28. Cain
CAIN
I couldn't believe what I'd just done. The scent of her followed me into the control room as I yanked the mask off my face and breathed deeply.
It was fucking amazing. Life altering. But she had no idea it was me.
Did that bother me? Did it bother her? I wasn't sure.
But everything she'd done made me think she really fucking liked it as much as I did.
I watched her through the cameras and hunted for any hint that she was regretting what we'd done. But instead of seeing her crying or over thinking, I saw her... was she singing?
The volume was set low, so I turned it up a few notches and sure enough, I could hear her sweet voice filtering through the speakers. It was the most beautiful sound. She really was an angel, I thought watching as her hips swayed to the rhythm and her smile was wide as could be.
A text popped through from Ace and I muted the camera, reading over his words.
It said:
Hey man, I wanted to give you a heads up. That pastor guy is awake. They're moving him out of the ICU and talking about releasing him within the next week. Maybe longer .
Fuck. That changed things. I had been hoping the guy would be destined for a grave and I wouldn't have to get my hands dirty.
There's more. The police have been looking into what landed him there, and they've realized Delilah is missing. I guess her friend at the library was worried when she didn't show up.
Shit, and more shit.
It seems their working theory is that Delilah was unhappy in her marriage and caused the chemical explosion in order to escape. They're treating her as the main suspect.
Well, this just went from bad to worse.
I wrote back a quick reply with anxiety curling around my chest.
Alright, man. Thank you for the heads up.
Mind reeling with this new information, I rubbed my temples as if that would somehow make everything better.
I'd thought for sure that if anyone noticed Delilah was missing, it would be to bring her back to John. I never thought they'd tried to pin all this on her. Fuck.
A message from Ace came back almost immediately reading:
Not a problem. I'll let you know if I find anything else out.
My eyes found Delilah on the screen, still shaking her ass and completely unaware of the mess I'd created for her. I wanted to save her from him, not have her take the fall for what I'd done.
When I first got out of prison, I swiftly took on a new identity, aware that if I used my real name that the people in Kingston who saw me as a threat could, and probably would, come for me.
Ace helped me set up the whole thing. The guy was a genius with computers.
Maybe that's what we needed to do now for Delilah, only would she be okay with that?
Taking on a whole new identity to leave this one behind?
I wasn't sure, but I felt like maybe it would be the answer she was looking for.
In the meantime, I needed to figure out how to get over my voice not working. And fast.
The thought of speaking rendered me panicked.
It felt like every time I tried, my throat squeezed and felt like it was closing up on me.
While I was capable of making some sounds it wasn't enough.
I wasn't saying what I wanted to her. I hadn't been able to explain a goddamn thing. And now time was running out.
With John's recovery, I knew that I didn't want that fucker walking free to inflict any more harm on anyone else. Would Delilah feel the same?
If I could walk back in there and ask her right now and reveal my identity, how would she even react?
My fingers flexed and my leg twitched involuntarily.
I had to make a decision, and soon. If they were looking for her then that changed my plans.
Ultimately, when I played this out in my head, we took our revenge out on these fuckers together.
Side by side. But if she chose not to join me, then she'd be at risk for them to come after her alone.
And the thought soured my stomach. I hadn't been able to protect her before.
And I'd vowed to never let any more harm come to her.
So, if she chose to go it alone, that was her choice to make.
Mine would be to follow her from a respectable distance, watching over her.
And maybe that made me a fucking creep, but the world had shown me just how fucked up and unkind it could be. She deserved better than that.
We both did.
I typed another text to Ace asking if he would be able to forge a new identity for Delilah, just in case.
He wrote back:
Sure thing, dude. Send me over what you have, and I'll see what I can do.
In taking her from the house, I'd grabbed the shit off the coffee table, her unconscious body, and her purse that had been dropped by the door.
She kept little inside it. Some hand sanitizer, a few Band-Aids, a slim container with a few errant pills that looked like they were for headaches, and her wallet.
Plucking out her driver's license, my thumb traced the sad, strained picture of her.
It looked like all the life had been sucked out of her and she wasn't even present. Like a zombie.
When I was in prison, my face held the same dull, void expression. The same haunted look in my eyes that felt beaten down by the fucking world.
I sent over a scan of her license, front and back, and hoped he could work his magic one more time. Her life depended on it, because I'd be fucking damned if she was accused of attempted murder on my behalf.
The fucking squirrel interrupted my thoughts, and I stormed out of the control room, finding the furry thing eating through the wood on my deck.
My hands waved him off, but he looked at me like I was an annoyance, continuing to destroy my property.
This little fucker. That was it. I was ordering a cage and hauling his ass out of here first thing.
But as I stood on the porch, the scent of impending rain hit my nose.
A quick search told me we were in for a rough night of storms and I groaned, going to check the generator.
If my power failed, then all the safety measures I had in place around my property would go dark, and it would place us in a vulnerable position.
While Ace might have been the only one to know my true identity, I couldn't trust that he was the only one that had access to it.
We were new acquaintances, and yeah, he helped me out of a bind, solidifying our bond in a mutual hatred of Kingston.
But I didn't know the dude. And definitely didn't know if his files were secure.
For all I knew, maybe my real information was out there, and the Crusaders were waiting for me to drop my guard.
I sounded paranoid even to myself, but I guess that's what happens when your life is snatched from you and you spend five years in prison for a crime you didn't even commit.
In order to feel safe, I had to be thinking ten steps ahead.
With the generator checked and the doors triple locked, I finally calmed down enough to take a shower and order a round of groceries.
Whoever invented grocery delivery was a genius. It allowed me to stay right the fuck here and keep an eye on Delilah without having to leave the comfort of my home. Everything was deliverable now. It was one of the many changes that I'd happily embraced since my release from prison.
Just a few clicks and I could have anything I wanted.
Egg nog? S’mores? Coffee? A coffee maker?
Done. Delivered within 24 hours. It was fucking wild.
And the streaming services? I bought them all not knowing what movies or shows Delilah would be into.
She seemed thoroughly entertained with reruns of Friends .
Laughing at all the jokes and sometimes I would catch her even talking back to the television like the characters could hear her.
"What do you mean you were on a break! That's a bad boyfriend, Rachel.
Dump him," she said the other day. I shook my head at how fucking cute she was.
She wasn't wrong. Ross was a dick to Rachel, in my opinion, while I watched along with her from the control room.
Though, watching a show through the cameras wasn't ideal.
In a perfect world, I would be sitting next to her on the bed with a bowl of popcorn between us, not watching in the next room unable to get past the trauma that had locked my voice away.
Google hadn't been much help when I searched how to start talking again. It all said the same thing: Get therapy.
I'm sure that was fine for other people but going to a complete stranger sounded out of the question for me.
Yes, hi, hello, I have a girl locked up in my house and I tried to murder her husband, thoughts?
I’d pass. No, I could figure this out. I mean I'm the one that stopped talking in the first place, so I theoretically could figure out how to start again. Right?
I had to hope so, because we couldn't continue much longer like this.