Jacob laughs. His breath is cold against Penny’s ear. She doesn’t know what to think. Could Jacob really be Em Dash? Could he really have changed?
Penny remembers the files detailing the employee’s past crimes. She knew the case of the girl drowning sounded awfully familiar. It was definitely talking about Jacob, and definitely proves he’s the psycho she always thought he was.
Or, does it corroborate his story? It does confirm that he indeed works for VC Solutions. It would explain the specific, insider information Em Dash had provided Penny.
“Where are the files?” Jacob asks.
Penny steps away from Jacob. He releases his grip. “You always hated Ben.”
“Please, Penny,” Jacob says, his eyes pleading. “Don’t blame me for the sins of my childhood. I had a fucked up upbringing, okay?”
“We all did,” Penny says, her shoulders squared in defiance.
Jacob looks down at his feet. “Did you watch your father beat your mother? It was a nightly event. They’d start arguing, and ding ding ding, the fight was on. Why she kept going against him, I’ll never know. But there were plenty of times, Penny, when I thought my mother was dead. I was sure he’d beaten her to death.” He looks up at Penny with narrowed eyes. “Can you imagine what that does to a kid?”
Penny shakes her head, quickly, glancing to the side. Either Jacob’s telling the truth, or he’s a very skilled liar. Penny can’t let her empathy get in the way.
“When Em Dash approached me about Ben,” Jacob says. “I thought, this is my chance to make it right. Penny, have you found the report yet, from that day?”
Penny gulps. “Not yet.”
Jacob smiles, his eyes lighting up. “I know how to find it. I know the code to search for. Show me the files, and I’ll prove everything to you.”
“You have the code?” Penny says with shallow breath.
Jacob nods, slowly. He turns towards the couch, where the screen of Penny’s laptop is illuminated.
“May I?” Jacob asks.
“Sure,” Penny says, fueled by pure desperation.
Jacob sits on the couch, balancing the laptop on his thighs. He scrolls through, squinting at the screen. “Look at all this,” he marvels. “This is everything.”
Penny stands in front of him. “Show me the report,” she says through clenched teeth. “Show me what happened to Ben.”
Jacob grins. “With pleasure.” He types a combination of numbers and letters into the search function. One result pops up.
Penny can’t help herself. She grabs the laptop from Jacob, and quickly clicks on the link.
“I found the code right before I left,” Jacob says. He studies his nail. “I really put my life on the line there.”
Penny ignores him. She reads furtively, desperate for the information about Ben. The report is short, only five paragraphs contained in one page. It describes a terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Kuwait. Two VC Solutions employees, described as brave men on duty, were killed in the explosion. It’s the exact report Penny and her parents had received.
“No,” Penny mumbles under her breath. “This can’t be right.”
“What does it say?” Jacob asks, innocently. He shifts the screen towards him, and scans it. “I’ll be damned,” he says. “Everything is above board here.”
Penny shakes her head, refusing to believe it. What about Ben’s call? He’d warned her not to trust VC Solutions. Her brother knew something. Penny was convinced of that. She’s risked her life for this mission.
“Hey,” Jacob says, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. There’s plenty more here to get VC Solutions on. Now you know the truth about your brother.”
Am I crazy? Paranoid? Did I get myself all worked up over nothing?
Penny sits on the couch, sinking into the cushions. Her shoulders round forward, and she buries her face into her hands. She doesn’t know what to believe anymore, which reality is the real one. And what will Zane say when he finds out she risked her life for a lie she told herself? Even if she didn’t get what she wanted, she still has VC Solutions’ files. They’ll still want to kill her.
She hears the laptop click closed, and opens her eyes. Jacob is staring at her with sympathy.
“It’s late,” Jacob says. “We should get some sleep. See where we’re at in the morning.”
*
Penny keeps the door to the small bedroom cracked so she can keep an eye on Jacob, who’s now stretched out on the couch, his eyes closed. She glances beyond the sitting room to the kitchen counter, where she’d carelessly tossed Zane’s car keys. She shouldn’t take any chances with Jacob. She should leave now. But to do that, she’d have to creep past him. If he caught her trying to leave, he may react violently. And he’s too large and strong for Penny to fight off by herself.
