Catalyst: Book 2 in The Dark Paradise Chronicles

by Isadora Brown

  “I think he’s out,” Andie said in a voice just above a whisper.

  Her tired voice was the only thing in the world that could persuade Jack to stop. His jade green eyes looked down at the man who had stolen his love, and it appeared she was right. He did seem to have passed out, his lips bleeding and his face already bruising. He looked like shit. Jack silently sighed and pushed himself off of the man, turning as he did so. Andie watched him with somber eyes. He took a few steps toward her, and then knelt down so they were almost eye level. Though she felt somewhat uncomfortable under his penetrating gaze, Andie forced herself to continue looking at him. His hand reached up and gently curled a strand of hair behind her ear as his eyes searched for any sign of injuries. There was a gash on the side of her head, probably where she hit his marble floor, and her lip was bleeding slightly from where Aaron had recently hit her.

  Before Jack could stop himself, he closed the gap between them and gently kissed her on the lips. How he had longed to do such a thing again, and now, as Black Wing, he was. Her lips were still soft, and after a moment, he could feel her kiss him back. He didn’t deepen the kiss, however, and forced himself to pull back after a moment. His eyes bore into hers and gently cupped both of her cheeks with his hands.

  “I will always protect you,” he promised her.

  Andie wasn’t quite sure if it was her whole ordeal, if it was the trauma to her head and now her cheek, or if it was that breath-stealing kiss she shared with the man she loved, but the next thing she knew, she slipped into a warm unconsciousness.

  Keirah

  Keirah awoke the next morning to soft fingertips caressing mindless patterns on the small of her back. It was a rarity for Noir to wake up and stay with Keirah until she, too, was awake due to the obsessive planning that always seemed to consume his thoughts. However, on occasion, he would choose to forego a few hours of planning acts, and instead decide he wanted nothing more in the entire world than to spend a few peaceful moments with the woman he considered the love of his life.

  He loved to watch her sleep above anything else. She never looked more serene, more beautiful, than in the moments when she was her most vulnerable. He would memorize her breathing and trace certain fixtures of her body that he was fascinated with. He had counted her freckles numerous times, and occasionally, he would even count the strands of hair in her face. He always checked on the first scar he had given her, loving the way it looked on her.

  Sometimes, his carnal instincts took over, and he would wake her up to make love to her. Other times, he would be so frustrated with himself for allowing his attention to be completely fixated by something as shallow as her beauty that he would take it out on her, and instead of making love, they would fuck. And other, even rarer times, he would wait until she was awake to talk to her. She was the only person he truly felt safe with, that he could be himself with.

  Not, of course, that he would be anything else, but he didn’t need to impress her with intellect or wow her with explosions.

  She never called him a freak, nor did she think he was crazy. There were many reasons why he was labeled as a sociopath, but she ignored them, didn’t care, or thought it was just part of his eccentric nature, and oddly enough, she loved him even more for it.

  Noir had never been a romantic, but there was no way he possibly could have expected someone like her to become a constant in his life. And somewhere, deep down, he was grateful for her presence.

  Her eyelashes fluttered slightly before she opened her eyes. When she saw Noir, she smiled blissfully. “Good morning,” she said in a tired voice.

  He gave her a smile, but didn’t greet her back. Instead, he repositioned his eyes on the small of her back, currently fascinated by the two tiny dimples resting in the lower area just above her backside. The sensation he stirred in her caused the young woman to close her eyes and sigh through her nose as goose bumps littered the immediate area surrounding Noir’s fingertips.

  “We’re going to do something special today, darling,” he told her in his silky tone, his fingers still dancing on her skin, but his eyes locking onto hers.

  “Really?” Keirah asked, her voice laced with warmth rather than curiosity. “And what, exactly, would be special about it?”

  He grinned. She always knew that asking questions about his thoughts pleased him. It was always flattering to know that she was genuinely interested in what he had to say. Not that he would ever admit that he cared.

