Blood and Bone (Blood and Bone Series Book 1), page 6
Stan pulls me to a cop who is next to his car. He nods back at me. “Hey, I think this girl is strung out. I found her in the alley with a trash-can lid on her head.”
The cop gives me a worried look as he tilts my face up. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m not strung out. I need to find my friend. She’s in Seattle.”
He sighs and nods at his car. “That’s a long ways from here. Just get in the back and I’ll give you a ride to the hospital in Seattle. I’m headed there anyway.”
I almost argue but then I think about it. “Okay.” A hospital sounds like a good idea. What am I running from? A doctor who loves me and wants to help me and protect me? Derek’s story has to have a valid reason. There must be a reason for it all. No one protects someone the way he does me unless there is something they need protecting from. The lengths he’s gone to speak of the love he has for me, more than the lies he has told can speak against it.
Either way, there is no way I am going to get anywhere without some answers, and I am not getting them by running away. All my answers are with Derek.
I climb into the back of the cop car, something that feels abhorrently wrong to me. My skin crawls and my mouth goes dry as I touch the vinyl seats. The man from the alley waves. “Feel better.”
I nod and look down at the floor. When they close the door I have the strangest sensation, like being trapped. My mind is attempting to reason with me, but my body is panicking. Its instincts are not keen on the police.
It’s weird.
6. A MAGIC COCK ON A MADMAN
Convincing the cop to bring me to the police station downtown was easy once I had him persuaded I wasn’t strung out. But clearing my name in the system is making me nervous. The office I’m sitting in is filled with the scent of coffee and old shredded paper. I don’t remember where I smelled shredded paper before, but I know the smell.
A man walks in, closing the door and leaning against it as if he’s trapping me in there. He makes me uncomfortable instantly, making my stomach hard as a rock.
“Samantha?” His voice makes my skin crawl, but the fact he knows my real name is unbelievable.
“Jane Spears.” I don’t know why I lie, but it seems like the smarter move.
He chuckles, and I realize by the way he said my name that he is the Irishman. He is the man searching for me. He shakes his head, cocking it to the side with a grin that makes my stomach twist in knots. “What in the fucking hell are ya doing in Seattle, ya crazy bitch?”
I pull back, stunned and unsure of what to say.
“I’ve been searching high and fucking low for ya. I knew ya weren’t dead. I knew ya just went deep with him.”
I shudder from the cool in the room. I didn’t notice it before, but I’m suddenly freezing.
“Did ya miss me? ’Cause I missed you.” He cracks a bigger grin and takes a step closer but stops when he sees I’m trembling. “It’s real then? The memory? It’s not an act?”
I shake my head slowly, completely scared.
He moves cautiously with purpose to the desk, picking up a file and sliding it across the table to me. He nods at it. “Sam, you were my partner for five years. We were undercover together at Berkeley for two. We were undercover in Ireland for a year. We worked the assassinations of seven men and one woman. It’s what led us to this case.” He chuckles again as he takes small steps to the desk and sits slowly. Everything he does is purposeful and planned, like a tiger walking in a cage, always watching you.
I lift a hand, dragging open the file.
Everything crashes inside me. My emotions hit a wall of sorts, but break through. Hot tears flood my face. They try to blind me and block out the truth, but every page is another answer to a question I never thought to ask until recently.
I am thirty-two years old. I work for the American government in something that’s blacked out on the files, so it must be intense if they won’t even tell me about me.
My mother’s name was Sheila. She died in a car accident when I was two. My father was an abusive drunk. His name was Leroy Anderson. I was abducted as a small child, taken by my aunt Pat, and raised as her daughter. Barnes is my aunt’s name. She’s still alive, living in North Carolina. The file says she saved me. She abducted me to save me from my father.
I have no sisters or brothers.
There are pictures of a cat, a black-and-white cat.
The tears try to block it all out, so I get blurry images of a history—schools, houses, and people that just can’t be real.
