EIGHTEEN
How do you know when a mute is giving you the silent treatment? Micah endured another sound thrashing in the art of combat on the big fucking screen and tried to sort out the evening so far. Kit sat across from him. His hair pulled back tight in a torturous ponytail bun thing that looked like something out of feudal Japan. Kit was very unchatty, which—considering he was mute—was incredibly out of character for him. If anything Kit liked to talk. A lot. About anything not personal.
After the ballroom showdown he’d gotten quiet. Okay, during the sex. He’d gotten really quiet. Never once saying a word about any of it.
Micah sat on the floor in front of the window with Kit sprawled on him listening to him breathe for about an hour. They’d touched and even kissed a time or two but there didn’t seem to be a need for words then. Now, though, hours later, Kit still wasn’t talking except to say please or thank you or to ask if Micah would like to play again.
Micah had made a couple of food runs to the kitchen. Kit had dealt with drinks and getting dishes. They were being polite at each other. Micah didn’t like not knowing where he stood with the man. Not after the things they’d done to each other.
That was sex. No getting around that. Maybe nobody’s dick breached anybody’s asshole sex…but still, emotionally, they’d had damned good sex. Micah didn’t want to analyze it. Damn. He wanted to make sure Kit was okay about it.
The silent treatment seemed to indicate he wasn’t okay about it.
“Tell me about that day?”
The electronic voice in the now quiet room startled Micah into dropping his game control. He’d zoned out, and Kit had zoned back in. He sat on one of the low rocker chairs. A second ago, he’d been facing the television. Now the game was on pause, and Kit had twisted the chair to face Micah.
“What?” Yeah, no, he was fucking clueless right now. “What day?”
“That day. The day your partner died. The story is redacted so much that I can’t find anything for myself. Only that a car accident took a US Marshal’s life and the child he was protecting. If it was just a car accident and you weren’t driving, why did you lose your job? Seems like none of it was your fault.”
“And I said I died that day?” Fuck, he’d put the kernel of curiosity in Kit’s head himself. He really should learn to keep his mouth shut. He set the game controller on the table between them and took the now warm beer and drained it.
“You did. And you didn’t.” Kit didn’t move. He sat perfectly still, his head cocked to the side. His gaze trained on Micah. He didn’t blink. “What really happened? Why didn’t you go back?”
“Lost my nerve.” Micah had never said that to anyone. Not even his shrink. “I killed that kid’s mother right in front of her. I couldn’t…I can’t bring myself to go back.”
“Mother?” Kit’s eyes grew larger as he turned his head the other way. Micah had the strangest sense that Kit was part owl and rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought the mother was also under your protection? That she turned state’s witness against her husband.”
“True. Very true. That was indeed the case. Until it all went to hell and we were the last to know we were harboring a murderer. The father was innocent. Well, okay, he wasn’t innocent, innocent. He was still a mafia boss who was up to his neck in just about everything illegal you could think of, but that night, it wasn’t him that the kid saw pull the trigger.”
“It was the mom?”
“Yeah. Sophie. Sophie was our assignment. She was six at the time and scared to death of her parents. We fucked up with her. Everyone fucked up with her. By the time we got her out of New York and in a safe house in Los Angeles, she was one lost little girl. That was my first assignment. My first partner was the lead on that one. We posed as her aunt and uncle for a couple of months until the mother was brought out. The trial was put off for one thing or another and we were both reassigned. Lora, my first partner, was on maternity leave when Heath took the call to move Sophie. Sophie was mine. She knew that if I ever showed up at her school not to question, but to go with me. She followed that to the letter. Even without Aunt Lora around. I told her Aunt Lora was having her baby cousin, and I was taking her to meet her mommy at the hospital. I think for a moment she really thought we were married and having a baby.”
“And then it went to hell?” Kit knew enough to make that assessment.
“Yeah.” Micah needed another beer, but it was late, and he didn’t want to get up to go hunt for one. “Nicole, her mother hadn’t been staying in L.A. like she was supposed to. She was gone for weekends, back to New York. Back to her life there. A life that had nothing to do with her husband or her kid. Her boyfriend— I guess, for lack of a better word—had paid her to frame her husband. And the whole case against him came crumbling apart. His alibi held up. Nicole’s story changed too often. The only innocent in the whole mess was Sophie. And we had a hell of time knowing exactly who we were protecting her from. The father she was supposed to have seen murder his business partner in their house. Or her mother who’d coached her in exactly what the police wanted to hear when they showed up and there was no daddy and a dead body.”
“And Sophie’s mother came after you?”
“That wasn’t in the reports. She rammed the car we were in. Heath was driving. I was in the backseat with Sophie. We rolled. Heath was killed instantly when the roof crushed his skull. I was thrown free. And that’s how I ended up with the scar. Not because she sliced me open. But she tried. She was screaming that we killed her kid. Sophie was screaming. She came at me with something and tore at my face. So I shot her. And then I lay in her blood and Heath’s blood and Sophie’s blood.”
