13. Louise
I feel like a shoebox filled with tinkling little pieces of broken glass as Caz carries me from the bathroom into the dingy sitting room where I’ve been kept on a ratty futon for the last few days.
Each time I move one of my limbs, it feels like I rattle the box—little shards of glittering razor-sharp pain cutting away at my insides.
I wanted to fuck Caz. I wanted to fuck him so bad—and he felt so fucking good inside me that I almost forgot that the whole reason I’d entrapped him in the first place was to escape this shithole and get free of this fucking nightmare.
How fucked up do you have to be to feel like the only time you’ve ever connected with someone physically and emotionally at such a deep level…
was while you were getting dicked down by one of your practically anonymous terrorist captors?
I’ve read about Stockholm Syndrome—about how it’s essentially a hoax.
I’ve listened to hours of testimony from hostages and FBI conflict negotiators…
and I can’t explain myself. I can’t outrun this shame.
Even worse, I can’t deny the connection I felt with Caz; something I’ve never experienced—even with long-term partners.
I thought for certain, when push came to shove—any of these bozos would waste me rather than compromise their own safety.
If I had wanted to, I could have killed Caz. He put his life in my hands after I put mine in his. I’d be lying if I said the connection—the passion I felt with him, that I have never once glimpsed before now—didn’t play into my choice to spare his life.
Now we both have to live with the uncomfortable truth of the limits of our own cruelty.
Then there’s the matter of the ‘truths’ the Saints have been selectively feeding to me since Seb and I’s little dinner the other night; my parents weren’t just research scientists who worked for a large pharmaceutical company—they were working not only for the government but also for shadow organizations who wished to use my parents’ research into designations and fated mates for nefarious purposes.
Even though I was generally unwell as a young child and spent lots of time in and out of various hospitals, my parents never brought their work home with them to a place where I could see it.
Both my mother and father were highly dedicated to what they saw as their calling, their life’s work—but neither had actually made any groundbreaking, life-altering discoveries in the field—as far as I knew.
For all I know Frank Stone was full of shit when he said that the terrifying ‘suppressant melter’ gas he dosed me with the other night was one of the fruits of my parents labors, but if there’s even an icicle’s chance in hell that he was telling the truth—then there’s a great deal to be afraid of.
Especially if my parents were somehow behind the mysterious Zeitnot virus and I am somehow the key to finding a cure.
I surface from my dissociative haze to the loud rumbling of my stomach, my body comfortably buzzing and warm from both the bath and the deep satisfaction of cumming on Caz’s hard cock.
Shaking off the memory of our bodies together—of the easy, almost inevitable feeling of our congress; I wiggle my toes in the wrinkled bed sheets on the futon, flex my fingers, and wet my lips slightly before I offer Caz a weak, ‘Thank you,’ unsure of how long we’ve been standing there in silence, or if I’m thanking him for the shampoo and condition, the clean sweats, or for making me cum—making me feel.
He looks away from me as I crawl into the sweatpants, tank, and pullover hoodie that he’s laid out for me while we wait for Frank and Q to return home with proper clothes for me, and a more robust plan of action for our next moves.
I’m about to ask him if we can go bother Seb to make us some lunch when the door blasts open, flying off its hinges into the room with us.
Two FBI agents in undercover duds with badges on ball chains burst into the living room—guns clutched in their hands pointed directly at Caz and I.
“FBI! Get down! Hands on the back of your head!” Dennis’ voice calls from the back of the pack—his telltale strawberry blond hair covered by a Liberty City Ballers cap.
My body moves on its own—my arms stretched wide, hands open—fingers splayed as I step in front of Caz.
“AGENT LOUISE PENNY, FBI—DON’T SHOOT!” I use my loudest, most authoritative sigma bark—two of the beta field agents up front lower their firearms immediately on instinct.
“Hold your fire!” Dennis screams—dropping the muzzle of his own gun as he pushes to the front of the group.
“Dennis!” I can’t contain the sob of joy that escapes me as I take a staggering step toward him.
“Louie,” he gasps—his own voice tight with tears as he holsters his gun. “Hold your fire!” he repeats himself, as I take another trembling stride forward.
I catch the movement from the corner of my eye. One of the alpha field agents up front moves his thumb to the hammer of his gun. The business end pointed between Caz’s eyes.
“Louise Penny, FBI—do not shoot!” I yelp, my voice cracking with desperation as I watch this nightmare situation unfold in slow motion before me.
Evidently, the alpha field agent has other plans—I hear the click of his hammer seconds before Caz closes his arms around my waist—dropping us both to the ground; the sound of the gunshot reaches me a split second before the burning sensation blossoms in my cheek.
In the split second that it takes Caz and I to fall to the floor, two shots are fired from behind us—through the narrow kitchen cut-out window, dropping the two agents at the front of the formation—pools of deep crimson blood spread beneath their slumped bodies on the poured concrete floor.
“I said hold your fire!” Dennis uses his alpha bark, withdrawing back through the metal apartment door frame to duck out of range.
What the fuck is this? Isn’t this supposed to be a rescue mission? A retrieval? This isn’t a beginner’s job. How the hell is some non-rookie ‘accidentally’ hitting me in the line of fire? No SWAT, no Kevlar, no uniforms. Whatever it is, I don’t fucking like it.
Suddenly, there’s more gunfire from behind me. Quentin has appeared, seemingly from nowhere; a gun in his single-handed grip. He peels off a couple of rounds—dropping the remaining visible agents that haven’t retreated per Dennis’ orders.
