52. Breach of Trust
SOUNDTRACK: Slayer by Bryce Savage
~ CAIN / SAM ~
I was panting so hard I had to swallow, try to gather my scattered thoughts, pull myself back from the edge because I wasn’t here to kill her, but to convince her that she still wanted to live. Yet, I’d seen that moment when she closed her eyes and braced for me to plunge that knife into her.
Holy shit.
God, help me.
“Sam?!” she squeaked in a small voice, her eyes so wide they were white all the way around. Then she blinked and her brows pinched down over her nose. “What… the… fuck?!”
“I need you to listen, Bridget—”
“No way. No fucking way!”
“—this was always the plan, I was never going to—”
“You told me not to do this! You told me Cain was a monster! You said—”
“I AM!” I roared, plunging my free hand into her hair and pulling her head back, pressing that shaking blade harder against her skin, then hissing at myself because a drop of blood welled under it and I had to fight for control . “Please, Bridget… I need you to listen.”
All my senses were thrumming, every inch of my skin on fire.
I swallowed hard and stared right into her eyes, terrified of what I was going to see there, pleading with her to understand, to see that I never planned this . She was never supposed to meet me as Sam. Only as Cain. She was never supposed to care for me—or me for her.
With a groan dripping in self-disgust, I threw the blade aside, away, deep into the bushes, cursing it and everything it stood for. Then I stared down at her and took her precious, shocked face in my hands, silently begging her to understand.
I’d done this all wrong. Right from the start. The fact that we’d gotten this far was all my fault. When she got so desperate, I was terrified she’d find someone else. So I’d agreed to come. But we could still salvage this, if only she’d—
I went still as her eyes welled and her chin trembled. “Fuck you, Sam. Fuck you! I thought you were the good one!”
“I am… fuck, Bridget. I am—can’t you see? This is a battle I fight every day, and sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose. But I’m here and…”
“You’ve been lying to me!”
“No! No! Everything I said was true. All of it—it was real. I changed my life. God changed my life—”
“You said you were going to kill me!”
I grimaced and shook my head. “No, I… I never actually agreed to do that,” I murmured, loosening my grip in her hair and shaking my head. “I let you think that when I talked about hunting you… But it was never… I was always going to try and convince you not to go that far. I always planned to disappear when you changed your mind—it’s what I do! And I did… when you said you wanted to live, I walked away! But I couldn’t let you go. And you didn’t either and… it wasn’t supposed to be this way, Bridget. I didn’t know you’d come to the church—I wasn’t even supposed to be there! But I can see now, it was meant to be. I’m telling you—”
“Oh shit,” she hissed, and suddenly started struggling.
At first I tried to stop her. “No, please, let me tell you—”
“Get off me… Get off me!” she shrieked.
I shoved off her with a curse, stumbling back, but keeping my hands up as she rolled onto all fours, choking and coughing, sobbing, staring up at me with welling, devastated eyes.
“Bridget—”
“You have to go!” she sobbed. “You have to go… right now!”
“No. I know this is a shock, but—”
“No, Sam. You don’t know. I didn’t know it was you. You didn’t tell me so I didn’t know!”
I frowned, dropping to squat in front of her, trying to take her face. “I need to explain—”
“You can’t. You don’t understand—you have to go!” she shrieked, batting my hands away. “Go! Get out of here! Leave me alone! Fucking leave!” she screwed her eyes shut and screamed so hard her face shook. “DO IT! GO! NOW! GET OUT OF HERE—!”
“I’m not leaving you!” I barked back.
The sound of a cocked pistol rang through the dark like the gunshot it threatened.
Every sense jangled with alarm—I shoved to my feet, already stretching to run, but jerked to a halt immediately as several large, male forms inched out of the trees dressed in head-to-toe black with weapons gleaming in the moonlight and pointed directly at my chest.
I turned to see if they were also behind me, just in time to find one of them leveling a pistol at me and circling around to step between me and Bridget, who was still sitting in the dirt, her face now in her hands so I couldn’t even see her eyes.
Our eyes met and his narrowed.
“I’m Special Agent Jeremy Haines with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said, tearing a Velcro flap at the chest of his black ops suit with one hand while keeping the gun on me with the other. The flap dropped to reveal a badge and identification.
My heart sank to my toes, but I put my hands up, swallowing hard. “Agent, I know how this looks, but it’s a fully consensual—”
“Sam Priestley, you’re under arrest for violation of parole, and on suspicion of stalking as defined by Oregon statute 163.732, and attempted murder as per statute 163.115—”
“Wait, what?!”
“—You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”
“This is bullshit!”
“Clasp your hands on top of your head and turn your back to me.”
“Bridget! Tell him!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be you,” she croaked without looking at me. “I thought you were Cain… I thought you needed saving…”
The agent shifted to put himself between us so I couldn’t see her properly, and he glared. “Hands up, Priestley. Now!”
I had no choice. Not if I wanted to live.
