Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series) (13 page)

“I have to get a condom,” John said.
Nooooo. Don’t stop.
Please.
I knew it was important, I knew we had to use it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him pulling out; the way he was thrusting into me, his head thrown back, the way he was slamming himself against my ass, made me wonder if we’d remember before it was too late.

“I’m supposed to get my period tomorrow,” I said, panting, pleading. “I don’t think I can get pregnant tonight.” I only knew about this stuff because Sasha had taught me, petrified that I would get a boyfriend in her absence. I was surprised at the manipulative tone in my voice — I swear, my biology was speaking for me, trying to get him to come in me.

He exhaled deeply and stopped for a moment. “No time is safe,” John said, stroking my backside. “I’ll pull out, if you’re okay with that.”

I grabbed his erection and rubbed it back up against my wetness; of course it was okay. Right this second everything was okay. I just wanted him back inside me.
Now.

“I would love to get you pregnant, someday,” he whispered to me. “Then you would be mine, forever.”

My heart stopped. I stood up, turned around, and kissed him deeply.
I am yours forever. Don’t ever doubt it.

He returned the kiss and grabbed my breasts, stroking them, but he soon started rubbing himself up against my belly. His need took over and he turned me around and bent me over again. He slammed back into me and pulsed, rhythmically, and I spread my legs further, taking him all the way in.

“Come for me, baby,” he said, and he continued to pound me, hard. He reached down and stroked my clitoris, twisting it, pinching it, making me scream. “JOHN!”
I hollered, not caring if anyone heard me, giving in to him, doing exactly as he said, my body wracked with spasms, my knees collapsing.

He pulled out then — my orgasm shuddered and clenched, my body searching for him, but he was gone, gone, gone. Instead, I heard him let out a strangled moan and felt a hot liquid spill up my back. “Liberty,” he said, lowly, seriously, “I fucking love you.” He shuddered against me, held me to him, and gently pulled me down. We both curled up on the mossy floor of the forest.

“Let’s do target practice tomorrow,” he suggested. I happily murmured my assent and I nestled myself, contentedly, against his massive chest in the stillness of the night forest.

* * *

“The is the first time I’ve slept till eight in six months,” Matthew said to me the next morning at breakfast. “It was awesome.”

“Yeah, it was pretty awesome,” I said, and promptly turned bright red. We were not talking about the same awesomeness. I stood up as he laughed and I left the table, grabbing my tray and hurrying, before he could make fun of me. I had to meet John at the shooting range now, anyway. Since we’d skipped out last night, he was taking an hour or so this morning to work with me alone.

The sun was shining and the air was warm but not humid; it was a beautiful late June day. Gone were my clouded thoughts from last night. I felt renewed and revitalized. My thoughts briefly flashed to last night and the memory made me throb
down there
and blush ridiculously.

“Have you been running?” John said, taking in my crimson appearance.

“Um, no,” I stammered. “I’ve been remembering.”

“Oh, me too,” he said, opening his arms wide. I went to him and laid my head on his chest. “It was
awesome.
”

“Yeah,” I said, laughing against his chest, “it was totally awesome.”

He hugged me for another minute then pulled back. “Okay, we’ll have to get back to that later.” He bent down and kissed me, quickly and deeply. “Mmmm ... and get back to that, too. But now,” he said releasing me and clapping his hands together, “it’s time to get down to business.”

He brought me over to a locked case on the far wall of the room. “We’re using handguns,” he said, entering an electronic code and opening the door to the case. Inside were guns — lots of guns — in all shapes and sizes. I didn’t know a thing about them, but I recognized some as shotguns and some as pistols. There were also some scary looking machine-gun types, but I would never touch one of those, even if John insisted.

“I don’t like guns,” I said, as he handed me a small one after checking its chamber and making sure it was empty. I
held it at
arm’s length, like it was contagious, and he laughed at me.

“You need to know how to fire one,” he said, in a firm tone.

“Why?” I asked. “It’s just like running ten miles or doing a pull-up — why, exactly, do I need to do these things?” Even if Ray made a run for it, there was little to no chance of him even making it a mile: he smoked like a fiend. Also, I couldn’t really picture John having me run after him, helter-skelter, when he had a trained crew of ex-Navy seals at his disposal.

