“Who are you?”
“My name is Shiri Roberts.”
He digested that. Did he know that name? No. “My daughter called you something else. A number. Seven. Why would she call you that?”
“That is the name she knew me by. It’s the name you called me, too. It was the name I was given when I lived in Crescent.”
Now that he could believe. Rage surged through his veins.
“You work for Crescent, and you dared to come near my children?”
“No, I don’t work for Crescent. You couldn’t be more off in that assessment.”
“Dad,” Ella’s voice called from behind him. “What are you doing?”
He raised his free hand to hush her. “I will speak to the two of you when I’m ready. Until then, do not say a word.”
“Five years ago, you helped me when I needed it. To save you now, we made a decision to remove some information from your mind. That information could have been used to hurt you.”
“You and your Institution buddies have been trying to get to me for five years. Now I find out you’ve messed with my mind, and you want me to believe you did it for my benefit? This is nonsense.” He stalked forward and grabbed her arm.
She gasped, her eyes large, as she regarded him. Good, she should be nervous. “Let’s go. Girls, follow me.”
He wasn’t going to get any real answers here. But his brother could, and the longer he wasted time, the longer those people could be out there causing havoc to his life.
Ben wasn’t satisfied sitting around and letting things happen to him anymore.
He was going to take action against anyone who wanted to harm his family.
“Girls, climb over the edge of the boat, use the ladder and walk to the car. I’m right behind you.”
He squeezed Shiri’s, or Seven’s—whoever the hell she was—arm tightly. “You will walk with me.”
“That’s fine.” Her voice sounded strained. “I’ve told you. I want to cooperate with whatever you need.”
“We’ll see.”
Ben tugged, and she followed him. He could feel the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips. As he forced himself to take a deep breath, he caught the scent of coffee in the air. That aroma always made him smile. It was like being caught in a good memory he couldn’t quite enter, but which made him feel good regardless.
In this case, the scent seemed to be coming from the girl he held. All right. He shook his head. So what? She smelled nice? It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean that what she said about helping him was actually true.
“You said we were friends?”
She looked at him sideways. “Yes, we were… friends.”
“Why did you hesitate like that when you answered? I know you’re holding something back.”
Shiri nodded. “Of course you do. You could always smell a lie.”
He jerked to a stop. That was absolutely true and, in fact, that was the exact phrase he used to describe what it felt like to him to know when someone spoke an untruth.
“How do you know that?”
She sighed. “You told me. Look, I can make all of this better. Would it be okay with you if I used my cell phone for a minute?”
Now he really thought the woman was out of her head. “No.” He extended his hand. “Give me your phone.”
“I can’t do that.”
He raised an eyebrow. This was more in line with the behavior he expected from her. Still, it made his gut ache. “Why not? I thought you weren’t here to harm me.”
“I can’t give it to you because I don’t have it on me. I meant that I could go and get it.” Her eyes fumed. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you, because I won’t let you risk anyone else. If you want to doubt me, that’s your prerogative. I can’t even blame you, since apparently you’ve had your brain really, really messed with. But I won’t tolerate anything happening to anyone else.”
So the lady had spunk. That was fine. Gene’s people would know how to deal with her. He swallowed away the lump in his throat that formed as he thought that. What was wrong with him that a gorgeous woman could make him go soft and gooey when he needed to be hard and tough?
He pulled her forward toward the parking lot, where the girls now waited for them in the car.
“Let me ask you something, Ben.”
“I told you, I’m going to be doing all the questioning.”
She was silent for a moment, but he didn’t dare hope she’d actually listened.
The woman was infuriating. What part of “don’t talk” didn’t she understand?
“What happened to you, Ben? What happened in the last five years? Is this just frustration at not having your mind intact, or is something else going on here?”
“Don’t act like you know me, Shiri.”
He said her name, and it didn’t feel right on his tongue. If he’d known her before—and that was a big if—then he hadn’t called her Shiri. He must have used his daughter’s name for her. Seven. Had Madame been talking about her? Had she been the reason that he’d started his vendetta against the Institutions?
They walked together past the other cars in the lot. Shiri looked over at one. For a second, he thought he saw her shake her head “no” to someone, but when he looked over, no one was there. This wasn’t the time to let his imagination go crazy. He had to keep it together.
“You’re hurting me, Ben.”
He looked down, startled to see that he was gripping her thin arm so tightly. As he took a forced deep breath, he released his grip slightly. In his life, he’d never harmed a woman, and he didn’t intend to now—unless he had to the way Madame had forced him.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Her eyes shone up at him with tears unshed. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. It’s all my fault.”
“Now that I believe.”
Even as he forced himself to stay angry at her—she had been with his children, and he had no idea who she was or if she was a potential threat—he could feel the adrenaline leaving his body a little bit. They were okay. The girls were seated in the car, buckled in and looking fairly chagrined. Whatever they’d been through, they’d clearly come out the other side unscathed.