That day came back so vividly, it was almost as if it was playing on the big television. Micah dragged in a breath and realized he was crying. He couldn’t stop it. The bubble had burst and that’s all he could deal with now. Blood everywhere. Blood and the merciless California sun beating down on him, blinding him, cooking the blood. They were out in the middle of nowhere. Running for a safe house, with a crazy woman on their tail and no back up because no one in a million years thought Nicole Franco would go bat shit crazy and kill her own kid.
“Sophie bled out and there was nothing I could do to save her. I was trapped under the car in a damned ditch. Jesus, Kit, why did you have to know this? I can’t go back into…I can’t…I might not have physically died that day. But my life ended that day. And now you’re picking at it. All of it. Fraying the edges of the bandage that covered it.”
Kit didn’t say anything. He sat in that damned chair with his too long legs and hands and owl like eyes staring at him.
“Yeah, okay. Well, it’s like two in the morning and I’ve had enough of this day, so I’m going to bed.” It was Micah’s turn to run away and slam the door, to his room, not Kit’s. He needed time to himself. Time that didn’t involve a pair of huge blue eyes that seemed to see through his soul. He paced the room, looking at the portraits on the wall. Much like the antechamber to the ballroom this room was lined with art and seemed to be made for entertaining. Why hadn’t they made one of the floors in the wing with all of the bedrooms into Kit’s rooms? Why take the public side of the house and try to turn it into a private apartment? Made no sense to Micah.
He checked his phone for messages. The clock read midnight. So it wasn’t as late as he’d thought. But he’d been awake for so long it just felt late. His mother had called. It was only ten on the west coast. But he didn’t feel much like talking to anyone right now.
He was exhausted and more than a little confused. When Kit’s keepers made it back, he was taking a day or two off and getting out of this…prison.
And Kit was the prisoner. All of the luxury in the world would never make up for the fact that Kit couldn’t or wouldn’t ever leave this place.
Micah sat on the bed and rubbed his face. One week. Tomorrow morning, or later this morning, he’d walked through the front doors exactly one week ago. Well, one week ago he’d been making use of Gideon’s perk. He’d forgotten all about the driver and the night he’d spent getting naked with him. He had no damned idea what his name was. Or if the sex had been good. Or just sex. He couldn’t remember the guy before him either. Only nameless faceless men since Heath.
Heath who was straight but not so straight that he hadn’t pulled into a motel that day and held Micah down on the bed while he pounded out his frustrations on him. No so straight that he was divorcing his wife and talking about life after. With Micah.
Heath was ten years older than Micah. He’d had a teenage son and an almost teenage daughter. And Micah had let Heath get to him. As if he’d needed some daddy figure in his life. He’d had a father. But Heath—with his California surfer boy charm. Yeah, Micah was an idiot. He’d fallen for Heath’s lies and let Heath use him for sex when Micah knew there was no divorce. He’d known all along that Heath was stringing him along so Micah would let Heath fuck him. Sick. Fucking sick.
And now he was doing the same thing to Kit. To Chris.
He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t be what Chris needed. He’d let something start between them when he should have kept his distance.
The brush of warm lips across his shoulder should have sent him across the room. He should have at least moved away. Instead, he leaned back into the warmth and let Kit wrap his arms around him.
He smelled good. Like birthday cake. Kit kissed him lightly on the cheek and sighed. Micah sighed with him. “I’m sorry for walking out.”
Kit shook his head and buried his nose in Micah’s neck. He rested there. Holding him. That’s all. Nothing sexual or dominating about it.
“I can see it sometimes. Sometimes I’d love to have no memories of that day. Of the war. Of any of it. I’ve seen too much, Chris. I was handling that. I closed it all off and was…dealing.” Micah twisted in Kit’s embrace and settled on the bed using the stack of pillows behind him to keep him upright. Kit sat on his knees in front of him. He looked much as he did back in the game room—lost, aloof, and quiet. Unsettled. Micah realized Kit was just as unsettled as he was. Maybe more so.
“I can’t remember the bad things that happened to me,” he signed, taking his time to find the right words. “I was Sophie. Or like Sophie. I don’t remember it. But I’ve seen the video. I was bleeding. I was dying. I don’t know how I got there. Or where I came from or who tried to slice me open. I don’t remember the pain or—” He stopped, letting his hands fall to his knees as a tear dripped from the corner of one eye. “I needed a Beastly to kill for me.”
“But you lived.” Micah reached out to cradle his chin. He swiped the tear away and held Kit as gently as he could.
“This isn’t living,” Kit said as a blaring alarm went off in the outer room. Kit closed his eyes and tried not to react. Micah could feel the fear course through him. “I’m a fucking hostage.”
Micah was off the bed and racing out the door when the last words came. Hands flinging out everywhere as Kit tried to sign and jump from the bed at the same time. Micah shouldn’t have laughed, but he did. Kit bumped his head on the ceiling and gave it a piece of his mind, in sign. The house could be on fire and the world going to hell around them, but Kit took a moment to tell the ceiling where to stick itself.
