Chapter Twenty
Damon.
“What was with the French accent, Le Douche?”
I throw my head back and laugh at Jonas.
“I am French, Jonas. Well, half. My mother is from Butte-sux-Cailles. My father is English, born and raised in East Horsely Surrey. They met in Paris while my father was working and studying there as a surgeon. Came to the United States before I was born and raised in Westport. I went to school at Harvard and graduated with honors at twenty-one. Then, I went to medical school in Oxford and did my internal medicine and psychiatry residency which took almost five years in New York. Accepted a job straight out of residency at Lorne Wood.”
“Where you met Raven.”
“Where I met little bird.”
“Wait, so how old are you?”
“A decade or so older than our girl.”
“That’s it?” He eyes me curiously.
I grin. “That’s it.”
“How old is Maverick?”
I look down at my watch from the screen that shows the security cameras. Raven should be back by now. “I think a year older than me.”
“I researched him. One of the brightest minds the FBI ever had. Do you know he was on that Ackles Farm case in Wyoming? He refused interviews with podcasts and media outlets and publishing houses were offering him beaucoup amounts of money for him to write about it. He refused all of them. Quit literally the same day. Handed in his gun, his badge and walked off the farm. He walked ten miles to the Goshen County police department. Covered in mud and pig shit.”
I nod. I do know. That broke international headlines.
What happened on that farm was told by his former partner, Tasha Williams, later on.
They interviewed her, instead. Although she was there at the farm, she hadn’t been the one to find what was left of the victims. She was the one that barged into farmhouse with the police department to find the murderer running at her with a kitchen knife.
It was suicide by cop. By the time she had gotten to Maverick, she'd found him on his ass in the pig pen holding one of the victim’s bodies while the pigs were still devouring them.
Those pigs were blue-ribbon winning pigs. Pigs that sold for a thousand dollars each when they went to market. William’s memoir kept Harrington out of it.
A mercy, I’m sure.
Through the screen, I spot Raven coming down the hallway, that scarlet wig on, oversized black hoodie, black sweatpants, and shoes two sizes too big. A limp in her gait tells me she’s over-exhausted herself.
Oh no, whatever she did can’t be good. I knew I should’ve stayed behind. I check the other cameras to find them still on a loop for the next twenty seconds.
Our extracurricular activities only took us about thirty minutes, so I’ve been continuously re-looping the same five minutes over and over again. Any longer than thirty minutes of an empty hallway of a busy hotel would alert security that their system had been breached.
“Open the door. Open the door. Jonas. She’s coming. Quick there’s only twelve seconds left on the loop.”
Jonas quickly gets up and runs to the door.
I watch the timer as Raven steps inside, and the loop turns off.
I breathe out a sigh of relief. He brings her inside but her makeup is ruined and her eyes are bloodshot and there are tears and snot that she wipes on her sleeves.
I start the fire in the fireplace as Jonas gets her naked and we destroy all the evidence, including the wig and the shoes.
She’s trembling, standing on her non-tattooed leg, favoring the other.
Fuck. After dropping Tyler off at his room and hijacking the security system so Raven could go into the penthouse suits, Jonas and I went back downstairs, changed in his car, put our clothes in bags to be burned later, and came back up separately.
Jonas picks her up and takes her straight to the shower.
“Doc I need help,” Jonas calls. I run to them. Raven is a mess, leaning against the tiled wall in the glass shower, and she’s signing.
We need to leave. I want to go home.
“Back to the dorms?”
No! I want to go home. Please. I want my cello. I need my books. I want my bed I don’t want to be here. Please.
“Your parent’s estate?”
She flings soap at us which we both dodge. That’s an obvious no.
“Little bird, you’re going to have to give me a little more, okay? I’m not in here,” I tap at my temple. “But I’m here ,” I gesture between us.
“Where’s home, Raven baby? Hmm? Do you want me to call Axel? Will he tell us?”
More tears spill over her eyelids and my little bird looks too tired to fly. I make a snap decision. “Call Axel before she retreats into her mind. She’s too wound up. I’ll finish up.”
“On it,” Jonas replies and leaves to call her stepbrother.
She nods and holds her arms out to me, and it reminds me of the first time she came back from her parent’s mansion when they left her all alone for her entire stay and back then, when she tried to climb into my lap, I had to tell her why it was inappropriate for her, as my patient, to be in my lap when all I wanted to do was hold her.
