Chapter 17
The second Jack and Todd arrived Mads refused to talk. He simply released me, raised his hands above his head until his wrists smacked dirt. Which, truth be told, was rather anticlimactic after I had just kicked him in the face, and dropped my weight onto his stomach just to make him suffer.
Having caught enough of the exchange, the agents must’ve known there was more fury simmering beneath my skin, and I shouldn’t be trusted near the stocky man who’d all but ruined my life. Because the agents, very astutely, made sure to keep us separated while we waited for the cops to arrive.
With Mads handcuffed inside the agents’ rental car under Jack’s supervision, Todd and I spent fifteen minutes searching the cornfield for the gun I’d tossed.
We couldn’t exactly leave an FBI-registered handgun in the middle of a farm field.
It was also key to placing Mads in Monongahela, where the two masked assailants—members of his team—were killed. By him.
My back stung, sweat plastered against my skin, as I actively ignored glances from Todd through the crop. The search allowed me a moment to process just what the hell had happened, what Mads had revealed.
For the last fifteen years, Mads manipulated my life.
Unintentionally or not, he’d killed Isaiah, broken Liam’s legs, and worked with Peter and his family to make me believe they had disappeared. Mads had conditioned me to think I was cursed, or scar me so irrevocably, that I would stay away from men of my own volition. And it had worked.
Shivers of rage rolled through my body. I fought the overwhelming urge to storm past Jack, grab Mads by the collar, and punch him in the face twice more for good measure. He deserved it.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He deserved much much worse.
Mads killed my brother.
He might not have pulled the trigger, but he’d drugged and programmed him to do as he was told. Lawrence was made to believe he had to kill himself. For me. A move that not only got Lawrence out of the picture, but put me in prison.
Fucker.
Keeping my rage in check, the tips of my nails cut crescents into my palms.
Mads was going to pay.
Big time.
The good news was Mads was in our custody, and I was going to enjoy fantasizing about all the ways I planned on making him atone. I didn’t want him dead, no, that would be too easy. But maybe the agents would let me get one more swing at him.
Or we could put him in a holding cell with a faulty smoke detector that beeped at unpredictable intervals.
Or maybe, if I was extra good, they would let me pay someone off to slip some itching powder into his prison uniform. With the itching powder and the constant rubbing of the jumpsuit, it was sure to drive him up the wall…
Todd’s head appeared above the stalks next to me, his brow furrowed. That’s when I realized I'd been giggling to myself like a school girl.
Oops.
Clearing my throat, I wiped the grin off my face as I swallowed down my laughter and tried to get my thoughts back in order. It really wasn’t a laughing matter, but I needed something to keep me going. A slice of revenge. Something that wouldn’t work according to Mads’ master plan.
Of course, there was my stabbing. He hadn’t planned that. But my stabbing wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I liked to think about. At all. I’d repressed it so far inside my memory I couldn’t even remember the face of the person who’d attacked me. Couldn’t give a description. Nothing.
They were a foggy blur of grey, a spray of red.
They were pain.
To top it all off, I didn’t even know why they had done it. If they wanted me dead, surely, they could have stabbed me somewhere more lethal.
There were eighteen stab wounds across my abdomen. It wasn’t like they slipped and accidentally shanked me eighteen times. Whoever did it, had a reason, and I was beginning to think they did it because of Mads. Out of spite.
Acting on instinct, I clutched my still flat stomach.
From what Mads had said about bets and ‘doubling down’, my guess was money was exchanging hands about my role as the key.
Whoever stabbed me must have been betting against me. But why?
What were they betting on? And how was it possible that I was worth such a staggering sum?
Another laugh bubbled up. Even I wouldn’t have paid eight million dollars for me. That was ridiculous.
My thoughts were cut short as Todd gave me another pointed look above the crop. He probably thought I was losing my mind.
At least he had the decency to not point it out, instead he held up the gun we’d been searching for in his gloved hand and said, “Come on, troublemaker,” before parting the stalks and heading back towards the road.
?
Red and blue lights twirled atop the cop cars.
