Chapter Thirty-One
Linden
Everything that I know about my life feels like it’s been turned sideways and upside down in a matter of hours. My in-laws wanted to kill me.
My neighbor killed everyone who tried to kill me.
And now the man in a mask that I thought I knew is only one of many.
I’m too scared to blink as we pass by the man standing by the back door. His black clothes are different than the ones that I’m used to. And his mask is solid white, and plastic like a hockey mask but without any holes. Besides his eyes.
Those aren’t eyes that I know.
My arms tighten around Jack’s neck instinctively.
The other man in the kitchen steps back to give us space as we enter, and Jack sets me on a chair.
He’s dressed in recognizable tactical clothes, but that’s as far as the similarities go. His mask is terrifying. It’s a depiction of the devil that you might see in a Japanese museum, nothing like the masked man I know.
Jack kneels in front of me, and someone sets something down on the table beside him. It’s a black balaclava. He glances at it, grabbing it reluctantly, but he doesn’t put it on. He looks up at me slowly with guilt-ridden eyes.
“I fucking knew it.” I exhale so much pain and disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
He nods in surrender. “Linden, I–”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“She’s safe in my room.”
“I want to see her.” I can’t look him in the eyes. If I do, I know I’ll cry.
He nods in understanding and walks out of the room, and I immediately realize my mistake.
Now, I’m alone with two men who are looking at me like they’re deciding the most appetizing way to eat me. I can only tell by the ominous tilt of their heads behind their masks.
I avoid their gazes by looking anywhere else, and study the house that I’ve never seen inside. It’s emptier than my house. The living room is completely empty.
The kitchen is stark. Not a single thing left out on the counter. The chair I’m sitting on is a fold-out chair that matches one other, next to a cheap card table.
That’s it. Besides the single picture taped to the refrigerator.
A pink piece of construction paper with scribbles from a three-year-old. I fixate on it to ignore the fear shaking my body.
“She’s asleep, but I can take you to her,” Jack says as he comes back into the kitchen. “But I really need you to tell us what happened.”
“Who is us? Who are you, people?”
He kneels in front of me again. “I was going to tell you everything eventually, I swear. Especially after the things I found out tonight.”
I glance over his head to the tense body language in the room. The other men are looking at each other like they can’t believe he said that.
“Tell me what?”
“The Scotts are doing very illegal things. It was my job to uncover what I could and take them down.”
I look at the black mask still gripped in his hand, and back to his face. The eyes that I’m so familiar with are filled with sorrow as he looks at me.
“I thought you worked for them…” I murmur just to him. “I thought they hired you to watch me.”
His eyes flare with disbelief as he shakes his head. “No, baby.”
Just hearing him say it brings a fresh wave of tears to my eyes. I needed to know for sure that he didn’t betray me like that, and he seems to understand my relief.
“I would never work for monsters like them,” he assures me gently.
I glance around at the terrifying men in the room. How do I know these people aren’t monsters too?
I’m too empty inside to know what to believe… All I want is my daughter, but she’s safe, and I can’t ignore what I saw earlier.
“There were people trapped in the basement,” I tell him, choking back a sob. My shaking hand comes to my mouth because I’m barely holding it together.
His hands go to my knees, and I accept the comfort because I’m desperate for it, but I know I don’t have room to break down.
This night isn’t over.
“Tell us everything. From the beginning,” the man behind him in the horrifying devil mask says.
So I do. My arms cling to my waist as I explain going over there because of the kitten, and how Avery ran away from me.
Going into the basement and exactly what we saw.
I gloss over the interaction with the guard outside the cellar doors only because I can’t stomach speaking about it yet, and end with my leg being caught in the bear trap.
“I saw your garage light, and I made Avery run. I didn’t know if I was ever going to see her again,” I cry inconsolably.
“I didn’t know if you’d find her, and I didn’t know if I could trust you once you did.
” Jack doesn’t flinch at my admission; he just rubs my back until I start to catch my breath again, and I can finally sit back and wipe my face.
But once I look at him, I see the agony my story is causing him written all over his face. The tension in his normally serious face is radiating down his neck and shoulders, even though his hands are gentle where they hold me.
“A bear trap would have nearly amputated your leg. It was likely something a little less… Effective,” the voice comes from the other side of the room and a new audience member.
This man is also wearing all black, and his mask is like Jack’s but… not at all at the same time. His balaclava is a skull. Slightly distorted, and filmy like an X-ray image over his face, anatomical to his actual bone structure.
But his eyes aren’t visible like Jack’s were in his mask… They’re black and hollow.
It’s eerily synonymous with seeing death walking.
“Can you look at her leg? Make sure it isn’t broken, and infection doesn’t set in?” Jack asks the man as if he is medically inclined to do so.
He nods, moving across the room, and everyone shifts out of his way besides Jack. “A little space, please.” The guy’s voice is like gravel but calm in a way that sounds educated or mature.
Jack shifts to my side, but I cling to him so he doesn’t abandon me. I feel like I’m in shark-infested waters in this room.
“Ow, shit,” I yelp when he removes my shoe and starts palpating my foot.
“Nothing seems to be broken. I’ll clean up the wound that’s creating most of this blood and then decide if it needs to be sutured.” He gets to work, using supplies he must have brought along, but I can’t watch him.
