Chapter 17 Aerin
AERIN
“Why are you staring at me like that?” As I speak, a throbbing pain ignites through my jaw and I wince. “And what happened to my face?” Glancing down at my bare feet, I wiggle my toes while trying to retrace where I could have left my shoes. “Did I fall?”
“Aerin.” Falco’s voice is deeply serious. “What’s the last thing you remember about last night?”
“I…” Casting my mind back, there’s nothing but an empty darkness. Something stirs in my chest, like the last tendrils of a dream fading from thought after waking abruptly.
As hard as I try though, there isn’t anything I remember about last night beyond the bar, and the look on Falco’s face is worrying. “I don’t know.”
“Think.” Falco suddenly steps forward, abandoning the meat sizzling in the pan behind him. “What do you remember?”
“I don’t know… I…did something happen?” My eyes dart between Falco and the stranger who mirrors the worry on Falco’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Think,” Falco insists as he stops in front of me, staring down with dark eyes. “Tell me the last thing you remember.”
“Uh… being at the bar, I think. With you and my brother. And then…” It’s there, hiding just out of sight in my mind, but no matter how I focus I can’t catch any other thoughts in my mind. A pulse of frustration wells in my chest and I shake my head. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Sit.” Falco takes me by the elbow and guides me into the chair at the kitchen table while the stranger moves to the stove and takes over cooking.
“Falco, you’re scaring me and I don’t like it. Will you just tell me?”
“That’s Rex.” He points to the man by the stove. “He’s a friend of Pidge’s. There’s another man here too, Bullet.”
“What? What kind of name is Bullet?”
“It’s a callsign,” comes a voice from the doorway. The stranger who must be Bullet.
“You’re a soldier? Like Falco?”
“I was,” he replies. “We both were.”
“Wow. I didn’t know you had friends,” I murmur to Falco, who narrows his eyes.
“They’re Pidge’s friends,” he replies.
“Ow,” mutters Rex dramatically. “After last night you’d think we’d be more.”
“Last night,” I repeat and my stomach twists. “Falco, you tell me what happened and you tell me right now!”
“I think you were drugged,” Falco says immediately, his expression grim. “In fact, we know you were.”
“Drugged?” My heart begins to pound. “I…how did that happen?”
“It must have been at the bar,” Pidge says as he joins us in the kitchen. “I’ve spent all night pouring over CCTV from that place and no one approached the table to slip something in your drink, so it must have happened at the source.”
Pidge carries the same expression as Falco. The longer I stare at all four men, the more pressure weighs down on my shoulders. It’s like they all know something they aren’t telling me, and the twisting in my gut grows into a sickness.
“Why do you all look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“You were…attacked last night, Aerin.”
Attacked.
I wait for the words to trigger something, to unlock a memory or a fear, but there’s only the throbbing of my face. Nothing springs to mind. No memory of anything. “Attacked?”
“You really don’t remember?” Falco’s head tilts as he studies my face. “Nothing at all?”
I shake my head. “I feel fine other than my face hurts and I’m a little cold.”
“I can fix that, partly,” Bullet says. He vanishes through a white door behind me, and a few seconds later, something clunks loudly, followed by a rushing hiss. Then the heating clicks on.
“You were kidnapped from the bar and taken hostage. Three men attacked you and we got there in time to save you,” Falco continues, his voice tight. “I’m sorry, Aerin.”
There’s still nothing. Everyone’s looking at me like something horrible happened, but there’s nothing in my mind.
Nothing about my body suggests anything happened; there’s no pain anywhere else, and the only issue aside from my face is maybe some lingering exhaustion. “I feel fine, honestly. You don’t need to apologize.”
Falco stands abruptly as if my words have struck him, and he shakes his head. “You have no idea what I—”
“Falco,” Pidge warns suddenly. “Maybe we should show her the video.”
“Video?” Suddenly my stomach sinks. “There’s…what video?”
“No,” Falco replies immediately. “But no memory…was it GHB?”
“Could be,” Pidge replies. “But Aerin was docile. Very easily persuaded to leave the bar. Even when you got there, she followed your requests to a T.”
“What the hell is strong enough to do that?” The nerve at the edge of Falco’s jaw jumps as he clenches down.
“Devil’s Breath,” Rex speaks up from the stove while depositing whatever he’s cooked onto some nearby plates.
“What’s that?” Bullet returns from the boiler room.
“Devil’s Breath,” Pidge repeats. “It’s uh…scopolamine or you’d know maybe as hyoscine? It’s typically used to prevent nausea or vomiting, especially after surgery, but in really strong doses it can make you disoriented and painfully sensitive to suggestion, leading to memory loss.”
“Hyoscine,” Bullet repeats. “Aye, I know that.”
“Are you kidding me?” Falco snaps.
“It fits her symptoms,” Pidge replies. “And much harder to detect that GHB.”
I watch them all in a daze, tracking their words back and forth as they unravel a puzzle I only have a couple of pieces of.
