by Peak, Renna
Brandon wouldn’t care what I said to these two men. It was what I had to tell myself—he would want me to tell them everything to get him out of that room. These guys were smart—they knew they could get to me easier by torturing Brandon than by torturing me. And it was working. I was prepared to tell them anything and everything I knew—not that I actually knew anything. But I knew I was willing to lie to get us out of there, especially if it meant they would leave Brandon alone.
Good Cop nodded. “You call him Brandon. And you believe that’s his real name?”
My brow furrowed and I turned my body to look him in the eye. What the hell was that supposed to mean? His real name? “Yes. I believe that is his real name. Why wouldn’t I believe that? Do you have some evidence to the contrary—?“
The loud chuckling that came from Bad Cop across the table stopped me in my tracks.
I was missing something. Something that was obvious to these two men—something I hadn’t considered before. It hadn’t crossed my mind that Brandon wasn’t who he said he was. And if he wasn’t, Krystal might not be either. Was it really possible that both of them weren’t who they said they were? They fought like siblings—they had been raised as brother and sister. I was sure of that—no one had the ability to pretend like that. But there was something creeping into my brain—some niggling doubt that bit into me, making me wake up from what must have been a dream. Maybe nothing was real. Maybe…
“Okay, Princess. Start at the beginning.” Bad Cop seemed to have no remorse for anything that was going on. He didn’t seem to care if I had feelings about any of this at all.
I winced at his words, though. Princess. That was what people thought of me. It was still how I was acting—helpless. Waiting to be rescued. But there was no one coming to rescue me. My knight in shining armor was slowly being drowned in the room next to mine. I was the only one who could save either of us now. It was the first time I had ever realized that I was capable of saving myself—and maybe I could save Brandon, too.
“We met in April last year. At a painting class.”
The way Bad Cop snorted made me want to slap him. He pressed the button on his headset. “Again. For fun this time.” He smiled at me. “See, Princess? If you’re going to play games, we can play games, too.”
I glared at him, not wanting to turn around to see the scene I had already witnessed too many times, but certain that they were going to force me to turn again at any moment. “You want me to lie?”
“No.” Good Cop answered the question I had directed to the other man. “We just want straight answers. You can’t really expect us to believe you met someone like him…” He motioned again with his head toward the window. “A guy like him? At a painting class? You do know who he is, right?”
I nodded, my brow creasing again. I did know Brandon. I thought I did, anyway. He was the love of my life, no matter how much anyone tried to convince me otherwise. He might have done as many bad things as Daniel had tried to convince me of. He might have done more. Maybe he had even been trying to marry me for reasons other than love—but he did love me. I knew it. I could feel it in the way he looked at me, even if he couldn’t express it as well as he should have. There was something about him that always seemed like he cherished me—just like the wedding vows he seemed so desperate to take. There was no question in my mind that he loved me. There was no doubt that I knew him better than anyone probably ever had. And he knew me. I was done running from it—if there was going to be any more running away, I was only going to do it with Brandon. I was never going to run from him again.
“I’m pretty sure he isn’t who you think he is, Princess.” Bad Cop snickered to himself as he pushed the button on the headset. “Go again.”
I steeled myself from the wave of pain I felt crashing over me. I might as well have been on that board with Brandon—it hurt just as much. Maybe more.
Good Cop seemed to feel some amount of pity for me—I though I could hear it in his voice. “I think Jenna—“
Bad Cop interrupted. “Princess.”
The guy playing the good cop rolled his eyes. “Jenna seems to think this guy is named Brandon Richardson. So let’s allow her to tell her story.” He smiled at me. “Just tell it as you remember it. Then we’ll get back to James from Waterville, okay?”
I nodded. “If you’ll stop doing that to him, I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything he’s told me.”
“Oh, Princess.” Bad Cop rolled his eyes this time. “You really think we’re going to believe you if we stop doing that to him?”
I would have loved to have sent a poisonous dart with my narrowed gaze in the direction of Bad Cop. “First of all, stop calling me Princess.” My voice had lowered to almost a growl. “And I said I’d tell you what I know. Which isn’t much, but I think Brandon—“
My jaw dropped when the door opened, interrupting me. I stared at the man in the doorway, unable to speak or move when I saw him.
The huge man let out a sigh. “It’s off. All of it. Shut it down.”
Bad Cop turned to him, sneering. “Sorry, man, you have no jurisdiction here. This is over your head.”
The third man lifted a brow at the Bad Cop. “It’s over all our heads.” He glanced over at me, frowning. The way his brows furrowed, I could almost see the regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Jenna.”
Bad Cop slammed a fist on the table in front of him before standing up. He turned to face the new guy. “Don’t apologize to her.” He glared over at me in disgust before turning back to face the man in the doorway. “And who the hell is over our heads? There’s only one person over our heads on this, and there’s no way—“
The large man pressed his lips together and gave the Bad Cop a single nod.
I heard Good Cop gulp next to me.
“No fucking way. No fucking way that he…” He motioned with his head at the window. “No way that little fucker goes all the way to the top.”
