by CJ Lyons
“Redemption? Revenge is more like it. Especially as I had nothing to do with your family’s deaths. And neither did Clint.”
“Liar!” His face blazed with fury. “Don’t think you can talk your way out of this! I know the truth. You and your father killed everyone I love!”
Morgan held her hands out, lowered her voice. “Tim. Mr. Crane. I’m truly sorry for your family’s loss, I really am. But the police said they died in a car crash. In Portland, Maine, right? I’ve never been to Maine—and neither had Clint before he died. I’m sorry, but we had nothing to do with—”
“No, no, no! Shut your trap or I blow this now!” He shook his head furiously; even more worrisome was the way his fist clenched around his phone. It had been almost thirty seconds since he’d last pressed it, stopping the deadman’s countdown. “No. You’re lying. Your father ended my family. I’m the last one. When I’m gone, they’ll all be dead. I need to do the same to your family. Clinton Caine’s bloodline ends here, tonight.”
She risked taking her eyes off Crane long enough to glance back out into the warped mirror maze with its seemingly infinite images of Micah and Adam. Crane knew Adam was Clint’s son, and Morgan hadn’t seen him move or heard him make a sound since she’d arrived.
“I’m here, guys!” she called. “Could I see some sign of life out there?”
Micah raised his head—or dropped it in the tilted upside-down reflections above him, depending on which mirror she focused on. He was hogtied, lying on his back, down in one of the oil-changing wells. “He shot Adam. To get me to go with him. But Adam’s lost a lot of blood. I haven’t heard him or seen him move since we were tied up and dumped here. Morgan, he needs help.”
“Working on it,” she called back, positioning herself so hopefully he could see her reflection from his vantage point.
Crane yanked on her arm, spinning him back to face him, and raised the cell phone. “I told you no talking!” he shouted into the service bay. Then to Morgan: “Your boyfriend is just like you. He doesn’t like to play by the rules.”
“He’s not like me. And Adam’s nothing like his father. But you’re right. I am. Punish me, not innocent kids. Let Adam and Micah go.”
“I’m not the one killing innocent people. I’m not the one hurting your friends, Morgan. You are. You’re the monster here, not me. Say it, loud and clear for the world to hear. Tell them what you are.”
How could she force him to believe her? Then Morgan realized: she couldn’t. The most dangerous thing to do to a madman was to show them the proof that their delusion, that the idea they clung to for dear life, was nothing but a wisp of imagination gone awry. She’d learned that the hard way with her father. She’d almost died because of it.
No way would she let Adam and Micah suffer the same fate.
She opened her mouth, ready to say whatever Crane wanted, but she must have hesitated too long, because suddenly he pushed an icon on the phone and the spray nozzle above Micah opened up and a mist of yellowish fluid streamed down.
Micah screamed and rolled his body as far away as possible, but the corrosive must have found something to whet its appetite because a cloud of smoke billowed up around the pit Micah was trapped in.
“Micah!” She took a step over the threshold before she remembered the lasers. It wouldn’t help Micah if she got them all blown up. She whirled back to Crane, a dagger in each hand. “Stop it! Get him out of there! Stop it!”
He didn’t flinch when she held a blade to each of his jugulars. Instead he smiled and pushed another icon on his phone. Water from the sprinklers poured down on the service bay, and Micah and Adam’s reflections were now covered in streaks of manmade tears. “That will dilute the chemicals. He’ll be fine, as long as none of it got into his eyes. And as long as you don’t make me wait too long. He’ll need proper medical attention to stop the burns from going too deep.”
Morgan gave him her death glare. He met her gaze easily, without flinching. If anything, his smile widened.
“Now we see the real Morgan Ames. Nice of you to come out to play.” He pressed the phone again and suddenly the reflection on all the mirrors was her face—teeth bared, eyes blazing, hands ready for a killing blow.
