Chapter Nine
Reyna and Jodie still didn’t move. Not while they waited to see if anyone would follow. Then the front door slid open. A sliver of light shot over the body bags, and Meghan’s voice rang out. “We’re in the clear, ladies. Come out of there.”
They both yanked down the zippers and tossed the bags aside with eager excitement. It was done. It was over. Finally.
“We’re free,” Reyna whispered. Her eyes moved to Jodie’s equally dark ones. “We’re really free.”
“I can’t believe it,” Jodie said. “When y’all said you were getting me out, I thought you were full of shit. But it really worked. We’re really gone.”
“I dreamed of getting out. I even plotted for it. But I never knew if it was really possible.”
“I didn’t even dream,” Jodie whispered.
Reyna frowned at that statement. She wondered how long Jodie had been inside Visage. How long a person had to be held captive before they gave up any hope of being rescued or escaping.
Meghan came forward with a switchblade. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“What…” Meghan snatched up Reyna’s arm without warning and dug into her forearm. Reyna howled and tried to pull her arm away, but Meghan held Reyna steady. Meghan stuck the tip of the knife into the wound she’d created, and out popped a tiny piece of metal.
“Sorry,” Meghan said. She held the little tracker in her hand. “We can’t take any chances.”
“A little warning next time.”
“You don’t like needles or blood. I wasn’t going to take my chances with you being squeamish,” Meghan told her. She was already bandaging up the wound with the efficiency of a real nurse. Reyna wondered which parts of her personality were an act and which parts were reality.
“I’m not squeamish,” Jodie said, offering Meghan her arm. “Get this sucker out of me.”
Meghan made quick work of removing Jodie’s tracker as well. After Jodie was patched up, Meghan dropped both devices into a plastic bag and sealed it shut.
“What are you going to do with them?” Reyna asked. She was applying pressure to her arm in the way that Nancy had shown her dozens of times with the IVs. She was practically a pro at blood loss.
“Decoy. They already know that you’re missing.” Her eyes darted between Reyna and Jodie. “One of you, at least, if not both by now. We’re going to need to get rid of these.”
“So like…who the hell are you people?” Jodie asked.
“Elle,” Reyna answered for Meghan.
“What the fuck is an L? Like a capital letter?”
Meghan sighed. “Elle, like the name, is the underground rebellion organization working against Visage. It was started by a human named Elle who opposed Visage’s rise to power.
She was killed in Elle’s Rebellion a decade ago, and we’ve been working as a rebel group ever since.
Our goal is for vampire and human autonomy and equality. ”
Jodie snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“We broke you out of prison,” Meghan said. “We’re doing good work here.”
“I’m a realist. I appreciate y’all saving my ass back there, but no one is taking down Visage.”
Meghan blew out a frustrated breath. “Whether you believe that or not is up to you. Some of us are risking our necks to try to make it a reality.”
“All right.”
Reyna could see the tough-girl routine for what it was: Jodie was scared. This behavior was bulletproof armor against the world. Reyna knew what that was like—had endured situations where she had needed her own armor. It was necessary. Shedding it would be hard.
“Just leave it,” Reyna told Meghan.
“Okay. Be ready to move when I tell you to. Tye is going to give us the signal, and then I need both of you on me. We have another short drop window. Hopefully we haven’t already missed it.”
Everyone fell silent at that. They weren’t at headquarters yet, which meant everything could still fall apart. As the truck bumped along, the three women stood tensely in the back, waiting.
Finally, the vehicle slowed and rolled to a stop in a gravel parking lot that sent the women and all the equipment bouncing. Reyna reached for the side of the truck to steady herself, but Meghan was already launching herself to the back of their getaway car.
“Are you coming or what?”
They darted after her, and as soon as they jumped down out of the back, they received no reprieve from the outside temperatures, which were also frigid.
Reyna did the math in her head. She’d been kidnapped in September.
The leaves hadn’t yet started changing in the park outside of Beckham’s penthouse.
The colder temperatures had barely graced the evenings.
Now, it was November…after Thanksgiving.
It was a bitterly cold morning, with thick dark clouds overhead and a slow drizzle.
Not quite cold enough to freeze, but cold and wet enough to be annoying.