  But with her, it seemed he cared about everything.

  And though he hated it, he wasn’t going to get upset with her about it. At least not now.

  “We are going to rob another, well, another bank,” Noir murmured, leaning in toward her so his lips were just grazing her right shoulder blade. “Since you did such a good job of it yesterday and all…” He smacked his lips together before narrowing his golden eyes at her. “You never told me you were a, hum…good shot.”

  Keirah furrowed her brow, propping her chinon top of her palm, resting her elbow on the bed. “Before my parents divorced, my dad would take me hunting,” she told him. “Andie always refused to go, but I loved it. I loved spending time with him, just the two of us."

  “Well, lucky me,” Noir drawled. Anyone else might have interpreted his tone of voice as sarcastic, but Keirah knew better.

  “So tell me about this bank,” she inquired. “After all the money we managed to come by, why is it necessary to rob another one so soon?”

  “Well, why is it necessary to do anything, princess?” Noir asked her, moving his head so he could look into her eyes much better. “To send, uh, a message, of course. We don’t rob banks for the money.” He said the last sentence as though the mere suggestion of it was ridiculous, but his tone was chiding. “We do it to make a point.”

  “And our point is?” Keirah asked, still unable to read Noir’s coded message.

  “To introduce you to the worrrld,” he stated. “People need to know ya, to fear ya. Your name should invoke something in the people of Onyx the way mine does. When they see your picture, people should, well, they should recognize your pretty face. And what better way to do that, my dear, than to rob a few banks?”

  “And what if something happens?” Keirah asked, her tone dry. “What if it doesn’t go according to plan?”

  “Don’t you see, doll?” Noir asked, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s what makes it more fun! Plans can be made in three seconds. There’s no reason to worry.”

  Something inside Keirah clenched, not necessarily agreeing with Noir, despite how much she wanted to, despite how sure he sounded.

  “Okay,” Keirah said after a moment, choosing to ignore her stomach’s fluttering. “You know how much I like fun.”

  Noir grinned darkly upon hearing this. “I do,” he told her in a low voice. “I do.”

  Within two hours, Noir, Keirah—as Bombshell—and a crewof henchmen were pulling up to another Bank of Onyx. It was a slightly smaller location, with fewer staff but the same amount of customers. The bank branch didn’t attract as many of the high-profile clientele, but for the recession, it was still doing relatively well. One of his henchmen had mentioned that he had an uncle who worked as a teller and could guarantee that between 10:25am to 10:31am, the security guards would be checking offices, staying away from the vaults and the lobbies. Noir decided it was the perfect opportunity in which to introduce the world to Keirah a second time.

  Keirah was much more nervous this time because she was required to be the center of attention. Unbeknownst to the henchmen, Noir would be entering from the roof doorway, joining them after he gauged the public’s reaction to seeing Keirah there by herself. The henchmen would be following her lead, not his.

  It was another one of his well-thought out social experiments.

  Keirah grazed the inside of her thigh to check that the Glock was in place before looking at Noir and nodding her head a couple of times. He smiled in return, utterly delighted to see
how this would play out, and exited the vehicle. It was easy for him to disappear, and in less than a minute, he was gone.

  “Let’s go,” she announced in a shaky voice.

  Though she wasn’t their leader, the henchmen knew better than to argue with her. They all slid magazines of hollow points into their guns and followed her outside.

  Upon entering, Keirah felt her stomach stir, and she was sure it was merely anticipation so she quickly pushed it aside. She was never one for the theatrical—that was Noir’s department—so she let Right Hand announce their entrance in the federal building. Of course, he did this by raising his Thompson machine gun and shooting up at the ceiling.

  “This is a stickup!” he announced, causing women and children to scream and men to stare in fright. “Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt. Now on the ground, and don’t you even think about hitting that silent alarm!”