He pushed her into the car, keeping the gun aimed at her the whole time. If she didn’t do something truly bad, he would probably not be able to fire it at her anymore. But she didn’t need to know that.
As quickly as he could manage, he made his way into the driver’s seat and started the car. It would be impossible to drive and hold the gun. He sat for a second and contemplated his options. Clearly his career as a criminal would be a short one. How the hell did Gene manage all these eventualities all the time?
“I’m not going to hurt you or the girls. You can put it away until you get me wherever we’re going.”
“Do you read minds? Is that your talent? Is that what the Institutions pay you to do?”
She sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “You weren’t this obstinate before.”
“Deal with it.”
He put the gun back into the holster hidden by his coat as he tried to concentrate on operating the car.
“No, I can’t read minds. It’s not my talent. My gift is being able to track, eliminate, and occasionally use ghost energy. It was why I was brought to you five years ago, although you won’t remember that.” She looked out the window. “The Institutions don’t pay me. In fact, if they knew I was alive, they’d kill me.”
Now that was information he needed. “So according to you, the Institutions consider you their enemy?”
“Correct.” She turned to regard him, but he couldn’t make headway with her expression. She was either hugely relieved or incredibly annoyed. Either way, he had to remind himself, he didn’t care. “We have that in common, then. I’ve been a thorn in their side for years.”
“They consider me more of a problem than they consider you.”
Remembering Madame’s crazy scene earlier,
Ben highly doubted that.
But he wasn’t going to reveal too much about that to Shiri. He didn’t trust her.
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m an escaped Conditioned. That makes me a fugitive. You’re a regular human they can’t quite figure out.”
“Dad.” Daphne’s voice pled with him to look at her, so he glanced up through his rearview mirror.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Seven came because I called her.”
He tried to swallow his temper. How had his girls gotten themselves into so much danger? “You called her on the phone?” He turned his head briefly to stare at Shiri. “My daughters have your phone number?”
“No,” Shiri and Daphne answered at the same time.
Ella sighed. “Daphne spoke to Seven telepathically.”
He tried to digest this even as he tasted blood in his mouth from where he’d clearly bitten down on his tongue upon hearing Ella’s words.
“She did what?”
“I spoke to her telepathically.” Daphne squirmed in her seat. “At least I think I did. We were just discussing it when you showed up with that gun.”
Okay. He was going to have to explain that to his daughters in a way they could understand. They were young girls, not quite teenagers, but not little either. Sometimes, it was hard to know what to explain and what to leave alone. This was not going to be something he could or should avoid discussing.
“I heard you, sweetheart. I’m just not a Telepath myself. I can’t answer. It’s kind of like speaking into a monitor. I could hear what you said, but I couldn’t respond to you. Another Telepath could answer, but given the circumstances, we thought it safer to send me to you rather than answer you directly.”
His daughter was Conditioned? His heart felt as if it might explode from his chest. “How long have you known you could do that, Daph?” They were going to have to hide her. He’d need a plan…
Shiri touched him on the arm. “You already knew, Ben.”
“I did?” No, he couldn’t have forgotten that.
“Roman must have thought it was one of the things that shouldn’t be available for inspection in your head.”
“Roman?”
She let go of his arm. “The guy who did this to you, upon my request. He thought he was helping. I can see why he wouldn’t want anyone in the Institutions to find out about Daphne.”
“So just to be clear that I’m not missing any of this lunacy, you’re saying that I know you? I knew about Daphne? And I’ve had my memory erased?”
“That about sums it up.”
“Except for the fact that we all thought she was dead, Dad. She got ripped right off our boat. She floated up in the sky and disappeared. We haven’t seen her in five years.”
Ben eyed the woman next to him. “You’re going to start from the beginning and not stop until I’m satisfied that I know who you are and what you want from my family.”
Sixteen
What did she want from his family? Shiri closed her eyes and leaned against the headboard of her bed. Not that she had much choice. She was handcuffed to the headboard and couldn’t go anywhere. The feeling made her want to rage to the universe. But it was either lean back and stay still or break her arm. She closed her eyes; the entire situation made her heartsick.
What she wanted from his family she couldn’t have—not while Ben didn’t know who she was. He refused to believe she was entirely trustworthy, and she couldn’t blame him. Truth was, Shiri was not entirely trustworthy. She’d abandoned him. He might not remember it now, but he would whenever Roman got around to fixing his neurotransmitters so he could have his own life memories back in his head.
Finally, she opened her eyes to look at the scene in front of her. Ben didn’t live in the same house. How had she not known that? With every bit of information she’d managed to garner about him over the years, how had she not known that important detail? She hadn’t seen much of the place, but it seemed as if he now lived with Gene, surrounded by the Mob. Five years had altered his life in ways she’d never anticipated.
On dark nights on the island, it had filled her with happiness to think of him going through his days the way she imagined he used to. Instead, he was practically living in self-made seclusion, fearful for the life of his family. She kicked the mattress beneath her. Somehow, some way, she should have made Guy bring Ben and his girls to her.
