32. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
Good, upstanding policemen don’t just steal you away in the middle of the night.
Iwas no stranger to the inside of a prison cell.
But I had never remembered one feeling quite as small as the one I’d been in ever since the cops had picked me up. It was barely big enough for me to pace, three short steps by four. No windows. Nothing but a tiny hole in the door where they shoved food from time to time, when they remembered.
Not for the first time, I banged my fist against the door and shouted, “I want a lawyer! You’re holding me here without charges, without a bail hearing, without any sort of legal due course!”
I didn’t expect a response. I’d been shouting and begging and cursing at them on an endless loop for days, and nobody had ever come. There’d been no phone call. No lawyer to accompany me to a bail hearing.
Nothing but these same four walls and tiny space in between.
It was fucking lucky I wasn’t claustrophobic.
So it was complete and utter shock when the lock on my cell whirred and the door opened.
I didn’t budge from my spot on the bed. Just stared at the officer who’d dragged me in the night I’d found Luca’s car on fire.
“Get up.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t trust this man as far as I could throw him. “What for?”
Rivera’s hand hovered over his belt and the array of tools hanging off it.
Like he might have to pull his pepper spray or his taser, or maybe even his gun to get me to cooperate.
“Because I said to. You’re the one who’s been bitching and moaning the entire time you’ve been in here.
You’d think you’d thank me for getting you out for a minute. ”
I hesitated, eyes narrowing slightly. “For a minute?”
“You want to look a gift horse in the mouth? Stand up. Face the wall. Hands behind your back.”
My gut didn’t trust this man. It shouted he wasn’t what he seemed. But there was little choice but to do what he said. I stood and turned to face the wall.
Cold steel wrapped around my wrists.
The officer walked me out of my cell and through the quiet police station. I’d never been taken to the main prison, because I’d never had a hearing and therefore never been sentenced.
I’d just been living in no-man’s land.
“Can I get a phone call?” I asked him as he shoved me along.
“No.”
I sighed. “Can I get a lawyer then?”
“You don’t need one.”
He reached around me, pushing on a door marked exit, and hope lit up inside me.
The door opened into a dark alleyway on the side of the police station.
Graffiti covered the walls, and broken glass shimmered beneath my flimsy, disposable prison slippers.
But it was paradise to a man who’d been kept in a windowless cell for so long he’d lost track of the days and nights.
I sucked in deep breaths of air that didn’t smell like stale, unwashed feet the way my cell did.
“You’re letting me go?”
He snorted. “No.” He made a “come here” motion with his hand, at a black van parked a little way down the alley. Its headlights flickered on, and it did a three-point turn, driving back in our direction until it was parked in front of us.
It had no police markings on the sides. The tint was so dark I couldn’t see the driver.
Rivera reached for the handle and slid open the back door. “Get in.”
I dug my heels in. As much as I didn’t want to go back to that tiny cell where I could barely breathe, I didn’t want to get into an unmarked van in the middle of the night either. “What kind of shady shit is this? I’m not getting in there.”
“You can get in or I can make you get in. Your choice.”
The officer pulled out his taser and dangled it from two fingers, just reminding me he could basically cattle prod me into doing whatever the fuck he wanted.
I’d been tased once before, the night I’d been caught breaking and entering and had tried my best to run.
I didn’t exactly relish the idea of it happening again.
And hell, what did it fucking matter anyway? Whatever this was couldn’t be any worse than being sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for supposedly murdering the only man I’d ever had proper feelings for.
So I got in the van of my own free will.
Rivera got in beside me, taser clutched in his fingers and pointed in my direction, like he was just waiting to use it if I so much as breathed in his direction.
Whoever it was behind the wheel got the van out onto the roads of Saint View, and I stared out the window, figuring if the officer had a jumpy trigger finger, I didn’t need to see the electric shock coming.
The lights of Dax’s shop were still on, and I strained forward, peering through the window in the hopes I might get lucky enough to see him standing out front, talking to one of his brothers.
That was what I hoped for now. That Dax had heard about Luca, or about me, and had decided to come back to Saint View to be there for Nyah. Maybe it was how it was always meant to be. Just him and her.
I hoped they left Saint View. I hoped they would take the baby and move across the country, or hell, across the world, to somewhere far away from all of this shit.
I imagined them getting married in a little church tucked away in the hills of a small town, walking their son to school every morning, knowing he was safe and loved and none of the stench of Saint View could touch them.