She glanced up. Beyond the harsh lights were cameras in each corner of the room. Her movement rippled across the dozens of mirrors in the room beyond, warped and distorted, larger than life and as grotesque as any nightmare demon. “What the hell?”
“I’m simply exposing your truth. Letting you feel one tenth of the pain your father caused me when he took my family from me. Not that it will matter. A monster can’t change.”
Which was exactly what Jenna had told her this morning, almost to the word. Jenna had also predicted that Morgan would hurt Micah.
Morgan searched through the smoke, seeking Micah’s gaze, and found him in the one mirror directly above his prison, his reflection almost smothered by hers. She had changed, for him. But his eyes were closed, and his face ashen and streaked with blood, oil, and angry red burns.
Fury surged through her—if not for the sight of his chest moving as he inhaled, she would have ended Crane then and there. But no. She couldn’t. Not in front of Micah. She’d promised him; she couldn’t betray his trust.
What would Micah do? He’d find a way out of this where no one died.
She lowered her knives in surrender. “I’ll do anything you want. Just let me get them help. Please. Before it’s too late.”
“Your friends are only suffering because you led them to me. You’re the trigger, Morgan. The tripwire.” His smile twisted with the irony of his words. “None of this would have happened without you making it happen.”
“What do you want from me?” She forced her anger to bolster her plea, tried to color her words with surrender. “Please. I’ll do anything. Just help them.”
“What do I want? Only what is in your true nature. I want you to do what you want—to show me and your friends your heart’s desire.” His smile morphed into a grin of ecstasy as he raised his arms, palms up. “Kill me, Morgan. Like father, like daughter. Kill me. It’s what you want. Listen to the monster calling your name. Follow your true nature. Kill me. It’s the only way to save them.”
She was tempted, so very tempted. But no. It was a trick. It couldn’t be that easy. And she’d promised Micah. “If I kill you, it’ll set off the bomb.”
He shook his head slowly, a cobra dancing before it struck. “No trick. The deadman’s switch is on a timer. Kill me and you’ll still have time to disarm the bomb. Wait and it will be too late for your friends. For us all.”
Still she hesitated. She glanced again toward Micah’s image, but really she was calculating angles and trajectories. Crane was broadcasting his video feed onto screens she couldn’t see, positioned so the mirrors caught her reflection. That part was obvious. Also, he was probably sending it to the cloud or live streaming it somewhere on the Internet—would he risk that? Someone seeing it and sending help? Maybe not. Maybe just a file to be sent to a newspaper or TV station once it was too late. He’d want his victory over Clinton Caine’s blood to be known far and wide.
The lasers. They bothered her. Could he really have calculated such a complex circuit where it remained unbroken despite the movement of the hanging mirrors, the water from the sprinklers, the fog from the corrosive fluid? No, that was the tell. The lasers were just for show.
“You didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t want to. Not with those first bombs. So why kill Adam’s foster mother?”
“I’ve been working as a youth counselor at his church since last year in the hopes of getting a chance to get in to visit Clinton. Before he escaped, that was. But she knew me, and it was too soon for you to know who I was. So,” he sighed, “she had to go.”
Morgan nodded. And he thought she was the monster. “How do you want me to do it? How do you want to die?”
His eyes widened. She could see that he hadn’t considered that, hadn’t imagined his own death.
Not in grisly, visceral details. All he’d dreamed of was being the martyr, the hero who ended Clinton Caine’s legacy.
“Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll do it,” she continued, more certain than ever that half of this macabre deathtrap was a fake. Part of his delusion. The problem was—which part? All it would take would be another release of the corrosive or a bomb going off near Adam or Micah… She couldn’t risk it.
She stole a quick glance at Crane’s phone. The icons weren’t labeled—of course it wouldn’t be that easy. From the position he held his finger when he pressed it, there were two that could control the deadman’s switch. But that wasn’t what interested her the most. It was the clock. Almost half an hour had passed since she’d made her final phone call. It was time to end this charade.
