Chapter 21 #2
“If you can’t help me, then you have no choice but to end me, London,” I say, my voice a dark rasp. “Promise me that now.”
“Maybe I couldn’t…” She trails off, lost in thought. “But Lydia could.”
A slow smile curls my lips. “Then I guess we should keep her around, after all.”
“Lydia Prescott is just as important as the boy who’s still locked in that dark room under a greenhouse.” She swallows hard, wincing. “As your doctor, as the woman who loves you, I’m telling you to embrace him. He’s not your enemy. Stop trying to escape, Grayson.”
My nostrils flare. Heat creeps up my spine. Resentment singes the edges of my vision in vibrating waves of red. “Strip all the layers away,” I say, a dare. “I suppose it’s only fair. Seems these bars just bring out the honesty in us, baby.”
She nods, as if recalling her experience in the cage where I locked her up, forcing her to remember the past she tried to keep buried. “A lock and a key,” she says. “Soul mates. We are an inevitability.”
A crooked smile stretches. “Till death, mo anam cara.”
She answers by removing the scarf. I notice every nuance, slide of hand, and when she slips her hand beneath the material to free if from around her neck, she retrieves an object from the gaudy locket beneath.
The guard at the end of the hall missed the action, but I didn’t. Only I can’t focus on what she’s wrapping in the scarf—I can only see the welts, the bruises, the dark fingerprints marking her neck.
I grip the bars so hard my knuckles ache.
I will kill him.
I know this as certainly as I know the sky is fucking blue.
London reads the tension thrumming through me and says, “No. We still need him.” She glances at the guard. He’s watching us. “It’s my choice. Mine.”
Rage lashes at my insides. “Then you better get to him first.”
Despite my attempts to be more than—better than—mortal, I’m no god.
I’m blood and bone and London is immersed in my marrow, so goddamn deep I can feel her becoming a part of me.
The pain won’t ever stop. The compulsions won’t ever stop.
I’m human and I’m weak, and she’s still my only chance at freedom. My need for her won’t stop.
The guard rises.
I release the bars, my palms burning. “Give me the scarf.”
Her throat bruised and swollen, London takes a shallow breath. “Did you plan this?” she asks. “Back then. Before. Did you plan all this out in such meticulous detail that every possible outcome had its own contingency? Or are we that fated?”
“Like a bad Shakespearean tragedy,” I tell her.
I have over a hundred different locks memorized.
The second I saw the tattooed key on her hand, I knew exactly which lock manufacturer it belonged to.
From there, it was only a matter of obtaining blueprints.
Getting a record of which jails and holding cells in Maine used the same manufacturer.
“I chose Rockland for more than its scenic beauty,” is all I say aloud to her.
Her soft lips part. Her gaze shifts to the bars of the cell, her eyes following the iron all the way up.
The cage in her cellar is made by the same company who installed the cells in her father’s police station all those years ago.
I know this, too, because I made sure I knew it.
And that jail cell manufacturer is the same one who installed the cell I’m in right now.
She smiles knowingly. “We’re a fucked-up kind of inevitability. Not fated. Doomed.”
She’s probably right. Good things don’t emerge from basements and cellars… Dark things do. Demons burned by the light.
“You’re still beautiful,” I say, my voice thick with the accent I try to conceal. “My dark angel.”
Her gaze holds mine. “How did you know I would connect it?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. That’s the part I can’t explain. The constant. The variable I’ve never been able to isolate or solve. We’re inescapable. The only prison I’ve never wanted to escape.”
She looks at the scarf in her hand, staring past the material to the key she’s hidden within. “It may not work.”
No. It might not. It probably shouldn’t. The chances that the key used to open her childhood cage would be a match to this cell is highly unlikely. I’ve already done the math. Calculated the odds. But like us, it can be warped and twisted into something perfect.
With a couple of crude modifications, London’s key will be an exact fit.
“We’re connected on some deeper level,” I say to her. “Through bars and cages and prisons…in the physical sense and the mind. That’s why you could never be expendable to me. You’re my match.”
Does she believe me? Some things can’t be manipulated. What I feel for her is real.
“I’m not the hero, London,” I say. “But I’m not the villain, either.”
“Times up, doctor,” the guard calls out.
London moves quickly. She rushes the cell and thrusts the scarf through the bars. “He’s going to take me,” she whispers. “Let him take me.”
I grasp the scarf and try to touch her hand, desperation clawing painfully to the surface, before she’s snatched away.
“Get her back!”
Two guards push London flush against the wall, giving me only enough time to slip the key between my fingers—like a cheap magic trick.
“Drop it, Sullivan,” the officer orders.
I let the thin material go. The scarf drifts to the concrete floor soundlessly.
“Step back,” he instructs me.
As the guards escort London out, I keep sight of her for as long as I can. Until she disappears down the corridor. I move to the back wall of my cell as the cop unlocks the barred door and retrieves the scarf.
“Fucking groupies,” he mutters as he inspects it. He gives it a sniff. “Smells good, though. You got one hot doctor, Sullivan. I’m keeping this.” He sneers at me, and I let him.
Once they leave, I settle in the corner. I run the pad of my thumb along the teeth of the key. Anticipation twists my mouth into a smile. I wait until the jailhouse goes still to start making the alterations to the key, using the edge of the steel sink to file down the teeth.
In less than two hours, an armored truck will arrive with a small army to escort me to prison. They’re taking their time, making the adequate preparations. Making sure I have no chance of escape.
And Nelson is going to take her.
London’s only chance is if Nelson is terrified to touch her.
I work at the key, sweat leaking into my eyes. The burn satisfying.
When it’s time, I go. And I make sure I do enough damage on my way out that Nelson knows I’m coming for blood.