  It was a perfect plan. Everything should have gone the way it was supposed to. However, in all of Noir’s figuring, he hadn’t anticipated that his arrogance would play a key factor in this particular plan's downfall.

  He quickly made it onto the roof, entered from the doorway when e heard a gun go off, and then silently made his way inside where he could see the action take place, but no one could see him in return. At least not yet. Not until he was ready.

  Cops were everywhere. They had shot two of his henchmen, but Noir honestly couldn’t care less. His golden orbs were solely fixated on his woman being arrested. Her hands were pulled behind her back and her wrists were ensnared with handcuffs.

  He hadn’t planned on being double-crossed.

  He hadn’t planned on losing Keirah so soon after he had gotten her back in his life.

  This, most certainly, was not the type of fun he had had in mind.

  It took a lot to surprise Noir.

  To catch him off-guard was rare, and usually, the one person who had the potential to do so had just been arrested before his very eyes.

  He wasn’t exactly sure how he was feeling. He couldn’t pick the correct word to describe his feelings. In fact, the whole analytical process that he was currently using was something he never partook in. He always knew exactly what he was feeling at every moment of every day. The one exception to that particular rule was after the first time he had made love to Keirah. He wasn’t sure if he really loved her or if his body was just responding to the physical act of intimacy. Of course, he had figured it out once he realized she had been taken from him, from what he thought was the safety of the apartment where he had brought her.

  But now he couldn’t figure it out.

  He was upset, angry at himself for letting her go in without him, at her for getting caught, furious with whoever had double-crossed him, worried about how they would treat her, if he would see her again, frustrated to lose her after just getting her back into his life, and determined to get her back.

  He had to get her back. Noir had no weaknesses, except, of course, her. He had come to terms with that long ago. And he wanted nothing more than to take her back.

  As he walked back to the parked van, he clenched his gloved fingers into fists and snapped his teeth together as his eyes narrowed at no one in particular. He intended to kill every single one of his henchmen, had any of them escaped from the police officers that had no doubt surrounded the building. When he saw the white van parked in a grocery store lot, his right hand reached into his coat pocket and allowed his fingers to coil around the gun housed in the material.

  Pedestrians saw him and clearly parted ways with whatever they were doing to get out of his line of sight. Most of them were too scared to reach for their cell phones and call the cops. The man killed when he was completely content with life when there was no reason for him to be provoked. Now he looked angry, upset, as though he was just waiting for someone to breathe the wrong way for an excuse to shoot something. So no one alerted the authorities, and no one talked to anyone else. In fact, some people tried not to breathe around him.

  But Noir wasn’t paying attention to anyone. His eyes were focused on the van ahead of him, and his index finger kept twitching inside his coat pocket, needing some sort of release for his pent-up emotions. He wouldn’t blow a hole in his coat pocket, of course, but soon, soon….

  When he reached the van, he walked around and threw the driver side door open. Before either of the two men could react, Noir grabbed the man in the driver’s seat, tossed him on the street, and shot him dead center in the head. The second man, still in the car, tried to scramble out the passenger side door. Since Noir didn’t want to clean blood stains from the floors of the car, he waited until the man thought he had escaped. Then, walking as though there was nothing pressing concerning him, he strolled over to the second henchman’s running form, extended his arm holding the gun, aimed, and then shot. The sickening pop echoed throughout the grocery store parking lot. A few people screamed; all were dashing to their cars, completely forgetting their just-bought groceries. Noir paid them no mind; he wasn’t concerned with the ordinary people of Onyx, at least not now. The only thing he cared about was watching the second man fall, and to ensure that he was dead.

  Well, he sure looked as though he was dead. Maybe two more shots—one in the back, one in the back of the head—would guarantee the assumption.

  Now the man was dead. Yup.

  Noir cocked his head in his dramatic, usual way, tilting his whole upper body at a forty-five degree angle, studying the body, before pressing his tongue against his teeth to make a squeaking noise. Then, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, began to head to his van. He slid in the driver’s seat, and for a minute, just sat there.