So, she decides to play along for now, and perhaps even give Jacob the benefit of doubt.
If he thinks I’m going to sleep, he’s lost his mind, Penny thinks.
The small bedroom, like the rest of the cabin, is a faux dump. It houses a single cot with no other luxury besides a thin white blanket and flat pillow. There are nebulous, yellow-brown stains on the sheets. Yet, like the couch, they smell freshly washed. On further inspection, Penny reasons that the stains were made with food coloring.
Penny studies Jacob’s face. He hasn’t aged much. His stylish man bun is about the only thing that’s different about him. Penny remembers how cruel he was when they were kids. Everyone was scared of him. Can someone like that really change? Penny would like to believe that change is possible, but she’s not so sure.
On the other hand, he’s the only person to show up at the cabin, claiming to be Em Dash. But if Penny’s to accept that Jacob is the notorious hacker, she also has to accept that VC Solutions’ story about what happened to Ben is the truth.
She lies on her side, her eyes on Jacob, conjuring up the conversation she’d had with Ben. Something was wrong. She’d heard it in his voice. He was distressed, unsure, and explicitly told her not to trust VC Solutions.
The path to paradise begins to hell.
What does that mean? Penny’s never forgotten the phrase that Ben had uttered over the phone to her that night. It echoes in her mind. She hasn’t thought to analyze it closely before now.
Before shipping off with VC Solutions, Ben would randomly email Penny poems. Penny never was much of a poetry lover, so she’d usually delete them without reading them.
The path to paradise begins in hell.
Penny wants to sit straight up in bed, but stops herself. She doesn’t want to wake Jacob. She slowly reaches for her phone on the nightstand, careful not to make any sudden movements. She shouldn’t connect to the internet, someone could track her that way. But something tells her there’s something important about that line.
Or you really are fucking crazy, she thinks, swiping open the phone.
There’s no wifi all the way out here, so Penny has to log on the 4G network. The browser takes a few minutes to load. As soon as it does, Penny searches for the line from her memory. Results pop up immediately, telling her it’s a line from Dante’s Inferno.
Excitement blossoms at the base of Penny’s spine. She pulls the blanket up to her neck to hide her glowing phone, then checks her email. She searches deep into her trash folder, until she finds the last email she received from Ben. The date is marked two weeks before his supposed death. She opens the email. There’s an attachment called Dante’s Inferno.
Penny’s breath catches in her throat. Her palms start to sweat. Her heart thumps wildly in her chest. This is it. This is what she went to all that trouble to get. She broke into a corporate conglomerate, stole their classified files, and got put on a hit list for this, when all the while, it was right here in her email account. She’d like to rip her hair out, until she realizes that if it wasn’t for her crazy mission, she’d never have met Zane.
If they both make it out of this alive, it’ll all be
worth it.
Penny opens the attachment. It’s not a poem. It’s a letter from Ben. Tears immediately well in her eyes. She wipes them away, and reads.
Dear Penny,
I’m sorry. I promised you I’d never leave you, but now I’m not so sure I can keep that promise. Please understand, I don’t have a choice. I can’t go along with VC Solutions anymore. I can’t be complicit in their crimes. They aren’t just a security company. They are changing the world as we know it, and not for the better. It’s all for profit. They’re in bed with the US government. Their lawyers have negotiated away regulations that apply to other companies, regulations that keep business from hurting others just for the sake of their bottom line.
I’ve been disillusioned with them for months now. Once I got overseas, and saw up close how things worked, I couldn’t look the other way. I’m thousands of miles from home, in a strange place, working for evil overlords. And I miss you, so, so, much. As you can imagine, it’s been very stressful.
Something’s going to happen in the next two weeks. There’s a good chance that you’ll never see me again. Please, don’t be mad, Penny. You’re strong. You can take care of yourself, I know that.
