by Paige Tyler
The worst part was she couldn’t really remember how she’d ended up bound and gagged, any more than she could remember ending up in this room. She had a few vague images bouncing around her head of being hustled into a car, then sitting there for a long time while it sped along the highway. But all of it seemed fuzzy, like maybe she’d dreamed it.
The only thing she remembered for sure was running into her ex-husband outside Ken’s apartment. After that, everything was a blur. The mere thought of Dave had her heart pounding in fear. She was certain he was responsible for her being here, though she didn’t know how.
Why couldn’t she remember anything?
Turning back to the window, Bree studied the building across the street again, hoping it would help her figure out where she was. The structure was vaguely familiar, and it felt like she should know what it was. It probably would have helped if she could see more of the front of it, but from where she sat, all she could see was a parking lot to the left and a bit of green space surrounded by a security wall in the middle. The only interesting things were the roll-up doors along the back of the building and one serious-looking gate that guarded the closest opening in the security wall. Whatever was in that building, Bree figured it must be valuable.
That’s when it hit her. It was the Federal Reserve building, which meant the road below her had to be North Pearl Street. Now she knew where she was. That still didn’t explain how the hell she’d gotten here.
Noise from behind her made her jump, and she jerked her head around in an attempt to see what was going on. Her pulse beat faster at the hope maybe someone had found her. For a moment, she let herself believe it was Diego. That his werewolf nose and instincts had led him right to her.
Her heart plummeted when she saw Dave come into the room, leading an unresisting Brandon by the arm. Panic surged through her when she saw the blood smeared across her son’s forehead, little beads of it running down the bridge of his nose and one temple.
She fought against the tape holding her to the chair, struggled harder than she ever had, screaming into the gag the whole time, twisting and jerking in a crazy attempt to flip the chair over and reach her injured son.
“Cut it out,” Dave said in a casual tone as he pushed Brandon down into the other office chair and started strapping each wrist down to the arms of it with packaging tape. “There’s nothing wrong with him. Do you really think I’d hurt my own son?”
Bree replied to that inane question into the rag in her mouth, screaming so hard it felt like her throat was tearing. But Dave ignored her as he put all his attention into binding Brandon to the chair, wrapping extra loops around his ankles as if he was going to get up and run away, which was crazy considering the condition her son was in right then. From the blood on his head, the blank-eyed expression, and the zombie-like way his body went wherever Dave pushed it, it was obvious Brandon was dealing with a concussion—at the very minimum.
That was why she was so stunned to see the change that came over her son the moment Dave wiped the blood off his forehead. Brandon’s eyes cleared as he looked around the empty office in confusion, his whole body going rigid when he saw Bree. He shook his head violently, like he was trying to shake off a dream. Then he started to fight against the tape holding him to the chair, desperation clear in his eyes as he tried to shout something through the gag in his mouth.
“You can stop struggling, Brandon,” Dave said, moving the chair a little so he was partially facing her. “Neither of you will get loose until I cut you loose, and all the fighting will do is make it harder on you both. So, just stop.”
Bree would have kicked her ex in the balls right then if she could have gotten one of her legs free. Instead, she settled for staring at him, imagining all the different ways he could have suffered right then. She had a vision of a piano falling on him, which suggested that she might be losing her mind.
Dave ignored her death stare and moved over to a section of the window, leaning his head against the glass and staring down at the building across the street intently, like he was expecting something to happen. Bree finally paused for a moment to take a good look at the man who’d lost his mind and decided to kidnap them. He looked like crap.
As he stood there staring out the window, she noticed his hands and his forearms were covered in bandages and almost every finger had gauze wrapped around it. Even though the material was heavily layered, spots of blood had seeped through most of them. What the hell had he been doing to himself?
It was hard to miss how pale and sallow his skin was. There were purple smudges under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in a week. He was sweating, too, and she briefly wondered if he was sick. Both mentally and physically. When he started mumbling to himself about it being hard to control so many people, Bree was sure she’d been right about the mental illness part at least.
It must have been a full five minutes before Dave turned away from the window and walked over to regard her with an expression that made her stomach twist and roll so much, she thought she might be sick.
“I’ve gotten everything started over there, so that should give us time to talk,” he announced.
She flinched back in the chair as far as she could when he reached for her, which wasn’t very far. Dave snorted a little, stepping closer to untie the gag from behind her head. She heard Brandon grunt in anger. Knowing he was as scared of what Dave was going to do as she was made Bree more terrified.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted as soon as the gag was out of her mouth. “I have a restraining order against you. You can’t kidnap us like this. You aren’t supposed to be within two hundred feet of Brandon or me.”
It probably wasn’t the most intelligent way to start the conversation, considering she’d already decided her ex-husband had lost his grip on reality. But surprisingly, Dave remained rather calm in the face of her rant.