All I did, could do , was pat her on the back and let her cry in silence.
Back then, her sobs would wrack her whole body and she would cry until she’d made herself sick, followed by refusing to eat for days. She’d lie on the floor and draw imaginary things with her fingers on the tile.
I zoomed in once. A family of stick figures .
I called her mother immediately the next time she went home and they were going to be out. I begged her to not treat Raven like a broken little doll.
Even then I saw how fierce she was and could be.
They went to Versailles without her. Even Axel, who usually would stay behind during his summer and spring breaks, left her.
When she came back, I gave her charcoal and a sketchpad.
She drew (very good) broken dolls… and then she was attacked by a patient who thought she was doing sexual favors for preferential treatment and I began sending her gifts from me as gifts from her family through packages to the mail room.
I will never make the mistake of not holding her ever again.
I get naked, sit on the tiled floor below and pull her to my lap.
“Fuck, doll, you’re freezing.” But the water is warm.
I stand us up, lather her hair up quickly and do the same with the conditioner and then soap up her and then myself.
It doesn’t smell like her and I hate it.
“She just keeps saying she wants to go home? Not her dorm, not the mansion. Home. Where her books and her cello are.” Jonas comes back into the bathroom as we towel up.
“Wait. She’s talking?” Axel's voice echoes throughout the bathroom since Jonas has him on speakerphone.
“No. She signed for home.”
“She – she’s signing ? Oh my god.” Axel’s voice breaks and I can hear him sniffling. “Can you FaceTime me? Please? I want to see her.”
“She’s in the shower. I don’t know. I came back from the funeral and she looked kind of drunk,” he lies, “and then kept signing for home, cello and books.”
Axel heaves a shuddering breath as I kiss Raven’s shoulders. “She owns a lake house. Casa de Cuervos. I’ll send you the address. Can you have her call me when you get there?”
Raven shakes her head and Jonas kisses her nose.
“Yeah, man. I can tell her to call you but you know her. She does what she wants.”
Axel laughs through his tears. “Yeah, yeah. I do. Get her home, Jonas. I don’t know what you’re doing… but, just… don’t stop doing it, okay? I want my sister back.”
Raven’s eyes fill up with tears as Jonas hangs up .
“You were never gone, were you baby?” Jonas asks in that tender voice he only reserves for her. She looks up at us, those big doe eyes that drive me insane, and shakes her head.
“Fuck, I love you,” Jonas whispers, kissing her forehead.
“Love… you.” Her voice is raspy, like she hasn’t drank water in years.
Jonas’ eyes widen, and I can almost feel his heart exploding from where I’m standing. I know he’s trying so hard not to freak out. I’ve told him before that when she begins to open up, he’d need to be careful – she’s a flight risk. He tampers down his excitement for her.
I should feel jealous… but how could I ever take her away from something so precious such as this? She shuffles on her feet and I break us apart. I dip and bring her up bridal style. She kisses my cheek softly and she whispers, “Love… you, too.”
I run my nose along her jaw and kiss beneath her ear. “I promise you, little bird, you will never love me more than I love you.”
She grins and throws her head back in a silent laugh as I set her on the four-poster king-size antique bed.
She touches the scar on her neck that has her bio-tracker and then, unwraps her towel, opens her legs, and spreads her pussy lips with two fingers.
I know exactly what she’s telling me. But still, her hands come up.
You’re psycho like me, Doctor. Your love is crazy like mine. I have allowed everything you’ve done to me because you’re mine as much as I’m yours. You own me as much as I own you.
I arch an eyebrow. “Keep flashing me your pussy like that, and I’ll show you crazy. I’ll show you who exactly owns whom, belle oiseau.” Pretty bird.
Her eyes flash, defiance burning bright as she leans back in her elbows and she spreads her thighs all over again.
“Well, well, well.” Jonas chuckles. “What do we have here?”
“It seems our girl is feeling… rebellious.”
Raven’s eyes widen.
“Oh, yes, Raven. Remember what I said the day in your dorm room?”
She almost pouts. Her hands fly up . I didn’t disobey. There are no consequences.
“But you did. Was flashing me your pussy after I warned you being a good girl and obeying me? ”
Her eyebrows knit together, crossing her arms.
“Raven?”
That’s not my name.
“That is your name.”
No. My name is baby or Raven baby or doll or little bird or pretty bird or - her hands stop moving.
“Or?”
She blushes and turns away.