The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

He rolled his eyes. “No, I’m being dramatic. It’s been a big day for all of us.”

I nodded in absolute agreement, suddenly feeling tired. I took a deep breath and pushed it aside, letting go of Quess. “Go ahead. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

“And I’ll let you know if Grey wakes up. Not sure what we’re going tell him if he does, so… I’m kind of hoping he doesn’t.”

I hated to admit it, but so was I. I didn’t have the faintest clue what I would tell him either, so hopefully we’d never have to cross that bridge. “Go ahead and get some time in with Maddox,” I told him.

“Oh, believe me, I will,” he said, adding a lecherous waggle to his eyebrows that had me laughing. Then he exited, leaving Baldy and me alone.

No, Leo and me. I forced myself to look at him.

“It’s me,” he said, as if sensing my need for confirmation.

I wanted to tell him that I knew that, that I didn’t see Baldy’s face when I looked at him, but it was too hard. “I know that logically,” I hedged.

Leo frowned, and I could tell that he’d picked up on my careful word choice. “But emotionally?”

I shook my head, not wanting to lie to him. “It’s freaking me out a little bit.”

It really, really was. Each movement he made sent a nervous tremor down my spine, a signal that an adrenaline rush was pending, my fight-or-flight instincts right at the surface. It was illogical and emotional, and I couldn’t shut it off, just like I couldn’t stop the running train of questions in my brain.

What if Leo got stuck in there? Would I be able to see through the skin and muscle and bone to the being within? Would I ever be able to get over the memory of the cold bite of the knife and the gleam in his eyes as he did it?

“Close your eyes,” he said softly. “Listen to my voice.”

I let them drift closed, but he barely got to “I—” before they snapped back open and I was violently shaking my head no. Hearing his voice only made it worse. Before the cut of the blade, he had struck me several times in the head, and his voice had been all I could focus on in the darkness.

“That’s not going to work for me,” I said flatly.

Leo paused, his mouth open, and then leaned back, his face adopting a contemplative look. “Would this help?” he asked in a high-pitched, singsong voice. “I suppose I could talk like this forever. Perhaps the vocal cords will even adapt to it.”

A surprised laugh escaped me, and suddenly, just like that, Baldy ceased being Baldy and started being Leo. Maybe it was the lopsided smile on his face or the hopeful gleam in his eyes, but I saw him. It was Leo.

Relief poured through me, and I returned the smile. “Hey,” I said, a small laugh in my voice. “I think it works.”

“Really,” he sang in his affected voice. “Then consider the change permanent.” I giggled at the very idea that he could do that, and then paused, a dark thought occurring to me.

“Wait, can you actually make his voice like that forever?”

He met my gaze directly and nodded once. “Normally, I wouldn’t suggest it,” he said, his voice normal again. It bothered me less than before, especially when he looked at his own bound hands with undisguised hatred. “But this disgrace of a human deserves it. These hands held you down and cut your flesh, and I could very easily make it so that he never used them again. I could do so much to him from the inside, and a part of me would feel that it was justice.”

As terrifying as it was to learn that he could do all of that from the net, his revelation filled me with a strange sort of warmth. Still, I had one too many people trying to protect me at the moment.

“Don’t,” I told him with a shake of my head. “Just focus on whatever information you can get out of him, so we can move you back as quickly as possible.”

He nodded and then gave me an apologetic look. “Then do you mind leaving me alone for a bit? I can’t tell if it’s because he’s not like Grey, or if it’s the sedative, but it’s hard to maintain a conversation and go through his memories.”

I opened my mouth, surprised, and then shut it. His request was reasonable, and I could only imagine what it was like being in there. “Sure. I’ll wait outside. Just knock when you’re ready.”

He smiled and then swung his legs back up on the bed and settled down, lacing his fingers over his stomach as best he could with his wrists cuffed together. “I’ll move as quickly as possible,” he promised. “I don’t like being in this body at all.”

“Just be careful, okay?” I said.

Leo nodded, his eyes already drifting closed. I stared at him for a moment or two longer, and then exited into the hallway to wait.





11





I was standing outside Baldy’s room for nearly twenty minutes, waiting, before a loud shout carried down the hall. Alarmed, I pushed off the wall I was leaning on, my hand on my baton, and took half a step toward the sound.

Quess came around the corner a minute later, his face a tight mask, and I moved to meet him. “What’s wrong? What was that?”

“It’s Grey,” he said. “He woke up and started freaking out. He doesn’t recognize me or Doxy. Should I sedate him?”

My heart lurched at the idea, my imagination already putting my feet in Grey’s shoes. He was confused and scared, and we didn’t need to make it worse by cornering him and knocking him out. I owed him more than that. We all did.

“No,” I said, swallowing some of my anxiety. “I’ll handle it. Will you wait here for Leo? He said he would knock when he was ready.”

Quess nodded. “Maddox is outside the door. He’s…” He shifted his weight, seemingly torn. “He’s angry, Liana. I’m not sure why or about what, but he started to get violent. He didn’t hurt anyone, but that was because of Maddox’s intervention.”

I cursed. That was only going to make things more difficult, but if I could just reassure him that he was safe and that no one was going to hurt him, he would hopefully calm down.

“Thanks,” I said as I started to jog away. I followed the spiral-shaped hallway about thirty feet, until Maddox came into view. When I slowed to a stop next to her, I could hear a rhythmic pounding coming through Leo’s door, followed by angry, muffled shouts. Maddox’s eyes were flat and hard.

“He’s freaking out,” she told me as soon as I was standing next to her. “I tried to talk to him, but I think it was our uniforms. He just flipped out.”

I looked down at my uniform and then sighed. Grey didn’t have the best history with the Knights. His parents had dropped him from his department when he was young, because his ranking had continued to descend instead of rise. Their decision forced him to live on the outskirts of Tower life, bouncing from department to department, until he fell in with Roark and got a place with the Cogs. He had been Roark’s ally in distributing Paragon for their escape plan and hadn’t exactly been on the right side of the law. So it must have been a shock for any version of him to wake up in a room with two Knights. It wasn’t any wonder he was freaking out.

“I’ll get him calmed down,” I told her.

She nodded. “Zoe and Eric are almost here. I’ll go grab them and get them set up.”

I studied the door and nodded, absentmindedly checking that off my list and then summoning up a deep calm. Inside the room, Grey continued to shout demands for someone to come in and tell him what was going on, accompanied by loud metallic bangs, indicating he was kicking or punching the walls. As I reached for the button, I suddenly hesitated, my heart pounding.

Even though I knew I had to do this—had to open the door and try to calm Grey down—something inside me warned that it wasn’t a good idea for me, personally. I was already twisted up inside over the complicated feelings I was developing for Leo, and now I had to deal with Grey.