Picture this (Birds of a Feather Book 3)

by Lena North

  “Hello,” I murmured after a while.

  I didn’t expect a reply, and I didn’t get one, but there was suddenly a soft buzzing and I felt a faint shift in the stale air, just in front of me. I opened my eyes, and through the soft gray, I thought I saw movement so I stretched my hand out and suddenly I felt a swift sweep of wings over my fingers. My heart soared when I realized what it was.

  It was a dragonfly.

  I had thought about the birds, known they wouldn’t find me, but I’d forgotten about Sloane and what Hawker affectionately called her army of insects. She couldn’t communicate with the birds, but she spoke to butterflies and dragonflies, and I didn’t know if this was one of her friends, though it seemed too much of a coincidence that it had made its way through the small openings and into my room, so I hoped that it was.

  “I’m Mary,” I whispered, but my voice was only a hoarse croak, and then I started coughing, so it took a while until I spoke again. “Tell Hawker and the others they need to come,” I wheezed out.

  The buzzing shifted, and a soft whisper of wings swept across my cheek. Then it moved away, and I hoped it was toward the openings leading out from the room. I stared into the darkness until the sound had disappeared completely and then I leaned back, exhaling through a wide smile. It was the first moment of happiness since I’d stood with Jinx in Carson’s kitchen, loading plates in the dishwasher. It felt like a lifetime ago but it also felt good, so when darkness closed in and I slipped down to my side and into unconsciousness again, I did it with that smile on my lips.

  I had no doubt in my mind that help was already on its way.

  Chap

  ter Five

  Rescued

  There was one more tide, and I stood up through it for the first time in days. Hope gave me strength and I had to lean on the wall to support my shivering knees, but I pressed my lips together and focused on breathing shallowly so I wouldn’t start coughing, counting every second until the water disappeared. Then I sat down and waited.

  They didn’t disappoint me.

  The door was thrown open with a loud crash, and light flowed into the room, although I’d been half asleep and couldn’t stop myself from screaming and scooting deeper into the corner.

  “In here!” I heard a male voice shouting, and I screamed again as I pressed my back against the wall.

  “Don’t touch me,” I sobbed hoarsely.

  Another shadow appeared in the door, and even though I recognized the huge shape, my mind was still reeling from the sudden onslaught of light and noise, and I couldn’t get it to cooperate.

  “Don’t hurt me,” I whispered.

  Olly froze, and I heard Kit shouting for Wilder to come, but my eyes had locked with Olly’s. His face was a frightening mask of rage, but I knew it wasn’t aimed at me so I found it oddly comforting and started to unclench my fists. Then he suddenly made a strange guttural sound, turned around abruptly and disappeared. A loud roar echoed from the outside, raw and filled with pain, vibrating between the walls in my small cell. It sounded like a wounded animal, and then a few shots suddenly went off. The shouting I’d vaguely registered changed into high-pitched, piercing screams.

  “Jesus, hold him back!” I heard Hawker shout, and then he ordered sharply, “Mac, d’Augustine, get control of him.”

  Suddenly, Wilder was there, walking slowly toward me.

  “Let’s get you out of here, sweetie,” she murmured.

  “Wilder,” I whispered.

  “That’s me,” she replied calmly, and when I stretched my shivering hand up toward her, she took hold of it.

  “You came,” I said, and tried to smile.

  She made a strange sobbing sound, collected herself, and leaned down to help me to my feet. We stumbled out of the small cell, through a short corridor, up a few steps, and straight into mayhem. There were men all over, although most were on the ground, and they were bleeding from what looked like multiple knife wounds. A few of them lay in strange angles, and some were clutching their wounds and moaning. Hawker and Miller were fighting side by side, pushing two men into a corner, and Kit was in the process of cuffing another one.

  A muffled roar echoed again, and I jerked around. Olly was held back by Dante who had wrapped his arms under Olly’s and then twisted them around to lock his hands behind Olly’s neck. They were about the same size, and Dante was struggling. Olly had knives in both his hands, and I realized who would have done the damage to the men on the floor. Mac was standing in front of them with his hands pressed to Olly’s chest, murmuring something I couldn’t hear.