Large Man said nothing; only his eyebrows twitched upward, telling Bad Cop how wrong he was.
And telling me how wrong I had been.
I turned to look through the window of horror. Brandon’s body was slumped over, lifeless, as one of the huge military guys carried him over his shoulder and out of the room.
I let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
There was a huge relief in knowing he wasn’t dead. But it was something else entirely when I realized he also wasn’t the man I had thought he was all this time.
A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I had to turn to grab onto the table to keep myself upright as the room began to spin. My stomach was as hard as a stone and I couldn’t help feeling like I wanted to run away again. I wanted to run as fast and as far as I could when I realized I was in much deeper than I had ever imagined possible.
I was frozen, rooted to the chair in the tiny interrogation room. I wasn’t sure what terrified me more—staying there to answer more of their questions or leaving to find out the answer to mine.
Who in the hell was Brandon?
6
It was the best dream I had ever had.
I could smell her—vanilla and raspberries and that … something. The whatever it was that I had never been able to find in anything else. It was just her.
I drew in a deep breath through my nose, wanting to just drown myself in that scent. Something inside me knew I was actually drowning—not in the fragrance of the woman I loved, but in the water I had feared my entire life.
But if this was what death was like, it wasn’t so bad. At least I still had that piece of her, and I was going to let it fill me up until it was over. Until there was nothing but blackness enveloping me, I was at least going to let myself enjoy this. Even if it only lasted one second longer.
I was sure I wasn’t quite conscious. I was certain that I was in some space between here and there—between life and whatever came after. The after part had to be where her scent was coming from—I cou
ld still sort of feel something covering my eyes and the water … the water was coming again any second. I could sense it. It was making my heart beat too fast just thinking about it, too.
But I felt something else at that moment—not a movement, exactly. It was something else entirely. Something warm against my body—something like home. It was then I was sure I was dead. It was Jen. I knew it was—the contours of her body fitting so neatly against my own. Like we were made for each other. Something I knew when they had strapped me to that board that I would never feel again.
This wasn’t bad, this death thing. This was contentment—it was the only thing I had wanted since that first night I met her. It was almost like I was back there again, back in my bed in San Francisco, holding the woman I knew I would spend the rest of my life with. I didn’t know how I knew then—that time in my life was still a blur, still not quite a complete memory. But Jen had been real. I had known it in my heart before I had realized that she was that Jen—the woman who was a possible avenue to complete what I was sent here to do.
I wasn’t going to miss that part of my life—the complications. The deceit and lies and … tangled mess I had made. It wasn’t supposed to have been like that. Quick, easy and uncomplicated—that was the directive. And there had been nothing in my life that had turned out that way. Especially when it came to Jen.
But I didn’t have to worry about that now—missions and directives and objectives. Duties. Now I could just lie here and feel—something I had been trained not to do. And this had to be what contentment felt like—the memory of it was so strong, it was all I had really thought about since it had first happened that night I met her. Fulfillment. Holding her and having it be enough. It was the only thing I needed now—to hold her and love her and nothing else. Just … enough.
I hadn’t felt the water again. I said a few words of gratitude for whatever force it was in the universe that hadn’t made me suffer too much at the hands of the men who had decided to torture me until I died. And the gratitude I felt for not being made to suffer was nothing compared to the thankfulness I could feel for this being what death was. It was fantastic—so much better than anything I could remember feeling in life.
This was what uncomplicated felt like. It was all I had ever wanted.
I let out a long, satisfied sigh—who knew you could still breathe when you were dead? I couldn’t feel anything else—just the warmth of Jen at my side. And I could smell her hair.
And feel her breathing.
When my heart began to race, I knew the dream was over. If Jen was by my side, it meant that she really was here and that they were torturing her, too. And considering I couldn’t move my body, I knew I couldn’t protect her.
It hadn’t been a dream at all—this was a nightmare.
* * *
I didn’t know what was happening. I had no idea who the men were who had wanted information about Brandon—and I couldn’t imagine why it had all suddenly stopped. What the third man had said about their orders coming from over their heads—I could only guess what it meant. It didn’t make much sense, and if Brandon ever woke up, I wasn’t sure he would tell me, either.
The only thing that really made sense was why they had tortured him—they knew I would crack. And I had—like an egg. They had to have known that he wouldn’t, no matter what they did to him. I just kept replaying in my mind what I had seen them do over and over to him. And thinking about it—seeing him as he was now—made my stomach turn into a guilty knot. Witnessing the aftermath of what they had done—it made me want to vomit.
But none of that mattered at that particular moment. After they had stopped doing the horrible things to him, they had let me be with him. That was what mattered—at least, I kept telling myself that. I hadn’t cracked fast enough—I hadn’t been able to give them the answers they wanted.
All I really wanted was for him to hold me—and I hoped he would be able to forgive me. He hadn’t deserved this. He hadn’t done anything to merit this kind of treatment—at least nothing that I knew about. And even the worst human beings on earth didn’t deserve to be tortured. And Brandon wasn’t one of those kinds of people anyway.
