Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was now or never.
Bodhi was occupied, speaking on his phone with his back to me, eyes out the open hangar, not paying attention.
Jason was standing next to the airstairs, talking to the pilot.
If I got on that plane, that would be it.
Atlanta could plead with Tom to send a team to Berlin to get me, but unless he was feeling altruistic, I’d be fucked.
I had no doubt Mason would come for me, and when he did, he’d rally his team—eight against Jason’s army was a battle I didn’t want to consider.
I couldn’t let Mason get hurt because of me. He’d try to save me without regard for his safety.
They’d left me to sit in a chair while the jet was being prepared for takeoff.
My only chance at keeping Mason safe was to escape.
Abandon my mission and sneak away while both men were occupied.
I had Jason in profile. He was a classically handsome man.
Back in the day, I understood my sister’s fascination with him; he’d been good looking then too.
He’d been attentive and affectionate. He’d made her laugh, called her pretty girl, and he’d even pretended to be a gentleman, opening doors for her and my mother.
Until someone experienced trauma, they couldn’t fully comprehend all the ways it takes over your life. How your brain latches onto a particular thought until it’s all you can think about—obsess over. The inconsequential consumes your every waking hour even when, logically, you know it’s trivial.
My sister had died in the ugliest of ways.
She’d lived through years of abuse and torture, yet my mind kept circling back to the moment Jason had turned on her.
The moment when she realized the man she loved was not the gentleman she’d thought, but Satan.
The confusion and fear she must’ve felt. The pain of his treachery.
Every kiss, every touch, every sweet word a lie rolling off his forked tongue.
Did she fight? Did she try to run? Did he tie her up, drug her, did he hurt her before he’d handed her over to his father?
The answers wouldn’t bring Lili back. Knowing would only give my brain more information to torment me with, yet that’s where my mind went.
My trauma response was the need to revive the trauma—keep it alive. Endure more pain so I never forgot Lili.
I couldn’t stop the cycle.
I now associated my big sister with suffering—hers, my family’s, my mother’s drinking. Any memories of happiness had been lost to me. My sole focus had been on her final years.
My need for revenge.
I’d convinced myself the only way I’d find peace was if I killed Jason.
Then I met Mason . . . and within a few days, he’d proved me wrong.
Could I give up a twenty-year vendetta for a man who I’d known for a handful of days?
This doesn’t feel like friends.
Um. What does it feel like?
Like you’re mine.
Was I Mason’s? He sure made me feel like I was.
I looked away from Jason, out the hangar, and took in nothing but brown sand as far as the eye could see, with a makeshift air traffic tower next to the runway.
Was it too late? If I managed to slip out, there were only a handful of buildings I could hide in or behind. My white T-shirt and jeans would do me no favors blending into the wasteland. I had no weapon. Both Jason and Bodhi were armed.
Shit odds.
However slim the possibility, I had to try to run.
“You always win!” Lili yelled from behind me.
“Not always,” I huffed, and bent double to rest my hands on my thighs.
I glanced over at the Atlantic and tried to catch my breath while Lili caught up to me, standing on the finish line we’d drawn in the sand.
“I wish we could move here,” Lili said when she made it to me.
“You just want to tell people you live in Kill Devil Hills.”
My sister’s laughter drowned out the sound of the ocean.
“Not true. I want to build sandcastles and skim board and twirl in the ocean.”
I watched Lili spin on the wet sand, and the white foamy seawater danced around her ankles.
“I want that too,” I told her.
Lili stopped spinning and smiled at me. “You don’t always have to want what I want, CeCe.”
Her declaration felt like a punch to my stomach. Did she not want me to like the same things as her? “But you’re my sister.”
Lili skipped back to me and grabbed my hand, pulling me into the water until it lapped at our knees.
“You’ll always be my sister, even if when we grow up, I move to Paris and you move to New Zealand.”
I didn’t want to move to New Zealand.
“But—”
Lili squeezed my hand and gave my arm a slight jerk. “What I’m saying is, no matter what, we’re sisters. You don’t have to like the beach or softball or painting. I’ll love you even if you don’t like what I like. I just want my little sister to be happy.”
“I want you to be happy too, Lil.”
She tugged my hand, stepping farther out into the surf.
“Lil and CeCe, best friends forever!” she shouted, lifting our hands above my head.
“Lil and CeCe, best friends forever!” I echoed.
With a rebel yell, my fearless sister dove under the water, taking me with her.
