(Blood and Bone, #1) Blood and Bone (16 page)

He shakes his head. “I know you love me, but you don’t know me, Jane. Not really.”

“I do know you. I remember knowing you and loving you. But I prefer the Derek you were in Seattle.”

His gray eyes are void of all green. I think that the green is the goodness in him and the gray is the evil. When he’s too full up on bad, the green doesn’t show. I lean forward, completely terrified of the man I am pressing my lips against, and yet intrigued that he is the gentle giant with me. He never hurts me. I don’t think he can.

He kisses back. It’s wooden and unemotional, but it warms slowly. His lips begin to move, rubbing against mine. Our fingers find their way up each other’s arms, gripping each other.

The car is like a trap, preventing us from moving much beyond the caressing and kissing, but I can tell we both feel the need to move. He lets go of me, jumping out of the car and rushing to my side. His footsteps on the gravel beneath us are intense. When he drags me from the car it’s rough, but I fight a moan over the violence of our sudden outburst. He pushes me to the hood of the car, bending me across it, face down and writhing. My pants are ripped down, baring my ass to the garden. I hear him spit. It makes me cringe until he pushes his erection inside me, bringing instant pleasure with it. Then I ignore the way it got there. He thrusts hard, sliding his hands up my back and into my hair. He drags my head back, lifting my upper body. His other hand slides across the front of me and into the top of my shirt. He dips his entire hand into my bra, rolling my nipple as he drives his cock forward, bumping my thighs and hips off the hood and bumper.

It is not love we make. His fingers grab too hard, his cock enters too roughly, and when his teeth find my back I cry out. But none of my responses are in pain or injury. When I orgasm he can hardly move with the tension inside me gripping him. But the second I’m done quivering all over his erection, he’s back to jackhammering me into the car. He pushes my face back down, sliding my cheek and lips up and down the gray car. Words leave my mouth, words I don’t comprehend at all. They’re mutterings to my ears but to my brain they’re the true sound of bliss.

When he’s about to come, he grips my ass cheeks hard, pulling me back onto him as his balls slap against me.

I cry out again, shocked by the eruption inside me—a second orgasm. I don’t suspect it’s coming, but the moment it hits he loses himself, coming at the same time. His orgasm drips from us both as he collapses on top of me, pushing me into the metal hood harder.

“God damn, I missed you, Sam.” He kisses my back, and instantly I am unsure how turned on I should be by the events that have transpired in a stranger’s yard.

Sam?

I don’t know the appropriate response to the name, and my trembling vagina isn’t going to be any help on the matter. She’s convinced we need him, forever.

11. SEE JANE DIE

T
here is no way to go back when we enter the airport. The passport in my hand is a lie. The place we are going to do the surgery is a mystery. The act we are about to commit is a crime.

“She’s coming, right?” I ask, scanning the area for the one face I need to see in the crowd.

He kisses the back of my hand, an act from before the truth came out. It is an act old Derek would have done, not the man he’s been since my father’s house. I have moaned through that version of Derek’s affection several times in the last twenty-four hours. “I told you she is, three times already. Stop asking, Jane.”

And we are back to Jane? Maybe he’s back to being old Derek.

I don’t understand so I don’t pry. I don’t know where to go with all of it. The emotions and confusion have taken up enough room inside me. I decided to trust him when I saw the house of horrors, and I’m not changing my mind. Course I said I’d never trust him once I saw the video old me made. Maybe making guarantees is a bad plan for me.

All I know is every time I close my eyes I’m back there, and I need it gone—need my father gone. I need to be free of all of this. Derek is the only person who has ever made me free. It was a short freedom, ending after only three years, but it was the happiest I have ever been since before my mother died. I know that as a truth inside me.

“No more sleeping with the light on as of Wednesday.” He kisses my hand again.

I nod, hating the fact I have completely reverted back to the sleepwalking, assaulting him sexually in his sleep, all the while crying and whimpering, and needing the light on. It’s disturbing me.

We walk past the airline counters toward the security area. When I see her my heart lights up. I don’t wave or smile, I just glow on the inside.

She acts as though she doesn’t know us and walks to the bathroom. I want to scratch my wig and adjust it but I don’t. The bright-blonde hair is my only chance at getting onto the plane. I leave his side, walking to the bathroom with her passport in hand. She knows to go to the American Airlines gate and ask for the ticket that’s been left there for her, the new her. When I get in the bathroom she hugs me, breathing as if she hasn’t since I left her house. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”

I pull back. “Why?”

She shakes her wrinkled face. “There was a man, the one who was at the house with you the first day. He brought me this, this morning. He said he needed you to have it and that it was the same as last time.” She hands me a scratched-up pale-pink phone. I scowl, taking it.

“Did they follow you?”

She shakes her head. “No. I took a bus, a cab, and then walked through an older area before catching another cab. It would have been impossible. I brought nothing with me but what is in this carry-on.”

“Okay.” I hand her the passport. “You’re a Canadian named Martha Jane Anderson. You’re from Toronto and were here to see an old friend, but now you’re leaving on vacation. Make sure you memorize the address and stuff.”

“I can do that.” She nods. “See you wherever we end up, I guess.”

It makes me grin, knowing she’s coming this time. I’ll have someone who’s mine. I wish I could bring Angie. I hate that I’m leaving her behind. She and Binx are my family too. I already miss them both, even though it’s only been days. I can’t wait to get Binx back. His stay in the kennel is going to make him extra cranky. I almost grin, thinking about how sassy he’s going to be.

My aunt kisses me once more before leaving the bathroom and heading for the airline counter. Once I’m alone the weight of the phone feels like the gun he gave me did.

I press the power button on, knowing full well he’s tracked my aunt here. I dial 911 and wait for it to ring.