“I want you to be able to defend yourself, if you have to,” he said. “It’s not just about Ray. It’s about
all
bad guys. I want you to always be able to take care of yourself, in case I’m not right there to protect you.”

Two things stuck out in my mind simultaneously when he said this:
In case he’s not there, and all bad guys. The first, meaning he might not be with me; the second, meaning more bad guys, a future filled with fear.
He must have seen the look on my face because his own expression quickly turned to one of torture.

“Liberty! I said
in case
I wasn't there — not that I
wouldn’t
be there,” he said, taking me in his arms, alerted to only a portion of my panic. “Don't look like that. You'll break my heart,” he said, kissing the top of my head, pulling me close to him. “Are you afraid? Is that what's wrong?”

I looked up at him and nodded. I wasn't technically lying — I
was
afraid; afraid he wasn't going to be there, afraid I was going to lose him. And in the alternative, afraid he was going to be off shooting and kidnapping people the rest of his life, while I waited for him, worrying.

I wasn’t worried about Ray anymore. He couldn't hurt me now. I was past him. John was the only one left who had any power over me.

“I
will
be there,” John said, deeply, and his voice caught. “But I won’t leave you unprepared. I couldn’t live with myself.” He buried his face in my hair.

“John,” I said, and I reached up and cupped his face. I could only imagine the guilt he lived with about his daughter; he probably felt like he sent her out into the world unprepared, and she suffered the ultimate price. I made him look at me. “You’ve already done everything for me. You’ve been everything I could ever ask for. Don’t
ever
feel guilty about me.” I kissed him
then,
holding him to me tightly, because I needed him to know. “I love you. But you are not responsible for me.”

“I
want
to be responsible for you, Liberty,” he said, looking down at me. “You are my whole world now. You are the only thing left that matters to me.”

My heart stopped when he said this.
Stop,
I thought at him.
Don’t say it: don’t make me think you mean forever.
The thing was, I
did
believe him; but I had learned the hard way that there was no such thing as happily ever after. And once you learned that, you could never go back.
I couldn’t let myself hope for more. It would kill me when it didn’t come true.
I had to shove the image of those three adorable babies to the side, the idea of that security and comfort.
Even if a miracle occurred and that happened, it wouldn’t be perfect: he would still be out, risking his life and my sanity.
I shoved the beautiful image of what I longed for, my heart’s greatest desire, to the side again.
That was the only way I was going to get through this alive.

“Do you have any idea how alone I’ve been?” he asked. He was being so honest, so emotionally raw, that I had to look him in the eyes. I let myself listen, without steeling myself against him, without letting myself think about the future. I was going to hear him out.

“After Catherine’s mother and I split up, I let myself get cold,” he said, sitting down on one of the long, low benches. “I thought that I loved her, but I realized after we had the baby that I didn’t, and I hated myself for that. Who wants to bring a child into the world, and then screw that world up for them?” He looked at me sympathetically, and I looked down. “I didn’t want to be that person, but there I was, in a position I had never pictured myself in, with a beautiful daughter and a girlfriend I felt completely out of touch with.

“She was the one who left. I didn’t blame her in the least: we had nothing in common, just our beautiful little girl. I came to realize what we’d thought was love was just youthful infatuation. It happens, and you’re young and that’s okay — but you need to not get pregnant. Because then someone else’s life gets complicated, and they never asked for their troubles.”

“Is that like us?” I asked, throwing caution to the wind, just wanting to know the truth. “Without the pregnant part. Are we an infatuation? An attraction?”

John looked at me and shook his head, an incredulous expression suddenly clouding his face. “You don’t feel what I feel?” he asked, grabbing my hand and placing it on his heart.

“I love you. It’s real,” he said.

“It’s real for me, too,” I breathed,
and it always will be.
I put my head on his chest, over his beating heart.

“I told you I believe everything happens for a reason. It’s taken me years to get to a place where I can see where my life has been, and where it’s heading,” he said, clutching me to him.

