Chapter 62
JMy eyes burst open, and I look up into a pitch-black sky.
Am I flying?
My arms windmill.
No, I’m falling.
Wind rushes past me. Faster and faster.
My heart is about to explode.
I’m not in control of my body.
I’m out of time.
Helpless.
No one will care if I die. No one cares.
A big, rough hand slips into mine, and it feels like a lifeline. Time stops. I hang suspended in the air, my body reflecting in the windows of a skyscraper.
Slowly, I open my eyes to find a familiar white ceiling and harsh fluorescent lights. The unsteady beep of a heart monitor welcomes me back to the real world.
I’m not dead.
Jerking upright, I pat my arms and stomach. I half expect my guts to be sprawled out in front of me, but I’m in one piece.
I massage my legs and move one and then the other.
Then I wiggle my toes. Everything responds to my brain’s commands.
Elated by the results of my inspection, I turn my head and fall into a pair of emotionless black eyes.
My heart jolts.
Finn stares me down. His hair has pieces sticking up, and he’s wearing the same outfit from yesterday. There are deep bags under his eyes.
Was he by my side this entire time?
“W-what happened?” I croak.
Finn rises to his full height, and I try to look up, but my neck hurts because he’s so tall.
“Ow.” I grab the back of my neck.
“Don’t move. You got whiplash from the fall.”
Whiplash? That’s it? Sounds like gravity gave me a pat on the wrist and sent me on my way.
I blink slowly. “Where’s Dr. Kenji?”
“Doing rounds.”
I press my finger against the puncture wound where Elise stuck a needle in my neck. There’s a bandage over it now. “Did the Kardimonex flush out of my system?”
Finn watches me for a long time instead of answering.
I squirm. “What?”
“It’s my turn.”
I stare at him in confusion.
He approaches the bed and leans over me, so close that I can see his eyes turning light brown. It’s beautiful and softens his face.
But when he speaks, I realize that there’s nothing soft about him. “I’m going to ask you some questions now, and you’re going to answer honestly, or I swear, I’m going to make you wish you’d hit the ground when you fell off that building.”
I shudder.
“How did you know?” Finn whispers.
“How did I know… what?” I turn in the bed, feeling sore all over. Even though the inflatable cushion dampened the fall, I still dropped off a twenty-story building, and it left its mark.
“What drug they were going to inject you with.”
I go incredibly still.
“Did you hack Gina’s phone?”
“No.” I swallow hard. “I visited Gina’s aunt a while back, and her nurse was really weird, so I sent the nurse a scam email to get access to her bank account. Just in case.”
Finn’s eyebrows jump almost imperceptibly.
Sending scam emails is convoluted, but it’s the easiest way to hack into someone’s personal account. Trying to break into an encryption is a lot more time-consuming.
“When Gina insisted that I meet her last night, I had a feeling she would target my heart and make it look like an accident.”
It’s an easy vulnerability to exploit, and it would be too tempting for someone as manipulative as Gina to pass up.
“But Gina wouldn’t know enough about medicine,” I explain to Finn. “She’d need help.”
“How did you make the connection to her sister?”
“I didn’t know Elise was her sister at the time, but after Mrs. Codd warned us about Gina covering her tracks, I figured she’d have someone she trusted watching Kelly’s last living relative.”
“And with her credit card statements, you could see everything she bought,” Finn says in a low voice.
“A few minutes after Kelly—I mean—Gina texted me, the nurse made an interesting purchase. I forwarded the information to Dr. Kenji and told him to get whatever he needed to counteract it.”
Finn’s gaze intensifies and his nostrils flare.
I creep back, wondering if he’s going to yell at me.
However, when he speaks, it’s incredibly slow and measured. “You do realize… how many things could have gone wrong last night?”
“The alternative was letting Kelly kidnap and kill me,” I argue.
“The alternative was taking my help.” His voice doesn’t climb at all, and yet I feel like I’ve been spanked.
“You can’t protect me every day, Finn. It’s not feasible. Besides, I’d rather gamble on my life than just throw my hands up because my heart makes me an easy target. I meant everything I said in the car last night.”
Finn glances aside, his jaw muscles clenching.
“I’m going to face Gina.” I told him after he insisted on seeing the text Kelly sent.
“Alone? Not a chance in hell.”
“Look at me, Finn! I can’t run. I can’t fight. I can’t protect myself against anyone. If I ignore this chance, I’ll be in the dark until Kelly strikes. If I do that, I won’t be prepared. This way, I know what I’m walking into.”
“I don’t agree.”
“It’s my life. I don’t need your permission. But if you’re that concerned, I do need a favor.”
“What?”
“Catch me if I happen to fall.”
“You wanted them to throw you off the roof, didn’t you?” Finn growls. “You psycho.”
“You’re the psycho,” I mumble.
Finn glares a hole through me. “What if I didn’t come through? What if we set it up at the wrong spot?”
Finn’s expression is severe enough to cut my head clear off, but I get this weird feeling that this is him showing that he’s worried about me.
“Well, you didn’t. You came through. Thanks for that, by the way.
