69. Sydney
sixty-nine
sydney
I’m not sure if there’s supposed to be some sort of interrogation in here, but Oliver and I move out of the offices while Carter and Penn enter the room where Bear is kept. They hoist him up and wrestle him out, past us and into the storage room.
“It’s okay,” I say to Oliver in the wake of their movement.
He looks at me.
“That you don’t, um, want to do this anymore.” I touch my wrist. I forgot my watch, and the old, barely healed cuts ground me. Amongst all the other pain, that is controlled.
He just looks at me.
Until I glance away.
“I do,” he says quietly. “I do want to do this. But I’m not going to give you my heart when you’re…”
“Broken?” Bitterness fills my voice.
“Distracted. Penn and Carter both said it, didn’t they? Or maybe Carter didn’t, but I’m sure you had some sort of conversation.” He touches my chin, turning my head back toward him. “Sorry, mi nena , but when I bleed my heart out for you, I want it to be the only thing on your mind. Not Bear, not being hurt, not how Penn did it or?—”
“Okay.” I wrap my fingers around his wrist. “Okay. I couldn’t bear it if you… left.”
“I’m not leaving,” he assures me.
The storage room door opens, and Carter sticks his head out. He gives us a thumbs-up.
My stomach twists.
This is it, then?
I follow Oliver into the room, holding my breath. Much like how they had me strung up, Bear is in the center of the room with his arms over his head.
Like they had me, only the very tips of his toes touch the floor. He slides, trying and failing to get purchase. I grit my teeth and stare at the mask taped to his head. Strips of the gray tape cover the mask eyeholes. I don’t want to know how they knew… or when Carter flicks open his knife and cuts Bear’s shirt off him, that that’s what they did to me.
Not until I find the scraps of my shirt in the corner of the room.
Oliver stands so close to me, his body heat radiates into me. We move around the room, until we’re at the farthest corner of Bear’s peripherals, with the profile of the mask clear in the low light. It takes me a second to notice the bucket of water. The jumper cables sit beside the car battery.
“What was first?” Penn glances at Carter. “Was it the water?”
Bear twists in his restraints.
“Yeah,” Carter says. “Soaked him through. Even the hood over his face. Bit like waterboarding, don’t you think?”
“We’ll have to ask him,” Penn replies. He picks up the bucket of water and dumps it, without warning, over Bear’s head.
He makes a noise. It’s muffled by something, but it would be a shout if he could speak.
Carter steps up and slices away the mask. The tape sticks to the back of Bear’s head, but the plastic mask falls away as soon as it’s free, dropping to the floor.
Fresh blood trickles down his temple from Carter’s knife, and a lone piece of tape covers his mouth. Before Bear can get his bearings— no pun intended —Penn delivers a hard punch to his gut.
The larger man contracts, his body jerking and shoulders stretching as his weight rests solely on them. He swings for a minute, his back to Oliver and me, until his toes scrape the floor and he brings himself to a stop.
Carter and Penn exchange a glance, and in one move, Penn rips the tape from Bear’s mouth. He drops it, his lips flattening.
“You getting your licks in now, Walker?” Bear spits.
His voice brings goosebumps to the backs of my arms.
“Fucking cowards,” he continues. “Resorting to stringing me up?—”
“Oliver fought you,” Penn interrupts. As he talks, he squats beside the car battery and attaches one of the clamps. “Beat you fair and fucking square. That didn’t matter to you so much when you attacked him at Sydney’s apartment. Two on fucking one with your brother.”
“We weren’t there for him,” Bear growls.
Oliver frowns.
“Two guys to pick on one girl, then, huh?” Penn laughs. Coldly . “That doesn’t make your case any fucking better.”
He reaches out and clips the free cable clamp onto the waistband of Bear’s pants, so one side of the metal is pressed to his skin. The reaction is instantaneous. He goes rigid, every muscle tensing and spasming, little tremors seeming to run through his legs. Electricity is always trying to find its way to the ground, after all.
That’s why the prospect of them touching higher than my heart was what freaked out my doctors. They said the electrical pulse could’ve stopped it.
Should’ve… might’ve…
I breathe out slowly. I don’t remember where they touched me with that clamp, just that it felt like I was being bit by an electric eel.
Penn and Carter seem content to watch him struggle. I move around, into Bear’s line of sight. I go to the car battery and kick it. The battery goes tumbling away and the clamp disconnects.
He sags, the chains over his head clanking.
My guys regard me. Oliver moves behind Bear as I step closer. Like this, stretched to his maximum height, he towers over me. And Oliver, too. All of us. He’s a beast of a guy.
The truth of the matter is that he didn’t need his brother. He didn’t need to bind me up and watch me struggle to breathe. He didn’t need to fucking torture me. He’s big enough, he’s strong enough—he could’ve overpowered me the old-fashioned way.
But he didn’t.
He chose to watch me choke. He chose to wear a mask for the terrorizing—not for the anonymity. Whatever twisted his brother up on the inside, it did even more damage to him.
“Henry Bernstein.”
His real name. It deserves to be spoken now, right? Spoken into the quiet, forced out into the open. I break the silence with it. I smile when his eyes open and he flinches first, glares second.
“Henry. Bernstein.” I inch closer, and Oliver mirrors me behind him. “What’s your brother’s name?”
He grits his teeth and looks down at me, then spits out, “Max.”
“Well. Max is buried in the woods behind the warehouse.”
He goes still. His muscles tense, like he’s about to move—but Oliver is faster. He drops a looped cord over Bear’s head and pulls it snug around his neck, stopping his idea of forward motion.
I shuffle backward. Bear roars, his body contorting and struggling. He kicks out, barely missing me, and Carter drags me farther away. While Oliver just?—
“Is he going to kill him?”
Penn shakes his head. “Maybe.”
When Bear stops fighting and goes slack, Oliver releases the rope. It hangs loose around Bear’s neck—nothing compared to the prolonged trauma I endured.
“What else?” Penn asks me.
My gaze drops to the blood under Bear’s feet. It’s soaked into the concrete, dry little flakes of it sticking to his shoes. It’s my blood. My trauma.
Carter nods and moves forward. He sinks the blade of his knife into Bear’s stomach.
The guy comes awake violently again. His eyes are so fucking wide, and he stares down at the blade protruding from him. He passes out again.
I’m so fucking tired, and I can’t tell if this revenge is making me feel better or worse.
“Is his brother buried in the woods?” I ask. I had guessed earlier.
They all exchange a glance, then shake their heads. “Not yet. He’s in a barrel…” Carter frowns. “You look green. Do you want to go home?”
“Is he walking out of here?” I motion to Bear.
“No,” they all say.
“Then, yeah, I want to go home.”
I look to Oliver, whose skin tone has paled dramatically. I feel the same, my stomach twisting like I’m going to heave at any second. I can’t take the smell of this room—the sweat, the blood. There’s a wet spot between Bear’s legs that grows by the second, the scent of urine overpowering everything else.
I cover my nose and mouth. “Take me, Oliver?”