“Come on, Chris, stop cussing the ceiling. You’re the one that bumped into it.” Oh yeah, he was now Chief Looney in the Looney Bin.
“Yeah, well, fuck you too.” Kit hissed at him. But his hiss turned to a smile and he rubbed his head. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go see what fresh hell is about to besiege us this night.”
* * * * *
Blizzard conditions persisted into the night and so did the alarms. Each time a new alarm sounded Kit pulled up the zone and the nearest camera along the perimeter wall. But there was never anything there. Just snow.
The front gate was unmanned due to the weather but the two night security guards were on the computer in the caretaker’s house where the main security hub was set up. They’d monitor the situation, but with the snow falling like it was, Kit wasn’t asking anyone to go out chasing shadows.
“The system picks tonight to start working again?” Micah said from nearby. Kit could see the gears turning in his head. He could feel his tension. “Why tonight?”
“Don’t know.” Kit didn’t bother with the voice computer. He liked that Micah could read his hands. Not many people could. Sam was the most fluent and could follow along well enough. Micah, who said he knew some sign, seemed to be able to keep up better than even Sam. And Kit liked that. “I’m confused.”
“Up until today, people have been strolling casually onto the grounds and into the house without a single alarm being triggered. And tonight, the fucking snow triggers it?” There was exhaustion and frustration in his voice. Kit shrugged. He knew the feeling. He’d been living it for nearly a month.
“I’ve had the whole system checked both online and by hand. Every camera. Every sensor. Everything. And as soon as we get it working correctly.” Kit threw his hands up again. He didn’t need Beastly shouting at him about something he couldn’t control.
Micah stormed around the room, looking out all of the windows into the near whiteout conditions. Kit tried very hard to pretend that everything was fine. He tried not to see the snow or the dark.
“Jesus, Kit. How in the hell am I supposed to protect you when I don’t know what I’m protecting you from?” He did an imitation of Kit—hands in the air, fingers stretched as if he were beseeching some being in the heavens for help…or control. Beastly was all about control. And that was a commodity they were running short on around this place.
Kit tried not to laugh at his frustration, but the hair standing on end from his constant pulling was making that pretty damned hard. So, instead of laughing at his bodyguard or raking lingering glances over his guard’s body, because he couldn’t seem to stop doing that, Kit ran a security scan of the house.
“Everything inside is fine. No one walking around where they shouldn’t be. And even if they did get into the main house they can’t get into my apartment. It’s double secure. None of the windows or doors can be opened from the outside even with a crowbar or a sledgehammer. The fire alarm is on a different circuit than the motion sensors. Fire would trip the whole house alarm. They’d hear that downtown.”
“So what you’re saying is?” Micah stopped in his pacing and driving Kit crazy to gape at him.
“It’s fucking late and I’m tired. I’m putting this on mute and we’re going to bed. My room. It’s darker and almost soundproof. And warmer. And you’re not arguing.”
Micah opened his mouth to do just that then shut it. He grunted, his shoulders slumping with fatigue as if he remembered how little sleep he was running on. “Yeah, okay. That sounds like a plan.”
Kit shut the computers down as he said he would. He’d have to trust that the house was as secure as he could possibly make it. Micah made one more pass around the atrium, peering out the windows, but Kit knew he was only seeing snow and more snow. He hoped it was only a glitch in the system, that the snow was setting the damned thing off. He hoped. But he didn’t believe.
The hairs on the back of his neck were standing at attention. His skin felt tight. His brain…itched.
When the power was off completely, he turned to find Micah waiting, took his hand, and let him take him to bed. There was no awkward jockeying for covers or small talk. Kit stripped down to his skin and crawled in on the side he’d occupied since Micah face planted into his bed earlier in the week. Micah did the same. “Turn the TV on. I know you can’t sleep without it.” Micah curled up against him and nuzzled his neck, making Kit shiver.
“Are you sure? I know it bothers you.” Kit loved that Micah understood about the dark. The TV kept the monsters away.
“You could drop a house complete with flying monkeys on me tonight and I’d sleep through it,” Micah yawned, his voice fading fast now that they were in bed. Safe and warm and safe…he was safe. Micah was safe, and Kit was in his arms. A black and white movie played, soft light flickered around the room illuminating Micah as he watched Kit, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Kit rolled to face him, he needed to taste Micah’s smile. He needed to remember every minute of this before it was gone. Micah kissed him back. Softly. A sigh followed and sleep. Kit stroked his face noticing how he flinched even in his sleep. Now he knew how he got the scar. He’d forever see that little girl when he closed his eyes. Except when he closed his eyes, that little girl was a little boy with hair so dark it was almost black and he screamed for his mother even as she lay on the bed with a hole in the back of her head. Poor Sophie. Poor Micah.
Kit had no idea who Sophie or Micah was. All he knew was dark and fear and cold. Screaming. The screaming.
Someone make the screaming stop!
Stop. Stop. Stop! He screamed, but no one heard him. He screamed as loud as he could, but no one heard him. Just make it stop. Please. Make it all stop.
Please.