  I must have made a sound because they stilled, and turned. I locked eyes with Olly, and then I whimpered because he wasn’t there. His eyes were normally so gentle, but the almost black, bottomless pits of endless fury were blank. Empty. Then suddenly, something flashed in them, and he stopped struggling.

  “You’re back?” Mac murmured.

  “Yeah,” Olly grunted.

  Dante slowly let go of him and picked the knives out of his hands. Olly breathed deeply and took a step toward me. I flinched and pressed back toward Wilder, which made him stop moving immediately.

  “Dad,” Wilder called out, struggling to hold me up. “We have to go.”

  Hawker kept pushing the men backward, but Miller turned, and our eyes met. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days and his eyes were hard, though they softened as we stared at each other through the awful scene surrounding us. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he said through the buzzing in my ears, and then he moved toward me with long steps, picking me up just as my legs gave out under me. I burrowed my face in the curve between his neck and shoulder and started crying silently. He must have felt it because his hold tightened.

  “Don’t be afraid, little girl,” he murmured as he started walking. “No one will hurt you now.”

  “Miller,” I whispered, but no sound came out, so it was just a movement of my lips against his neck. Then I started coughing.

  The sun was high in a ridiculously blue sky, and there was only a faint wind. Miller raised his head, and I saw his kite sweeping down toward us.

  “Get word to Carson, he needs to come here now,” Miller murmured out loud, and the kite made a chirping sound.

  They didn’t have to make any sounds at all, so I guessed they did it for me.

  “Thank you,” I rasped, and the kite chirped again.

  Then Miller walked away from the building and toward an open area. There were a few large rocks to the side and without letting go of me, he sat down, leaned at one of them and cradled me deeper in his arms.

  “I smell,” I murmured, and tried to move away.

  “Shh,” he said and held me tighter. “Carson will be here soon. We’ll get you to the hospital.”

  “Is Olly okay?” I asked.

  “He will be.”

  We sat in silence for a while and then I heard the helicopter. Hawker and Dante walked out of the building at the same time, scanned the area, and walked over to where we sat. They both crouched down and looked at me. I tried to smile, although it must have looked pathetic because I felt my mouth wobble a little. Dante made a soft, soothing sound and Hawker put a rough hand gently on my cheek.

  “Mary,” he said, and flinched as his thumb slowly swept over the bruises under my eye.

  “I knew you’d come,” I whispered. “Don’t worry about me. You got me out of that place like I knew you would.”

  He made a small huffing sound, and then his mouth curved slightly.

  “Resilient,” he murmured.

  “Yeah,” Miller sighed. “You’ll clean up here?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Hawker said and turned his eyes toward the chopper which was almost on the ground. “Get her to the hospital.”

  “Twin City is closest. We’ll take her to Corriente Medical,” Miller said and turned to Dante, “Jinx needs to get up there as fast as possible.”

  “She’s
already on her way,” Dante said calmly. “I got word to her via Snow as soon as we found this place, and she guessed you’d take Mary up there. Danny is with her, and Jamieson is in another chopper on his way from Prosper.”

  “Good,” Miller said as he shifted and got up on his feet.

  I heard sounds of running feet, and when I turned my head, I saw Carson. He slowed down but didn’t stop until he was right next to us. His hands moved gently over my face, and then he turned to Hawker.

  “They’d better all be dead, Hawk,” he growled.

  “Some are,” Hawker said evenly. “The ones that got away will be.”

  I blinked. They couldn’t just kill a bunch of men, could they? Wouldn’t they get in trouble with the law? Then I remembered what Miller had asked so calmly. He’d asked if they’d clean up, and I thought I understood what he’d meant.

  Before I got a chance to say anything, Carson nodded abruptly, caressed my cheek again, and murmured, “Let’s get you to a doctor, sweetie.”