I loved her enough to want that for her. To want her to forgive Dax for leaving.
I only hoped she could one day forgive me and Luca too.
We might not have had a choice, but that wouldn’t matter to a woman who’d just been abandoned by all three men she cared about.
She would hate me for the things I’d done that led me here. And she’d hate Luca for the same reasons. Neither of us were innocent.
Maybe we both deserved what we got.
I wanted to rub my hand over my chest. It ached every time I thought about Luca. Every day I hoped his death had been quick. Hoped he hadn’t felt any pain.
Maybe he was actually the lucky one. Because it was those of us left behind who felt it most.
Nyah.
Me.
I saw the flames everywhere I looked, whether my eyes were open or closed. They engulfed his body. It was all I ever saw, and it left me feeling weak.
The officer with his taser had nothing to fear from me. The grief I battled daily consumed me, leaving nothing left to fight with.
Wherever they were taking me didn’t matter. I was never getting out. I’d never be a free man again.
“Blindfold him,” a vaguely familiar voice called from the front seat. “We’ll be there soon.”
I racked my brain, trying to think why it sounded so familiar, but I came up with nothing. And the partition between us prevented me from seeing the driver.
The officer produced a black cloth from one of his pockets and stared at me. “You going to go along with this, or am I gonna tase you first to make you compliant?”
I glared at the piece of shit. “Just put it on. I don’t care.”
I realized it wasn’t even a lie. Good, upstanding policemen didn’t steal you away from your cell in the middle of the night. They certainly didn’t blindfold you so you couldn’t see where they were taking you. I had no doubt in my mind now these officers were not working within the law.
Which probably meant I’d be dead inside the hour.
There was no point arguing or fighting now.
The Grim Reaper had been chasing me for a lifetime. I deserved to feel the slice of his scythe. I’d taken lives, some I could barely remember. I didn’t deserve to just walk the streets a free man, not even certain I wouldn’t take more.
The farther we drove, the more I convinced myself I was a piece of shit who’d brought all of this down on himself. And worse, it had spilled over to Nyah as well.
That was the bit that was hardest to live with.
From the very first moment I’d met her, all I’d ever wanted was for her to be happy. After everything her family had put her through, there was nobody who deserved it more.
I’d just been another weight tying her down.
I hoped now, she could finally be free.
The van bumped around, tires crunching over gravel before coming to a stop, the engine cutting out.
Rough hands grabbed me, a key finding the little lock on my handcuffs and undoing them, but something that felt an awful lot like a gun being pushed into my spine reminded me they didn’t need handcuffs to control me.
The blindfold blocked out ninety percent of my vision, the dark of night just about making it complete.
All I caught was tiny glimpses of my feet in the moonlight as I stumbled along, no idea where I was being taken.
Sweat broke out across the back of my neck, the darkness suddenly suffocating. “Where are we?” I demanded.
The gun at my back only pressed in harder. “Just keep walking,” the officer spat out in short, sharp tones.
My stomach churned, my sense of dread rising with every step.
Everything inside my body screamed at me to stop, turn around, and run. To rip the blindfold off, even knowing doing any of that would result in a bullet to the back.
“Stop there,” that same voice from the front of the van said.
I racked my brain again, desperately trying to think who it belonged to. One of the Slayers? Another prisoner from the last time I was locked up? Someone I’d met while I’d worked for Luca’s father?
No matter what I did, I just could not place it. “Who are you?”
The voice didn’t respond.
The only sound that came back was the safety disengaging from the gun.
Fuck. This suddenly felt like an execution.
My heart thumped too fast, adrenaline filling my system.
Even though the gun was no longer making an imprint on my spine, there was no mistaking its presence.
Blood roared in my ears, blocking out everything else, and I waited for it.
Silently counting down in my head, waiting for the piercing pain of a bullet ripping through tissue and muscle.
I held my breath.
At least I’d see Luca on the other side.
A door slammed behind me, locks engaging with a mechanical whir one by one.
And yet I still stood there, frozen, unable to move.
“Took your time,” a familiar voice said.
And that was when I knew I was dead. That the gun had gone off and I’d died instantly.
Because surely there was no other explanation for me ripping off the blindfold and seeing Luca and Dax on the other side of the room.
Dax not missing.
Luca not burned.
Both of them still breathing, locked up, and staring at me like we were completely and utterly fucked.