Jack’s busy looking over my other injuries. His eyes roam over my scraped limbs and the wounds on my hands, my swollen knuckles. His frown deepens when he gets to my face.
I can feel the stiffness in my cheek where a bruise is probably discoloring my skin, and it’s not the only place. I feel like I’ve been hit by a car.
“Are you going to tell me everything now?” I utter after his scary friend sticks a needle in my ankle to numb me.
“Not here.” His eyes shift to the side as if he doesn’t want to speak freely in front of these people, but I thought they were a team?
“You promise?” I whisper more painfully than I mean to, and it has nothing to do with my physical state.
He kisses the tips of my battered fingers before he flattens my palm over his chest. “I fucking promise.” He looks at me deeply with those beautiful eyes that I knew were his all along. The eyes he could never truly hide from me, and I know in this moment at least, I believe him.
“Why the masks?”
“We work anonymously because it’s safer that way, and we don’t know each other’s old identities.”
“But your mask…”
“All I could think about was getting to you on time. I didn’t really give a shit who saw my face.”
I nod, biting my lip. It would be so easy to fall into his arms and forgive him for all of the lies… But I’ve been kept in the dark about so many things. Being lied to by so many people has ruined me.
“What do you mean by old identities?”
“Working in black ops means that your old life is over. We function in the dark,” he whispers ominously.
“What’s our plan?” The guy in the white mask asks.
In the light of the kitchen, it’s easier to see that he’s wearing nicer clothes than everyone else. They’re nearly dress clothes.
Jack studies my face for a moment longer before standing and pulling his mask onto his head but not over his face. “We go in hot. Kill everyone we can. Save the hostages.”
“What if you get hurt?” I interrupt their huddle.
A few muffled snickers fill the room, and it makes me bristle. This is not funny.
“Not worried about your in-laws, momma bird?” The guy in the white mask asks, and Jack’s head snaps to the side to glare at him.
“Don’t call me that. And, no. I don’t really give a shit about them.”
“I like her,” the devil mask says.
“Is she fine?” Jack snaps at the guy playing doctor.
“Yes, just a lot of swelling. No need for stitches. Keep your wounds clean. Take these.” He tries to hand me white pills.
“What is that?”
“OxyContin.”
“No thanks.”
He shrugs. “The pain will hit you soon now that your adrenaline is dropping. Rotate acetaminophen and ibuprofen.”
“I’ll take you to Avery.” Jack leans in to lift me, but I stop him.
“I’ll walk.”
“Linden–”
I look at the black mask resting on top of his head. “Everyone has been lying to me. Everyone.” I look at him pointedly. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for saving Avery, and me… But I still don’t even know who you really are, and I’m too broken inside to care to find out.”
He drops his head and nods. I stand as tall as I can, fighting the agonizing pain in my leg, and shuffle towards the hallway.
“Cut him some slack. Secrets keep us from getting killed.”
I turn my head to see who spoke, but nothing tells me who it was. They’re all looking, but I can’t see their mouths to get a read on them.
“Secrets keep loved ones from being killed,” the skull mask says. I can only tell because the voice is distinguishable.
“That’s why we don’t have any loved ones. Connections are a weakness,” the guy in the white mask says, finishing their uplifting speech.
“Come on.” Jack ushers me down the hall at a snail’s pace, and we pass a room with a wall full of computer equipment and another wall covered in weapons.
“Oh, my God.” I can’t believe I’ve been living next door to this entire time and didn’t know. No wonder he didn’t care that I lost his gun in the tall grass. He has dozens.
He opens the door to his room after punching in a code and lets me walk through ahead of him.
Avery is curled up in the center of the bed under a mountain of blankets as Barney sings on the T.V. The sight sends me to my knees as I buckle onto the mattress.
My baby.
I crawl to her, wrapping her in my arms as gently as I can.
“She was brave. I hated to leave her in here alone, but I knew you didn’t have much time.”
I feel softer now that we’re in this room alone, away from prying scary men. Even though I know now that Jack is one of them. He was my man in the mask all along.
“Thank you, Jack,” I say, admiring my sleepy girl. As angry as I am about everything, he saved us.
“Don’t thank me yet.” I glance up at him, and he continues. “I’m getting these guys into the mansion to finish this op, but I have a feeling that we won’t find the Scotts.”
“You think they ran?”
He nods. “It’s no longer safe for you here, Linden.”
I stare at him blankly, but my mind is already sprinting. Where can I go? What do we do?
“You and Avery need to go to a safe house until the Scotts are eliminated, and I know for sure they are no longer a threat to you.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” I admit.
“I know. But I do.”
“What? You’re taking us somewhere?”
“It’s what I should have done weeks ago.”
“Weeks ago? You barely acted like you tolerated my presence weeks ago.”
“I know.” A small, defeated smile tilts the side of his mouth, and his voice is filled with sadness. “We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
I don’t know what to say… He always seemed so removed, but right now he seems heartbroken.
“Do you need the bathroom?”
I shake my head.
“I’m locking the door.”
“Wait–”
He twists his head guiltily. “I need to know you’ll still be in this room when I get back.” He takes a step back, and another, before he shuts the door, trapping me inside with a click.