“C’mon, let’s do this,” she snarled, raising her blades once more. “Hit the deadman’s switch to turn off the bombs like you promised, and I’ll end you.” She twisted the fine-honed carbon steel daggers until they made the light dance. “I’ll give you a show for the cameras, just like you want. Just like my father taught me. Just like the monster I am.”
Crane gulped so hard his Adam’s apple quivered. It made for a delicious target, but Morgan kept control, straining to listen for the sirens she hoped were on their way. He pressed a target-shaped icon on his phone, slid it back into his pocket, raised both hands to show the camera they were empty, and slowly lowered his body to kneel before her. He tilted his head back. A beauteous smile practically cast his face in a halo as he exposed his vulnerable neck to Morgan.
“I’m ready,” he said, his voice booming to ensure his final words were heard by his cameras. “Do it. End me. Show the world what a monster you really are.”
Meaning: what a saint he really was, sacrificing everything—including other people’s lives—as he unmasked the demon that was Clinton Caine’s daughter.
Morgan circled behind him, crossing her hands with her blades against the front of his neck. He relaxed, almost impaling himself on their wicked sharp edges, as he sighed in ecstasy.
She jerked her hands away, straightening as she finally heard what she’d been listening for: the sound of the state police’s SWAT team’s sirens.
He opened his eyes. “You tricked me!”
She leaned down to grab his phone but he lunged at her knees, tackling her to the ground. Morgan grappled with him, wrapping her arms and legs around his thin body. Not just thin, but weakened by the cancer. He was no match for Morgan or her blades. She moved without thinking, her muscles well-trained, knowing exactly where to attack. One dagger sliced through to his groin, the other stabbed him from behind, hitting the kidney. Both killing blows, although it would take him several minutes to die. It was self-defense—and the cameras would prove it.
But Morgan knew better. she could have chosen other targets; could have fought her instincts and reflexes. She could have disabled him, maybe even without cutting him at all.
No. She’d wanted to end Crane. Permanently. And, just like her father, what she wanted trumped what she needed. Sorrow drowned out any sense of victory, leaving the taste of ashes in her mouth.
She rolled Crane off her. He gasped in pain, surrendering. She slid his phone from his limp fingers and hit the target icon. A timer appeared—she studied it for a few seconds and realized all she had to do was cancel it and it would end the countdown without the bomb going off. Finally, she relaxed.
Then she heard the sound that broke her heart.
“Morgan,” came Micah’s voice. Weak, but it still carried across the service bay to reach her. She whirled and saw her myriad reflections—the blood on her hands, the grotesque visage of her face. “Morgan.” Pain twisted his lovely voice into barbed wire. “What did you do?”
And she realized that he’d seen it all, up close, magnified and made personal by the videos and the mirrors. He knew the truth.
The sirens wailed louder. Soon the whole world would know what she’d done. It was to save Micah and Adam—wasn’t that clear? She’d had no choice, right?
But she didn’t care about the whole world and what they thought. All she cared about was one person and the promise she’d broken.
She couldn’t face that, couldn’t stand to see the look on his face, so she did the one thing her father had taught her to do even better than killing: she ran.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morgan watched from a distant treetop as the police stormed the building, and then quickly brought Adam and Micah out to the waiting paramedics. Her own vision blurred when she saw the medics bind Micah’s eyes with gauze that glowed a ghastly white against the darkness. She heard them say something about chemical burns.
Both Adam and Micah were critical enough that they called in LifeFlight. When the helicopter took off, whipping the tree branches that concealed her, she had nothing left to care about, so she left as well.
It took her several hours to find her way back to the medical center. She probably could have gotten there faster, but her heart just wasn’t in it. But she also couldn’t not go. Micah deserved that, at least.
She crept about the surgical floor, staying only long enough to hear that Adam was stable after they’d repaired a ruptured vein and pieced his shattered femur back together. He was still in recovery, but she didn’t try to sneak into see him—he was better off without her.
