Chapter 20
I crawled back into the cramped space and hid myself until my muscles screamed.
Quiet returned, but it couldn’t erase the echo of Beck’s anguished cry.
It haunted my skull, playing over and over, until I wanted to scream like he did.
I focused on the distant sound of waves crashing against the dock.
The rhythmic slap brought me back from the edge.
How long could I wait here in the dark? Long enough for each breath to taste of salt.
For the panic to boil and spill over my burning eye-rims and coat my cheeks with tears.
I wasn’t like Adelaide, who saved her tears until they refused to be suppressed any longer.
Her emotions were inconvenient, and she let herself feel them rarely, and only around people she trusted.
I used to cry a lot when I was younger.
Frustration and anger made me break the easiest. That all changed the day my mom died.
My shoe got stuck between a train track, and my friends abandoned me.
I watched their blurred forms disappear into the forest as my fingers scraped my laces.
Double-knotted and impossible to untie. The train horn blew as it turned the corner, and I cried even harder.
My chest ached, lungs burned and my thighs trembled as I finally slipped my trapped foot from my shoe.
Wind tossed me onto the rocks beside the track as the train buffeted past. My ears split with another cracking horn. I’d almost died, and on my way home, I fell apart with that knowledge. I cried desperate, messy tears throughout the ten-minute bike ride. Vowing never to speak to my friends again.
I’d been acting out ever since I broke up with my stupid boyfriend and met a man I couldn’t forget. I felt the burn of his gaze on the back of my neck at all hours.
I wanted my mom’s arms, even if she was drunk. So desperate for her warmth, I didn’t realize we had guests when I stumbled in the front door. One shoe on, one lodged between a train track. I tore off my dirty sock and flung it toward the couch.
Where two drug dealers were beating Mom.
I had already wept a flood, with no tears left as they buried me with my dying mom. Tears didn’t come so easily going forward. What was there to cry about that was worse than what happened that day?
But sitting in that dark hole, the tears came.
They wouldn’t stop. The wound on my arm didn’t help, pinching with red-hot pain that wavered my vision every time I moved.
I had to fold myself like a pretzel to fit inside.
Iron coated my tongue, mingling with the salt-peppered air.
My knees dug into the wall, numb and cold.
The adrenaline I relied so much on was waning, and with its absence came more pain. The kind I couldn’t grit my teeth against.
“Hide for me, Little Liar.”
I knew he meant more with those words. Beck didn’t want me to rescue him.
He was gone, dragged out by The Unseen with as much care as a flour sack.
Purple streaks painted the dusky sky, and the floodlight glinted through the askew blind.
On the broken window, one shard was dark with blood. Had Beck injured himself climbing out?
I muffled a sob as the flash of Beck’s body slumping on the ground filled my thoughts again.
Had Ray and Jonah suffered the same fate?
Would The Unseen take them in or just kill them?
I breathed through my fingers, wrinkling my nose as the scent of iron filled my lungs.
Death was my companion, and my weapon. I lived and breathed for years, knowing death could choose me.
I couldn’t face another day without them.
Three men had changed me, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. The Unseen didn’t care who they were hunting, only that we had gotten in between their plans.
They didn’t love Ray, Jonah, or Beck. But I did.
Nobody knew them like I did. The sly smile Ray gave when he laced another comment with innuendo.
How that charm was rare, crystalline, and forged through years of neglect.
When Jonah watered his plants with a slight frown, searching for brown spots or pests with a tender care that belied his large, calloused hands.
How his heart held so much quiet love and protection because he’d never been given the same.
And Beck.
I knew him to his black soul and back. Heartless. Emotionless. Yet…a man who faced his worst fear to pay for making me face mine. Who let needles pass through his skin after so many years of being tortured by the thin metal because he was desperate to atone.
I dug my fingers into my palms until the nails bent back. Pain stole into every crack inside me. My lips trembled as their names spilled out. Desperate whispers I couldn’t contain.
Beck.
Jonah.
Ray.
I knew where one was, but not the other two. As soon as I left this hiding place, I would have to face reality. What waited for me out there, and could I survive it?
The port workers would arrive soon, and I needed to be gone before they did. Move. I screamed orders at my stiff limbs time to get secure and start planning my revenge. But my muscles didn’t respond to my orders.
The ocean breeze snuck through a crack in the box, drying my slick cheeks. Like it lent me a breath I didn’t dare take myself. I wanted to fall apart, but something kept me steady.
No amount of training could prepare me for this.
The unmaking, the rearranging, the shattering.
I didn’t even have my phone, tucked in Connall’s pocket, wherever he escaped to. I hoped the graze on his arm hurt more than mine did.
My throat was raw with unspoken words. I should have seized the moment with Beck. All I could think about now that he was gone was the lingering warmth of his forehead on mine, his heartbeat tattooed against my palm. The way his voice sounded, jagged with love and regret.
I swore I would never let Beck inside my heart again.
But the truth was he’d never left. I knew he would destroy me from the moment I accepted I was in love with him.
My mentor.
My crush.
My fate.
I had no business falling for a weapon. Less man than monster. I’d tasted that ruthless streak and felt his brutality in my bones.
But he was my monster.
I’d questioned the earth and the darkness when he betrayed me, and now I had my answer.
I knew the depths he would go to for me.
