Unhinged

by Natasha Knight

  She wanted to know what my nightmare was, but I’m trying to make sense of it myself. Because what I saw, it doesn’t make sense.

  The bathroom door opens and I look up. Why am I stunned when I see her? She doesn’t look any different. I’ve just seen her naked. Seen all there is to see of her. Yet, her standing there in a knee-length skirt and a tank top, wearing no makeup apart from lip gloss, and her wet hair pulled into a long ponytail fucking stuns me.

  I don’t know if she feels it or not, but she keeps her eyes level with mine. I know she’s struggling to do it. She’s so skittish. But I won’t make it easy on her. I’m all for owning who you are. She needs to take an honest look at herself and take responsibility. She could have said no anytime, both last night and today, but she didn’t. And I want her to own that.

  She clears her throat and takes a step into the bedroom, dropping some things into her suitcase and slipping on her sandals. They have a two-inch heel but when I stand up, I still tower over her.

  “You’ll need different shoes. Walking shoes.”

  She doesn’t ask me where we’re going. I have a feeling she knows, but doesn’t want to admit it just yet. She slips out of her sandals and puts on a pair of sneakers.

  “Tell me the rest,” she says. Her voice is strange, like her mind was somewhere else.

  I take the keys of the car I rented last night and those of the hotel and shove them into the pocket of my jeans. Before opening the door, I grab my duffel bag.

  “Are we checking out?” she asks, looking confused.

  “No. We’ll be back.”

  “Why do you have your things then?”

  “I need them.”

  She studies me, but I point to the door. “We have a lot to do.”

  “What’s in there that’s so valuable?”

  Smart girl. Thing is, she’d almost seen them that first day. I’d planned on showing them to her. Making her look at them. It was part of my punishment for her.

  But then I’d changed my mind.

  “Nothing.”

  She studies me a moment longer, then decides to let it go and walks out the door. I follow close behind and we don’t speak until we’re in the car and I’m driving out of the city.

  “Where are we going?”

  I don’t answer. I’m not sure she wants to know, and I haven’t been back there since that night.

  “Zach?”

  “Baskinta.”

  I feel her tense up beside me, but pretend I don’t. Neither one of us wants this, but we both need it.

  “I just need to make one stop.” I pull into the parking lot of a drugstore. “Stay in the car.” I want condoms. I realize how ridiculous it is my brain has room for that, but I know myself. I know what I need. And she’s it.

  She doesn’t argue and I’m in and out in a few minutes with some bottles of water, snacks, and a package of condoms. We’re soon on our way to Baskinta.

  “Tell me the rest of the nightmare,” she says.

  “It was that night again. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all. You were saying something. Trying to grab something. Or someone.”

  Someone. But it couldn’t be. I’ve been getting bits and pieces of that night back for two years now. I remembered everything before the blast, but afterward, it’s a blur. This nightmare had been the most vivid yet. But what it had to tell, it made me doubt everything because it couldn’t be.

  “I spent five months in a coma,” I say, not ready to talk about that dream just yet. Still needing time to process it myself. It’s easier to talk about what happened after that night.

  “What?”

  “After that night. I should have died, but I didn’t. I was in bad shape though. A local doctor and his son found me. Took me to their home and kept me hidden there.”

  “Hidden?”

  “He had the sense to know if word got out of a survivor, whoever did the job would be back to finish it. Seeing as how I was flat on my back and unconscious, I’d be as good as dead if that happened.”

  “What happened after the five months? There’s a year and seven months between that and now.”

  “Recovery. You don’t just get up and walk away from injuries like I sustained. I’m indebted to Dr. Hassan and his family.”

  “How did they find you?”

  I shake my head. That’s a question I’ve asked too. “They were nearby. They heard the blast.”

  She nods, but she’s distracted. She’s looking at the road. “Do we have to go back to that place?”

  “I need to see it. I owe it to the dead.”

  “What if—”

  We hit a pothole and she jumps, catching herself on the handle above the door. I reach out and cover her other hand with mine.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “That man at the hotel in Denver, he tried to kill me. Someone sent him to kill me. Do you think it was Malik?”

  “I don’t know but I do find it strange that on the same day, someone sent you your old passport and a one-way ticket home.”

  “What if that was Armen? It has to be him. Who else?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Eve.” She gives me a sideways glance. “Dr. Hassan healed me,” I continue with my story, wanting to distract her. I don’t have answers to her questions just yet, but I do know one thing. I meant it when I said I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

  “He told me what happened to me. Told me that everyone else had died.” I glance at her. “Everyone but you.”

  She only studies me, and I’m not sure I expect any sort of answer.

  “Once I woke from the coma, my skin was…healed, I guess you could say. I still had pain, but I shouldn’t have. I think that was my mind fucking with me. The doctor and his son helped me through the hardest times. They stayed with me during nightmares. Taught me how to work around the limitations of my injuries. Helped me get strong again. It took me a couple of months, but I realized my own government turned their backs on us. Deserted my men. Me. For all I know, they set us up.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore, Eve. I’m here to find answers though. This ends here. One way or another, this ends.”

