Chapter Fifty-Five
Raine
I grip the dark blue sun hat hard enough my hands shake. As soon as Asher left, I yanked the thing off my head so quickly, I pulled a few strands of hair with it.
I should have been the one to make contact.
What if Claire ran? What if someone was following her?
The redacted personnel file I found for her in the archives didn’t list her as having a formal RJ number.
And someone would start asking questions if both the Assistant Director of Systems and the highest ranked analyst disappeared within days of one another. I hope.
“Almost there,” Asher says from somewhere close by, his tone firm. “You’re doing fine.”
They turn the corner together. Claire is pale, her jaw tight, mossy green eyes churning with both fear and anger.
Until she sees me. Then her expression shatters.
“Raine?”
Her eyes travel the length of me, catching on the bruising at the base of my thumbs, again at my face. She takes a single step closer, like she’s not sure I’m real.
“Hi, Claire.” I manage to keep my voice steady, though I’m not sure how. “I’m…sorry about this. If he—my friend—scared you. We didn’t have a choice.”
“You retired,” she says. It’s almost a question. “There was a memo. The Assistant Director in Portland said you were emotionally unstable. That you’d elected to take early retirement rather than face any disciplinary action.”
Asher moves to my side. The heat of him—his steadiness—keeps the worst of my panic at bay.
I pass him the hat and sunglasses, then slowly draw the sleeves of my hoodie up to expose my wrists.
The bruises have faded from near black to a mottled blue ringed with yellow, but the shape of them is still unmistakable.
Claire sucks in a breath.
A tremor runs through my fingers as I brush my hair off my neck. More bruising at multiple pressure points. The red, angry line where the hood ties rubbed raw. The exhaustion still bracing my eyes.
“Does this look like I avoided ‘disciplinary action’?”
Claire’s eyes shimmer. “That’s not—” She stops, shakes her head, and darts a gaze to my wrists again. “Raine…what happened in Portland? It was a standard training assignment—”
“No. It wasn’t. They put me in cuffs, threw me into a van, and took me to a black site somewhere in the foothills. I was there for eight days, Claire. Hooded and restrained almost the entire time. If I moved or made a sound without permission, they corrected me.”
“Corrected?” she squeaks.
“Pain. Stress positions. Pressure points.” I swallow hard. Asher’s hand rests on my lower back, the steadiness of it the only thing keeping me here. “They were trying to break me.”
“Raine, you…you need help. Let me call HR.” Claire reaches for her phone, but Asher grabs her wrist and pries the device from her hand.
“Look at her,” he snaps. “Do you honestly think she gave herself those injuries?”
I wrap my fingers around Asher’s forearm. “It’s okay. We knew she might not believe me. Turn her phone off. By the time she gets it back on again, we’ll be gone.”
“Gone? Where?” Claire asks.
“Somewhere GSD can’t finish what they started.
” I hide my wrists and let my hair fall forward.
“They didn’t let me go, Claire. I escaped.
If I hadn’t, that retirement memo wouldn’t have just been the end of my file.
It would have been the end of me. Because if the program can’t break you, they slap electrodes on your temples and run enough current through your head to induce a cardiac event.
And if you’re somehow still alive after that, they lock you in a room without food and water until you die anyway. Ask me how I know.”
“No. GSD would never…” Tears gather in the corners of her eyes.
“Claire, you know me. I do my job. I’m good at it.” My voice cracks, then sharpens again. “I saw a pattern. A contractor tied to too many ops. Agents disappearing without transfer paperwork or retirement notices.”
Claire shakes her head. “You never mentioned anything about—”
“Of course not. Because I didn’t have proof. And neither did Tessa.”
“Tessa? What does she have to do with any of this? She’s on medical leave until the end of the month.” Claire takes a step back, her hands clenching and unclenching around the strap of her purse.
“No.” I feel the weight of that single word all the way down to my toes. “Tessa went through the same program I did. She broke after two days. And now she’s home, but they’re monitoring her to decide if she’s stable enough to be reassigned.”
All the color drains from Claire’s cheeks. “And if she’s not?”
“They’ll do the same thing to her they did to me. She’ll be another retirement memo in your files, and GSD will keep killing agents for nothing more than seeing behind the curtain.”
Claire shakes her head for so long, the motion makes me dizzy. “I told her not to worry. Oh, God. I…she trusted me. I have to go.”
Asher passes Claire her phone, then returns to my side.
The hum of the market is a constant backdrop of sound that’s chipping away at my focus. My eyes sting. I thought Claire would help. That the proof of what they did to me would be enough. Instead, all I did was put the three of us in danger.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. I must have bitten the inside of my cheek sometime in the past few minutes, because I taste copper. “If you don’t want to find out what eight days of being systematically erased feels like, don’t tell anyone you saw me today.”
My hands shake as I settle the floppy hat back on my head. Asher rests his hand at the small of my back and we turn for the stairs.
“Raine, wait!” Claire calls, and her hand closes around my arm.
I only manage half a whimper before my lungs seize. The world collapses into darkness, the odor of old sweat, and bone-deep cold.
“Can’t…breathe,” I gasp. My fingers claw at my throat. At the hood ties that aren’t there. Another sound tears free, smaller this time, raw and humiliating.
“Raine.” Asher’s voice is close to my ear. Steady. Strong. Familiar. “You’re not back there.”
I can’t process the words. My skin is wrong. The air is wrong.
He’s in front of me now, his deep blue eyes locked on mine.
“Let. Go. Now,” he snaps at Claire.
My knees buckle, and Asher catches me, wrapping an arm around my waist so I can sink against him.
“Look at me, Raine. You’re outside. Pike Place. No restraints. No hood. No hands but mine.”
My vision stays glassy, the market blurring at the edges. I can’t control my racing pulse no matter how hard I try.
Claire’s voice drifts in from somewhere behind me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t.” There’s a lethality to Asher’s tone I’ve never heard before. It would be enough to pull me back if I could only get some air. “Don’t touch her. Don’t say another word.”
My lungs are still locked tight. Each breath is borrowed, and I don’t have anything left to spare. I focus on Asher’s face. On the furrow between his brows. On the line of his mouth.
The market noise pushes back in, piece by piece. People laughing, the honk of a car horn, a seagull screaming overhead.
“There you are,” Asher whispers, leaning forward to touch his forehead to mine.
Exhaustion drops over me like a blanket. My legs feel hollowed out. But my mind is here. I’m here.
I turn my gaze to Claire. She clutches her purse to her chest, eyes rimmed with red. “Maybe…” The word catches, and she tries again. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”