Micah was on another floor. His mothers were talking to an eye specialist, who told them only time would tell if his corneas would heal or if he’d be permanently blind. Another man, a plastic surgeon, assured them that his burns weren’t serious and that he didn’t expect any scarring. Which was nice to hear, but Micah’s eyes—that about wrecked her. How could he be an artist if he was blind?
Blind because of her. Her stomach roiled so violently that she rushed to the nearest restroom. She didn’t actually throw up, just felt like it as she huddled on the cold tile floor between the toilet and the wall. Finally, she stood, washed her face, and cautiously emerged once more.
A man in his twenties with dark hair and a complexion that could reflect almost any heritage was lounging against the wall across from the bathroom, his hands jammed into the pockets of his denim jacket. “Ms. Ames? I’d like a quick word.”
She glanced both ways down the empty corridor. No witnesses. They were at the far end near the staircase. Without a word, she strode to it and pushed through the door. Once on the other side, she drew one of her daggers and waited.
He came through the door but immediately spun away from her ambush before she could make her move. Fast. Faster than she’d expected—or she was simply that exhausted. He stood on the opposite side of the landing, out of her reach. “No need for that. I’m just a messenger. I’ve seen your handiwork—as have my bosses.”
“What do you want?” she snapped, sick of games.
“They—we—would like you to consider joining us.” He extended her a card with a single phone number on it. “Call that number anytime.”
“Wait. Us? Who are you?”
“You can call me Ryan. I’m like you, bit of a different skill set. But I must say, you are the youngest I’ve ever seen recruited. A child prodigy of sorts.”
“But who are you? Your group? What do you want with me?”
“Our group? We get things done—things regular government and law enforcement can’t. I guess you could say we take care of the ones who slip through the cracks.”
“But you’re not part of the government?”
“We’re not part of anything. Officially we don’t even exist—or have a name. We, the grunts on the ground, don’t even know who our real boss is. In fact, that’s what I call us, BOSS—Black Ops Shadow Stalkers.” He grinned, and she realized that despite his cocky attitude, he wasn’t all that much older than she was. “I wish I could tell you more, but I was simply given orders to reach out and extend an invitation. The rest is up to you.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and she tensed, but he came out
with a hard drive. “A gesture of good will. The video from tonight.” He extended it to her. “I’m told it’s the only copy left.”
Right. And she had a bridge in Brooklyn to sell. Still, she took the drive.
“Also,” he continued. “As far as the police and the DA are concerned, you weren’t anywhere near what happened tonight. Your name has been dissociated with the investigation.”
Whoa. Now that took some real juice. Despite herself, Morgan was impressed. “What does this group do?”
“What needs to be done.”
“Kill people?”
“If that’s the only way, yes. But only as a last resort. We don’t enjoy it.”
“You think that’s me? Someone who doesn’t enjoy it?”
He regarded her from across the landing. “You tell me.”
“You don’t know who gives the orders? But you go out and kill people? How do you know they’re not innocent? Or that you’re being manipulated, used?” She couldn’t think of a worse fate, turned into someone’s pawn—like her father had done with her when she was a child. Like Crane had tonight. Never again.
“Trust but verify. It’s a good motto to live by. And believe me, that man back there, your mad bomber? The folks we handle are a lot worse. Some of the others, they do see it as just a job, following orders. But they’re in the minority. Most of us, we’ve gotten here the long way around, not always following the righteous path, so it’s a chance at redemption, to be the good guy for once. From your history, I’d say that might be something you’re interested in?”
She nodded, searching his face for answers beyond his glib words.
“You’ve killed a lot of people for someone so young.” His voice dropped. “But I watched you with your bomber.” He nodded to the hard drive. “Ironic, isn’t it? You and your father had nothing to do with his wife’s death. You were in Atlanta at the time.” He sighed. “Crane simply couldn’t accept that he’d lost everything in a random, senseless accident. He needed someone to blame, to pay for their deaths.”