by K. A. Linde
Reyna tilted her head back and stared up at the white spackled ceiling. “What do I do?”
“If you want sage advice from a girl who has been locked up for longer than you, I’d say find him and fix things. We both know that time is fickle and we might not make it out of this.”
Reyna suspected Jodie had been in Visage a lot longer than her, but she had never come out and asked about it. She figured there was a lot that Jodie wasn’t ready to talk about.
“I know,” she finally said. “I just want the truth.”
“And you’re willing to give it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Going to have to give to get, sister,” Jodie said, flicking a lock of hair out of her eye. “You want him to be open, you have to be prepared to open up about what happened.”
Reyna knew that she was right. Hated that she was right. Couldn’t she forget those eight weeks and move on? Couldn’t she forget that anything had ever happened to her?
“I could tell him, but he’s not going to be happy.”
“Are you happy about the little you know about your eight-week absence? No? And you know what…it’s simple. If you open up and he still doesn’t or if he tells you it’s him and that bitch now…you dump his ass.”
As if it were that simple.
Beckham was imprinted on her heart.
Never for a second had she seriously considered him leaving. She had sent him away to give herself some distance, but she didn’t actually want distance. She wanted to be with him. Exorcise the demons inside him and just be Reyna and Beckham again.
“I probably should have done things differently,” Reyna said.
“Well, that’s obvious.”
“I was just…so upset. Between the escape, finding out about the engagement, and then that Beckham knew about my blood type. I don’t know. It didn’t help that I was coming down from the venom and had a massive headache.”
“Yeah, plus probably PTSD,” Jodie said flippantly. As if it wasn’t this crazy scary mental condition that they both may never heal from.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she whispered.
“Meghan mentioned it. That’s why we’re both sleeping so much and acting all crazy. It’s why she wants us to go to a therapist.” Jodie rolled her eyes. “As if I’m going to spill my guts to some stranger.”
“I’m spilling mine to you.”
“Yeah. What’s with that shit, huh?”
“I don’t know. I kind of feel like you’re the only person who really understands what it was like.”
Jodie nodded. An understanding passed between them. Solidarity.
Then Meghan bounced into the room. Her red hair was down in waves past her shoulders and she smiled brightly at the pair of them.
“There you are!” she gushed. “God, I’ve been looking all over for you. We have to get going. Sydney requested your presence.”
“Really?” Reyna asked. The head honcho wanted to see her? Maybe this was good. Maybe this was the opportunity she needed to be a part of something here at Elle. With everything up in the air with Beckham, it would be better for her to focus on something. Plus, she had always wanted to make a difference. No better place to start than the top.
“Yes! Sydney was the one who authorized your escape. She’s the reason you’re here and not still with Harrington. I’m sure you have a lot of questions for her.”
“I do,” Reyna admitted. “Plus, I’m sure she has a lot of questions for me.”
“Great. Let’s go,” Meghan said,.
“I’ll see you later,” Reyna said to Jodie on her way out. Then she turned to Meghan when they were out in the hallway. “So, what’s Sydney like?”
Meghan bit her lip and considered. “She’s amazing. Ex–military officer and a brilliant strategist. She expects and commands respect from everyone. Smarting off to her is not something that I’d suggest.”
“How do you talk to her, then?”
“Carefully,” she said with a quick grin. “But really…be careful.”
“Why do I feel like I should be afraid of walking in there?”
“Not afraid, cautious. She’s gotten ahead for a reason. Everyone who succeeds gets ahead for a reason,” she told her. “She’s not the kind of person whose bad side you want to be on.”
“Okay. Anything else I should know?”
“Sydney is an amazing leader. She is the only reason we have survived this long. But…don’t let her see any weaknesses. Be strong and confident. You’ve got this.”
Reyna didn’t respond. All she could think was that Sydney sounded a hell of a lot like Harrington. Lock down her emotions. Show no weakness. Control her reactions. Don’t get on her bad side. It all felt too familiar. Uneasiness settled in her bones.
Meghan stopped in front of a steel door reminiscent of the one holding B back at Visage. The tech was about the same to access it.
“This is intense,” Reyna muttered.
“Situation room. This is where everything happens.” Meghan tapped in a code and then did a retinal scan. The door popped open. “Good to go.”
“Aren’t you coming in with me?”
Meghan shook her head. “Just you, but don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Chin up.”
Reyna took her advice before pushing forward into the situation room. It was about the size of a large conference room with a table taking up the center of the room and a wall of television screens showing a loop of all the major news networks.