I threw my hands up and laced my fingers over my hair, everything within me screaming in protest. I had been here. I had changed my life. I wasn’t going back!
My chest started to heave. I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit or scream.
“Bridget,” I said through my teeth. “You have to tell him—”
“Trust me, he knows. But… your last name is Priestley?” she asked faintly… and then she started giggling, a strange, high, unhinged sound in this black night.
“Keep your hands on your head and turn your back to me, Mr. Priestley.”
I bellowed my frustration and rage into the night, but did as he instructed. And the moment I turned, rough hands took hold of mine on my head and a sharp kick to the back of my knees forced me to drop to the ground. The men around us rushed in, guns still pointing at me, as I was planted face down in the dirt and my hands levered behind my back while I roared my protest.
The click-click-click of the handcuffs tightening on my wrists felt like a death knell. My heart began to jump and quiver in my chest. I couldn’t go back—
“Bridget, tell them!”
“Tell us what, you creepy fuck? That you’re a convicted felon carrying a weapon and pursuing a woman in the dark at night? Or that you’ve been following her for the past week?”
“I wasn’t—she knew—”
Bridget’s laughter cut off abruptly. “Week?” she asked breathlessly.
“Find that weapon he threw. Get his phone, and search the vehicle. Everything by the book. This one is slippery.”
I turned my head, mashing my nose into the mud to do it, but finally I could see her, beyond the forest of legs surrounding me, still sitting, staring at me, wide-eyed, tears tracking down her cheeks.
Tears from laughter? Or tears of grief?
“I wasn’t lying,” I snarled through my teeth. “I wasn’t fucking lying, Bridget!”
“I didn’t know, Sam. I’m sorry… I really didn’t know it was you. I would never have—”
“That’s not the point—”
“This isn’t your first rodeo, Mr. Priestley. My advice is to keep your fucking trap shut and stop incriminating yourself by attempting to manipulate my colleague.”
Bridget’s head snapped up, and she glared at Special Agent Jeremy Haines like he was a piece of shit. But then his words came home to me.
Colleague?
And that was when I realized. My jaw dropped. I grunted as a knee ground into my lower back, sending a jolt of pain up my spine.
“You’re an FBI Agent?” I ground out.
“No,” she breathed, then licked her lips quickly and her eyes dropped to the ground. “I just—they protect me and… and I help them.”
“A fucking narc?!”
“That’s colorful language for a Priest,” Special Agent Haines commented dryly.
“Shut up!” Bridget and I both snapped at the same time.
Then her eyes cut straight to mine and it felt like she was begging me. But for what? I was clueless.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she breathed. “I wasn’t lying. I wanted Cain—wanted you. But I thought he was like me and needed saving from himself… just like I do.”
“Stop feeding the animals,” the agent hissed at her, then I was being dragged up, my entire body weight being lifted by their grip on my arms craned behind my back. I bellowed in pain and scrambled to my feet.
Still standing between me and Bridget, Jeremy flicked the safety on his gun, then holstered it before reaching for the radio unit at his shoulder. “We have the suspect in custody, send in the medics for Bridget, and we need CSI,” he said calmly into the black unit. Then he caught eyes with whoever was behind me and nodded.
And suddenly I was being ushered out of the forest at a rapid clip.
“Bridget,” I started, uncertain what, exactly, I was going to say.
“Jeremy, please,” she murmured to the agent. But he’d already stepped in front of her again as I was moving, glaring at me, a very unimpressed warning in his eyes, and Bridget behind him, her face hidden by his thighs.
“ I wasn’t lying, Bridget! I told you I wouldn’t! Every fucking word was true—but I guess I was the fool, right?”
I thought I heard a little noise—a tiny hiccup of a sob. But I couldn’t be sure. Because there were suddenly people rushing from every side, some of them with the black ops kit on, others in coats and… and I was being frog-marched out of the clearing.
I kept looking back over my shoulder to where Jeremy stood, glaring at me, hands clenched at his sides, blocking my view of her.
And then I hacked a single cough of a humorless laugh, because the way he was standing, chin down, eyes on me, feet planted…
Dear God.
It hit me that he was just one more fool who’d fallen for her broken bird vulnerability.
One more idiot who had decided he could protect her—from the world, and from herself.
“We’re both victims of the same crime,” I called back to him. “Do you realize that? She fooled us both!”
“Ca—I mean, Sam! No!” she protested.
But Jeremy turned to look at her on the ground behind him and shook his head, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. But I saw his lips move.
Then the medics reached her, all of them dropping to kneel and start checking her out, and she was completely hidden from view.
But he wasn’t. Not for a little while longer.
He watched me get marched away, his eyes locked on mine, and his upper lip curled away from his teeth.
“How many times did you fuck her?” I called back. “Huh?”
Jealousy, envy, and rage burned behind my ribs. As he passed out of sight I roared my frustration because I knew… I knew there was nothing I could do.
They had me. They were taking me back to a cage.
And it was all her fault.