I’d found out that bitch was coming for him, I’d started making my plans.
Wynter and Mina were never satisfied with the proof of my death. I knew they would never let it go. I just hadn’t believed they would go after Jae. Although, I had to admit, the lesbian team was a solid act. Their downfall was their cockiness. If they had done their research, if they had bothered to learn just a little about him, they would have uncovered his loyalty. He never would have told them about me, just like he wouldn’t ever fess up about the prison.
Men like him took secrets to the grave.
Mina wasn’t even close to getting him to spill. She probably hadn’t realized that though, and I had intercepted before she could keep trying.
Then, there was Wynter. She was just a toy. Someone Mina had used to help entice the mark. She hadn’t made it more than twenty minutes in the prison before her arms were cut off, and she was fed to a roomful of rats. The thought of that kind of death made me quiver, but I didn’t feel sorry for her. She was as guilty as Mina.
Jae turned his lips into my cheek and said, “Talk to me, baby. Tell me what happened.”
I finally pulled out of the lock I’d held him in, knowing that, in just a few minutes, I’d be hugging him again, and I reached for his hands.
The only way for him to know what had really happened was to start from the beginning. So, I took him back to my college dorm room when Wynter and I had gone to the club that very first night. I continued my story right up to when I had found out I was pregnant. I didn’t tell him that part. That was for later when we were alone. But I mentioned Gary’s involvement—how he’d gotten me new identification, helped me get out of town, and sheltered all the cash I had been withdrawing from my Achurdy account. Then, I explained how I had gone to Bond—although I left out the details of how I’d persuaded him. I just told Jae that Bond was no longer supplying them drugs and how I had become a client of the prison, hiring them to take Wynter and Mina as inmates.
“The stripper,” he grunted.
“You didn’t even know her fucking name,” Mina barked.
“I didn’t give a shit about her or her name,” Jae snapped back. “I still don’t. That bitch is getting eaten, exactly the way she deserves.” He continued to look at her with so much hatred in his eyes. “You’ve been a client all this time, and I never knew.”
“Nix took care of all that,” she said. “I never knew it was you either or who he spoke to at this place.”
Jae lifted my hand and looked at my tattoo. He’d stared at it so many times, but this one felt different. “I didn’t know, Tyler.”
He was talking about The Achurdy being a client, the girls they’d sent here. The ones who might have even died in the same place I was standing.
“I know,” I told him.
“Had I seen their tattoos, I would have made the connection, but I wasn’t the one who killed them. That was Shank’s job.”
I knew that, too. I’d learned that when I arrived at the prison.
“How did you figure this all out?” he asked me.
This was where I had to really think before I spoke. As much as I wanted to be honest with him, I just couldn’t tell him everything.
“I hired a PI, and he followed a few of the girls who I suspected were breaking the rules,” I said. My gaze bounced between Jae and Mina. I loved the shock in her eyes, hearing that I actually knew more than her. “He found out that one of them had a boyfriend, and he had a feeling she was pregnant. He watched her closely and tracked her here.”
“That’s how you found out about the prison?”
This would be another answer that wasn’t completely honest. It killed me that it had to be this way, that I was playing dirty with a man I loved. But some things Jae just couldn’t know. These were some of those things.
“Yes,” I said. “My PI followed the plane straight here. It didn’t take him long to figure out what was happening in the basement. Plus, one of your helpers has quite a big mouth once you get a couple of cocktails in him.”
“Toy,” Jae growled.
I got the sense Toy wouldn’t ever be speaking again.
“What was the girl’s name, Tyler? The one your PI tracked?”
“Audrey,” Mina and I both said at the same time.
“She was Inmate #1501. Jesus, fuck.” He shook his head, and I didn’t like the expression that came with it. “That poor girl, she—”
“Jae”—I held up my hand, cutting him off—“if it’s bad, please don’t say it.”
He nodded and didn’t speak another word.
I’d confessed it all at this point. He knew I’d faked my death, my relationship with The Achurdy, how I had found him, and why I was here.
Now, it was my turn to ask the questions.
I faced Mina, moving a few steps closer, my hand dropping from Jae’s. There was a chance she wouldn’t tell me. But she had to know she wasn’t going to survive the night, so I didn’t see a reason she would hold it in.
“How did you find me?” I asked her.
She smiled, and I hated her for it. I wanted to reach forward and slap it right off her face, but I knew she was getting what she deserved, and that would be happening very soon. I needed to save my energy because the second Jae and I got to his room, I’d be using all of it.
“After you died,” she said, “Wynter pulled the video feed from the security camera in your building. It showed you coming in, taking the stairs to the second floor, and grabbing the elevator from there. The only reason you’d avoid the lobby is if you had something to hide. Turns out, we were right; you weren’t dead.”
My hands still didn’t feel safe in front of me, so I stuck them on my hips and squeezed. “That doesn’t explain how you found out about Jae and me.”
There was that smile again. Jae must have expected something from me because he moved behind me and put his hand over my stomach to keep me in place.
“You want more from me?” She gleamed. “Then, take these cuffs off.”
“Not a chance,” Jae said.
“I’m not saying a goddamn word then.”
I turned around and gripped his T-shirt between my fingers. “Please,” I urged, “just her hands. I need to hear what she has to say.”
I didn’t like the glare he gave me, but eventually, he
went to the back of the room, opened a drawer, and pulled out a set of keys. He used them to unlock her shackles. “Those are staying on,” he said, pointing to the ones on her ankles.
Once her hands were free, she rubbed her wrists and moved them around in circles. “Much better.”
“Tell me now, Mina. How did you find out about Jae and me?”
She played with her hair as she spoke, twirling it around a finger, the same way she always used to do to me. “Wynter followed you one night. She didn’t know about Jae.” She paused, glancing over at him. “Or Beard, whatever the fuck you go by.” Her eyes then came back to me. “One of the guys at the bar told her everything she needed to know. It only took a few hundred dollars, and she learned all about your friendship with the bartender. From there…”
She smiled, and it hit me right in the gut. I knew before she even said it. It was what I had been afraid of.
“Your poor friend, Gary. He fought a good fight. He didn’t even tell us your location. I’m assuming because he didn’t know it. But he told us about Beard and where we could find him.” She gazed at Jae again. “You had your mail forwarded to a hotel in Miami. The rest was easy. You’re a whore who likes lots of pussy. We knew you’d never turn down two lesbians. Turns out, we were right again.” She licked across her bottom lip. Even with all that black makeup that had dripped down from her tears, she still looked beautiful, and it sickened me. “And that dick, baby, was one of the best we’d ever had.”
“You’re the fucking whore,” I spit back.
Jae held my arm, so I couldn’t move, but I could tell he was just as angry as me.
“Let me get something straight,” he said. “All that shit was fake—the investments, the businesses, your office. All of it?”
She nodded. “Nix helped me put the whole thing together. You remember him, don’t you, yerekha?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Anyway, everyone you met—Yerem, Panig, and the assistants—they’re all affiliated with The Achurdy. I didn’t even bother giving them American names because I didn’t think you were smart enough to catch on.” She laughed. “I wasn’t wrong either. You were too focused on our pussies. Weren’t you, Beard? Oh, wait, maybe that’s when you were trying to get in our asses. I can’t remember. You were in so many of our holes.”