2. Freya
FREYA
I escape to the helipad on the roof of the mountain hideout. The area is swept for snow each morning but a thin scattering of white powder has fallen in the last half hour. It’s settled on top of me as I lie here, staring at the cloud gray sky.
My head’s a mess and I’m furious and pissed off but, of all things, my mind keeps replaying the memory I had of Allie this morning.
It was one of the few times in my childhood I remember feeling truly happy.
I guess that’s kind of fucked given we were locked in the basement, but I only didn’t like being locked up in there alone.
That day was a week before I let one of my father’s victims escape and Allie took the blame. It’s the last memory I have of her as the girl she used to be.
Our dad shut her in the basement for three weeks after that and when she came out, she was broken. Silent. I spent days begging her to talk to me. To show me another knife trick. To practice our secret code. It was months before she even uttered a word.
I close my eyes, my heart breaking all over again at the loss. All I ever seem to do is lose the people I love.
Light footsteps stop by my side, and I open my eyes to find Carmen blocking the sun.
“You’re going to get frostbite.”
I’m still too mad to reply but she ignores my silence and carries on.
“And then I’ll have to take you to the hospital to save your stubborn ass, they’ll register you as a patient, and Oz will track you down in minutes.”
I shove myself up to sitting and bury my numb hands in my hair.
Carmen drops a black ski jacket on my feet. “Put it on.”
I don’t move.
She sighs, her own jacket rustling as she sinks down to sit beside me. “I shouldn’t have ambushed you.”
I shrug and risk a glance at her. Carmen is tiny and sitting down only makes her look smaller, but I’ve never met someone so small yet so deadly. Her dark hair is pulled back in two French braids that thin as they hit her shoulders.
She’s got sharp cheekbones and her eyes, so dark they’re almost black, scream ‘don’t fuck with me’.
I thought she was an assassin when I first met her and honestly, if they ever get her to take up their offer, the CIA would have a field day with Carmen. She’s got her own mission though. The whole operation she’s built here is systematically disassembling the child trafficking industry.
If I’m honest, I’m not surprised Carmen tried to manhandle me into therapy. She’s got somewhat of a savior complex. But if she didn’t, then she wouldn’t have taken me in when I turned up on her doorstep after faking my own death.
I pick up the jacket and wrap it around my shoulders.
Carmen stares out at the light snow falling on the Montana mountains. Ragged peaks reach up into the sky, the green trees and slate gray rocks melding together in stunning striations on the mountainside. “I think I maybe let you down when you first came to me,” she says into the sky.
“What?” I shiver, the heat of my disagreement bringing feeling back to my cold body. “You saved my life,” I argue. “Taught me how to take everything that happened to me and use it. Own it.”
Carmen props her elbow on her knee and rests her head on her hand as she looks at me. “I saw myself in you. The same pain, the same anger. Sure, I gave you all the physical skills you needed, helped you focus, but I think I was wrong. I sent you out to fight your demons too soon.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing here? Fighting your demons.”
Carmen gives me a half-smile. “Yeah, but I had a shit ton of therapy first.”
“Oh.” I slide my arms inside the coat and fiddle with the plastic toggle on one of the cuffs.
“There’s nothing wrong with needing help, kid.”
Tears sting my eyes, and I blame it on the biting cold air. “The last time I let people help me, I was forced to give them up,” I say into the soft breeze.
“Yeah. Do you think maybe that’s worth talking about?”
My teeth dig into my bottom lip, and I tug on the toggle. “I’m not sure what will happen to me if I let everything out.”
Carmen nudges my knee with hers. “I’m not sure either but I am sure that keeping it all in is slowly killing you. You may be okay with that right now, but I’m not. So do it for me. If you can’t live for yourself right now, live for me.”
I swallow, my throat as rough and jagged as the mountains I’m staring at.
“What do you say?”
Carmen’s office has glass walls on two sides. Bullet proof glass. The room juts out of the edge of the mountain with a 400-meter sheer drop on the other side of those walls. The inside though is all cozy like a log cabin, with a stained oak desk and an armchair by an old wooden coffee table.
I snag a Twizzler from the jar of them on the desk and take Carmen’s laptop to the big wingback armchair. I bring my legs up, wincing as I scrunch my toes together. Now they’re warming up, they itch like a motherfucker.
I rearrange myself a few times, getting up to pull the drapes closed when the sunlight reflects off the screen, grabbing a bottle of water from the minifridge in the corner, tying my hair back. Eventually I run out of ways to delay the inevitable and click on the link to join the meeting.
