5. Alive
FIVE
ALIVE
CONNOR
Peering down at my victim, I recognize him from the traffic camera photo. It’s Cameron Andino, the man who was in the same van as Haven.
My heart jumps. She has to be here—and this man put her somewhere.
Fisting his hair, I yank. Hard. He gasps, and I tighten my hold on him as Adrian and Dallas reappear in the hall, drawn by the sound of the scuffle. Now it’s five against one, and I really like the odds of us getting this guy to talk.
“Where is she?” I snap. “What have you done with her?”
He shakes his head just enough to be obvious while careful not to nick his throat on my knife. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Liar. “Haven. Beautiful girl with brown hair and grey eyes. You stole her from me. Give her back. Now.”
“I just do deliveries for Mr. Winter. I’m not even a real Snowflake yet, don’t have the tat or nothing. You gotta let me go.”
The only thing I have to do is make sure that Haven doesn’t spend a second longer in here than she already has.
I dig the knife in, drawing some more blood. “I won’t say it again. Where. Is. She?”
I’ll give him credit. With that nasty wound in his side, he held out longer than I expected.
I guess, at first, he was more afraid of Winter than me, but when I switch my hold on my knife and dig my fingers into the slice in his side, ripping a scream of true agony out of him, he spits out: “She’s back there. Or what’s left of her is.”
I don’t like the way he said that. “What do you mean? What did you do to her?”
The idiot with the scar running through his eyebrow and eyes that tell me he’s drugged out of his mind has the nerve to snort. “What didn’t me and the guys do to her? I’m sure you could ask, but she’ll never tell.”
Blood pounds in my ears. Behind me, Bas tells me to let the guy go, to check on Haven, but I can’t. Not yet.
“She doesn’t have to. You will.”
Cameron must realize that there’s no way he’s getting out of this.
My hands are shaking with the urge to slash, but I manage to stay them long enough for him to say, “Put it this way. You may think we cut out her tongue. We didn’t.
Not when we were too happy to use it whenever the boss let us have a piece of her. ”
I go stone-cold.
Over the last six weeks, I imagined every horror that could be happening to Haven while she was away from Harmony Heights. Because of how gorgeous and tempting she is, I was terrified that they might use her, and if he means what I think he means, they did something to hurt her.
And, suddenly, all I want to do is hurt him.
I probably should’ve controlled myself more. Andino could’ve been a hostage, he could also have been the answer to what happened to Haven and why she was taken in the first place… what the hell Winter wanted to do with her… but I let my body take over before my brain could give any other commands.
My hand moves. The knife slices. One second, Andino is putting the worst sort of ideas into my head. The next? He’s choking on his last breaths as my knife opens a pretty, pretty smile in his throat.
“Shit, Connor. Murder? Right in front of me? Don’t you ever fucking think before you act?”
“Shut it, Des.”
“I’m a fucking lawyer, Sebastien. I can’t—”
“You can.”
Des sucks in a breath. “Adrian—”
“You already help the Order cover up their money laundering and other schemes, so don’t get on your high horse now, Desmond,” adds Adrian. “Don’t look down your nose at getting your hands dirty when we all know you’re no saint.”
Desmond sniffs, glaring at Adrian, though he stops arguing.
He does grimace when Adrian orders Dallas and Desmond to drag Andino’s body out of the hall, though he does do it.
I clap Adrian on the shoulder of his suit jacket, wipe the blood on my blade along the side of it, then continue running toward the door at the end of the hall.
The hallway is narrow and poorly lit. The concrete floor is stained with things I don't want to think about. The farther I go, the worse the smell gets. My hands are sweaty. I tighten my grip on my knife, just in case, though it’s eerily quiet.
With Andino dead, no one else jumps out at me.
I’m pretty sure no one else is here, either… except for, perhaps, Haven Smith.
This door is no match for me. I don’t bother stopping to kick the cheap wood in, simply turning in time to rush into it with my shoulder leading the way. This one pops open easily, swinging in to slam against the dingy white wall behind it.
The smell is even worse in here. The mildew and the rot is overpowered by something sickly sweet mingled with undeniable body odor.
Another horrified whiff and I catch the rank stink of stale urine.
Of course. There’s a bedpan lying on its side to my left, a puddle of piss beneath it.