  His hands gripped the steering wheel, and his whole façade of indifference faded. It didn’t last long, but it had happened.

  The satisfaction of shooting people had done little to reassure him of Keirah’s safety. But the rational voice in his head reminded him that he could do nothing about his current situation just sitting there, feeling sorry for himself.

  He forced himself to focus.

  He turned the keys, starting the ignition, and without looking to see if he would hit anyone or anything, backed out of the parking lot and sped off down the street.

  Already his sharp mind was thinking of some way to release Keirah from her incarceration. Already, he was thinking of some sort of plan to get her back with him. Again.

  Keirah wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting in the dreary interrogation room, staring at nothing but a gray wall, but it had to have been for a while. She had been deprived of food and water and even the use of the restroom. At least she didn’t have to go. Yet. The only noise in the silent room was her rumbling stomach that complained of its emptiness every other minute.

  But Keirah would not beg. Keirah would not give in to their demands.

  After being escorted into this room, nobody had come in to check on her. Nobody had even tried interrogating her. Not yet.

  Maybe this was some kind of psychology shit, trying to wear her down mentally so she would be begging for some kind of human contact, even if that meant confessing to her crime and pinpointing Noir as her accomplice. Giving him up, his whereabouts, that’s what they wanted.

  They didn’t know Keirah.

  For her short stint at Underwood Mental Institution, she worked eight hours without speaking to anybody. She could go for a long time without human contact. It was his contact she craved.

  And there would be no way in hell she would ever give up her lover, even if that meant going to prison for a long, long time.

  The irony in this entire situation was the fact that the police had more than they realized. Keirah could be used against him in any way they imagined. Noir might or might not actually do anything about the change in plans, but the police could surely try.

  Ha. If only they knew.

  It wouldn’t matter, of course. Nothing would. Keirah had already been certain for a while now that she would die for the man. Nothing
would scare her into giving him up. Nothing in the world.

  He was all she had, and if she could help it, she would never let him go.

  Reese

  “Ollo,” Reese said after lunch, leaning back against the log. Her stomach churned as it began to digest the food. Ollo seemed pleased by the fact that he had made it himself, and she made sure to finish it to show her appreciation. She was by no means a rabbit fan, but even she could admit that it wasn’t half bad.

  He picked his eyes up from his truck—he must have been studying it for quite some time—and locked them on hers. She felt herself blush at the simple action, and scrunched her nose up in frustration.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “We’re supposed to have sex.”

  Ollo cocked his head to the side and gave her a look. “Come again?” he asked, deadpan.

  “The vision I had,” she explained, her voice steadier than she thought it would be. In fact, it was easier talking to him about it than keeping it from him. “You’re in it. We’re having sex. And from what I saw, it almost seemed as though….” This was the part where the blush came back and her entire face burst into flames. “As though we had done it before.”

  “Before…” Ollo let his voice trail off, confusion evident in his eyes.

  “Before,” she repeated again, as though this would explain everything. “You know. Before.” She sighed, recognizing the look on his face to mean that he still didn’t get it. “As in, we’ve done it more than once.”

  “Oh, before.” Even she knew that he had no idea what she was talking about until right then. “Before. We’ve had sex before.”

  “But in the future.”

  An awkward silence that hung in the air, and Reese let the cool breeze carry her eyes away from Ollo and toward her surroundings. The clouds were still a dreary gray, but rays of light poked through, demanding entrance and attention. The air was cold and bitter and moved the crisp leaves back and forth. Reese’s wet hair was wrapped in a towel and she was in a new change of clothes topped with a heavy jacket. There was something beautiful about winter, she decided. Something bright and hopeful about a bleak, lifeless environment. Onyx rarely got snow, but she wouldn’t be surprised if this year was different. Snow would only add to the woodlands and their beauty, and, in her opinion, would probably add romance to it as well.