” I scrunch my nose, recalling the bits and pieces of my memory from last night.
“Hey, where did you get the inflatable cushion from? And was I hallucinating, or were there twenty Japanese men in suits dragging the cushion around for you?”
A flicker of discomfort passes over his face before he tucks it behind his regal mask.
My mind whirrs. “Those men… do they work for you?”
“For my father,” Finn admits grudgingly.
My heart beats faster, the way it does when I’m on the verge of discovering a secret. “Your father… it’s not Jarod Cross, is it?”
The mysterious “bodyguards” who can fight off groups of men at a time…
Taking the Grave City Crew hostage…
The dangerous-looking inflatable-cushion-rescuers who crawled out of the shadows to save me…
Finn’s knife.
The truth hits me between the eyes. I scraped the internet for info on the symbol tattooed on Ren’s arm. But it was on the back of the knife Finn gave me. I lost the weapon when I tried to defend myself from Ace in the elevator and never thought of it again.
Finn and Ren are in the same organization.
The organization owned by Finn’s father…
Is he the one behind The Grateful Project?
That would mean…
Finn’s family is more powerful than all the political pawns who were sacrificed when the scandal came out.
They’re higher than the law, than the police, than the politicians…
Theirs is a name that can’t ever come to the light…
Oh, my gosh.
I’ve been making out with the son of the Japanese mafia.
The doors suddenly part, and Dr. Kenji walks in, effectively cutting off our conversation. His tired eyes land on me and he fast-walks over. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I fell off a building, but it could be worse,” I mumble, still reeling from the fact that Finn’s father belongs to the criminal underworld. It would explain why Finn acts like more than just a musician or a high school senior.
I remember when he took Ace down in the shed. He’s a chess master, expertly shifting between his role as a quiet rich kid to a lethal crime lord.
This realization is, somehow, more insane than the entire mystery behind Kelly and Gina.
Dr. Kenji passes Finn and dips his head at him in the weirdly respectful way that I saw both Ren and Hayato do last night.
When I ran a background check on Dr. Kenji, it came out clean. No gambling debt. No weird fetishes. Nothing to write home about.
But obviously, nothing can be believed.
Is he working for Finn too?
“You’re lucky to be alive, young lady.” He stares down at me with fatherly concern. “What were you thinking taking on those crazy people alone? The police said that Gina-girl killed an entire family.”
I snap my attention to him. “Even the parents?”
“Her sister told the cops everything. They found the teenager’s body this morning, but the parents haven’t been found yet.”
I wince.
Dr. Kenji puts his stethoscope against my heart. “You would have been next if Finn hadn’t been there.”
I duck sheepishly. “To be fair, I programmed the window-cleaning drones to swoop in and form a cradle, but they didn’t.”
I think I know why.
In fact, I think I know who made sure they didn’t.
“We’re going to run some more tests, but the fact that you’re moving and talking is a great sign, and I’m hopeful there won’t be any adverse effects from the drug.” Dr. Kenji straightens and shakes his head slowly. “But I can’t say the same about the other drugs you’ve been taking.”
I whip around, pinning accusing eyes on Finn. “You told him?”
Finn just stares at me.
The mafia prick.
“Finn didn’t tell me,” Dr. Kenji says, fitting the stethoscope back around his neck. “Not directly anyway.”
“I gave Dr. Kenji one of your pills and asked him to tell me what was in it,” Finn says, folding his arms over his chest.
There’s not even a hint of remorse in his tone.
I fume, digging my fingers into fists to keep from aiming at his head. If I start mouthing off, who knows what he’ll command his mafia army to do to me.
I just survived a life-ending fall.
I want to live a bit longer.
Dr. Kenji’s voice cracks. “J, your echocardiogram revealed significant left ventricular damage consistent with ischemic cardiomyopathy.”
The words hang in the air. For a second, I think I’ve misheard.
So much for living longer...
Silence falls swiftly.
Finn is the first to break it. “Explain that.”
“Parts of her heart muscles are dying.”
Finn steps forward as if he wants to start punching Dr. Kenji.
The older man pulls back, bracing himself even as he continues talking. “The pill Finn gave me contained muscle stimulants, but it also contained a microdose of a vasoconstrictor…”
I inhale sharply, but the air doesn’t hit my lungs.
“… it’s a powerful medicine that reduces blood flow to your heart…”
His words get fainter and fainter.
“… fatigue, fainting, chest pain. It would all look like a natural worsening of your condition…”
A beeping sound pierces through the haze. I glance at my watch, my heartbeat climbing as I stare at the little message box that started it all.
Normally, the messages are two to three words.
Kiss him.
Touch him.
Flirt with him.
But today, there are four tiny words on the watch screen.
“J?” Finn calls my name.
My eyes are locked on the watch like an invisible hand is holding my head in place.
“J!”
Suddenly, Finn wrenches my arm up and stares at the watch, reading the message.
He’ll see.
He’ll know.
But I don’t care.
Technology didn’t just fail me.
It betrayed me.
Finn’s eyes meet mine, filled with horror.
JINX: The deal is off.
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