A foldaway cot is stretched in front of me.
It’s empty, and the only reason it is is because there’s a body curled up on top of a stained sheet on the floor in the corner.
My heart jumps to my throat. I don’t need to see a face to know instinctively that I’ve found Haven.
Unfortunately, though, I do see her. Her back is to the wall, the same purple t-shirt I know she was wearing when she was abducted six weeks ago slipping off her shoulder.
As I rush toward her, dropping in front of her, I see that, despite the late hour, she isn’t sleeping.
Her once stormy eyes are wide open and staring.
Blank. Her lips are pressed closed, and when I frantically shove my hand under her nose, I want to cry out in relief when I sense warm breath fanning against my fingers. She’s breathing. She’s alive.
She’s… broken.
How else can I describe it? Her hair is limp and loose, with a few matted hunks forming clumps.
Her skin is paler than usual, her lean frame notably more slender and fragile.
It’s a shock to discover that she’s both the source of the BO stink and the stench of urine. She’s not moving. She’s not reacting.
She’s not talking, either.
She’s just… there as though she doesn’t have any idea that I am.
“It’s me, Haven,” I rasp out, stroking my thumb over the top of her hair. “It’s Connor. I found you. I fucking found you. And I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Still nothing, and it hits me that, no matter how bad I imagined things might be for Haven, this is so much fucking worse.
This Haven… she’s not the one who used to roll her eyes and flounce away every time I flirted with her, trying to get her to notice me.
She’s not the girl who bit me after I kissed her, and who I decided finally Claimed me back even if she had no idea that that’s what she was doing.
She’s not the one who’s shown up, straight-backed and proud, to every Claiming ceremony, knowing that she would leave it again, forever rejected.
She’s altered. Changed. It’s like they threw her in a cell somewhere, locking her away, hoping the world would forget her. Like an oubliette, this room was meant to trap her until there was no one left who would remember her. Who would save her.
If so, they fucked up big time. They never counted on the fact that Connor Heyward’s been obsessed with this woman for so long, I would’ve searched for Haven forever to find her. And now that I have? I’m getting her out of here.
Now.
I start to reach for her when, finally, she does something to acknowledge my presence: she whimpers and draws away from another touch.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Haven fucking Smith whimper once before in my life.
With my next breath, I look at her. I mean, I really look at her.
Past the jutting cheeks and the cracked lips, the matted hair and the dirty clothes, and I finally notice the bare feet.
The broken toe that’s almost as purple as her shirt.
The bruises on her arms, her neck, her cheek…
no wonder she flinches like that. She’s not just broken. She’s battered, too.
And I’m only sorry I can’t kill Cameron Andino again.
That’s okay. I know I have Johnny Winter on my kill list. Anyone else who was part of the ‘we’ that harmed Haven… I’m gunning for them next. But, first, I need her to understand that I will never hurt her.
How can I when I fucking worship her?
To prove it, I drop down to my knees and murmur her name. “Haven.”
This isn’t the time for a flippant nickname. This is me being uncharacteristically serious because, if I don’t, I’m gonna fucking rip this warehouse apart with my bare hands, piece by piece, to let out some of the rage building inside of me.
She doesn’t say anything. I try not to think about what that Andino bastard said—and I have this urge to make sure that she really does have her tongue—but either way, she’s not talking.
I need to hear her. I need to know she’s with me…
“Haven? It’s Connor. Tell me you know me. Tell me you see me.”
Just as fear starts creeping up my spine, Haven slowly lifts her head from the floor. For the first time since I found her in here, our eyes meet. The grey is so familiar, I start to relax—but then I notice that, like so much of Haven, they’re different, too.
They’re empty.
Haven…
Fuck me, when I see how truly blank her stare is, I think that might be the moment my heart actually breaks. When I have to admit that, while I’m getting her body out of here, I’m not sure how much of my Haven is coming with me.
She’s back there. Or what’s left of her is…
I think I finally get what Andino was trying to say—
“Connor? We gotta go. Someone might’ve heard the gunshots, and we got that—” Dallas stops short, censoring himself even though I’m not so sure there’s a point as he says, “It’s in one of the empty rooms. Just in case the cops get called out to check, we need to be out of here.”