  His voice had gentled again, and the hard look on his face disappeared. Suddenly it all crashed down on me, and I started crying. Miller made a strangled sound and then we were moving.

  I calmed down when we were in the air, but the sound from the chopper drowned out any possibility to talk, and my mind felt completely blank anyway so I held on to Miller and focused on pulling in shallow breaths. Miller didn’t say anything either and just held me in his arms. Carson had wanted to strap me in, but Mill just grunted and told him, “You’ll have to fly safely, brother, because we’re not tying her up, not in a seat and absolutely not on the stretcher.”

  Jinx was at the helicopter pad when we landed, and so was Jamie, her doctor friend from Prosper General Hospital.

  “Thanks, guys,” Jinx called out as Jamie pushed me onto a stretcher and started to roll me away.

  I twisted my head around and looked at the two men standing there, watching us.

  “Stop,” I said urgently, and when they kept moving me, I raised my voice, “Jinx, stop!”

  She didn’t question me and immediately grabbed the bed, halting our movement surprisingly quickly. I got up and walked on shaky legs back toward the helicopter. Miller met me half way, and I looked up at him.

  “Thank you,” I said, and added, “Tell the others that too.”

  “Mary, please,” he muttered. “Why would you thank us. We’re the reason you were in that place to start with.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “They had a list with all your names. Johns, Mac, Keeghan, Harper and Black. They said…” my voice hitched but I swallowed and went on, “They said that they would kill you all, one after the other, even if you were stupid enough to try swapping me. That’s why I told you not to do it. It was because it wouldn’t be worth anything, and they’d kill me, and they’d kill all of you anyway. So, I wasn’t brave at all, it was just that –”

  My voice sounded weird, and I stopped talking and just stared at his angry eyes. Then I admitted quietly. “It was horrible, and I hoped that you and the others would come, but I didn’t know. I kept telling myself to be brave, but I wasn’t, Mill,” I told him, and my voice broke as I spoke. “The tide kept coming in, and it was cold and frightening, and I thought I would drown so many times when I didn’t wake up in time and inhaled the awful muddy water –”

  “Shh,” he murmured and pulled me into his arms.

  I leaned my forehead on his chest and tried to calm down.

  “I’m sorry,” I sniffled. “I don’t know why I… I’ll go now,” I added and moved, but he held me tighter and leaned down until his beard scraped my cheek.

  “Mary, don’t,” he murmured. “You were brave, and we all saw it. They sent that video, and we –” He cut himself off and took a deep breath. “Jesus, honey, I thought I’d die,” he whispered, “And so did the others. Then Jinx understood your message, and we moved the search to the coast. We weren’t far away when Wilder’s hawk got the message from the dragonflies.”

  I leaned back to look at him, and then he smiled gently.

  “You need to go and get checked out, Mary.”

  He was right, I had to go because my knees had started trembling again and my head was spinning. Miller noticed and just as he had in the place where they’d kept me, he picked me up as my legs gave out under me. When he put me on the stretcher, I opened my eyes and forced my mouth to smile.

  “Tell the others I’m grateful you came for me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he answered, and then they rolled me away.

  ***

  I spent the next days in a drug-induced blur. There was nothing seriously wrong with me according to the doctors, except that I had a high fever from having pneumonia, so they pumped me full of drugs, and I slept most of the time. I also had shallow cuts and scrapes from the concrete floor, was dehydrated, and had lost a lot of weight. Since I was thin already before, it looked awful, and I cried the first time I saw myself in a mirror. My ribs were sticking out, my cheeks were hollow, and I had dark circles under my eyes.

  When the fever went down, they took me off the drugs but decided to keep me a few days longer to make sure I recovered. I managed well during the days, and they sent someone that I thought was a psychologist, or whatever, to talk to me, but she had hard eyes, and I didn’t want to tell her about what I’d been through, so I lied and told her that I felt fine. I didn’t, though, and that was mostly since I couldn’t stand the nights.