“Now, why would you go and get a restraining order?” he asked, looking almost hurt as he crossed his arms over his chest. “How are we ever going to work through our issues if we can’t be in the same room?”
Bree stared, not sure how to deal with this rational, yet delusional version of her ex. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dave, we aren’t getting back together—ever. Even if we ignore the fact that I divorced you and that you kidnapped us, there’s still the part where you’ve been stalking me. Not to mention the way you attacked Diego the other night.”
Dave’s lip curled at the mention of Diego, and she charged on before he could become fixated on the wrong part of this.
“Worse, I found out you’ve not only been stealing, but that people are dying because of you. After all that, how could you think getting back together was a possibility?”
Bree expected him to blow up at her, or at least deny everything she’d said. Instead, he looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Actually, I’ve never stolen anything. I got other people to do it for me. So, if anyone died, it was their fault. Not mine.”
Bree thought Dave was trying to play with her head and confuse her again, but when his expression never changed, she realized he was telling the truth. Or at least thought he was.
“What do you mean, you got other people to do it for you?” she asked slowly, trying to work through that while keeping in mind she was likely dealing with someone who was mentally unstable. “Did you hire people to steal for you?”
“No, I didn’t hire them.” He was silent, as if considering whether he should explain what he meant by that. Finally, he shrugged. “I wasn’t planning to tell you this, but if we’re going to get back together, I guess I should. My ability will be important to both of our futures, so there’s no reason not to tell you.”
Bree barely kept from rolling her eyes at the way her ex made it sound like he’d gained a comic-book superpower. It was enough to keep her from pointing ou
t once again there was no way in hell they were ever going to be together again.
“What kind of ability?” she prodded. “Are you talking about something you learned in prison?”
“Yeah,” he said. “My cellmate, Will, had it and I got it from him. When we first met, he told me that he could control people and make them do what he wanted. I thought he was full of shit at first, but then I saw him do it. He’d get other inmates to give us cigarettes or junk food, have the guards leave our lights on for an extra ten minutes so we could read at night. Sometimes he’d use it to keep the other inmates from messing with me.”
Bree almost laughed. So, Dave’s cellmate was a charmer who was able to talk people into being nice and giving them things. It sounded like a great skill to possess, especially in prison, but not exactly a superpower.
“I told him he was wasting his gift,” Dave said pacing back and forth. “He could have run the prison and been the most powerful man in there. Instead, he used it to bum smokes and candy bars. He claimed it was a talent that shouldn’t be abused and refused to go along with anything I suggested.”
Dave stopped in front of her, an ugly gleam in his eyes that reminded her of the one she’d seen there the night he beat that poor guy to death all those years ago.
“What did you do?” Bree whispered, afraid she already knew the answer.
“I took it from him,” he said, as if that should have been obvious. “He rambled on all the time about how he’d been on some kind of DNA research team that got genetic material that had been frozen in the ice somewhere for thousands of years. He’d got some of it into his system, is the way he put it. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, and I have to admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention when he talked about that part. But I was smart enough to figure out how I could get some of his DNA into my system.”
Bree felt her stomach turn as her mouth went dry. “Dave, what did you do? Tell me you didn’t…”
“I got him alone in the laundry area, and then I choked him to death and took a big bite out of him.” He turned back to look out the window, frown lines appearing across his forehead as if something across the street was bothering him. “I wasn’t sure if drinking his blood alone would do it, so I took a little extra, you know? Eating human flesh isn’t fun, but it was definitely worth it.”
Bree gaped at him. If she’d had any doubts before, they were erased now. Holy crud, he’d eaten another person because he had delusions that would give him superpowers. Her ex-husband was a damn cannibal. She’d always known he was a little off, but she never imagined he could go as far as something like that.
A few feet away, Brandon was staring at his father like…well, like his father had just confessed to eating his prison cellmate.
“I was right,” Dave continued as if he hadn’t admitted to be the biggest whackadoodle on the planet. In fact, from the self-satisfied smirk on his face, he seemed to think his little act of cannibalism had been the brightest thing anyone had ever done. “Once I had the ability, I was able to make people do anything I wanted. I had a crew of muscle covering my back 24/7, and getting the parole board to go along with my early release was a piece of cake. The two people I marked with my blood fell all over themselves to get me released without probation. Once I got out, having people rob banks and jewelry stores for me only made sense. A little bit of blood and it was ridiculously easy to get those people to steal for me. The best part was, they couldn’t remember doing it afterward.”
Pieces began to fit into place then. Oh. My. God. Diego said the delirium drug had likely originated in Coffield. It turned out he was half right. Delirium had started at the prison. But it wasn’t a drug. It was Dave and his blood. She guessed that explained all the bandages and gauze on his hands and arms. She wasn’t sure how such a thing was possible, but apparently, it was.
“I have to admit,” Dave said, still looking out the window, his face paler than before, “it took a while to learn how to control more than a couple people at a time, and when the numbers get too high, maintaining control can be a bit challenging. Actually, it can be kind of painful. It gives me really bad headaches, like my brain is on fire.”