I caught glimpses of myself in the sedan windows which now lined the street, and I looked like a mess. Truth was, I felt like a mess, and was in need of a good long soak in a tub. Preferably, at home, in my apartment.
But that was just a dream. We were nowhere close to done dealing with Mads, and a day away from D.C.
“The first twenty-four hours are crucial,” Jack looked back at me in the rearview mirror I’d been avoiding so I wouldn’t catch sight of my reflection. “But I’ll use every tool in my arsenal to ensure he is held in custody without bail.”
Jack’s words were kind, but I could still feel the frosty edge of the trust I’d betrayed by not telling the agents about Mads earlier.
At first, when I’d revealed what I’d done back at the motel in Huntington, and why I needed to go to Eureka, they were angry.
Very fucking angry that I’d kept Mads, and his unannounced visits, from them.
And they were even more fucking angry that I had agreed to put myself in an unnecessarily compromised situation, just to get some information.
There were a lot of “how are we supposed to help if you keep secrets?” and “how can we trust you when you go off and put yourself in danger?”
Pushing through the discomfort, I had told them everything.
Showed them the pictures of the steam mirror messages. Told them about the confrontation in my apartment after returning home from the Almeidas.
How I’d been told not to trust the red-tape.
Once they’d gotten over the initial shock of what had been going on right beneath their noses, I told them about the letter, the safety deposit box, and Mads’ self-professed connection to my brother.
Which did not go over well.
Todd actually considered revoking my apology ginger ale. The nerve. Instead, Todd left the motel room, slamming the door shut behind him.
His departure, however, only lasted a minute before he returned, his breathing controlled, his response measured, “Is that everything?”
After I confirmed I’d purged all the Mads-related secrets from my system, and gave what felt like a thousand more apologies, Todd and Jack shared a look.
“Then we’d better get going,” Jack sighed, as he began packing away the few belongings he’d taken out of his bag. “We’ll need another car if we want the Muffin Man to think Delilah made the trip herself. We’ll hatch a plan while we’re on the road.”
“Delilah drives with me,” Todd declared. It made sense, we needed a voice in the car if we were driving over separately while working through the logistics, but it felt like our friendship had taken ten steps back. He wanted to keep an eye on me.
And I was about to press my luck. “An hour or two out, you’ll need to swap cars so I’m seen driving into town alone.”
While Todd just stared, Jack nodded, giving Todd a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he brushed past. “I’ll inform the motel we’ll be checking out.”
With Jack’s exit, I didn’t want to deal with any more emotional fallout, so I made to collect my belongings from the adjoining room.
My intent, however, was cut short as Todd grabbed ahold of my arm, just firm enough to get my attention.
“This means I’ll be checking your phone.
Not just location.” He raised his brows. “No more funny business.”
To an outsider, it would seem that Todd was angry, and was revoking permissions he’d bestowed on me.
But I read between the lines.
Our friendship wasn’t lost. He was warning me.
Again.
Without using those exact words, he was telling me to delete anything that I didn’t want to be found.
The flirty text messages between Jack and me came to mind.
But I was certain they had only been flirty given the context, how they were read, rather than what was said.
I mean, Jack and I both knew my device was FBI-monitored, there had been a reason I didn’t bother deleting them.
Jack didn’t seem to mind sending them either…
“You couldn’t wait to tell me in the car?”
“It’s dark.” He released my arm, but I could still feel the lingering warmth. “And I’ll be driving.”
Without further fanfare, the three of us made the drive to Eureka together, albeit in two separate cars, driving through the night to make it to my hometown by morning.
We worked in enough time to plan our routes. To map out where Jack and Todd would station themselves within viewing-range of the bank and the parking lot.
We’d also agreed that if I found myself getting taken to a secondary location by Mads, that I should get myself into a position of power—also known as staying conscious and not getting locked in the trunk—and they’d give me a two-minute head start.
I tried to negotiate three, so I’d have more time to grill Mads, but neither agent had been excited by the prospect of letting me out of their sight that long.