  I kept the light on, but one of the nurses found out and asked me about it. Since I didn’t want to see the shrink again, I said that I’d forgotten it, and dutifully turned it off each evening. Then I spent the nights sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the night. There were lights on outside, and I kept the window open so I could smell the fresh air, although I didn’t sleep much.

  Jinx was there every day, and Wilder came to see me once, but none of the others visited. I told my girlfriends everything that had happened, slowly and carefully so that I wouldn’t forget any details. I remembered a few letters from the license plate on the old lady’s car, the small red tattoo in the shape of a snake on the hand of the man who had given me water before they filmed their message, the color of his eyes. I also told them about the list I’d seen, though they’d heard about that from Miller already and shared with me that Hawker had punched a hole in a wall and then started pulling all strings he had to find out who was behind this. Then Jinx started asking about all kinds of details, such as the brand of the water, what food I’d been given, or if I’d seen the plates or the trays. I couldn’t answer most of her questions, and eventually, they ran out of things to ask.

  “Dante is interrogating them, Mary,” Jinx said calmly. “I’ll let him know, and he’ll get more information out of them. Once we find that toad, we’ll know even more.”

  “What toad?” I asked.

  “Francesco Fratinelli. My ex-father's horrible cousin,” Wilder said sourly, and added, “It was his house you were in. He inherited it from my step-father, although it looked like they’d rebuilt it a lot, and recently.”

  “I heard him,” I said slowly. “Someone was there when they filmed the message, and he spoke with a southern dialect. It could have been him.”

  I wasn’t sure about the other voice I’d recognized when the man had kicked me, although it had all been blurry at that stage so I could have been wrong. Jinx assured me they were running the videos through her voice recognition programs and they’d figure it out. Then we talked some more about the house, but since I’d been kept in the small room in the basement, I really didn’t have anything to tell them that they didn’t already know.

  “Where are the others?” I asked, even though I knew they would be busy investigating.

  I wanted to know that they were all unharmed, though. Something had been really off with Olly, so I needed to know he was okay again, and Miller had felt like the calm center in the middle of a storm when they’d rescued me.
I wanted to see him, to thank him.

  “Hunting,” Wilder replied laconically.

  I didn’t ask more questions because I didn’t want to know, and they left shortly after to share with the others what I’d told them. The doctors came to see me that afternoon and told me I’d be released early the next day. I smiled my first real smile since I got to the hospital, and started making plans for how to get back to Prosper without telling my friends.

  I knew that if Wilder or Jinx found out that I could leave, they’d push for me to go to Double H or to Marshes, and I wasn’t going to go to either place. I wanted to go somewhere where I could deal with my nightmares on my own, and I could visit with either of them when I felt better. When I felt happy again.

  Then Bo walked in, although it took me a few seconds to recognize him.

  “Boz?” I whispered.

  He had his long hair tied back at the neck, but he’d put a ball cap on and to my amazement, a flannel shirt. His usual flowy blouses made from gauze or silk were nowhere to be seen, and he hadn’t put on a speck of makeup.

  “Oh, honey,” he whispered when he saw me. “Baby girl, I’m so sorry. They’re hunting them down, and I wouldn’t be any good at that, but I wish I could help.”

  My lips were trembling, and I swallowed, but couldn’t hold my tears back. They leaked out of my eyes, across the temples and into my hair.

  “Bo,” I said brokenly.

  He pulled me halfway out of bed and put his arms around me, rocking me gently.

  “I’m not a murderous kind of man, sweetie-pie, you know that I’m not,” he said after a while, and I nodded into his chest. He ignored that and kept talking, “I’ve been a gay man my whole life, and the shit I’ve had to put up with is beyond your imagination. Never been in a single fight, and haven’t felt the slightest need to kill anyone. Not until now.”

  He pulled back a little, and I looked into his normally so happy eyes, hating that what happened to me made everyone so upset. Then he smiled, and it was a little tense at first, but it widened, and suddenly, he grinned.