  “Did it occur to you this could be a suicide mission?”

  “Some things are worth dying for.”

  She swallows as I turn off the road. I drive as far as I can into the dense forest before parking the car and killing the engine. I’d need an SUV to go farther.

  “We walk from here.”

  When I reach to unzip the duffel, she takes hold of my arm. “The dead are dead. Nothing you do can bring them back.”

  I laugh. “I’m not here to resurrect them. I’m here for revenge. I’m here to take more life.”

  All color drains from her face. I pull my arm away, unzip the duffel and take out the Glock I took from the assailant of the other night.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  “Keeping us safe.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

  “We have to be. We owe it to the dead.”

  I get out of the car. Emotions are high. I’m anxious to get to the site, hoping it will jog that final memory into place.

  The hike in is about two miles through thick forest. She’s mostly quiet, we both are. I remember this path, know this forest like the back of my hand. Hiking through it was something I did with my men in the cover of night. With Eve, I’m slower. She wants to rest, but I’m not sure it’s physical rest she needs or if she’s trying to put off the inevitable. I give her a few minutes now and again, but we push through.

  The names of the dead on my back burn as we near the spot of their massacre. We’re quiet, and the only sounds are those of the forest. I touch Eve’s hand and put a finger to my lips, signaling for silence as we near the clearing of the old building. I stop, look, and more importantly, listen. I’m not expecting company, but no way I’m walking into an ambush.

  But
we’re alone. There’s no one here.

  My heart is calm although I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I close the space between me and the rubble that was once a small stone building. I look at the boundary of walls, step inside it. Eve follows close behind me and although I’ve got one eye on her, my attention is on the space. On the single wall that remains half erect. The rotting wood where the glass for the window was blown out even before that night. Where the first grenade was hurled in. The elevated area where Armen had dragged her onto the stage. Had stripped her naked.

  I look back at her. Her eyes are riveted to that spot. She glances at me, but neither of us speak. Instead, I take a turn along the perimeter of the wall. It’s bigger than I remember.

  There’s an energy to this place. Unfinished business. Blood unavenged. I’m here to finish it though. I’m here to honor my men.

  I walk the room again and again, trying to remember. I can hear the sounds of that night. Men shouting as weapons were sold. Remember thinking it was a good thing most of these men didn’t drink. They were armed and dangerous. Fucking insane, some of them.

  I also remember the stench of the night. Too many unwashed bodies in one place.

  I glance at Eve who’s walked out of the perimeter and is sitting on a tree stump, her eyes on me. How could he have brought her here? She didn’t belong here. Didn’t belong in the company of those men. I wonder if they wouldn’t have torn her limb from limb in their savage lust if hell hadn’t broken loose. She’d been terrified. Trembling. Desperately trying to cling to the scraps of clothing left on her as her brother tore them off to display her.

  When I called out the number doubling the last bid, the room fell silent. It was a silence that didn’t belong there. Didn’t belong to men so violent.

  It’s in that memory of silence that I remember him. The piece of the puzzle that’s been fucking with me ever since I woke from the coma. Eyes I recognized. Eyes that once had looked at me with kindness.

  Or what I perceived to be kindness.

  Eve stands and takes a step toward me. She’s a blur though. I think she calls out my name, but I’m gone. I’m back there. Back in that space. The screaming, then the silence just before the utter and complete hell. That instant when I see him. Commander Maliki Remi. A man who took me under his wing when I first joined the military at eighteen. The man who mentored me through the darkness that was my past: my mother turned to ash; my father dead. One brother imprisoned for his murder. Another going insane within the remains of our family home.

  Kids are resilient. Kids block the pain. The past. But thing is, it comes back. Nothing is ever forgotten. What you bury deep within fucking eats at you from the inside out. It’s like a cancer. You can’t unsee things. Can’t unfeel them. It’s stupid to think you can. Stupid to think you can ever run away.

  Maliki was the only person I told about it. And I remember feeling proud when he’d told me of the potential he saw in me. He recruited me, made me a part of his team. I was its youngest member. I trusted him. And he trusted me. But I’d been wrong about him. His betrayal had almost cost me my life. And it did cost him his.

  Now though…the memory of that night two years ago is flooding back. And it’s knocking my legs out from under me.

  It takes everything I have to drag myself out from the past. I blink hard, sounds of the forest slowly waking me. Bringing me into the present.

  Commander Maliki Remi isn’t dead. Had they ever said he was, or did I just assume that? It didn’t matter though, what they said. Maliki wasn’t dead at all. He’d been here that night. Standing there, wearing the same scarf to cover his face as the others. And when I went down, I saw them. I saw him stand by and watch as hell broke loose on earth. As screams and gunfire competed, as bodies hit the ground, hit me. But when I blinked, he was gone.

  “Zach?”

  I turn to find Eve at my side. I rub my face trying to make sense of this, but I can’t. I can’t reconcile this memory. Could it be my mind making up memory? Filling in the empty spaces? Because if it’s true—if Malik is who I think he is—it changes everything.

  13

  Zach

  We drive back into the city in silence. Eve leaves me alone, and I need to be alone. I need to figure this out because it doesn’t make sense.