It’s all about me.
Me as a blonde, a redhead, a brunette. I am thin in every shot, much thinner than now.
“Aye, look how skinny ya were.”
I lift my snotty face, crying harder.
He laughs at me, completely at me, as if we have a comfort level that can support that level of mockery. He hands me a tissue. “You look better like this. More real. You were always a bit of a Barbie doll before. So thin and pert. Ya look like a regular girl now.”
I sniffle. “I don’t believe this, any of it. I’m Jane Spears, and I want a lawyer. You’re trying to make me do something I don’t want to do. I need to go home. I demand to be released.” Panic fills me as the walls creep in closer and closer.
“You don’t know you’re Sam, and it’s gonna take some time to get you back on track. Just look at the evidence.” He nods. “I would imagine you have spent a long time being lied to. How long since you lost your memory?”
Before I answer, I blow my nose and wipe my face. Trying desperately to get some sort of control over my emotions, I shake my head with my eyes closed. It’s like being in Oz or The Twilight Zone. But when I open my eyes again, he’s still here and I’m still some secret agent of sorts with a dead mother, an abusive father, and an aunt who might have actually saved my life.
“Answer the questions and you can go home.”
“Three years. I was in an accident and got amnesia.”
His eyes narrow in disbelief. “Were you hurt badly?”
I shrug. “I have hordes of scars. Derek said it was bad.”
He scowls. “Who? You aren’t with Dash anymore? Did you kill him? Fuck, he didn’t get away, did he?”
My brow knits. “You have to ask questions I might understand.”
He reaches for me slowly, stopping at the file to flip pages. He comes to a shot of a man who could be Derek, maybe, and thumps his finger down hard. “Dash, Benjamin Dash. Is he dead or alive?”
I swallow hard, worried about exactly what kind of trouble Derek is in. My instinct is to protect him. “I don’t know this man.”
He winces, wrinkling his nose. “Of course ya do. He’s a skeezy fucker.” He says it like focker and snorts. I have never seen a human being react that way to Derek. He’s a god among men. “What were your injuries in the accident?”
“I have scars on my ribs, back, and my arm. My head has a small one under my hair.”
“You’ve always had those scars. They’re old as sin. I don’t think you were in a car accident. I think he did something to your mind. Fucked with it. Feel like protecting him now? The old you was hard as nails and woulda killed him in a heartbeat. He’s made you soft.” He snorts and grabs a picture from the bunch of the blonde girl who is identical to me, in a bikini. The scars are the same. I had them before. They’re not from the accident. His words cut through me, making new scars.
No accident is ringing in my head like Quasimodo is in there himself, pulling on the rope. After a second I nod. “His name is Derek, not Dash. He’s a good man.”
“A good liar, ya mean.” He sighs, licks his lips, and slaps the picture. “What can you tell us? What have you gotten on him in the last six years?”
Every time he mentions how long it’s been, he looks like he might hug me. I move my chair a little, backing away from him. I don’t know what to say about the scars so I focus on Derek. “Nothing. He’s a surgeon and a humanitarian and a good cook.”
He bites his lip, furrowing his dark brow. “Right, and he’s got a magic cock. How about the assassinations with their serial-killer tactics used? He doesn’t assassinate like a normal cleaner would. Who does he work for? Why always political and royalty with him? Why not the average random, like normal serial killers?”
“He works at the hospital. I don’t know.” Tears build back up in my eyes again.
He slumps back in the chair, groaning. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the bleeding hell did he do to you? Ya baking cakes now for him, or what?”
“Who are you?”
He cocks an eyebrow, pausing as if he doesn’t understand the question, before bursting into a fit of laughter. His dark-blue eyes narrow with the laugh, squinting with tears of joy. He’s tall and broad, just like Angie said he was. He’s handsome and chiseled—that’s the word I would use for him: chiseled. His dark hair and tanned skin make him a perfect tall, dark, and handsome. It’s too bad he cusses so much, just like Angie said he would. I almost want to record him so I can show her she was right. If I wasn’t on the verge of losing my mind and committing myself into a center, I would actually do it.