Her eyes landed on three figures standing on a platform on the other side of the room. She recognized the two men immediately but from completely different worlds. One wore a white doctor’s coat. He was tall and disheveled in his middle years—though she knew he was a vampire and thus likely much, much older. He had been the doctor to hand her over to Beckham that fateful first day at Visage. The other was much smaller and human. He was slight but fit, built even. A fighter’s body. Someone who had crawled his way up from the streets to make something of himself. His eyes were haunted but his smile was light, almost inviting when he found her standing in the open doorway. She had once photographed him when he had been in an underground fighting ring at the Ferrier House.
The last person was dressed in a sharp charcoal gray suit. This must be Sydney. She had her back to the door, a bold move. All Reyna could see was that she was tall, though not as tall as the doctor, and had dark hair slicked back into a ponytail. This woman ran the entire Elle organization?
“This must be Reyna,” the fighter said. He whistled low. “Everything suddenly makes sense.”
Sydney slowly turned around to face Reyna. She was imposing. Everything about her was sharp and hard and controlled. Arrogance danced in her eyes.
Reyna took a half step backward. She should have known. Should have prepared herself for this. But she had asked the wrong questions. So how could she possibly have known in advance?
The leader of Elle was a vampire?
“Gabe, go see Tony about this. See if we can get eyes on the subject,” she said in a crisp clear voice. A commanding tone that said she was in charge and if she ever had to raise her voice, you were done for.
“Sure thing, boss,” he said with the cocky grin Reyna had seen in the ring.
He winked at Reyna as he slipped past her. “See you around.”
She sincerely hoped not. He had bad news written all over him.
Gabe shut the door behind him, leaving Reyna alone with two very keen, very intelligent, very domineering vampires.
“Miss Carpenter,” Sydney said, straightening her already impeccable suit and taking the stairs down the platform, “please come in. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Hi,” she said. She took a step forward and then another, forcing herself to show no fear.
Sydney stuck
her hand out for Reyna to shake. She looked at it a beat too long before placing her hand in Sydney’s. It was cold to the touch and clearly strong. Very strong. Callused in all the right places that said she knew hard labor and was skilled in her work. You didn’t get hands like this without years of rigorous training.
“You have met Dr. Washington before, I believe,” Sydney said. She gestured the doctor forward; he nodded at her.
“Yes. We’ve met.”
Washington had saved her from Harrington the first time. Sydney had saved her from him a second time.
“Thank you,” she said immediately. “Both of you, actually, for what you did to help me.”
Sydney had a severe face, but her lips quirked up at her comment. “We’re glad that our mission was successful and that you were able to be brought back safely. The cost could have been greater. It’s fortunate that we only lost four sleeper agents to retrieve you.”
Reyna’s mind whirred. “Sleeper agents?”
“Meghan, Tye, and Xavier were all in key positions in Visage. Washington had been working in the Visage hospitals from the beginning. All were scrubbed from Visage after their work for you. Luckily, we have other people working there so it’s not a total loss.”
“But most unfortunate,” Washington said.
“You know Harrington wouldn’t have let you live,” Sydney said to him.
“William and I have a complicated history. I do not know if he would have killed me had he had the chance.”
“You knew Harrington?” Reyna blurted out in surprise.
“My dear girl,” he said with a flash of fang, “I was his closest friend. His only friend for most of his wretched years looking for a match such as yourself.”
Reyna’s mind spun. “But…you work in opposition to him.”
“Penance.”
For what?
Sydney seemed to read her mind. “You must not be aware that Dr. Washington here discovered the blood type cure.”
Reyna nearly fell over. “You discovered the cure?”
She was standing before the man who had found out that pairing a vampire with a human of the same blood type “cured” their baser tendencies. This was how Visage had become an enormous company that employed humans. This was how Harrington had taken over.
“Quite by chance really. I was a scientist before I was turned. When I met William, sheer force of will kept him from catapulting into the animal so many of our kind succumb to. He has always been,” he said, stopping to consider, “a sanitary type of man. A germaphobe before the word existed, of course. It set him on the path to asking why this happened to him. A question so few had the mental capabilities to ask. And then when we connected, he had a means to figure out how to change it.”
“Enough of a history lesson for the day, Roger,” Sydney said.
“So…this is your fault?” Reyna couldn’t help but ask.
Washington frowned. “I suppose it is.”
“But he is working to right the wrongs of his past,” Sydney said. She gestured for them to take a seat at the end of the conference table. “Which is where you come in.”
“How do I fit into this?”
“You are the key to Harrington’s blood. There is something special about you.”
“I really don’t think that’s true. It’s chance that our blood types match.”
Sydney considered her for a long moment. Reyna could tell then that Sydney was not a woman to be fucked with. She might be putting on a good face, but it was not her nature. It was something she could just sense about her.
“Why don’t you let us determine that? In the meantime, I would like to debrief you. Tell me everything that happened in the eight weeks of your disappearance. Nothing is too big or too small.”
Reyna gulped. This was not going to be pleasant.
* * *
—
“That’s it. That’s all I know. That’s everything,” Reyna ground out a few hours later.