Just don’t believe what VC Solutions tells you.
Vincent Connor is working with a local terrorist group. He’s seeking a big contract from the US government, and knows an attack will strengthen his case. They call it a ‘false flag.’ Vincent knows the military will be compelled to act, and would need more weapons, that they will buy from VC Solutions. The terrorist group will get more exposure, and recruits. Win/win, right?
I’m not going through with this shady shit, Penny. I’m supposed to wait for the attack to go down, then immediately impose martial law. But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to shoot the attacker, then run in and disable the bomb. I can’t watch people get blown apart all to line some asshole’s pockets.
They’ll probably kill me.
Please, forgive me, Penny. It’s what I have to do.
I love you.
-Ben 2A6B6
Penny is full on sobbing when she gets to the end of the letter. She presses the blanket against her wet face, trying to stifle the sound of her crying. She’s devastated, but also feels vindicated. Her every instinct has been correct. And Ben is the hero she always knew he was. Grief wells inside of her, threatening to swallow her whole. He probably died trying to save others. Her brother is dead.
She reads the letter again and again. What’s the code Ben had typed beside his name? She closes her eyes, remembering what Jacob had typed in to find the report. She’s quite certain it was the code Ben provided, plus a few more numbers. Could 2A6B6 be his employee code? If Penny searched for that, would she find every file attached to him?
Penny cranes her neck to look out of the cracked door. The laptop is on the table in front of Jacob, with the flash drive still connected. Penny simply can’t accept Ben’s dead until she knows the full truth. She needs to know exactly what happened that night. And obviously, what Jacob showed her is bullshit. Him being Em Dash, that’s bullshit too.
Penny’s veins turn to ice. She can feel the paralysis of fear overcoming her, but she fights it off. Her eyes dart between the laptop, and Jacob on the couch.
He works for them. Has he been sent to kill her? She should get out of here.
She hardens her gaze on the flash drive. But not without what she’s fought so hard for. She has to know the truth, the full truth. She goes over what she should do in her mind. She could creep out of bed, crawl on all fours to the laptop, then quietly extract the flash drive. From there, she could quietly grab the car keys off of the counter before making it out of the front door.
She slips out of bed, landing softly on her feet. She watches Jacob’s face like a hawk as she crawls out of the bedroom. His face doesn’t stir. He’s peacefully still. The sound of Penny’s breath, and the beating of her heart reverberate in her head. With every movement, she has to fight the urge to rush. Slow and steady, she reminds herself with each breath. She stays low, maneuvering around the couch and the coffee table. She lies on her stomach, then carefully lifts her hand to grasp the flash drive.
Penny exhales with relief when her fingers wrap around the flash drive. Now, she has to slowly pull it out of the computer, careful not to do any damage.
But she can’t get any leverage from down here. With achingly slow movements, Penny rises up to her knees. Something catches her eye, making her blood run cold.
It’s Jacob. He’s sitting straight up, and staring at her. There’s a wicked smile on his face, the one he always wore as a kid. His eyes are dark and narrowed. Penny knows in that instant that he hasn’t changed. He’s as cruel as he was back then.
“What are you doing?” Jacob asks, an edge to his voice.
Penny sits back on her knees, feigning innocence. “There’s something I wanted to double check on the files. I didn’t want to wake you.” She tightens her grip on the flash drive, refusing to give it up. With small movements, she shimmies the flash drive up and down, until it pops out of the port.
Jacob rises to his feet. “I wasn’t sleeping. In fact, I was waiting for you to fall asleep.” He leans over the table, and with patient, deliberate movements, grabs Penny’s hair at the back of her head. He pulls her hair, forcing her up to her feet. Penny screams as the skin tightens around her face. Despite her fear, she manages to keep her grip on the flash drive. The laptop clatters to the ground.
But Jacob doesn’t seem to care about the computer or the files. He’s looking at Penny with pure predatory lust. “I was going to kill you in your sleep,” Jacob says through clenched teeth. “I was going to show you mercy. I told you I changed.” He jerks Penny towards him, so hard she thinks her scalp will split from her head. Her body drags across the coffee table before she slams onto the couch. Jacob stands over her. “Fuck mercy,” he says. “This will be a lot more fun.”