A small ferret-faced agent that I recognize as a member of an ATF field squad ducks his head into the frame only for a fraction of a second—the shining barrel of his dart rifle coming into view just as he fires at Quentin.
The dart doesn’t even have time to fully load the dose of whatever sinister serum is inside before Quentin pulls the tufted metal projectile from his upper shoulder.
The ferret-faced man looks on in shock and horror as Quentin seems totally unphased.
His eyes dart to mine—making momentary contact.
This man knows me, or at the very least, recognizes me.
There’s a complete shock and terror that widens and hollows his expression—as if this outcome wasn’t imagined possible.
Admittedly, I’m a little shocked that Quentin hardly seems to have batted an eyelash. Was it a tranquilizer? Some other catalyst? Quentin is certainly massive for an omega—but even that wouldn’t account for his complete and total lack of reaction to a tranquilizer or some other inhibitor.
“I said stand the fuck down Navitz! We haven't been authorized to use—” Dennis begins barking at the agent with the gun from their safe hiding places behind the door frame when a loud metallic plink and a low thud draws the attention of the room, a small canister lands a few feet in front of us, rolling toward the door frame.
“Move it!” Seb screams at us from his place crouched in the kitchen—Caz and I shoot up from the floor just as the canister begins belching sinister looking plum colored smoke from one end.
“Cover your nose and mouth,” Caz snaps at me, pulling the sweatshirt’s collar up and over the lower half of my face—pushing me in front of him, behind Seb and Quentin, down the hall and toward one of the extra bedrooms down the narrow passage.
We scramble through Frank’s temporary bedroom and onto the rickety fire escape outside his window.
Beside me, Seb and Quentin clutch their guns as Caz dials Frank on his burner phone.
“We pulled up front—Q and I saw the Feds penetrating the building and he went in even though I fuckin told him not to! Now I see smoke—what the fuck is going on up there?” I can hear Frank loud and clear on the other end of the line as Caz kicks the fire escape ladder down its rusty tracks.
“Pull around the right side of the building,” Caz snaps as Seb reaches into the messenger bag slung over his shoulder—his hand emerging with another mysterious metal cylinder.
“But you’ve got company on the left,” Frank argues from a distance as a black SUV rounds the corner into the alley.
“Yeah, we’ll take care of that. Come around the right—keep the alley open from that side,” Seb quips at the phone in Caz’s hands, raising the mysterious metallic item to his face—his pearly canines closing over the metal ring threaded through the makeshift grenade’s pin.
“Cover your ears!” Seb spits the metal ring from his mouth before yelling to Caz, Quentin, and I.
I watch as one of Seb’s homemade incendiary devices sails through the air in a high arc—ending its downward trajectory on the hood of the big black monstrosity with a resounding, flaming BOOM!
An ugly, wine colored Lincoln sedan screeches around the right corner. Frank explodes from the driver’s seat—gun already in hand as he takes a wide, legged stance on the sidewalk beside the car.
“Let’s go!” Caz screams—hustling down the metal ladder—urging me after him.
The four of us all speed toward the Lincoln; Caz dropping easily into the driver’s seat with Quentin riding shotgun—Frank shoving me into the middle of the back bench seat, he and Seb lunging into the seats on either side of me before slamming their doors—tearing off into the busy city streets in the midday sun.
“Somebody wanna tell me why the fuck our hostage is running around uncuffed while we were getting raided by the goddamn FBI?” Frank bellows, cranking down the Lincoln’s ancient back window—his gun still drawn, eyes on the road, Caz’ side mirror all the while.
“Not particularly,” Caz groans as he screeches down another narrow side street, bound for one of the busy tunnel exits from Liberty City to the westbound highway that will carry us to our next destination—wherever that may be.
“Did you at least manage to bring the hard drives with us?” Quentin presses from the front passenger seat—his own gun drawn—his mirrored aviators obscuring his gaze.
“Yeah, I got ‘em, a good batch of night-night juice, and a few bric-à-brac for the road,” Seb pants, reaching a hand into the bag, rummaging around.
“Alright—then, what are you waiting for? Make Little Lucifer here go night-night; we need to start making tracks toward safehouse D,” Frank growls as we make our way into the westbound underpass, no evidence of a tail in our sights.
“She could have run!” Caz protests as Seb pulls an auto injector of the eponymous ‘night-night juice’ from his bag as Frank, satisfied that no one is following us, holsters his gun and grips my shoulders to keep me still.
“She could have let them shoot me!” Caz keens—his icy blue eyes finding mine in the rear view mirror.
This gives Seb pause, even if neither Frank nor Quentin look unmoved.
“All of you fucking morons,” I croak a low laugh, going limp in Frank’s hands, my head lolling back as I laugh. “Whether crooked Saints or boys in blue—none of you sick fucks really care if I live or die, do you?”
I watch Q shift uncomfortably from his seat up front.
“What makes you fuckers any different from the people you say you’re fighting against, huh?”I laugh joylessly, hot salt tears streaming down my face.
“Absolutely fucking nothing, that’s what,” I snort, watching Seb’s hands—frozen above my right leg, the red safety knob of the autoinjector already disengaged.
“Oh, come the fuck on Seb!” Frank snaps—one of his hands flying from its place on my shoulder to snatch the tranquilizing serum from Seb’s hand, driving the needle into my thigh with a spring loaded click; the burning sensation in my leg is the last thing I feel before my consciousness melts away again.