Chapter 29
Butterfly Man
By nature and by practice, I am an extraordinarily patient man.
I’ve waited years for her. I’ve built this place from scratch for this moment.
I can wait a little longer for the rest of her to catch up to what is already inevitable.
I can wait for the hope to die in her eyes, to watch her finally understand that this is her reality now. Mine. Finally, completely mine.
But she’s still fighting. It’s written all over her face. That particular expression, that cold, inward-turning blankness she retreats into when she doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of her pain.
Her unreasonable refusal to accept our truth radiates off her, testing the very outer limits of my patience.
“You still think I’m the detective, Reagan?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m confused,” she mutters.
“Do you want my cock again, my naughty butterfly? Because that sounds like a blatant lie.” I’ve just been inside her.
How can she not know? How can she not remember?
Am I too forgettable or has she had so many they’ve started to blur?
She claims she’s only been with three men.
Shane, Blake and the man with the motorcycle.
But I know for a fact that’s just one of her many lies.
“I think you know exactly who I am. You just don’t want to admit it. ”
“If you’re so desperate for me to find out who you are, why don’t you just show yourself?”
Maybe I want her to figure it out on her own. Maybe I hope my Reagan will recognize me at last. Maybe I’m looking for proof of something that doesn’t exist. “Who is Mason Bloom?”
She sighs impatiently. “Take that thing out of my butt.”
I inflate it a little more and enjoy her screams. “Answer my question.”
“Fuck. Off.”
My hand caresses her forehead. “I can’t, darling. You’re wrapped around me like a cocoon. Every thought of mine that tries to escape dies beating its wings against you. My only way out is a metamorphosis I won’t survive. Because even when I shed myself, all that’s left is you.”
I stare into her eyes, search them for the one answer I’ve been dreaming to find.
Isn’t that what happens in her books? He confesses his obsessive love, and she finally understands, she finally realizes it’s the best thing she will ever have, she finally falls for him, and they get their happily ever after.
She, though, is silent. Cold. Calculating. I bare my heart and soul to her, and she’s in her head, finding a way to use my words against me.
After everything—after I’ve shown her my devotion, my loyalty, my willingness to be anything she needs—she doesn’t give a shit.
I’m gonna make you pay for this, my little butterfly.
“You know what, Reagan,” my hand slides down her body, past her breasts, over her stomach, “I’ll grant you your wish. I’m gonna pull that thing out of your ass.” I start deflating the lolli and watch relief seep out of her pores. Then I lean to whisper in her ear, “Only to take its place myself.”
Relief turns into horror. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I? I’ve been very gentle with you, all things considered.
Very patient. But my patience has limits, Reagan.
And you’ve just found them.” I pull the attachment out of her asshole, savoring her moan.
“Maybe that’s what you want. You want me to fuck your ass while you scream and cry and beg me to stop. You’re practically asking for it.”
“No. No!” Panic floods her face as I push the button that rotates the table.
“Who is Mason Bloom?”
“I told you he was my neighbor, and a biker. He…” A tearless sob escapes her. “He tried to help, before everything went wrong, but I didn’t let him.”
“Help with what?”
“Stop this thing. Put me back.”
The table groans halfway through its rotation. “Help with what, Reagan?”
“Shane. He tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen until it was too late, and we both paid for it.”
“How?”
“Please stop.”
The table locks with a dull click, completing the flip. She’s face-down, ass in the air now. I bend, catching her gaze from below, the world inverted between us. “Why are you protecting him?”
Her breath catches. “I’m not.”
“Then who are you protecting?”
Silence.
“Last chance, Reagan. What’s the real story of you, Shane and Mason?”
She just stares at the floor.
I straighten with a grunt. Then I move to the center of the table, getting out of my pants. “You have a very nice ass. I’m gonna enjoy taking it for hou—”
Light zaps the room. Red. A single, violent pulse from the panel on the east wall. Then two. Then it holds, steady and silent and absolute.
Every muscle in my body locks and then releases in the same half second. Cold clarity snaps through me. I’m at the panel when she asks, “What is this? What’s happening?”