  Maliki Remi can’t be Malik. He’s dead. I know. I’m the one who put a bullet in his chest.

  When we pull into the parking lot of the hotel, I switch off the engine and rub my face.

  “Zach?” Eve’s hand is on my arm. “You need to tell me what’s going on. What happened back there?”

  I look at her and I know I shouldn’t have brought her here. I should have hidden her away. Maybe sent her to Italy. To my brothers, Raphael and Damon, to hide her. They’d know what to do. They’d know how to keep her alive.

  Me? I’m no good for her. Being with me is going to get her killed. Because I’m a dead man walking.

  “You need to get out of here, Eve.” As I say it, I’m already thinking how I can do this. Italy isn’t too far away. I can get her on a flight today. I’ll send word to my brothers. It doesn’t matter anymore if I do. I’m not in hiding anymore. I have no doubt Malik knows exactly where I am.

  “What?”

  I look around the parking lot, taking note of every single car, every shadow a threat. I face her. I know she’ll fight me, but she has no choice.

  “I know who Malik is.”

  She processes the words slowly. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s me he wants. This has nothing to do with you. Remember when I told you he’s a bridge burner?” She shudders. I know she remembers. “Your part’s done. You can’t stay here. You can’t be with me.”

  “I’m going to find Armen,” she says. “Maybe Rafi and Seth too.”

  I ignore her. “I’m going to put you on a plane to Italy. My brothers are there. I’ll arrange for Raphael to pick you up. He’ll get you somewhere safe until this is over. Until Malik is dead.” This time, for real.

  I get out of the car and grab my duffel from the backseat.

  She gets out and slams her door shut. “This won’t ever be over. Don’t you get it?”

  I walk to her side and take her arm. “Don’t make a scene.” We’re walking into the lobby and she has the sense to stop talking. I bypass the elevator and we walk up to our room on the fourth floor.

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m too close,” she says.

  “You’ll do as you’re told. Period.”

  “Fuck you.”

  A door opens, and a woman steps into the hallway. She stops short. She must feel the tension. It’s fucking crackling between us. Eve’s fuming. And I’m a fucking time bomb.

  “I said don’t make a scene,” I say through clenched teeth, squeezing her wrist in warning. The woman passes hurriedly as I get our door open. Eve slips free the moment I let her.

  “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but I’m not leaving. You’re not sending me anywhere.”

  “Get packed.” I start shoving shit into her bag.

  She’s pulling it out as I’m putting it in.

  “No.”

  She grabs one end of a dress and tugs it back out of the case, but I take hold of the other end and pull so hard, she slams against my chest before bouncing off.

  “This is over, Eve!”

  “No, Zach!” she’s loud. Louder than I’ve heard her before. And her eyes are on fire. “The only way this is over is when you die!”

  I blink at the abruptness of her statement.

  She sounds as surprised by her words as I am, but when she continues, her tone is quieter. Like she’s just realized what she’s said herself. How very true it is.

  “That’s what you want. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  I can’t look at her. Not at her face. Not at her eyes.

  “You say you want to avenge the deaths of your men,” she continues, “but I think what you want is to join them
. You have so much fucking guilt that you’d rather be dead than alive. Dead like them.”

  I wrap my hand around her throat and in two strides, I have her pinned to the wall. Her hands close around my forearm and she’s trying to pull me off.

  “Maybe I do have a death wish. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s what I’ve wanted all along.”

  “Coward,” she spits.

  I squeeze harder, and she makes a gurgling sound.

  “Zach.” She can’t breathe. And I watch her. Watch her face redden. Watch her eyes widen. Feel again how fragile she is. How easily her neck can be snapped.

  I let up a little and she wheezes.

  “I won’t tattoo your name on my back,” I say. It’s a low growl. I’m not even sure she can make out my words. I keep my hand around her neck, but I’m not squeezing anymore.

  “You won’t have to if you’re dead.”

  Our eyes lock, hers are a deep amber flame. Her breath comes in shorter heaves and my gaze drops to her chest. She’s wearing a lace bra. I see it through the fine cotton of her tank top. How did I miss it before?

  Her nipples are hard.

  I slide one hand beneath the tank, over her belly and cup her breast, flicking that nipple once before capturing it between thumb and forefinger. I return my eyes to hers before I squeeze.

  “I need to fuck you. Be inside you.” I smash my mouth into hers and she moans, urgent fingers moving to the hem of my shirt, drawing it up and over my head. Our lips lock again as I tear her tank off, walking her backward to the bed. Dropping her down on it when the backs of her knees hit, leaning into her as she undoes my jeans and pulls them open, cupping my cock. I draw her hand away and straighten, push my jeans and boxer briefs down and fist myself, begin to pump my length while she watches.

  She’s greedy, licking her lips, so I cup the back of her head and slide my cock into her mouth. She’ll appreciate the lubrication in a minute because I’m not planning on using a condom and I can’t pull out again. I need to be inside her when I come and there can’t be anything between us, and since I can’t come in her pussy, she’ll take me in her ass.

  Her lips make a smacking sound when I pull her hair to tug her off me.