Chapter 16
The silence in the car was deafening. Mads had positioned himself in the passenger seat so that he could keep his eyes on me at all times. My every move supervised. Judged. And I hated being judged.
I almost hit the brakes, just to break his concentration, but I figured it was in everyone’s best interests not to add gasoline to what was sure to become a fire.
Five minutes. It had been five minutes of forced proximity, and we were coming up on the auto repair shop. An errant bead of sweat slithered down my spine, as I turned my blinker on, and—
Nothing.
Mads didn’t make a single move. He just kept his face still, unreadable.
Perhaps he was going to let me go, find a mechanic, and get the slashed tire situation sorted.
If that was the case, Mads would really be subverting my expectations.
The whole tire-slashing would have been a coincidence, and Mads, despite Botan’s warning, would have no further cards up his sleeve. No Machiavellian plans.
But we both knew that wouldn’t be happening.
A sentiment which was made abundantly clear when Mads pulled a gun on me.
A fucking gun.
“Keep driving.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I really hated guns. They were so unfair.
“Drive.”
“Keep the money, I don’t care,” I offered. “Just put the gun away.”
“This isn’t about the money.” Come on, it had to be a little about the money. He cocked his head and gestured with the pistol. “Drive.”
Turning off the blinker, we continued past the auto repair shop and I shot Mads a death glare.
“Don’t look at me like that. Eyes on the road. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“I’ll look where I want.” I sized him up, paying just enough attention to the road to keep us on the straight and narrow. Now, I was no gun expert, but the gun was familiar. It’s shape. The coloring. The make.
Why the hell did I feel like I knew this gun?
Then, it clicked. It looked identical to the gun Jack sported in his holster. The one he brandished above his head in Monongahela. Shit.
In that moment, I came to realize two things. One, is that I was fairly certain I was looking down the barrel of Todd’s gun, the one that had been misplaced during the assault at the cabins. And two, Mads wasn’t afraid to use it.
My skin turned cold. “How the hell do you have an FBI-issued gun, Mads?”
He looked at the weapon in his hands. “Shit.”
Mads’ attention flashed to our surroundings.
We’d passed the edge of town and were surrounded by fields as far as the eye could see.
If I kept driving straight, we wouldn’t hit another town, or another person for that matter, for miles.
Even Google Maps didn’t have this part of the road filled in, that’s how out-of-the-way we were.
“Pull over.”
“I’m not pulling over.” I took the driver’s seat for a reason.
“I don’t think you know how this works.” Mads leaned forward, but kept the gun out of my reach. “I have the gun, I make the rules.”
“I have my foot on the gas pedal, and will drive us into a tree if I have to.” Mads could also technically grab the emergency brake, but I wasn’t about to point that out.
Nor was I going to point out that we were about to approach a large swathe of flat treeless farm land.
“And I’ll have you know, I’m a really good driver, so if I decide to total half this car, it sure as hell won’t be the side I’m on. ”
Mads hadn’t been expecting that. His clutch on his weapon tightened.
“Besides you won’t shoot me.” The next part was a risk, but if Lawrence had been put up to the Seal by Mads, it only made sense that Mads wanted me to play the role. “You have a vested interest in making sure I’m unharmed. I think it has something to do with me being the key.”
“What the hell did you just say?”
“The key.”
“How the hell do you know that?” He straightened his shoulders. “I don’t know what you think you know, but let me assure you, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Don’t I?” His face was like stone, unreadable, but I kept pushing, “So, here’s what we’re going to do, Mads. You’re going to put down that gun. I’m not going to ram this car into a tree. Then you are going to explain everything to me.”
“I know that trick, Delilah.”
The trick where he explains everything and then I use his own weapon against him to get what I want—yeah, that trick. “But it’s the best option you’ve got.”
Mads’ attention didn’t waver, not for one second. His eyes were on me, unblinking, as he ran his free hand through his hair. He took five steadying breaths, and then slammed his arm against the passenger-side door. “Damn it, you sly bitch!”
“What the—”
“Your phone, toss your phone out!”
And here I was thinking he’d almost forgotten.
“Toss it out and I’ll put down the gun.”
“How do I know—”
“Just do it!”
Lowering the window, I slid my hand into my pocket, picked out the phone, and held it up for Mads to see—but not touch—before I tossed it out onto the road. “Happy?”