The silent alarm has been activated. That’s what’s happening. There’s a breach. Someone is here. Someone has found this place.
The monitoring station in the corner blazes to life. Twelve screens illuminate the darkness, showing every angle of the area above this tunnel, above us.
Her sharp intake of breath echoes behind me. She can’t see it, what this room actually is. She only sees the pale light flooding the floor. “What are these lights? Are these computers? Security feed? Are the police here?”
She can’t see it, but she’s smart enough to know exactly what is happening. I don’t care. I don’t have time for this.
On the screens, three vehicles on the access road, lights killed early.
A fourth car behind, the passenger door opening before it fully stops.
The man that gets out moves toward the property at a pace that isn’t procedure.
It’s personal. Ten, eleven, maybe more men still in the vehicles. My jaw tightens so hard it hurts.
My fingers work fast on the computer as six officers bust the door of the house on top of the tunnel. “Don’t worry, my queen. They won’t get down here. I won’t let them.”
“BIRDIE ABEL! THIS IS THE OAK BLUFFS POLICE!” The voice streams from the feed audio.
“BIRDIE! BIRDIE!”
“Jacob,” Reagan gasps. “Is that Jacob? He’s here. He came for me. He’s here. Oh my God. HELP! HELP! I’M DOWN HERE! RJ! I’M DOWN HERE! HELP!”
She squirms against the straps and screams with everything she has, raw and ragged and furious.
It screeches through this room and goes absolutely nowhere.
The walls take it. The acoustic board behind the rock walls swallows it whole, the way I designed it to.
She should have known that by now, and yet she screams again, harder, as if sheer desperation can push sound through six feet of earth.
The motherfucking detective swarms into the house, kicking each door, screaming her name. How the fuck did he get here? The police should be hunting him, not raiding my place with his help.
On the east exterior feed, two men break from the group. One of them carries a sonar wand. He crouches. The first impact of the wand ripples through the floor and into my feet. I can read his body language. He’s hit the density differential. The police know there is a void.
“Fuck.” I move swiftly and pull my go-bag that’s always been packed with weapons for exactly this scenario. AR-15. Glock. Spare magazines.
She stops screaming. “What sound is this?” Her voice fractures at the edges as the second wave hits. Then she howls his name again.
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll shoot him in the head.”
“What? No. Please. Just…just run, okay? I’m sure you have an escape plan. Just do it before they break in.”
I do have a plan, and it involves me and Reagan and no one else. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Reagan. Don’t even try.”
“Please. I don’t know anything about you. I can’t tell them who you are. Just go save yourself. Start a new life somewhere else, away from all this.”
A new life without her? How can she not understand by now that there is no life for me without her?
I let the table rotate back to its original position. Something slams against the panels. The impact reverberates through the walls. I check the feed. They’re trying to break through.
SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.
“Battering ram. First a sonar wand and now a battering ram.” The police came in suspecting there’s something underneath the house, which means they’ve been tipped. The list of people with that specific information is very short.
I will deal with that later. Right now I have a sequence to run and approximately four minutes before everything I’ve built comes crashing down.
I take a pre-loaded sedative syringe from the bench and go to her.
“No, please, no more drugs,” she begs.
“I’m sorry. We have less than three minutes to get going. I can’t deal with your useless fighting right now.”
The detective keeps shouting her name through the speakers, and she screams back. I roll my eyes and push the syringe into her neck.
Her head lolls to the side, and her eyes flutter closed. Time to evacuate.
I remove each of the pins carefully; I won’t damage my display. Then I unbuckle the straps, disconnect the IV, wrap her in the blanket and lift her into my arms.
CRACK. The sound of metal giving way.
I write my final commands quickly on the computer and activate the defense program. Then I hit the switch concealed in the wall above the monitors. The butterfly cases slide aside, and a door hisses open, revealing the tunnel entrance.
This tunnel was sealed years ago when the water flooded it, and I made sure it didn’t show on any current blueprints of the property. The police might be tearing this house down, but they’ll be looking for a hidden room in a basement or similar. They won’t know where else to look or what’s coming.
I run the sequence in my head one more time: sealed tunnel access, Beneteau, open water and the final step…
Detonator.