Watching him take that needle without even fighting proved it, if the tattoos hadn’t already.
Beck was always going to leave his mark on me, and he had.
He loved me in the darkness, while Jonah and Ray loved me in the light.
With the three of them, I was a blazing whole.
I dragged myself out and onto my feet. The office had only a few chairs and tables, as well along with a metal filing cabinet. A rust stain made a brown streak near the window, and shattered glass covered the floor.
I prodded Beck’s shirt around my wound, wincing as pain shot through me.
At least I got my own mark in. During training, Beck spent twice the allotted time teaching me marksmanship teaching me.
I hadn’t taken to the skill, not like other recruits.
I always felt more natural in front of a computer.
He spent months with me, practicing my posture, stance, and drilling into me that I could do it.
He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
With the pain came fire, I welcomed it. Stronger than adrenaline, more potent. In the pit of my stomach, it burned, burned and blazed. It forged a path out through my fingertips and toes. They curled and cramped with sudden rage.
Beck sacrificed himself for me. Hide for me, Little Liar? Did he think he’d taught me so little? Did he think I would let him go that easily?
My fist found the floor, and I pounded until my wrists cried with pain. But I couldn’t stop. I needed the reminder that I was alive, and Beck damn well better be.
“My heart has always, always, been only for you.”
He whispered those words in my ear, and I’d already absorbed them into the beating organ in my chest. I possessed his heart and his life.
Beck didn’t get to die, not until I said so.
I wouldn’t let The Unseen choose his time of death either.
“Enough.” My whisper sounded disconnected from my body. “Get up.”
My muscles cramped, and a sharp exhale rushed from my raw throat.
“Right. Now.”
I leveraged my numb body along the wall, sliding with weight bowing my shoulders. My muscles trembled, and I faltered, crashing to the floor with a muffled curse. The graze on my arm throbbed.
“If you could see your Little Liar now,” I gritted my teeth.
Jonah would help me up. Ray would make a quip about staying there. Beck would roll his eyes, then thread his arm through mine before pushing me to the end.
He never let me wallow for long.
Every breath I took burned with metal, salt, and fire. My lips ached as I twisted them into a grim smile. They wouldn’t give up, and neither would I.
The Unseen might have the three of them, but they would keep Beck alive until they found out how much he’d been working against them. I had to believe Ray and Jonah could survive as well.
I reached out for the jagged glass-lined window and pulled myself through. It took every ounce of energy from my body, and I melted onto the floor to ease the burn between my ribs.
“Just give me a second.” I glared into the darkness, seeing Beck’s gaze narrowed out from the plum-hued shadows.
The wind sluiced off the ocean and slapped salt across my cheeks. Even tucked away from the spray, it was still colder than an hour ago. The early hours of the morning made themselves known with a chill. Clouds hung low in wait.
I cocked my head, searching for a sign of company. Nothing. I needed to get out of here and to a safe house. I spared a thought for Ellington, abandoned in the fray, but shook off any lingering melancholy.
He made his choice. Just like Connall, and just like I was about to.
We understood each other a little in the end. But his nihilistic lean made his death the perfect way for him to find his end.
Not a blaze of glory, but in a tangle of mess.
Imprinted in the memories of the surrounding people. Connall might have pulled the trigger, but Ellington would still be with him every time he closed his eyes.
When I got my hands on him, he’d pay for betraying me.
I slid along the edges of a pathway, choosing the narrow, dark ones rather than those lit up in spotlights. I headed away from the old shipyards and toward the exit. The graze on my arm throbbed occasionally, but I ignored the pain.
Beck’s T-shirt still smelled like him, and I pressed my nose against it, iron, spice, and bitter cherry.
I swallowed against the barrage of memories.
Too many to focus on. I stayed mute when he confessed to the tattoos, and said his heart belonged to me.
I saved up all the words as I walked and used them for strength.
Some of them were sharp lashes of scolding. Others were tactical instructions. Most were hot coals in my throat that needed to be heard to find fire again. Jonah and Ray chimed in with their stoic comfort and cheeky warmth. My fingers tingled as blood rushed to every limb.
I let my discipline reignite. Trapped it in white knuckles and grit that Beck taught me to build long ago.
I loved three men, and I wasn’t going to let them go without telling them again.
I reached the exit, moving away from the empty security box illuminated by spotlights. The Unseen wouldn’t have left without leaving someone to watch. I traced the fence until I reached the section I’d used all that time ago, when I broke into Adelaide’s warehouse.
Always have a backup plan.
I could only hope Ray and Jonah remembered where this was and made their way out unscathed. I caught my reflection in a puddle on the ground and swallowed a laugh. Knotted hair crowded the base of my neck, coming apart in wild locks. Tear stained, pale cheeks, splattered with blood and dirt.
I didn’t recognize the wildness in my gaze, but I clutched it tight. This was who I needed to be to defeat The Unseen.
Someone unrecognizable, brutal, and dangerous.
Lights from the city glittered bright from across the harbor, and I knew somewhere, Beck, and maybe Jonah and Ray, were being ferried out of the city. The Unseen didn’t think anyone would follow. But they didn’t know the space in my heart for them.
My men.
Forgiveness held no bearing on the inevitable pulse that throbbed between us, impossible to shatter.
I would not rest until I found them. And my revenge when I did?
Watch out. I’m about to burn this world down.