He slaps the desk once more, wiping his face. “Rory Guthrie. I can’t believe I never introduced myself.” He reaches over, flipping to the section in the file about him and me. There are dozens of photos of us together. I blush when I see us kissing.
“Well, we had to be a couple, but we kept it professional.”
There is a photo of us young and in Berkeley sweaters. Mine is gray and his, black. We look like typical college nerds. His hair is longer and fluffy and he has glasses, but it’s like Superman and Clark; you can’t hide his type of beautiful with some nerdy shit.
Seeing the pictures makes my heart flutter in the wrong sort of way. He instantly makes me uncomfortable. The smell of his cologne or aftershave fills the air.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“For you to finish the job you started.”
I glance up at him, completely lost. “What job?”
“Bring in Dash.” My eyes clearly answer the request, because Rory laughs. “You have to, or they’re going to consider you rogue. You know what the charges for treason look like?”
My insides twist. “How can I? I don’t know anything, and he’s done nothing wrong. He’s a good person; this is a mistake.”
“You’re still alive after six years. He clearly feels something for you or he would have killed you. He must know what you are.”
I shake my head. “What am I? I work in shops. I’m lucky to have him. I’m the one you want. At night I sleepwalk and murder animals.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You’re a fucking vegetarian! Stop the act.”
I shudder. “No. I’m not.”
“Yeah, ya are. Ya been one since you were five years old. Your dad was killing a pig in the barn. It was making all kinds of fuss. He was cocking it up ’cause he was drunk off his ass and you woke up, caught him, and freaked out. He fucking cooked the pig and made you eat it. You decided from then on, no more animals.”
My throat turns sour. “You have to be wrong. I eat meat.”
He sighs. “Well, I guess being with nutty old Dash has cured you of one thing. Thank God for that.”
I push the images away, pretending the last ten seconds never occurred. “It doesn’t matter. I woke with blood all over me. He told me I kill animals in my sleep.”
He scoffs. “He rubbed you down with blood and lied to you. He’s a sociopath. He’s going to play with you, Sam. Get used to it.”
“Jane. If that’s the case, you can’t expect me to go back there and pretend everything is normal.”
“Your name is Sam.” Rory nods. “And yes, I do. I expect ya to do your job. I won’t go to the superiors yet. I’ll give you a week to figure this all out. But the minute they find out you have amnesia, they’re gonna haul you in for testing. No one wants CIA testing of any sort.” He nods at the file folder. “Read it, memorize it, and get the fuck back home.” He winks, and I think I might actually hate him a little. “Also, what’s your cell phone number, so I can rig your line?”
I write the number down. I think I would do anything to go home at this point.
He flashes me the grin that makes my stomach ache. “Dial 911 from your phone to get me anytime of the day. If he leaves at night, you follow, and call me.” He takes something from his pocket and slides it across the table to me. “Put this on the car if ya get a chance, so we can track it.” It’s a small metal magnet. It makes me feel instantly guilty but I pocket it anyway. “He’s not a good man, Jane. He’s a killer and a dangerous one at that. He’s erased your memory and made you his simpering bitch. I need you to think about that. I need you to want revenge for it as badly as I do.”
I want to argue, or at the very least, be offended by the “simpering bitch” comment, but I have run out of ammo. The evidence makes Derek look guilty. If he is, I will need all the help I can get, and if he isn’t, I’ll need to clear his name.
Rory leaves the room, so I spend the next four hours memorizing the contents of the file and praying this is somehow still a case of mistaken identity.
The information feels like too much, but my brain seems to come alive under the circumstances. There’s a sickening thrill for the first few hours of reading, as if my brain thrives on the danger and adventure of it all. Finally, exhausted and unable to read another thing, I sigh and slip the file folder into the shredding machine and turn it on. I don’t even know why I do that; it just feels like the right choice. I walk to the front counter. “Is he still here?”
