“Better?” he asks me, raising a brow.
I stare at my cuffed hands. “Not even close…”
Vivisected. On-off-buzz-buzz-on-off. Caleb, I miss you.
“Help me catch him, Olivia.” He pauses; his expression is calculated but he needs something too. “I know I’m not a nice guy, but maybe you need someone like me in your corner.”
Caleb.
Go away, go away, go away.
My heart aches. “Please…give me the picture,” I plead.
Agent Reed steps within my line of sight, but I only stare at his tie. “If I give you the picture, will you tell me what happened? Will you answer my questions?”
I suck my bottom lip, running my tongue across it as I hold it between my teeth. It’s now or never and never isn’t truly an option. The inevitable is upon me. “Uncuff me.”
The agent’s eyes flicker over me. I know his mind must be racing with ideas on how to make me talk. Trust is a two way street. Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. He steps toward me, slowly, and cautiously removes the cuff from my wrist. “Well?” he says.
“I’ll tell you. Only, you. In exchange, you’ll give me any pictures you have of him and get me out of here.” My heart is beating a frantic tattoo in my chest, but I gather my courage. I’m a survivor. I hold my hand out. “Give me the picture.”
Agent Reed’s mouth twists with disappointment at the knowledge he cannot win this point from me. Reluctantly, he gathers his folder and hands me the photo of Caleb. “You’ll have to tell me what you know first, and then I can talk to my superiors and make a deal. I promise I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, but you have to start talking. You have to tell me why it looks like you’re more involved in this than any eighteen-year-old-girl has any right to be.”
No one else exists as I stare at Caleb’s face. I sob and trace the familiar lines of his face. I love you, Caleb.
“I’m gonna go get some coffee,” says Agent Reed, his voice resigned but still determined, “but when I come back, I expect answers.” I don’t notice when he leaves, or care. But I know he’s giving me time to grieve in peace.
He walked out of the room and shut the door. This time I heard the lock.
For the first time in five days, I am left alone. I suspect it will be the last time, for a while, Caleb and I will have to spend together. With trembling lips, I kiss him.
Chapter Two
It seemed to Caleb, the nature of human beings revolved around one empirical truth: we want what we cannot have. For Eve, it was the fruit of the forbidden tree. For Caleb, it was Livvie.
The night had been a fitful one. Livvie whimpered and trembled in her sleep and Caleb’s chest seemed to contract with every sound. He had given her more morphine and after some time, her body seemed to quiet down though there still seemed to be frenzied movement behind her eyelids. Nightmares, he assumed. Without fear of awkwardness or reproach, he felt a compulsion to touch her. He held her close and comforted them both, but he could not get Rafiq’s text out of his mind:
How soon would he land in Mexico?
How would he react to Livvie and her broken condition?
How long did he have with Livvie before she was taken away from him?
Taken. Away. Strange, horrible, and foreign words. He closed his eyes and set his mind to reality. You’re giving her away. He opened his eyes. And the sooner, the better.
He couldn’t argue with logic. It had kept him alive for longer than he could remember. He was cold and efficient. He did not dally with questions of morality. Still, he wanted to argue with logic. He wanted to find reason in what he felt to pacify the hardened man inside his head. But he couldn’t. The truth was – he wanted her. The truth was also, it was never meant to be. He pulled Livvie even closer, careful not to crush her ribs or injured shoulder and buried his nose in her long hair, trying to smell her scent.
He had told her he wasn’t her Prince Charming, but what he hadn’t said, was he wished he could be. Once upon a time, he may have been…normal. Before he had been stolen, before the beatings and the rapes and the killing – he could have been something different than what he was. He had never thought like this, never wondered about the roads taken or not taken. His life was lived in the present and without the angst of fantasies. But he fantasized now. He fantasized about being the sort of man who could give, Livvie, all she ever wanted. The kind of man she could….
But you’re not that man, are you?
Caleb sighed, knowing the answer. The fantasies of others had never confused him, but his own, left him dissatisfied with the life he’d accepted and even enjoyed from time to time. He wanted it to go away, the longing, and the feelings of regret. He wanted to live for the hunt and kill – it had been the only thing to make sense to him for so very long. Even in those moments of darkness, when his drive had flagged and he questioned the possibility of ever finding Vladek – he had never thought to be anything other than what he was.
Yet, in just three and a half weeks with Livvie, most of which, she spent locked in a dark room, it all seemed to be evaporating. It was stupid, naïve, and dangerous. A person was incapable of changing fundamentally in such a short period of time. He wasn’t different. And yet, he felt different and not even logic could alter that. If it hadn’t been for the memories, those awful, f**king memories of Narweh, beating and raping him. If he hadn’t seen Livvie, covered in blood, bruised and shuddering in that biker’s arms – he wouldn’t feel like his entire world was caving in on him.
God! What he’d done to make them pay. It had been the kind of rage he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He didn’t regret it either. He’d savored the look on those biker’s faces as he’d plunged his knife deep into Tiny, and his blood sprayed Caleb, the walls, everything.
Revenge! That was his purpose.
“It will be like it never happened?” Rafiq said, softly.
“Yes.” It was a choked sound.
Rafiq sighed. “No one knows how you feel more than I do, Caleb. But you cannot continue to defy me; you cannot continue to act like a petulant boy! You are not Kéleb any longer. Wash. I promise you, Narweh will still be dead when you are finished.”
The boy pushed away from the grip on the back of his neck. “No! No! No! I won’t do it.”
Rafiq’s face went from cautiously warm to stone cold. “Have it your way, Kéleb.” His grip on the boy’s neck intensified and as he winced with pain and tried to struggle away from Rafiq, his other hand came down with a meaty thud across the boy’s face.