“Why are you trying to make me crazy? This isn’t even funny, Sam,” Rory answers, sounding desperate. “We are moving in to bring him down. We need you to stand down on this one. Please, for me.”

I close my eyes, letting the things I need to fall from my lips. “If you ever cared about me, even a little, I need you to imagine your father made you do the things mine did. Imagine for two seconds how you would feel knowing you woke in the night and killed animals like you once saw your father do.” He tries to interrupt me but I keep going. “Imagine for one minute how it feels to know someone took everything from you and left you a shell. How would you manage all of that baggage?”

“Don’t do this. Whatever his plan is, don’t do it.”

“I want this to go away. I need to be free of it all.”

His voice cracks. “Don’t leave me again.”

I shake my head as if he can see me. “I want you to go away, and I never want to see you again.”

“He isn’t the person you think he is. Trust me, you had to have had a plan. There’s no way you let him brainwash you without there being a method to your madness.”

A heavy sigh leaves my lips with my next sentence. “Let me be dead, Rory. Let me just be dead. This is me begging you to let me be free of this. Don’t be the person who traps me in the world my father tortured me in.” I hang up the phone, leaving it in the garbage can, and walk from the bathroom. My eyes are filled with tears, but my mind is certain we are doing the right thing.

I walk back to Derek, trying to hide the fact I’ve been crying, but he sees it immediately. “You all right?”

I nod. “Just a little sad still. My heart hurts, ya know?”

He wraps an arm around me. “I do.” We walk to the security check. It’s there I discover we are headed to Austria, which makes me excited. I know I’ve been there before. I saw the pictures, but I don’t recall it.

We walk to the gate for the plane, sitting next to each other on a bench. Earlier I told him I thought coming to the airport and taking the same flight was a gamble, but he said he picked the flight for a reason—it was overbooked.

He kisses my hand again, muttering, “I’ll be right back.”

I nod, waiting for him. Everything is clicking into place. I watch him walk down the long corridor of tan carpet, past the gates of the departure area. He’s crazy, there’s no doubt, but he wouldn’t ever hurt me. I know that. He’s the only way I’ll ever be rid of the haunting details of my childhood. I wish he could just take away the last two weeks but leave me with everything else. I was never scared before, except when I worried he would eventually see what a plain Jane I was.
Plain Jane.
The words ring in my head.
Plain Jane.

I open my mouth, whispering the words, “Plain Jane.”

It acts likes a trigger. A darkness covers my face, like a bucket of blood has been poured over my head, making my vision turn red
and cloud out my view. My eyes flutter like I’m having a seizure, only I’m not making them do it. A thousand images wash through my head at once, like a flood filling my brain.

Memories clear away, leaving one distinct image in my mind. I see him, my father. He’s on a bed, tied there. He’s old—older than my other memories of him. I’m in the room, smiling wide at him as I inject a needle into his fat hairy arm. He cries out in pain, making me jerk the needle a little more. I can see it dragging under the skin as he screams. There’s a small second when I almost open my eyes to stop the image, but I don’t. I force myself to watch as I drag a blade across his chest, cutting in. Then I pour a type of acid across the skin. In the haze I see the label of the white bottle as my gloved hand lifts it—citric acid. His screams are delicious. I rub him down with cream, his entire naked body including his flaccid cock; touching it makes me gag but I do it. I douse him in something that makes him scream in a way that just seeing the memory makes me shudder. His skin is flaming red, and his eyes are bulging from his fat head. He goes pale in the face after a few moments, clearly in shock. I grab the paddles and shock him to bring him back.

He screams and cries. He begs and pleads. But like my words once fell on his deaf ears, his do now to mine.

The scene fades away. I open my eyes, unsure how Derek could have killed my father if I was the one torturing him.

The airport isn’t any different when my eyelids lift, but I am.

I remember small bits of being me. It’s not whole, but the bits and pieces give me a clue to a few things I didn’t know.

I remember Rory—I remember not hating him at all.

Getting up, I hurry down the hall to the bathroom. The door slams open as I burst through it and instantly stick my arm into the trash bin. My fingers touch things I might have squealed about seconds ago, but now I’m unfazed by it. My armpit pinches as I reach to the very bottom of the trash and paper until I touch the pale-pink
phone. I squeeze it with my fingertips, lifting it slowly so I don’t drop it back into the filth. I press 911 and put it on speakerphone, not even washing my hands.

“Tell me you changed your mind.” Rory’s desperate voice makes me wince.

“Ror, I need you.” He doesn’t respond, so I speak again. “Ror? You there?”

I can hear him breathing and, I swear, swallowing hard. “Sam?”

I wince again. The name is mine. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“You remember?”

“Sort of.” I nod, like he can see me doing it. “I think so. I think I remember a lot of things. I need you to come and get me. My aunt was at the American Airlines counter and got a ticket to Austria. I need her found and taken somewhere safe.”

Again he pauses. “We followed her to the gate for Colorado, not Austria. She’s there now. I was just looking at her. We got here about ten minutes ago. She was being incredibly slippery earlier. We tracked the phone and followed that way. We assumed she meant to leave the phone at the airport and sneak out another way. That’s sort of the thing Dash would do.”

It’s my turn to pause. “Fuck. He might actually be doing that. He left me at the gate for Austria. What if he ran?”

“Come to the Colorado gate. It’s twenty-seven. Come here and we’ll regroup.”

“Okay.” I don’t want to leave Derek/Dash in case he’s on to me. I don’t want him to run. I have to assume I’ve wasted almost seven years trying to get him. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” My head isn’t clear, and my heart is conflicted, but my thirst for revenge has become the only emotion I am capable of feeling.

He didn’t kill my father.

He didn’t save me.

I saved myself.