Self-defense.
“He knew more men would be after him, so he went after the guy in charge directly. Killed him and replaced him as the head of the organization. But there was chaos by then. Losing their leader twice. Having a young man in charge of everything, one who didn’t even want to be there. People started flipping out. There were so many deaths. It was chaos, and Carlos was sucked into it, righting the organization and bringing everything back to order.”
“Why didn’t he just turn them in?” The question was out before I could call it back. I’d just meant that he could be free of the situation, wash his hands of the heritage he’d never wanted.
“They were family,” she said simply.
And yes, of course. Because normal people didn’t sell out their family. That was only for the disloyal, like me. How dare I call Carlos cruel when he hadn’t been able to do what I did, turn my back on blood.
*
“What do you remember?”
The psychologist sat with her legs crossed in a short pencil skirt. Did she know how much attention she drew to them? Did she want her male patients to look at her legs? Fucking psychologists. Voyeurs and exhibitionists.
Her question hung in the air. What did I remember about my captivity, she meant. But the question was open ended, and I wasn’t thinking about captivity. New memories had started to float to the surface, ones long repressed.
A better question would have been: How did you escape your father’s attention?
No one has ever hurt me. It had been my mantra for so long, a lament and longing rolled into one. But was it true? I could no longer be sure. Of that, of anything.
“Samantha?” she prodded.
“I don’t remember. It’s all a blank.” It wasn’t completely a lie. It wasn’t blank, but it was a blur.
Her eyebrows rose. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember Lance. He’s one of the agents I work with. I remember we were stepping out of the van, trying to figure out what had happened. Everyone inside the warehouse had gone quiet.”
“Were you worried?” she asked.
She was trying to profile me. And doing a piss poor job of it, too. But I was a good little agent, so I answered. “Yes. The plan was very specific. And we’d heard them over the comm. Something was wrong.”
“What did you do then?”
“We headed toward the location to see if we could help. Only, we got separated. And…someone attacked me. They disarmed me before I could stop them. I remember being punctured with a needle. Some kind of drug.”
I looked at her, the nameless, faceless woman who was supposed to analyze me. She’d be the one signing off on my return to duty. Her expression was politely blank. Her eyes were placid—borderline vacant. The only reason I knew she was listening was her pencil moving, marking down notes, judging me.
“And that’s it,” I finished.
“You never got a good look at him?”
“No,” I said, and at least that much was honest. “I never got a good look at him.”
The master of disguise and evasion. He could have been anyone. He could have been any man I passed on the street, and I wouldn’t even know it. And wasn’t that the fucking tragedy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Hell no,” Lance said over the phone.
“Please.”
He swore. “I can’t believe you’re still hung up on Hennessey after…”
“After getting raped?”
“I just would have thought you didn’t want company. Not that way.”
Yeah, I would have thought that too. Instead, I felt the opposite. Whereas before I had been satisfied with steamy moments and hot kisses, they were no longer enough. They were too weak to counter the memory of handcuffs and whips, of hard phallic objects inside me. The memory of pain. I wanted something more, needed the closure pleasure could give me. That Hennessey could give me.
“Never mind,” I told Lance. “I’ll find it another way.”
He swore again, low and vicious. “Fine. I’ll get it for you. But you know he’s just going to drop you as soon as he gets a new assignment. Don’t come crying to me when he does.”
“Okay. And Lance?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”