Understandable, given the situation and secrets I’d been keeping. Secrets I kept…
“—else, Delilah?” Jack’s voice brought me back to the present.
My eyes blurred over from watching the cornfields of Eureka whisk by, I’d missed whatever it was that Jack said, which was still awaiting my response. My mind had been elsewhere, and I didn’t have it in me to tell him I hadn’t been listening.
“Uhhh…yes?”
“You know what, never mind. Your mind is elsewhere. We’ll handle it at the station.”
Even though everything went according to plan, Mads in custody and riding in the cop car ahead of us, the agents’ displeasure was still palpable.
I didn’t expect immediate forgiveness for my actions, and truth be told, they’d handled the discovery of my clandestine activities a lot better than I’d been expecting.
But I could still feel the weight of their disappointment, and it was crushing.
And that was before Todd turned in his seat to glare at me.
Of course, I did what any well-adjusted woman in my position would do, and crossed my arms over my chest and glared right back. Though my return glare seemed to go unnoticed, as Todd furrowed his brow and turned his attention to the glove box. There was some zipping and the staticky pull of Velcro.
“Drink this.” Todd tossed a room temperature juice box at me.
Orange juice, just like when I’d been stabbed and sutured in the back of the car in Monongahela.
“Why do you—"
“Drink.”
“—have a juice box?”
“I always have a juice box. Drink.”
“Why?”
“Because you look thirsty.”
I was, in fact, parched, and if I thought about it further, I was very close to plummeting off my candy-induced sugar high. “No, I mean why do you always have a juice box?”
Todd shuffled his bulging mass of muscle so that he faced me completely. “Why does Jack always have his dice?” They were swinging from the rear-view mirror as always.
“Because we are constantly in rental cars, and need to be able to quickly identify which one is ours?” I was always able to figure out which car was ours, even if the make and model changed all the time.
“True.” Jack kept his eyes on the road as he poked the furry dice. “And they’re fun.”
Todd rolled his eyes. “Because we need to be prepared. I always have a med kit. Always in the car, with sutures and a juice box.”
If I thought about it, I did notice him constantly tucking first aid kits into the rental cars we used. It made sense given Todd’s medic training. If we were in an emergency situation the car should always be near us.
In theory.
I turned the juice box over in my hands. “You going to keep watching me until I drink it?”
“Yep.”
Todd didn’t budge. Neither did I.
Guess we were doing this the hard way.
Not breaking eye contact, I grabbed the plastic straw and stabbed it through the foil. I brought my lips to the straw and sucked.
Now, what I had meant to happen, was for this to look like an act of rebellion. Maybe flip Todd off for good measure, before he turned around with a huff at my superiority. But with my lips circling the neck of the straw, eyes on Todd’s unwavering stare, there was a slithering in my stomach.
Perhaps a bit lower.
Todd didn’t turn around. No, he stared back with equal measure. Eyes only dipping momentarily, to where I sucked on the straw.
Oh god, this was a bad idea.
Orange burst on my tongue. I swallowed.
Todd choked.
My core clenched as I did everything in my power not to aspirate the liquid.
Juice pooled on my bottom lip as I released the straw. I should have used the back of my hand to wipe it away, but it was so covered in dirt I’d only be adding to the mess. My tongue acted on reflex, darting out to grab the droplet.
Something about the situation changed.
My heart thudded in my ears. A shiver skittered across my skin.
Neither of us was willing to concede. It was a battle of wills and I wasn’t going to lose.
Jack must have sensed that Todd and I were both too stubborn to step down because he waved a hand between the two of us to cut the tension. “Staring contest later. Todd, can you send an update to the team? Divert them to Huntington, while we get things squared away here.”
Todd, unfazed by Jack’s interruption, took a steadying breath, and raised a brow. “Was that so hard?”
Yes.
But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a response. If I had, I most definitely would have said, “No.” Just to aggravate him.
Instead, I sipped my orange juice in silence, returning my gaze out the window and ignoring the feeling that it was exactly what I needed, even though I hadn’t known it myself.