Mads didn’t respond. The redness of his face and the speed at which he breathed told me he was getting a grip on his temper.
Rolling up the window, I tried to get a read on what would come next. I’d followed his directions, and from the way he was actively working to calm himself, with long intentional breaths, he was considering keeping his end of the deal.
Here’s hoping I did enough to diffuse the situation…
It took a moment, but he placed his gun on his lap. Unfortunately, it was still out of my reach unless I wanted to risk some unintentional off-roading.
“You know you should be thanking me.” Mads slicked his hair back, a sudden pompous air about him. Like I should have been willing to bow down before him and kiss his rings.
Not fucking likely.
“Those assholes at the cabins—the ones that sliced your belly—they were gonna ruin everything.” His next words were a whisper, “They were gonna ruin you.”
He was talking about the two very dead masked assailants at the cabins in Monongahela. Two people who had also called me “rough around the edges”. Two people who were killed by the gun Mads held on his lap.
“Ruin me? And what, you are here to save me? Because from where I’m sitting it looks like I’m being held hostage by a murderer.”
“You’re mine,” Mads snapped, his hand flew to my throat pinning it against the headrest, his gun clambering to the floor.
I almost swerved us off the road, but regained control before the tires could snag gravel and pull us into the ditch.
If we stopped, he held all the power. “I’ve kept my eye on you for years.
Years. And they thought they were gonna bring you in?
My team? Without my say-so? No fucking way. ”
His hold, while jarring, felt more possessive than aggressive. I could still breathe, but it was difficult to pay much attention to driving with someone’s hand on my throat. I tried to pull my neck away but he pulled it back. “Bring me where? Why did you kill them?”
“I did everything. Everything! Fifteen years, Delilah. For fifteen years, you have been my burden. Mine. And those two ingrates were messing with my plans. They went behind my back and tried to take you from me.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to state the obvious. “I am not yours.”
He gave my neck a squeeze. “Oh, I’d beg to differ.”
“Let go of me, Mads, or I swear to all of the gods that I will drive you into that tree.”
He shook, his anger vibrating off him in waves, his hand still gripping my throat. “I did everything. Everything!”
His face shot closer to mine. I knew I needed to keep my cool, but my body had other plans. I flinched. Me, Delilah James. And Mads wasn’t fooled by my attempt to conceal my reaction. He’d seen it, damn it.
Mads looked at himself, his grip on my neck, then released his hold with a look I couldn’t name. “You really don’t understand.”
Rubbing my neck and clearing my throat, I gave a slow, measured response, “I can’t understand what you won’t tell me.”
“I was chosen. Chosen. Me. By the Wardens.” Mads settled back into the passenger seat, flattening his shirt as he plucked the pistol off the floor.
“They chose me to be your minder. Which means you’re my responsibility.
Mine to watch. Mine to keep safe. Mine to ensure that nothing comes between you and your role. ”
“Comes between me and my role? What do you—”
“It’s hard to be a virgin mother if you’re not a virgin now, isn’t it?”
My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t like where this was going, but I had no intention of interrupting, not when he was giving me answers.
I channeled my excess energy into my grip on the steering wheel.
“Some of those boys came close though, didn’t they?” Mads flicked his gaze over my body. “Do you know how hard that was, Delilah? How many people I had to threaten, maim, and kill to keep them from getting in your pants?”
Gross. Real gross. I didn’t want to think about that too much. Correction, I didn’t want to think about that at all.
But clarity struck like a bolt of lightning.
My cursed love-life, the reason I’d taken so long to cross the line, was because of Mads. “Oh my god, you killed him, didn’t you?” Isaiah, the first boy I dated with any seriousness who was found dead in the public pool.
“To be fair, I didn’t plan on killing him. It just happened.”
“He drowned! How was that a mistake?”
“It’s not my fault he tried to breathe under water, if he gave me two more seconds, I would have pulled him up, but he went full on panic mode, didn’t he? Started breathing in water like he had gills!”
“And Liam. You broke his legs! His family moved cross-country after that!”
“Nothing was allowed to come between you and your destiny for the Seal. You know that, right? If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. And I was a fucking saint to you.”
“What happened to Peter?” Peter and his family had just disappeared. The police didn’t even go looking for him.
“Nothing happened to Peter.”
“Tell me the fucking truth, Mads!”