Penny stares up at him in terror. She’s shaking so hard, her teeth clang together. Jacob holds a thick swath of her hair, freshly ripped from her scalp. But curiously, Penny doesn’t feel any pain, just an intense desire to defend herself. Jacob crouches down in front of her, studying her face. He lays a heavy hand on her shoulder, pinning her down.
“You haven’t changed much, Penny,” he says. “You look just like you did back then. Ben was a good big brother, always protecting you.” Jacob strokes Penny’s hair away from her face, filling her with disgust. “But Ben kept us from getting to know each other. I’m glad we’re getting this time together.” He bends down and gives her a wet kiss on the cheek.
Penny doesn’t think. She just reacts. She jerks her face towards Jacob, opens her mouth, and clamps her teeth down on his flesh. Her teeth snags part of his cheek and the side of his nose. She bites down, hard, until she tastes blood. Jacob’s screams are loud in her ear. He flails his arms to get her off of him. But the more he fights, the more his flesh tears on Penny’s teeth. Penny rouses all of the strength she possesses, which is considerably more than she thought she had, and rolls her body forward, pushing Jacob back. His head slams against the table. His hands fly to his bleeding face.
“Cunt,” he spits, as blood flows over his fingers.
Penny doesn’t waste any time. She jumps to her feet and darts away from the couch. Her first thought is to grab the car keys on the counter, but Jacob is on her in an instant, lumbering towards her. She rushes to the door, and throws it open, then disappears into the darkness of the woods.
Chapter Seventeen
Darkness.
There’s a thick viscosity to this darkness. It seeps into every open space, filling every orifice, every pore. Zane is aware of his body, but he can barely move against the heaviness that surrounds him. It’s even difficult to fill his lungs with air. Zane doesn’t remember how he got here, and he doesn’t question it much. It seems as if the darkness has always existed, and somehow, is the only thing that exists.
Zane feels himse
lf slipping, and he doesn’t fight it. He falls deeper into the black pool, letting it envelop him. Soon, he’ll be lost to it forever. But Zane has forgotten how to care.
He’s not sure how, or when it happens, but the darkness gradually becomes lighter. He can hear muffled voices. There are beeping sounds, and other electronic noises. Where is he?
Here are his fingers. He can move them. And his toes too.
The darkness takes on a tinge of red. He realizes he’s seeing the back of his eyelids. He shifts his large body.
A sharp, red hot pain, like a glowing poker in his side, crashes through him. Zane’s mouth opens and he howls. The sound is hollow in his ear.
His eyes fly open, and he’s nearly blinded by bright, white light. The voices become louder, more clear.
“Zane, can you hear me?” a female voice asks.
Penny.
Zane fights to regain full consciousness. Is Penny here, by his side? He thrashes on the bed beneath him. Something sharp tugs in his arm. He grasps the chord connected to his flesh and yanks it, causing sharp pricks of pain on the inside of his elbow.
“Restrain him, goddammit,” a male voice says.
Needles reenter the wounds on the inside of his elbow. Zane forces his eyes open, and keeps them that way, despite the light burning his cornea.
Gradually, his eyes adjust to the light. Zane blinks, looking around. He’s in a hospital. There are IV’s in his arm. There’s blood around the needles where he’d yanked them out. He’s hooked up to machines that beep and whir.
Zane struggles to concentrate, though intense pain is gripping his midsection like a vice. With each breath, he feels like his chest is ripping apart.
This isn’t a hospital. The walls and floors aren’t white and sterile. He’s surrounded by gray concrete. There are two other people with him. With a groan, he turns to see a blonde woman wearing a white lab coat.
Zane knows her. He’s seen her before. The memory flashes dully in his mind. He’d met the doctor on Vincent Connor’s yacht. She was handing out botox shots.
Assassin In My Bed Page 15