Chapter 19
Ayla
It’s day two, and although the people who have identified themselves as the Cerberus motorcycle club have fed me and left me alone, I don’t feel like any less of a captive than I felt yesterday.
I didn’t sleep well, even having a door that locks between me and them.
I didn’t lock it out of fear of what trouble that may cause me.
I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep well again.
I got too accustomed to keeping such strange hours, I could feel the emptiness of the living room from inside this room in the early morning hours.
When I did try to sleep, they were active, each noise they created making me jump because it’s normal for people to be awake at fucking noon.
The high-end looking digital clock on the bedside table tells me it’s midafternoon, but I’m still sitting on the bed, watching the door.
I’m a reasonable person. I know I can get up and look out the window.
I know I can go take another shower in the en suite bathroom if I want to.
It hasn’t helped me get out of the bed and do any of those things.
I can’t help but think they’re just another group waiting for some fucking buyer to come pick me up, that they’re waiting for funds to clear or something.
They don’t have to be hurtful individual monsters to sell me to the highest bidder.
People can still lack morals and not be a rapist. They can still bear witness to atrocities and do nothing to stop them.
Just like it did whenever someone walked past my doorless room, my heart rate triples when someone knocks on the door. I regret immediately not locking it, no matter that they’re knocking rather than just shoving it open.
“Y-yes?” I manage.
The woman everyone calls Slick steps into the room, leaving the door open at her back as if she thinks it will make me feel any less trapped.
“Why do they call you Slick?” I ask, desperate to know if it’s for the reason I pictured it was.
She’s pretty enough, and regardless of the wedding rings several of the men are wearing, I have no doubt she’s spreading her legs for each of them.
A soft smile spreads across her face, and once again, I hate the way it threatens that fight-or-flight voice inside of me with how sincere she makes it look.
“It’s a name I got stuck with in the Marine Corps.”
“Is it a sexual reference?” I ask. as if I’m irritated with her wasting my time, when, honestly, I have nothing but time to spare it seems.
She scoffs. “I’ve often wondered if that might’ve made things easier for me.”
Her smile slips away when she notices the look on my face.
Alani often told me I have the angriest resting bitch face, but it comes with the territory of being responsible for so much too soon in life.
“I’m a psychologist. The guys started calling me that because they felt like I was always in their heads, trying to be slick and get them to talk about their feelings. The nickname has followed me my entire career.”
“So, not because you’re fucking all the men out there?”
She doesn’t cringe away at my vulgarness.
“My man is back home, recovering from an injury. There aren’t very many single members in Cerberus.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I ask, my suspicions growing and growing.
“I want you to feel safe.”
“Can’t exactly feel safe when I’m not allowed to leave, Slick.” I snap out her name like an insult.
“If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can call me Dr. Sullivan or even Brynn. That’s my first name.”
“Does this ‘make friends with them, give them a little information so they feel a bond,’ work on those Marines, Slick?”
She never falters, never clenches her jaw once in irritation.
“No one is going to hurt you here. You aren’t in any danger.”
“I was told the same thing before. I went days without anyone hurting me under Raul Cortez’s watch, but the pain always comes.”
She eyes the empty edge at the bottom of the bed as if she’s wanting me to offer it for her to sit down on, but we’re not fucking besties. I don’t want any one of them any closer to me than they have to be.
“It took us a while to get the video from Lindell because they cycle every ninety days. With the help of BBS, we were able to verify your story about being abducted.”
“I don’t know what a BBS is,” I mutter.
I refuse to get excited. She may have been able to verify my truth, but she hasn’t told me I’m free to go, even after accusing her and her team more than once since she walked in here of being my captors.
“BBS is Blackbridge Security. We have a really great IT specialist, but their guy, Wren, is the best in the business.”
She’s not lying about being a fucking psychologist. She’s like every other one I had the displeasure of meeting while working in the hospital. For people who say they’re there to listen, they sure do love the sound of their own fucking voices.
“Am I free to go?”
She gives me a soft smile.
“You’re free to go, but before you bolt out of here, I wanted to talk to you about some resources we have.”
“I don’t need your resources.”
“We have connections at the American Embassy. We can help you to have it fast tracked, but they won’t let us take you across the border without a copy of your passport.”
I could tell her that I don’t have a passport, that becoming a fucking parent to a teen girl at the age of twenty didn’t exactly leave much time for traveling the fucking globe.
“How long will that take?”
“A couple days.”
“And if I don’t have one?”
Her smile falters. “Longer.”
“You can’t get me across the same way I was brought here?”
The woman looks like I slapped her in the face.
I guess that’s a no then.
I push away the covers on the bed, feeling like I should apologize for having the shoes given to me on while I was in it. But I had no clue what I was going to be facing with these people.
“We can get you in touch with counseling services.”
I have no idea why her words piss me off as much as they do. I’ve said them too many times myself when people come into the emergency room having been victimized in one form or another
“I’m fine.”
She gives me another weak smile. If she’s been doing this for very long, then she knows I’m full of shit.
“Your apartment was cleaned out in Plano. It’s been rented to someone else. We can help you get back on your feet.”
“I need to see my sister,” I hiss. “She’s not safe.”
I don’t know if either of us will ever be safe again. There’s too much evil in the world, too many chances to get hurt, for me to ever stop looking over my shoulder now.
“What will you tell her?”
I freeze, turning my attention back to her.
“I’ll tell her nothing. She doesn’t need to know.”
Slick doesn’t look very impressed with my declaration, but it’s not my job to make her feel better.
“She’s going to have questions.”
“I’ll tell her I was able to make it back from Guam for Christmas,” I insist.
“Christmas was yesterday.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I might’ve known that had I felt safe using the remote on the bedside table and turning on the television.
“What will you tell her about the bruises?”
I press my fingers to the purple under my left eye. I didn’t exactly have cosmetic concerns when I flew off the table as all those men came into the recording room in a hail of bullets. I don’t know what I hit on the way down, but it left one hell of a black eye.
“You’ll have to tell her eventually. We have people who can help you work through all of it and make sure you’re in a better place to have that conversation.”
“She. Isn’t. Safe,” I repeat slower, as if she’s an idiot rather than a damned doctor because the woman isn’t fucking listening.
“We have people in Lindell keeping an eye on her.”
“That feels like a threat,” I say, my eyes running the length of her in an effort to determine whether I can get the upper hand if I lunge.
“I assure you it isn’t.”
“They said—”
“You’ll let me fucking see her or you’ll have to fucking kill me!” a man roars from the other room.
I hate the way Slick holds her hand out as she reaches for a gun concealed under her clothing.
It’s her way of telling me to stay back, that she’s willing to get hurt protecting me, and I don’t fucking like it.
It calls into memory too many things I ignored while under Pirro’s entrapment in an effort to keep my sister safe.
This woman saying she has a man back home to get back to, yet she’s willing to get hurt before that happens to protect a stranger, is fucking foreign to me.
Even fully dressed, clothes covering almost all of his wounds, I recognize him immediately. I have to determine whether I should run to him or if I really do need Slick’s protection. Honestly, it could go either way with the things that have happened between us.
Nash stands across the room, seething and a little twitchy, as he goes chest to chest with the big guy who declared himself the president.
He must sense me or he notices me move in his periphery because he turns his head, immediately locking eyes with me.
There’s shame in his eyes, but also this sense of camaraderie for the things we went through together.
He looks as stuck as I feel, as if he demanded this but never imagined he’d actually get it, and he is now torn on what to do next.
I’m the same exact way, wondering if running and hiding would be best, or if I’m meant to run in his direction.
I make the decision for both of us, stepping around Slick and walking toward him.