They’d made her tell all her stories and retell all her stories and retell all her stories. As if they kept expecting her to tell them something different or to trip up and prove that she was lying in some way.
There were a few things she kept back for herself—seeing Beckham and Penelope together at the ball, meeting B, and her dreams. She knew that she should tell them about all of this—especially B. But everything was still so traumatizing…her fear so acute, she couldn’t dredge it up. Not here. Not now. Not so soon after it had all happened.
“Are you sure?” Sydney asked for what felt like the thousandth time.
“Yes. I’m sure.” Reyna glanced down at her hands and then straightened. “I actually did have one question for you though.”
“Oh?”
“I want to help the rebellion. You have all the information that I have. You have a complete picture now. I think I could be valuable on your team.”
“No,” Sydney said at once.
“Look, I can’t sit around and do nothing. I’m really bad at being cooped up. Can’t you see where I’m coming from? I just laid it all out for you. I was kidnapped and I’m not in a great place. If I sit around and do nothing, then I will go crazy. Please, give me something to do.”
“Perhaps I could offer you a job,” Washington said with a cheery smile. “You could work in the medical wing with me.”
Reyna balked. That was the absolute last place that she wanted to work. She turned pleading eyes on Sydney. “Anything but that.”
Sydney shuffled the papers in front of her and stood. “You asked for a job and Washington is offering you one. Take it or leave it.”
“I understand. I appreciate the offer. But I am really bad with hospitals after what I went through. I don’t think that I can handle that kind of position. Don’t you think I could work with my brothers on security?”
“You are important here, Reyna. You are not important dead,” Sydney said bluntly. “You are now a member of Elle. You will have to find a place here as you did when you were miserable in those warehouses and when you were uncertain and afraid with Beckham and even as you did in Harrington’s care,” she spat out. “But you will not work on my security team. Do you understand?”
Reyna nodded solemnly.
“Good. You’re dismissed.”
Chapter 14
It was nearly a week of doing absolutely nothing that finally did Reyna in. She hated sitting around. Had always hated it. Between Meghan’s insistence that she needed to rest and Sydney’s insistence that she couldn’t do anything she truly wanted to do, she was going stir crazy.
Not to mention the fact that she hadn’t heard from Beckham in all of that time. A full week of nothing. Was he really going to stay away? Had he really given up?
Eventually, she got so tired of resting that she threw on workout clothes and headed downstairs. She was already through her fifth mile on the treadmill when her brothers showed up and stared at her in shock. It took little convincing to get them to start training with her in their spare time. Since her cardio was already on point, they started her on weights and higher intensity workouts.
Four days later while working on self-defense training, Tye strolled into the room. “Tonight,” he said with a nod to Brian and Drew.
They straightened and nodded back. It wasn’t until he had left before they relaxed again.
“What’s that about?” she asked.
“Work detail,” Brian said.
“It’s stuff we do every day,” Drew said with a smile. “It’ll be fine.”
“Can I come with you?” she asked hopefully even though she already knew the answer.
“No,” they said as one.
“Come on. You’re training me. You could get me into the program or something. I want to be useful. Let me be useful.”
“It’s not abou
t being useful,” Brian said. “It’s about keeping you safe.”
“I know. I totally get that. I don’t want to be kidnapped again or anything. Trust me. But I can’t sit around and do nothing. I’m going crazy.”
“I heard Meghan say that you could work in medical with her,” Drew said.
“No. I don’t want to work with blood and needles.” She shuddered. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was work in a hospital. Why did no one understand that? “I want to help. I want to make a difference. Take down the bad guys.”
She fake-punched Drew’s arm. Brian shook his head and adjusted her hand so that her thumb wasn’t covering her knuckles.
“If you punch like that, you’re going break your thumb.”
“I can be taught!” she said with a reassuring smile.
“Find something else,” Brian said with an exasperated sigh.
“Fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. She was sure there was something else that she could do for Elle besides work in that insufferable lab. She wanted to feel like she was really doing something. At least doing something that didn’t trigger her PTSD from her kidnapping. But no one would listen to her.
“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Brian said reassuringly. “I’m sure something else will open up and you won’t be stuck in this limbo for long. When we get back, why don’t we do something with you and Laura. It’ll be great.”
Reyna grinned. She was looking forward to spending time with her brothers and Laura some more. “That’d be good. Now, show me that flip thing again.”
Drew laughed and stepped forward into her space, showing her how to flip him over her shoulder.
“But your best option is to run, Rey,” Brian said, looking her square in the eyes. “Run as fast and as far as you can.”
“I know,” she told him.
But it didn’t help her last time. It didn’t help her against anything she had ever encountered. Running only did so much good. She wanted to know how to defend herself. Better yet how to stop any of this from ever happening to her again.