11. Harper
ELEVEN
HARPER
Somehow, these fuckers knew who I was. Considering their line of work, it wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that they didn’t seem to realize it until they got close to me. So either they had no clue who they were actually sent to kill, or they thought they were after my alias.
I needed more info, but this one seemed like a dead end.
His knife was at my throat again as we pulled into the parking lot of the Port Wylde Asylum, an old rundown mental hospital that had been bought at a tax auction and now housed the craziest fuckers capable of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Usually murder. Sometimes torture. Past that, I had no idea what to expect in the fucking asylum, home of the Guild.
Hell, ordinary people like me were lucky to hear those little tidbits. Knowledge of what exactly the Guild was seemed to be a guarded secret.
I was about to get my first glimpse at the inside of this selective club of killers and criminals. Possibly my last, too.
The asshole who’d kidnapped me threw my duffel bag over his shoulder and led me through the fucking parking garage like a trophy, holding onto my hair still as a reminder he could and would cause me pain if I caused him any trouble.
I took a mental note of the path he chose to lead me through, wincing at the bright fluorescent when we stepped into what I could only describe as a mudroom for murderers.
Along one wall was a trough filled with dirtbike riding gear in various states of being washed, and a single man holding a hose nearby. He spared only a cursory glance to my captor, then did a double-take when he realized there was a woman attached to the end of his arm.
"Well, well, Ghoul, it looks like you finally snagged you a plaything. Did you have to chase her down, or did she come willingly?" He leered at me, baring sharpened rows of teeth that made him look like some twisted fae halfling from a nightmarish fairytale. His eyes on me made my skin crawl, and I found myself recoiling against the man he’d dubbed Ghoul.
Better the devil you knew than the one you didn’t, and this man in front of me was covered in enough mud and blood to paint the walls of my whole apartment.
My captor snarled at him in a very predatory manner, and I caught a glimpse of the monster beneath that sent a shiver down my spine. A small part of it was intrigue, and I didn’t like that.
I was not a danger hound. I was not imagining the thrill of someone like that going down on me.
I wasn’t.
"She’s mine, Jackal, and you’d do best to remember that. Hands off her, you hear?"
Something in his tone struck a familiar chord in me, like I’d heard those words in his voice before. But that was impossible. I’d mainly kept to myself during my stay in Port Wylde. Aside from a few hookups and short-term boyfriends, I was a loner. And I certainly didn’t associate with men like these. It was highly unlikely I knew this man or had even encountered him before.
"Fuck off, Ghoul, I touch what I want." To prove his point, he leaned forward and curled a stray strand of my hair around his finger, laughing when I snapped my blunted teeth at him and growled. "Oho, she’s feisty. Honey, you’ll have to do better than that to scare me, though." When he moved to touch me again, I lashed out with a free foot and kicked at him, hating the mocking laugh that echoed around us as he dodged it and shot me a playful wink.
Ghoul seemed less than amused.
"You come within an inch of her again, and I’ll make you a nine-fingered Jackal, got that?"
The stare-down was intense, and if I wasn’t already resigned to the idea of dying, I might not have done what I did next. But somehow, a little bubble of laughter snuck its way up my throat and into the air, shocking not just me but the men involved in the standoff, as well.
Now, suddenly, all eyes were on me, and I didn’t like that.
I was inches away from a breakdown, I could tell. Panic was just on the horizon. So my mind was doing everything possible to keep from fracturing as long as possible. Which somehow only made things worse, of course.
Jackal reared back and snorted at us, his hose coming dangerously close to soaking my bag with my laptop in it. I wasn’t sure at this point if I’d crushed it in my mad dash to escape, but I wasn’t taking any risks.
"Hey, watch it, buddy, that’s got electronics in it!" I shouted, stepping further away from the water splash zone.
Of course, this prompted Jackal to turn the hose on us, and I wasn’t fast enough to react. I closed my eyes against the blast and prepared to be drenched.
Only to be spun around at the last minute as the full force of the spray landed on my kidnapper instead, who’d stepped in front of me to block the water and save my bag.
Jackal wasn’t laughing anymore, and he wisely turned the water off and muttered something about ‘having other shit to do’ as he fled from the room. I stood in awe of what had just happened as Ghoul shook his head like a dog, rubbing his hands over his face with a groan. The paint he’d been covered in dripped from his face, joining the blood that had run from his broken nose in its race to the floor. He shook his head again, carding his fingers through his hair as he turned to shoot me a pointed glare.
Except, when he turned, recognition flashed like a warning sign in my head, freezing me to the spot. I shorted out, the panic forgotten for a moment as realization set in, along with shock, surprise, and confusion. I’d deny it if I were asked, but I even felt some level of . . . disappointment ?
I knew this man—or, rather, I knew a ghost of his former self.
My mouth fell open, and my jaw hung unhinged as his eyes met mine. The two of us refused to move; the only sound between us was the echo of water draining from the room and our labored breathing.
My hand lifted of its own accord as I stepped forward, not quite believing my own eyes. There was no way I wasn’t hallucinating. Maybe I’d finally snapped, and my brain was transposing something comforting over such a gruesome visage. I opened and closed my mouth several times, but in the end, I could only form one word, and even that felt like I had to pry it from my lips to force it into existence.
"Nash?"
His eyes never left mine as I reached up and skimmed the side of his jaw with my fingers, the feel of him solidly affirming what I dared not believe.
No wonder his voice was so familiar. No wonder I felt like I knew him.
My brain took a little longer to piece together the rest of the puzzle, though. I was too overwhelmed with the knowledge that my captor— my savior —the man named Ghoul was none other than my eldest stepbrother, Nash Blackwood.