“I can understand if you don’t see it yet — you’re so young, there’s so much that’s tumultuous, it was like that for me, too — but now, for me, the timing is almost too perfect. You came to me when I had given up hope; I had certainly given up the hope of ever finding someone to love. And yet, I love you,” he said, bending to kiss me tenderly on the cheek.

“It’s as natural for me as breathing. I couldn’t write down a list of what I was looking for — I
wasn’t
looking for anything — but I met you, and you were so beautiful, and so instantly, crazily important to me. It was like someone flipped a switch. All of a sudden, I wasn’t lonely anymore. I wanted to wake up every morning to find out what would happen, to see if I could make you smile. I didn’t want to punish myself anymore for all the things I hadn’t done, or that I’d done wrong,” he said, stroking my hair. “You were more interesting to think about. Do you understand? You brought me back to life. So even if you don’t want me to be responsible for you, I want to be. It makes me happy.”

I just sat there and looked up at him, my eyes wide. “It’s exactly the same for me,” I said, my voice choked. “I was alone, I had nothing, and then I saw you. It was like I was being resuscitated, only I didn’t know how far gone I was.”

It was true,
I thought then, and I knew it even in my secret heart.
He did love me.
He believed it. It was real.

Now I was just going to have to find a way to let
myself
believe it. Before I found myself flatlining again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

You Don’t Want to Know

After that, the shooting practice went okay. My hands were numb and shaking afterward, but John worked with me for a couple of hours, and by the end of it, I was feeling more confident with my aim. I was at least hitting the target. John said we could work on getting closer to the bull’s-eye the next morning. Which brought me to my next question.

“How many mornings do we have left here?” I asked. I was sure I didn’t want to know the answer: I never wanted to leave. I would run ten miles every day for the rest of my life if I could stay here with John, in Never-Never Land,
watching fireflies and having sleepovers. I would live in a barrack and put up with Matthew’s teasing and core workouts and target practice.

I knew it was coming to an end, though. And I had never been as afraid to face a change as I was now.

“Two more days, tops,” John said. He was cleaning out the guns we’d used, separating them and wiping them down meticulously. “We’re about to let Darius go. Once we do that, we just have to pack up and get everyone’s travel arrangements made. And I have to make sure my father has everything he needs before our trip.”

“You’re letting Darius go?” I asked, eyes wide with surprise. “Go where?”

“Back to Brazil,” John said, continuing to look down at his work. “He’s agreed, tentatively, to act as an informant for us.”

“So you’re just going to let him go, on his word?” I asked. I knew John didn’t trust him, and neither did Matthew. It seemed too easy for Darius to just make a promise that he had no intention of keeping.

“No, my dear, not on his word,” John said, looking up at me finally. “He’s going to have to be secured first.”

“
Secured
?” I asked. I had no idea what he meant, what he had planned.

John blew out a long breath. “Really, you don’t want to know,” he said, gently. I held his gaze unflinchingly and he sighed.

“This is part of what I have to do. I have to keep my client safe, his family safe, and with respect to this particular asset, the general population safe.”

I shook my head at him. This wasn’t good enough. I needed to know the full truth. “John, we’re going to go get Ray after this. I need to know what I’m in for,” I said. Really, it was more pressing for me to know what exactly John was capable of. I knew he had a good heart.
What I didn’t know, for sure, was what he was capable of in a situation like this.

“You really want to know?” John asked, and he looked resigned.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then come with me, now. And bring that gun. We’re probably gonna need it.”

* * *

“I have another question,” I said, my voice coming out in puffs. I was struggling to keep up with John as he strode purposefully towards where they were keeping Darius.

“Of course you do,” John said, and smirked at me. “Go.” He was in full-on military mode.

“Who’s the client?” I huffed, barely able to keep pace. No wonder John ran so much: apparently, walking normally was way too slow for him.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, looking straight ahead, not slowing down. “Trust me. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

“It’s my sister isn’t it,” I said, panicking. “Is she okay?”