I shook free of the memory—our last vacation to North Carolina. The next year, my parents had taken us to Daytona, and Lili discovered the orange-sand beach at Flagler. From that year on, every summer until Lili went missing, we’d spent a week together in Florida.
Good times I’d forced myself to forget.
The best of times.
Lil and CeCe, more than sisters—best friends, happily sitting on the beach doing nothing but spending time together. Just being us.
I glanced back at Jason, the truth slamming into my chest with such force it knocked the air from my lungs. A truth I’d buried because it didn’t fit my narrative. A truth I’d ruthlessly denied so I could plan and plot and do so free of guilt.
Liliya would hate this.
She’d hate all the years I’d wasted, keeping the worst years of her life alive and forgetting the love we’d shared.
My sister would be pissed, and when Lili was angry, she was hell on wheels. She’d chew me out and not hide her disappointment.
It was time.
To give up the past.
To stop resuscitating the pain.
To start healing from the loss of her.
But first, it was time I got my ass up and out the door.
Fuck Jason Anderson.
God would be the judge of his soul.
Bodhi abruptly dropped his phone. The clatter of it hitting the concrete echoed through the hangar. I watched as he yanked his rifle up, the combat sling smoothly adjusting as he fitted the rear of the stock to his shoulder. His gaze swiftly cut to me, but he spoke to Jason. “We have company.”
Company?
“Get ready to leave,” Jason said to the pilot as he drew his sidearm.
I bolted out of the chair, uncaring it fell back in my haste, and took off running.
I was nearly at the door when Jason’s hand caught my hair. With a vicious yank that made my scalp scream in pain, he spun me around. I only had seconds to lift my arms and cover my face before he hammered down the butt of his gun.
My temple exploded in pain. The flow of blood fast on its heels.
Before I could get my bearings, Jason used my hair to drag me back into the middle of the hangar, toward the plane that would be my death sentence.
I spun, ignoring the pain of my hair being wrenched in the process, and punched his forearm. As soon as the pistol flew out of his hand, I elbowed the bicep of the arm that still had my hair in his grasp.
“Fucking—” he shouted.
If he meant to say more, it was cut off by gunfire.
Before I got hit by one of the bullets that were slamming into the back wall of the hangar, I needed to end this.
I kicked the inside of Jason’s knee, the resulting howl of pain making my heart swell with joy. Unfortunately, my elation was short lived. On his way down to the concrete, Jason grabbed ahold of my shirt and took me down with him.
I landed on my hip. More pain exploded up my spine as Jason tumbled on top of me.
I twisted to my side, freed my elbow from under Jason, and swung it back as hard as I could. I heard his grunt. I reached behind me, feeling for any soft tissue I could pinch, pull, or gouge.
I swung another wild elbow, connected with something hard right before Jason punched me in the back of the head. I blinked away the blood, now flowing freely over my brow and impairing the vision in my right eye.
I felt the tip of a knife press on the right side, just below my ribs, and froze. I didn’t know how long I’d make it if he stabbed me in my liver.
Jason maneuvered to his knees, digging the tip of his blade into my side.
“I should’ve just killed you,” he ground out.
For the first time in twenty years, I cared if I died.
Wasn’t that inconvenient. Here was my chance to kill my sworn enemy, but I could die in the process.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black-clad body sneak into the hangar, followed by a second one with broad shoulders. The men were masked, but I’d know Mason anywhere, and those shoulders were Fallon’s.
“Should’ve taken both of you. Bet that sniveling bitch would’ve been easier to break if I had you as incentive. Instead, all she did was beg and cry. Took fucking months to shut her up.”
Red.
Blood red.
Murderous red.
My vision blurred with it. The room went hazy with it. My veins throbbed with fury.
The snap of a bullet rang out.
Jason’s body slumped over me. But no sooner had it landed on my chest than it was being pulled off.
“Calli.”
I looked at Jason Anderson, face down on the floor.
Dead.
Not by my hand.
“Calista.”
Gone.
No more one more thing.
“Calli, baby.” Mason’s gloved hand wrapped around my upper arm and pulled me up. “Sweetness, I need you to talk to me. There’s too much blood. I don’t know where you’re hurt.”
“Head,” I said by rote.
“Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me,” he groaned, and pulled me to his chest. “We need to get you out of here.”
I shook my head.
“Calli, before Amir’s men get here, we need to exfil now.”
I shuffled around Mason. I needed to see him one more time.
Dead. Just dead.
“Come on, baby.”
When I didn’t move, Mason swept me up into his arms.
Four times.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit this one to memory, but just in case, I closed my eyes and let Mason carry me away from the man who had stolen everything from me.