He didn’t say a word, just stared at me while I mapped his face with my touch, desperate to confirm my spiraling thoughts. When my fingers found a ragged piece of skin at the corner of his mouth, however, his hand darted up and gripped my wrist, refusing to let me explore further.
"You’d better keep your hands to yourself, Harper. I’m not the boy I used to be."
The hardness in his voice surprised me. Seven years ago, he and his brothers saw to my death—or so they thought. How it must fester, like a rotting wound that refused to close, that they hadn’t succeeded and had to clean up their mess now .
"I’m not the same girl I used to be, either," I retorted as he dragged me along by the arm, wincing from the tightness of his grip. "Where are you taking me?"
He refused to say another word, just continued dragging me through the asylum, and I’d long forgotten my mission to map out an escape plan. We marched up two flights of stairs, then around another corner until we came to a stop at a door painted with a half-assed skull and bones insignia.
"Home sweet home," he muttered, throwing a key in the lock. I steeled myself for the possibility of anything being on the other side—a torture room, a gun cabinet, a bunch of dead bodies, anything.
What I wasn’t expecting was a fully functional living room with an attached kitchen.
And I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear the faint sounds of an operetta playing in the background.
Nash kicked the door closed with the heel of his boot and stomped in the room, dragging water, mud, and blood across the beautiful rug that looked like someone painstakingly wove by hand. My eyes found the shape of another human in the kitchen, and my heart stopped as he turned around to point a butcher’s knife in Nash’s direction.
"Dammit, Nash, get those clodhoppers off the rug; I just had it steamed—" His eyes narrowed, and the knife slowly fell to the counter in front of him as those strikingly beautiful violet eyes pinned me to the spot.
I’d know those eyes anywhere. They featured in many of my young schoolgirl fantasies, and later, in my nightmares, as I adjusted to life as a new person.
Angel Blackwood, the boy who’d curled up with me on the roof to escape our parents’ fighting in the next room at night. The boy who’d been so pretty growing up it almost hurt to look at him. He was a man now, and time and age had done absolutely nothing to dull the beauty he’d been blessed with. His black hair was now bleached blonde, almost white, and hung in a messy ponytail that draped over one shoulder like the finest silk. He was taller than I remembered, and maybe a little thinner, but somehow, his presence snapped everything into place for me.
Suddenly, all the pieces were coming together in my head.
"What is she doing here?" he asked, his eyes still studying me as Nash let go of my hair and deposited my duffel bag on the couch. "I thought you were stalking her, not picking her up."
"She was on her way outta town, so I gave her a hand and a detour," he snapped back, sinking onto the couch beside my bag. He seemed uncaring about his state of being or how much paint, blood, and dampness he was spreading all over the furniture. "So now she’s here until we figure out what to do with her."
"She’s our target," he spat, walking toward me slowly, almost like he was afraid I’d bite if he got too close. "We’re supposed to kill her and send the client a lock of her hair, not keep her as a pet."
"She’s not supposed to be alive, either," Nash drawled, unzipping my bag slowly as I watched. "Oooh, what do we have in here?" His hand dipped in the bag and emerged clutching a pair of panties I’d hastily stuffed in there for later. "Oh, lookie here. See, I knew you were a slut. Only whores wear panties like these."
That stung more than it should have, and I couldn’t stop myself from wincing as he tossed them at Angel, who’d rounded the island in the kitchen and was only feet away now. He snatched them out of the air and frowned at the back of Nash’s head, smacking him for good measure.
"You don’t bother to clean up anything out here, so take your wet-dog-looking ass to the shower and clean the fuck up before you make this whole place a mess."
Nash grumbled at Angel’s demand but did as he was told, slinking off with a little smirk for his younger brother.
When the door shut behind him, it sucked a lot of the fight out of me, and I turned to Angel, who’d always been the softest of the brothers, hoping for a kinder ear.
I should have known these weren’t the same Blackwood boys I’d grown up with.
"Angel?" I tried, looking up at his stern visage. Waiting for the cracks to show so I could weasel my way inside that stern outer cage he obviously erected to keep feelings and emotions at bay.
"Don’t give me those puppy eyes. I’m not your savior here. My temper’s worse than his." He jerked his thumb toward the room where Nash had disappeared. "And had he not brought you to us, I was planning to finish the job myself tomorrow night."
Hearing that Angel had plans to off me on his own made my heart sink to the floor. Somehow, in seven years, I’d learned nothing. My brain had glossed over the fact that these boys had killed me—or tried to—that night on the fucking bridge. They’d thrown me in the cold waters of the Dread and assumed the crocs would eat me, or that I’d drown. They walked away without looking back.
The thought that these fuckers would have some sort of remorse now was laughable.
How fucked up was I that I really believed I could convince them to let me go? And they were just the messengers, the people hired to finish the job. They didn’t want me dead; someone else did. And though I knew who that someone was, I needed someone to keep me safe.
I needed somewhere to hide that nobody would dare to step foot uninvited.
A building full of murderers and psychos was the perfect hiding spot.
Now I just had to convince them not to kill me.
I glanced around the rooms, noticing a door cracked just far enough to allow light into the pit of darkness beyond.
Angel must have noticed my train of thought, because he snapped his fingers and dragged my attention right back to him .
"You’re safe for the time being, but the second he wakes up, we’re having a little talk. We might not be hurting for money, but a job is a job, and as far as I’m concerned, you died seven years ago. So don’t go looking for mercy from us."
The wool lifted from my eyes, and I started to see these men for what they were—killers. Ruthless criminals who had been given a job—to take me out. I wondered if they knew who put the target on my back this time.
I wondered if they even cared.