“Your sister
is not the client,” John said, as if he was ripping a bandaid off swiftly, so it wouldn’t cause me any more unnecessary pain. “I’ve been in contact with her, briefly, and she’s doing fine.” He looked at me sideways and saw my jaw hanging open, my mouth agape. “She’s the one who told me what sizes you were, and what books and food you liked.”

I couldn’t process this.
She was alive! She was okay!
Somehow, deep down, I’d known she was. She was probably just trying to move on from mom, pretending that everything was all right. But she wasn’t the one who’d hired John to take down Ray?
I didn’t have anyone else!

I stopped walking then, and threw up my hands in frustration. “Who then?” I asked, and I was desperate. Desperate to know. “Who cares enough about me?
Who?
Who even knows that I exist?
” I asked, I yelled, not caring who heard me.

John stopped and hung his head. “
I
do,” he said quietly. “
I
care. But right now, we have work we need to do.” He grabbed my hand firmly and lead me to the holding chamber.

Matthew and Sean were seated outside the locked door, playing cards, drinking bottled water, and cradling shotguns between their legs.

“We’re going in,” John said, still holding my hand firmly. “Call Michael and have him come here immediately and be on stand-by, please.”

Michael was the medic. My palms started to sweat.

“You’re
taking her in?” Matthew asked, a bit incredulously,
nodding at me.

“Mind your own fucking business,” John said, lethally, and Matthew leaned back as if John had hit him.

I saw him look at me, though, as John lead me away, and his look told me to be wary. It was like he was taking a mental snapshot of the way I was — and his look warned me that I would never be the same again.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” John quietly asked me just outside the door. I heard real doubt in his voice, none of the bravado that he had just fired off at Matthew.

“You go, I go,” I said, even though I was afraid.

He smiled at me then, in spite of himself. He opened the door and, still holding my hand, led me inside the darkened room. I could feel the pistol he’d insisted I bring in the small of my back, where I’d stuck it into the waistband of my yoga pants, as instructed. I noticed briefly that I was sweating there.

I looked around the room and saw that the windows had the blinds drawn, blocking out the midday sun. It was plenty bright enough for me to take in several unpleasant things, however: a lone toilet in the corner; a sad, flat cot with a rumpled blanket on the floor; and Darius, sitting alone and stricken, tied to a chair, at the far end of the room. He looked like he’d been beaten. Regularly. Recently.

“John,” I breathed. This was horrible. I knew Darius was bad, but these conditions were disgusting. “John,” I said, keeping my voice low, “you can’t
do
this.”

“This,” John said, motioning around the room, “
is
what I do.”

He looked at me then, steadily,
and in that look I could see so much about him. Yes, it was true, he tortured people. He’d killed people — some in the line of duty, some because he’d been hired to. Some of them he thought were pure evil and should be taken from the earth.
He needed to move past this, I thought, in order to heal. I needed him to move past it, in order to be with him.

We were going to have to figure this out.

He squeezed my hand and pulled me towards Darius’s slumped form. “Darius?” he said, softly, warily.

Darius’s chin jerked up, and he opened his swollen eyes a fraction. Looking at him up close, I could see that his face was puffy and bruised all over. My stomach rolled and I had to look away.

“Ah, John,” Darius said, snidely, like he was meeting a child on the playground that he particularly liked to bully. “I see you’re back. And this time, you’ve brought your whore.”

I didn’t even see John move; but the next thing I knew, I heard Darius scream. I turned my head to look through squinted eyes and I saw Darius’s nose gushing blood, just like it had on the bus.

I guess I should have expected that.

“I told you not to talk about her like that,” John said, matter-of-factly, flexing his knuckles. He fished in his pockets and produced a handkerchief, which he roughly applied to Darius’s nose. Darius yelled again, but the noise was garbled beneath the cloth.

“We’re letting you go,” he said, and Darius laughed shortly, unbelievingly, with the cloth hanging halfway off his face, only part of it still stuck to tacky blood. “We are,” John said, and his voice was dead calm. “Back to Brazil. But you’re working for us, now, like we talked about.”

“Lucky me,” Darius said, and I was surprised that he managed to still be snide. He was one tough guy, certainly tougher than he looked right at the moment. I couldn’t imagine that John was going to let him go back out into the public.