The lady at the desk gives me a completely blank stare. “Who?”
“The Irishman I was with—Rory. Tall, dark hair, and quite handsome, but crass.”
Her eyebrows knit. “I didn’t see anyone like that.”
“Of course not,” I mutter and leave the police station.
On the way home my brain runs everything off like it’s following a list of things to decipher.
Benjamin Dash is a genius. He’s smarter than I am. He’s a doctor. He’s a psychopath? That one doesn’t feel so real. The people who want me to bring him in suspect he’s murdered dozens of people using freakishly devious ways to kill them. He’s a master at making it look like an accident. That I could actually see—he’s intelligent in a way that awes me regularly.
And then there’s the fact he’s in love with me.
But according to them, not me the way I was, me the way I am now. He likes me broken and needy. He made me needy on purpose. He made me soft and took away everything I was. I don’t know how to feel about that, if it’s true.
And even if it is, it’s not like he took much away in reality. Looking back at the file I realize I wasn’t much better off. I was stronger, more independent, and braver. But I was alone, working all the time. I was single. In every one of those pictures I looked sad or hard. I don’t recognize that girl. She’s sad and distant, and I don’t feel that way anymore. So maybe he saved me from myself?
In all honesty I feel like I will wake any second and it will all be a bad dream caused by watching late-night TV again.
I feel sick that Derek has lied to me, but I see why, in a sick and twisted sort of way. I was lying first. I am still lying; we just didn’t know it.
I ride the bus home with my last couple of dollars. I’m cold and hungry and exhausted. I can’t kid myself—the moment I see the house, I’m elated. I know he’s in there, cooking or waiting for me. I know he’s worried and misses me. And I miss him. I miss who we were yesterday.
I don’t even make the driveway and I see the handle on the door turning. Quickly, I slip my hand into my pocket, pulling out the magnet, and as I walk past the car I attach it to the back of it, just on the metal at the trunk. It doesn’t look like anything but a tiny magnet, so it blends. I don’t want to do it, but I think I need to. I need him to be innocent, and I need to prove he is. They’re wrong, and I have to show them.
When he opens the door, Derek’s face is pinched and his dark greenish-gray eyes are mostly gray. He looks cold and hard. “You okay?”
I shake my head, pausing on the cement. The light from inside shines behind him, taunting me with its warmth. I only have to sell my soul to the devil to go inside and be warm again.
He opens his arms for me. “You scared me.”
I walk to him. Those arms are beacons of warmth and love. The only thing we’ve lost so far is the trust, but I think we might be able to get it back if I can prove he’s innocent.
When I melt into them I feel different. I melt all the way without him forcing me. I pause, wondering if he feels it—the difference in me.
But he kisses the top of my head, smelling me. He hovers there, taking gulps of me like he has been starved all day of the life force I give off.
“I missed you all day. I was terrified. I thought I scared you away with the truth.” He pulls me back. “Sam, I don’t want to ruin what we have. You’re my everything.”
I shake my head. “Jane. Don’t call me Sam.”
He smiles, making everything okay. He blankets us in that smile and the love inside it, and I don’t believe a single thing I read. I believe whatever he wants me to. He’s perfect, and they’re wrong. And when he leads me inside, kissing my cheeks and closing the door on us, I feel like he’s closed the door on everything else. He’s brought us into our safe haven and made us protected again.
I don’t care about anything but that.
He drags my clothes off there at the door, stripping me naked, and scoops me up into his arms. He carries me to the bathroom and undresses himself, pulling us both into the shower. He protects me from the cold water until it’s warm and then steps aside so I am blasted with heat. He wraps himself around me, letting the hot water wash it all away.
I close my eyes and breathe him in too, the same way he does me. I get it now—the dose he gets when he takes a breath pushes everything else away.
“Where did you go?”