So I held him while he slept, pressing my body next to his. I must have drifted off at some point, and when I stirred, his arm was around me. He had to know I was there on some level—his head was buried in my hair, and I felt him pull me closer to his body.
It was the nearest I had been to him in so long, and it was what I missed most about being with him. The way he looked at me. The way he would touch me with a tenderness that didn’t seem possible from a man like him.
I tilted my head to look up at him. His face was swollen with the bruises of the pistol-whipping he had endured. One of his eyes was swollen closed, a dark purple circle already enclosing it that extended almost to his jaw.
I reached up, barely tracing the bottom of the purple bruise along his jaw line with the tip of my finger. I didn’t want him to wake up yet—being awake was going to be excruciatingly painful for him. But I needed for him to know that I was there. That I cared about him and loved him, the same way I knew he did for me. It didn’t matter who he really was or what he had been sent to do. I only cared about him—the man I knew he was, regardless of his real name or where he came from.
I’m not sure when that realization hit me—that the only thing that mattered was who he was now. Not who he had been in the past. And I loved that he had fought for me—that he had never given up on me, no matter how stupid I had been or how hard I had tried to push him away. He had always come back for me. He loved me. And damn it, my heart was about to flutter out of my chest as I realized how much I loved him, too.
My finger traced the length of his jaw, dropping to his neck and trailing along his shoulder. I wanted to feel his strong chest—my favorite part of his body. I longed to press my hand to his heart, just to know it was still beating. I wanted to press my ear to his chest to hear it, too. But it was obvious from the bruising that it would hurt him—I was sure he had to have some broken ribs in there from the caved-in appearance of that side of his chest.
They’d had a doctor look at him after the … session. That was what they had called it—a session. The doctor had given him a shot of something that I assumed was a painkiller, and Brandon hadn’t stirred at all the entire time we had been in the tiny holding room.
I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I knew he had been out for a long time. There were no windows in the room, only a camera in the corner of the ceiling that was pointed right at the twin bed where the two of us were sleeping.
I still couldn’t believe they had let me be with him, but they had let me in immediately and without question. No one had said a word about the two of us being together after the large man had come into the interrogation room. It was like they just rightly assumed that I wouldn’t want to be any place else. I had even been able to watch the examination by the doctor though he also hadn’t said a word in the time he had been in the room. No one had. None of the people in this complex would tell me anything—someone had come in to check on Brandon every couple of hours or so, but they just nodded at me, just a curt acknowledgment. I was sure they were only checking because someone had screwed up—and they had to make sure he was alive and was going to continue to be that way.
I had been going over every detail in my head—every time I had awakened, I would go back over it all. Something wasn’t right. I was missing something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Brandon would know—somehow I knew he would—and he could tell me when he woke up. If he woke up. I had to wonder if they had gone so overboard that they might have caused permanent damage, especially since he had been unconscious for so long.
I traced my finger down the center of his bare chest, feeling the outline of his abdominal muscles, still as rigid and defined as they had ever been. I stopped at the top of the pajama bottoms they had dressed him in, resting my hand on his hip.
I nestled my head back into
the crook of his arm, pushing my body as close to his uninjured side as I was able.
He responded by nuzzling against the top of my head again, burying his head in my hair and drawing in a loud breath. It was a horrible sound, and I was certain he was in a lot of pain.
But instead of going back to sleep, he turned his head, resting his uninjured cheek against the top of my head.
“God, I love being dead.”
7
“Brandon.”
I could hear her—I knew it was my imagination. It had to be. I was dead, and there was no way she was talking to me now. But I loved hearing her voice, even if it was imaginary. I could smell her and feel her—and that had been more than enough for me before. But if I got to hear her, too? Fuck, death wasn’t half bad. If I could see her, too … that would be something. But I couldn’t see a damned thing. My eyes were open, and there was nothing but blackness. If I wasn’t dead, I knew I would be able to see. And it was impossible that I was blind. I had to have died in that torture chamber.
But I could get used to this death thing. Especially if I could make my arms move and feel what I knew was her body next to mine. Being able to make love to her—I knew it was probably too much to ask, even if there was a god. But fuck, that would have been awesome. It would have been the perfect way to spend all eternity.
I told myself then that if I ever got to talk to the big guy upstairs, I would make that suggestion. That would make the afterlife totally worth going through the hell on earth I had been through.
Eternal, mind-blowing sex would have been amazing, but I was content to keep what I had been given. Three of the five senses—and who knew? Maybe I could taste, too. I hadn’t tried it yet.
So I decided to try. I buried my head again in what could only be described as the best scent I had ever had the pleasure of smelling. Jen’s hair. It was fucking ecstasy. Okay, not as great as sex, but close. And I kissed her hair, fully expecting there to be nothing there but the great void of nothingness that I had been so sure before today was the afterlife. But it wasn’t nothing. It was … hair. I could feel it on my lips. I couldn’t feel much else, but it was definitely her hair.