“You can appreciate that I have my reservations, of course,” John said, conversationally. He was seemingly unfazed, walking around with his hands now in his pockets. It was as if they were discussing something banal like the weather. “Not the least of which is your language. But I have no guarantee that you’ll perform as agreed.”

“I will,” Darius said, and this time the snide tone was gone from his voice. He sounded deflated. The handkerchief, spotted with blood, fluttered to the floor. “What choice do I have? If you don’t let me go, I die. If you let me go and I don’t do as you ask, I die. Why wouldn’t I work for you?”

“Precisely what’s been troubling me,” John said, turning around to face him, glancing at me sideways to make sure I was still standing and hadn’t passed out. “Why haven’t you done what we’ve asked? As far as my intelligence indicates, you’ve got no one looking for you. You are almost impossible to find even if someone bothered. And yet, for the most part, you’ve completely held out on us. Until we recently offered to let you go back into the field.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time. In this business I’ve become familiar with various types of people,” he continued, pacing again, his hands in his pockets. “They follow certain patterns. I’m familiar with your kind, which makes it easier to forecast your next step.”

John kept pacing but looked at him; Darius’s face gave nothing away. “I know you’ll go back, acting like you're working for us, because you’re right: you have no other option but to cooperate. But then, you’ll disappear. That’s your plan, anyway. Because that’s the thing you’ve been hiding from us, the thing I’ve known from the start: you’re an extremist. This is an end game for you. It’s not about money or your survival. You’re willing to pay the ultimate price.” He stopped pacing then, stood still and stretched. He looked perfectly calm. Darius’s face was impassive. He gave no acknowledgement whatsoever.

“I admire your commitment,” John said, “so please don't take this personally.” And in one fluid motion, he pulled his revolver out and fired at Darius.

“AAAGGHH!”
Darius screamed, clutching his knee and knocking himself and his chair over to the side. He landed in a heap on the floor, the chair on top of him. I heard him crying. Sobbing.

I went to run to him to help but John held his powerful arm up in front of me so I couldn’t move. He turned and looked at me levelly. “It'll be harder for him to run on crutches,” he said, matter-of-factly. I could feel all the blood drain from my face and the world started spinning around me. He grabbed me then and held me up.
“
Remember what I told you,” he whispered to me. “There’s a reason I’m doing this. A reason you can believe in.”

At the moment, I couldn’t think of any reason worthy of this. John sat me down on the floor and put my head between my knees. He started heading towards Darius. I was shaking. My knees were knocking, and they batted against the sides of my head as adrenaline and fear coursed through me.
How could this be? How could this beautiful man, who I had given myself to so completely, who had shown me so much kindness, be this hard? He was acting as a cop, judge, jury and executioner all at the same time...but what gave him the right?

It was like he could hear my thoughts; John stopped and came back to me. He kneeled down and gently grabbed my chin, pulling it up so I was facing him. My body was still shaking, and I found myself shaking my head at him,
No.
No, I can’t take anymore.
I could still hear Darius crying, but his sobs were muffled.

John leaned down so his eyes were level with mine. He held my chin steadily so I would stop shaking, trying to steady my gaze with his. “Do you remember what I told you, when we met?” he asked, and his eyes were moist. I could tell that my reaction was affecting him — Darius could scream, cry, gush blood and be on the edge of death, and that wouldn’t bother him — but my horror, my disbelief, was punishing John, causing him pain.

I shook my head, no. All I could remember right now was seeing him for the first time, when my heart stopped, and my world changed, forever. I wished I could forget it. I wished I could forget the whole thing.

“I told you that you were going to have to trust me. That you were going to have to play it out,”
he said, and I remembered, remembered being petrified that he would smell greasy French fries on my breath, remembered how heady it was having him close to me. I remembered having no idea what he was talking about at the time. It seemed a little clearer now.

“I love you,” John said, as he looked into my eyes and held my face between his two hands. “I would never hurt you. Do you understand?”

Somehow, through my shock, I found the strength to nod.
I did trust him.
No matter what else he did, who he made bleed, I knew in my heart he would never, ever hurt me. Not like that.