She hustled out into the rain and sprinted with Meghan over to a nondescript pickup truck and a dilapidated sedan.
Meghan handed off a baggie with the trackers to Xavier, a large Black man with short, coiled hair and a menacing glare.
Vampire. It was written all over him. She knew that vampires worked with Elle—Beckham did, after all—but it was still surprising to see a vampire running a prison break detail or getting into a piece-of-shit, rusted-out car.
“Thank you,” Reyna managed.
Xavier shot her a swift smile that barely touched his lips before speeding off into the distance with the trackers.
Tye hopped into the front seat of the pickup truck. “Over here.”
Reyna followed Jodie into the back seat of the extended cab while Meghan took the passenger seat. As soon as the door was closed, Tye took off like a bullet.
The ride was tense and silent. At one point, sirens blared in the distance.
Meghan chewed on her lip and kept glancing out the window.
Only when they were far enough away that the sirens were just a distant ringing did Meghan straighten once more and exude all the confidence Reyna had already grown accustomed to.
“Sorry about this,” she said, tossing Reyna a black mask. She dug around in a bag for another second and then passed a black strip of fabric to Jodie. “It’ll be safer, in case something happens, if you don’t know where the entrance to headquarters is. We blindfold all newbies.”
Jodie grumbled something vulgar under her breath and held up the blindfold. “You think this will fit around my hair?”
“We’ll switch,” Reyna said, offering her the mask.
Jodie grumbled again, wrestling the fabric over her voluminous hair. “Congrats. I can’t see shit.”
Reyna stared down at the blindfold in her hands.
It was basically just a black tie. Her hands shook as she thought of all the times she’d been forced to wear a blindfold.
When Beckham had led her down to the Vault before the fires wiped out the club, when she’d been kidnapped from Everett’s apartment, on her way to the ball where Harrington had forced her to watch Beckham with Penny.
“Reyna,” Meghan said softly in her nurse voice. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said unconvincingly.
Nothing was okay. As she slid the blindfold over her eyes, she didn’t know if anything would ever be okay again.
…
As soon as their truck came to a stop, Reyna yanked the blindfold off as quickly as she could. Her heart had hammered and her hands had shaken the entire way. She hadn’t removed the blindfold before it was time, but only with great effort.
They were in some sort of underground garage. Before them was a solid, steel door. They hadn’t driven very far since she’d been blindfolded, and still she had no idea where they were or what was on the other side of that door.
“Honey, we’re home,” Tye singsonged with a wide grin.
It had been so long since Reyna had seen anyone this genuinely happy.
She honestly couldn’t remember ever seeing a smile that vibrant before.
Had his life been that pleasant? Joy was not something that came naturally to her, even before the kidnapping.
Now…well, let’s just say the glass was half empty.
Jodie pursed her lips at his enthusiasm, which made Reyna feel marginally better. Meghan and Tye got out of the front seats and corralled her and Jodie out of the back.
Trepidation bit at Reyna. What was Elle, anyway? What would they expect of her? Had she traded one prison for another?
One thought propelled her forward: Beckham. He was part of this organization. If he trusted them, then she would give it a shot.
Then her heart fluttered. Beckham.
All those weeks, she’d had to lock him away in a far-off place.
He helped her through the tough moments, but she couldn’t think of him without breaking.
Through all of that…she’d worried that she would never see him again.
Be in a room with him, hold him, touch him, love him once more.
She’d left that part of her life for her dreams. Those sweet, toxic dreams.
But now she was here. He was here. She would see him. They could be together again. Her heart expanded with hope. It was all right behind that door.
Tye entered a security password and looked into a retinal scanner before the door hissed open on silent hinges.
Meghan looped her arm through Reyna’s and strode inside behind Tye and a fearless Jodie.
It opened to a sky-blue room with wooden floors and paintings hanging from the walls.
It was clear and light and even comforting.
No whitewashed walls or white-tiled floor.
No antiseptic or hospital smell. No bright light overhead. Just a room. An empty room.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting. A welcome party, maybe? Beckham standing there with open arms? Anything would have been better than nothing.
“Welcome to Elle,” Meghan whispered to Reyna. “Welcome home.”
Home.