She wanted to ask if that was why he was sweating and pale at the moment, because he was trying to control too many people, but before she could get the words out, Dave continued.
“I did all of this for us,” he said, spinning away from the window to look at her. “So we could have the money we need to leave here and start fresh. We’ll get it right this time. Just the three of us. And the people I’ve been stealing from have so much effing money, they aren’t going to miss it.”
Bree’s head spun as she tried to keep up with her ex’s view of reality. Then again, he’d eaten someone, so she supposed it was a given that his perception was screwed up.
“Dave,” she said, keeping her voice soft and even. Right now, her ex-husband had suddenly become someone she didn’t want to set off. “I suppose I can understand what you mean about you and Hobbs stealing from the banks and maybe the jewelry stores, but you were stealing from your own company’s clients, too. Priceless works of art, family heirlooms, collections that took some of these people a lifetime to put together. Of course, that stuff is going to be missed.”
It was Dave’s turn to stare. Or, more precisely, to look at her like she was stupid. “My own company’s clients? What are you talking about? I wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from a paint-by-number, and I’d never steal from my own company’s clients.”
After everything he’d already confessed to, she was supposed to believe he’d grown a conscience and decided ripping off his employer’s clients was more than he was willing to cop to? “I found Ken Reed’s notes. He knew you were breaking into his clients’ homes and stealing from them. He knew it was you. That’s why you killed him.”
Dave stared at her, managing to actually look stunned. “I never stole anything from Ken’s clients. I wouldn’t do that to the best friend I ever had. And I certainly didn’t kill him. I’ve never killed anyone.” He must have realized the obvious fallacy in that last part because he shrugged. “Okay, sure there was that guy I killed to get myself locked up in the first place, and then my cellmate, and those baggage handlers from the airport I sent on a suicide mission to kill your cop boyfriend. But that’s it. I had nothing to do with Ken’s death.”
Bree wanted to point out how incredibly coincidental it was that Ken had ended up dead the day after figuring out Dave and Ernest Hobbs were involved in stealing half of Dallas blind, but something else Dave had said registered, stabbing into her like a sharp knife.
“What do you mean you sent people to kill Diego?” she demanded. “He never said anything about that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dave said, wiping the back of his hand across his sweat-soaked forehead. “None of this stuff you’re talking about matters. Not now. The three of us are together, and after the guards from the Federal Reserve I’m controlling drive those trucks out of there, we’ll have enough money to go somewhere far away from here. Somewhere we can rekindle the love you’ve let us lose.”
She might have been distracted by the thought that baggage handlers had tried to kill Diego and he hadn’t told her, but Dave’s words got her attention.
“Dave, I’m not in love with you,” she said. “I haven’t been in love with you for a very long time and I’m never going to be in love with you in the future, so you can drop any plans you have for rekindling anything. I’m not going anywhere with you and neither is Brandon.”
She expected an angry outburst from her ex this time for sure, but that wasn’t what she got.
“Oh, you and Brandon will be going with me,” he said flatly, his expression ice cold. “And we’ll rekindle anything I damn well want whether you do your part voluntarily or not. I’d prefer not to mark you with my blood and control you, but I will if I have to. At least until you decide it’s be
tter to love me of your own free will. And trust me, you’ll want to decide that quickly. You don’t want to know what I could make Brandon do while you watch.”
Bree was too stunned by his threat to reply. From the corner of her eye, she saw Brandon was just as terrified. The thought that he could make her son do anything he wanted scared the hell out of her.
Before Bree could come up with something to say to calm Dave down, the sound of squealing tires and sirens filled the air outside. She glanced out the window and saw half a dozen cop cars and two black SUVs with SWAT decals on the side come sliding to a stop in front of the gate to the Federal Reserve that had opened at some point when she hadn’t been paying attention. Two armored trucks exited the building through the roll-up doors and were now trapped inside the walled compound. Several guards in uniform ran out those same doors and began to shoot at the police. More gunfire came from slots in the sides of the armored vehicles.
Dave’s reaction was immediate and violent. “Dammit, no!” he shouted, slamming the palm of one hand against the window glass hard enough to leave bloody fingerprints. “How the fuck did they get here so fast. This was all planned out.”
As Bree watched, another black SWAT SUV slid to a stop a few yards away from the others. Three big SWAT cops jumped out, rifles in hand. One of them was Diego.
He and his pack mates immediately headed toward the gate and the shooting going on there. Bree’s heart jumped into her throat as bullets hit the concrete all around them. But before he’d gotten more than a few feet, Diego skidded to a stop, his nose lifting into the air. A moment later, his head snapped around until he was staring straight at her and Brandon through the window. Bree swore she could see him mouth their names, then he was running toward them, yelling something over his shoulder to his teammates.
Oh, God.