An older man with deep umber skin and a gray receding hair line appears in a little box on the screen but I barely look at him. I’m caught staring at my own reflection.
My ginger hair is tangled, my freckled face so pale it’s pasty and dark circles cling under my eyes. No wonder Carmen’s worried.
“Freya, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Alistair.”
I blink and pull my gaze back to the shrink. His eyes are focused, intelligent, but the fine wrinkle lines on his forehead and the trimmed white mustache and beard soften him.
I run my finger over the trackpad, tracing circles with the cursor. “So, how does this work exactly?”
Alistair leans back in his chair and steeples his hands in front of his chest. “Well, therapy can be whatever you need it to be. For some people it’s about talking through what they’re struggling with, others like to learn techniques for coping with stress, anxiety, or low mood.”
“Carmen thinks I’m depressed,” I tell him, mostly because I want to see if he’ll agree.
Alistair just looks at me with clear eyes. “Are you?”
My finger stops tracing the trackpad. “I, uh, I don’t know.” My heart flips. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can do this.” I go to click off the call, but Alistair’s voice stops me.
“Freya,” he says, calmness etched into his very being. “Just talk to me.”
I slump back in the chair and twist my hair in my fingers.
My knee jitters up and down, making the laptop shake, and Alistair’s calm demeanor hits my agitated state like a cold front.
“What am I supposed to say? That I was forced to leave the men I love? That I miss them so much it feels like I’m breathing underwater? ”
Alistair gives a slow nod. “What else?”
I press my cracked lips together, my heartbeat slowing.
“I keep having flashbacks to when I was a child. I feel like I spend so much time lost in the past that even when I’m here, in the present, it’s as if I’m not real.
Things are happening around me but I’m not quite there.
” I stare past the screen. “Like I’m a ghost.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
My gaze meets Alistair’s, the hollowness in my chest gaping. “Like I want to scream. Just to see if anybody will come.”
Alistair folds his fingers together. “Sounds lonely.”
I rub my hand up and down my thigh.
“I met my mother five weeks ago. We asked her questions about the case but other than that I hardly said a word to her.” My mother is another thing I can’t get my head around.
I didn’t really have time to process meeting her before I ran and now, I’ll probably never see her again.
I feel like I should be more upset about that.
Or angry. Or anything really other than just numb.
Alistair takes my change in subject with ease. “Does that bother you?”
I shrug. “She’s my mother. I should have questions. I should want to get to know her.”
“And you don’t?”
I squint. “No, I do. It’s just, she’s a stranger. It felt like she was too far away to reach.” I shake my head. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
Alistair’s smile is soft, understanding. “It does. Relationships, especially estranged ones, take time. I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself for not instantly feeling that connection.”
During the chaos with Zach, River’s friend Jack took my mother to a safehouse. I don’t even know where she is, so I very much doubt we’ll ever have the time to develop a relationship, but I nod anyway.
“Talking about relationships,” Alistair says, “you said you ran from the men you love. That couldn’t have been easy.”
My jaw pops. “I didn’t have a choice, my brother threatened their lives and Oz’s sister was in danger.” I still wake up to nightmares of Zach holding a needle filled with cyanide to Layla’s neck.
“I imagine they’re worried about you.”
I scoff. “They’ll be mad at me. Really fucking mad.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I broke my promise.”
Alistair tilts his head slightly, his eyes pinching. “We’re only human, Freya. We all break promises on occasion.”
“I don’t.” I’ve only ever made three promises. Never take a life, never abandon my sister, and never run from the guys again.
The second I almost broke, the third is shattered, but I refuse to ever break the first. I will not become what my father tried to make me.
I will not be a murderer.
Alistair watches me for a moment. “Alright. Why did you break your promise then? Why did you run?”
My hand curls into a fist. “I told you, I didn’t have a choice. Zach had Layla.”
The lines on Alistair’s forehead deepen. “What’s the FBI’s rules on negotiating with kidnappers?”
“They don’t,” I say automatically, my training kicking in. “There’s always another way.”
“So why didn’t you find the other way?”
I go still, then shake myself out of it. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk him hurting the guys.”
Alistair taps his fingers together.
My hackles rise. “What, you think I should have stayed?”
He shakes his head and sits forward. “I think… you’ve had to spend your whole life running away from the scary things and you don’t know how to stop. Even when they’re the good type of scary.”
My huff of laughter is laced with disbelief. “My brother is not the good type of scary.”
“No.” Alistair pauses. “But you weren’t running from your brother, were you?”
My fidgeting fingers still. The meaning in his words sinks deep into my brittle bones. I wasn’t running from my brother.
I was running from the guys.