Not that anyone ever made Guy do anything he didn’t want to do.
A little thread of concern filled her mind, one she couldn’t seem to push away. Had Roman done this on purpose? Everyone was always telling her that he was in love with her. He’d never told her he was, and it didn’t matter anyway, since she was irrevocably in love with Ben and would be for the rest of her natural life. And maybe beyond, if such a place existed…
She shook her head. Now was not the time for existential musings. Had Roman done this to Ben to make it so they couldn’t be together anymore? She couldn’t believe he would do such a thing, not when he had been responsible for saving her life five years earlier. He’d risked everything for her. He wouldn’t want to ruin her happiness now. No way would she believe that.
The door opened quietly. Ben entered the room, shutting the door just as silently as he’d opened it. The last rays of sunshine filtered through the cracks in the shade, casting him in a twilight haze. It made him look both beautiful and scary at the same time. The gentle man who hadn’t let her sit on the floor didn’t seem to live within him anymore. Her sweet Ben had left five years earlier.
A tear slipped from her eye. It would have been better if he’d never met her.
“My daughters are hysterical messes.” His voice sounded hoarse. “They’re not liars, so I’ve decided to believe them, that the story they tell me is true.”
Shiri nodded. The only problem she could see with that fact was that his daughters had been so young when everything had happened. Shiri doubted Ben had told his six-year-old girls much of his personal relationship with the woman they’d called Seven. He’d probably just left it that they had been close friends.
How much had they understood on their own?
Not that it mattered. Without his memories, he didn’t love her, and you couldn’t make someone feel that way simply by telling them they once did.
He walked closer, his stride slow and steady. “They tell me you were pulled off the top of my boat, in front of my eyes, into the sky.”
“Yes. Madame used one of her goons to capture me that way.”
“Why would she do that if she could have just come and gotten you from my house?”
Ben’s words, his questioning of her, the way he still looked at her as though she were nothing to him—it all added up to make her feel dead inside. She wanted, needed really, his arms around her. Her body craved his scent, his taste, his essence. This close to him and unable to curl up in his warmth. It was torture.
“I don’t know. I never saw Madame again after that, thank God,” she sniffled.
Perhaps she should have been embarrassed that he knew she was upset, but he still looked like her Ben. Shiri would never be humiliated to let her Ben know anything she thought or felt. “Maybe she somehow knew you would never turn me over to her.”
He didn’t comment on her remark, and she wondered if he was thinking he would have, in fact, handed her over if asked. She was glad she didn’t know what he actually thought.
“Why did she want you back that badly? According to the girls, you’re a Ghost-Reader. From my research, I know that’s profitable for the Institutions, but certainly not worth risking that level of trouble to retrieve one who hadn’t even gone rogue.”
“I can’t answer that either.”
He rubbed his face. “I need answers to my own life. I need to know what’s going on here.”
“Ben, I can get your memories back any time. I need to make a phone call.”
Or maybe she didn’t. It was highly likely that Addison had already
called in help even though she’d tried in the parking lot, without giving herself away to Ben, to tell the other woman no.
“Shiri.” Ben sat down next to her on the bed. “It doesn’t help your case here that you keep admitting to having something to do with the fact that my head is messed up.”
It was weird to hear him call her Shiri. She’d given up Seven the day she’d finally named herself. But it still sounded strange on his lips. If she tried, she could hear him saying her name—Seven—in passion the night they’d made love.
“I could lie but, in addition to the fact that I prefer to tell the truth, we both know you’d know if I did.”
“Try to put yourself in my position.” He scooted closer to her as he lowered his voice. “I’m aware that I do know you. We definitely communicated for a period of time five years ago. I have no memory of any of it.”
“But the girls told you.” It was important that she stay positive, keep him in a good place.
“Yes. They did. But they were six years old. At that age, I’m not sure what they did or didn’t understand about how I felt. Maybe I pretended to be your friend to set them at ease. I have no idea.”
She’d wondered about how he would see the girls’ perspective. Opening her mouth, she tried to think of something to say, but there was really nothing, so she closed it. It was better to remain mute than to perhaps make things worse.
He continued. “I have had portions of my memory erased. I have spent the last five years working to get Conditioned people rights, and now I have been violated.”
“Ben…”
He held up his hand, so she let him continue. “I don’t know if what got taken out of my head is actually because I discovered something you don’t want me to know.”
“No.” She struggled against her restraints. More than anything, she wanted to touch him. “Please, Ben, you have to believe me.”
“Don’t pull. You’ll only hurt yourself.” He touched her arm as she leaned back against the headboard again. She swallowed. For a second—a split second—she thought she had seen heat in his eyes when he looked at her. As if he saw her as a woman and not as just a person whose motives were questionable.
Illicit Connections (Illicit Minds Book 2) Page 16