Last night, I was drugged and attacked but I have no memory of it, not even a distant glimmer in the back of my mind.
The more they talk, the more dazed I feel until I stand abruptly. They all fall silent.
“Enough! Stop. Please, stop. This is…too confusing.”
“Aerin,” Falco tries but I cut him off.
“No! Look at me. I’m fine. I feel fine, I am fine. You’re all panicking about nothing.”
“Are you serious?” Falco snaps. “Someone tried to kill you!”
“What’s new?” I throw my hands up, exasperated. “It’s part of my life, apparently, but I’m here and I’m fine so I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“I almost lost you for good this time,” Falco continues, his eyes lock onto mine. The heat of his gaze is so intense that my eyes water slightly.
“But you didn’t,” I snap back. “So your paycheck is fine. That’s all you care about, right? Keeping your job? Making sure my father doesn’t kill you for fucking up or losing me? Then look at me, Falco. You can see I’m fine, so stop making a big deal out of it!”
Falco’s mouth hovers open as if there’s more he wants to say, but his argument fades in the face of my tirade.
His lips snap closed and one hand curls into a fist, pressing down onto the kitchen table. “Aerin. Just because you don’t remember doesn’t make what happened any less serious.”
“Then show me.”
“What?”
I turn to Pidge. “Show me the video.”
“No,” Falco barks out. “Not a chance.”
“Maybe we should?” Pidge tries, but Falco approaches him and shoves him away from me.
“She doesn’t need to see that.”
“Hold on!” Grabbing Falco by the arm, I try to pull him backward. “If there’s a video of me then I deserve to see it! You’re the one making a huge deal out of this, so I deserve to at least see why. How bad can it be?”
“If you can’t remember, I’d take that as a mercy,” says Rex as he deposits the plates on the table.
“Who even are you?” I mutter, rolling my eyes and pulling at Falco again. “Let me see.”
“No!”
“Why? What is so bad that it’s got you this worked up? Are you worried I’ll show it to my father and he’ll fire you?”
Falco suddenly spins to face me, his eyes blazing as he grabs my shoulders and shakes me just once. “Aerin, for once will you listen to me and understand that I’m trying to protect you!”
Despite the clear care in his voice, my eyes narrow. “If you were good at your job, then last night wouldn’t have happened, would it?” The harshness of my words causes Falco to flinch as if I’ve struck him and guilt immediately floods my gut.
He does protect me. The fact that I’m standing here, alive, is proof enough, but his over-protective attitude is annoying and my curiosity is stronger. What could be so bad that he doesn’t want me to see? Surely it can’t be something terrible because I would remember.
I know I would.
“Fine,” Falco says flatly and releases me. “You want to see it? Fine. Watch it.”
He turns and makes as if to storm out of the kitchen, but he lingers by the door as Pidge walks forward and pulls a phone from his pocket.
“Just so we’re clear,” he says as he hands it over.
“I only think you should see this because you deserve to know what happened to you. If this were any other situation, I’d burn that phone. ”
“Thanks.” Moving back to the chair, I sit back down and the room falls eerily silent. A single video exists on the phone after I swipe my thumb to unlock it.
My heart begins to pound. With another swipe of my thumb, the video begins to play.
It’s me.
I’m crying. Sobbing, actually, and begging three strangers to let me go, but they only laugh and mock me.
One tall, thin one keeps yelling in my face, demanding I do things like get out of the car, run up some steps, and more.
For some reason, I do them.
Through tears and pleas, I obey everything this man demands that I do.
My blood turns to ice and my vision blurs as the details of last night unfold before me, trapped in this small device rather than in my mind.
The horrible things they say about me echo in my ears, the horror of watching myself strip my clothes off and beg for more through sobs while they laugh and jeer.
It’s me.
And yet it doesn’t feel like me. I’m watching myself. Yet with nothing in my mind to make this a reality, it’s like watching a movie.
I blink and a tear rolls down my cheek that I hastily wipe away.
The video continues until something crashes, and the camera catches Falco charging into the room, looking utterly enraged.
He shoots one man immediately then attacks the one with the camera.
The last shot is the camera landing on the floor and recording the ceiling as Falco leaps over to me on the bed, trailing a blanket behind him.
The recording ends and the kitchen remains deathly silent, like no one is even daring to breathe.
My thoughts tumble into one another.
Confusion over my lack of memory clashes with embarrassment and shame at the things I did, along with pain that it turns out Falco was right.
I would have preferred not to know at all.
Slowly, I set the phone face down on the table and stand.
No one moves.
Turning, I move past Pidge without looking at him. It’s utterly humiliating that they all saw me like that and that they heard me say such filthy things to horrific men.
I walk until I’m facing Falco and our eyes meet, his gold eyes reflecting the pain in my own heart.
My stomach twists into cold knots as if I’ve swallowed a mouthful of barbed wire.
“Take me home.” My throat catches slightly as I speak. “Please. Take me home.”