Chapter 21
Luke
I storm out, furious and fucking betrayed by the one person who I never thought would betray me. By the time I get to the rental car a few minutes later, I turn to see Emily walking out of the building beside Cole with her head down. I grab her overnight back and purse from the car and toss them to Max before I jump in the car and take off. I speed past the police cars, slowing momentarily to see Jack sitting in the back while the kids are on a bench outside eating ice cream. That’s the only positive thing about what just happened.
Against my will, concern for her forces me to pull the car over only a few miles down the highway. I fucking shouldn’t worry, but I do. I yank out my phone and quickly look up Cole’s number.
L: She doesn’t like enclosed spaces. She’s going to struggle on the plane.
C: Got it.
L: Distract her. Make up shit to talk about if you have to, just find a way to distract her.
C: Will do. I’ll clue Max in, maybe she can talk about girl shit or something with her.
C: You okay, man?
L: Fine.
C: She’s doing shit on her phone, hasn’t looked up since you left. She’s probably trying to find you.
L: Probably. She won’t though. Don’t let her out of your site. She needs to go back to Virginia.
C: I’ll get her there.
C: Anything you want me to tell her?
Rather than answering him, I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and pull back onto the highway. I don’t know how long I drive, but when the car comes to a stop I’m both stunned and angered at where I end up. Of all fucking places, of course, I would go here. If you didn’t know the horrors that occurred here, you’d have no idea just by looking at the open field. That’s all that’s left of this place that was my living nightmare for more than eighteen months. Shortly after he was sentenced, the state demolished the house that we were kept in for so long, the house that still brings me nightmares even all these years later.
When we ran away that morning, I had no idea where we were. I had no idea we were still in Texas, only a few hours from where he found me living on the street. I had no idea that we were in farm country, with miles and miles of nothing but openness surrounding us. He kept us so secluded, even when he took me to fights, that I had no clue about my surroundings. When I was coming up with a plan to get us out, I pictured houses surrounding his, where all his “friends” lived that we would have to hide from.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My gaze immediately falls to the woods at the end of the property; those woods were the first place we ran to. They were the first safe place we had since the nightmare began. The woods hid us, protected us, and kept people from seeing us until we were ready to be found. We stayed in them for two days, cutting our feet to the point of bleeding, but neither of us complained—not once.
How could the girl that ran away with me that night, be the same girl I’ve been working next to for nearly two weeks now? How could I have not known it was her? How did nothing appear on her background report about it? I knew her fucking dad’s name for Christ sakes! If his name was on it, I would have figured it out.
And yet, she knew exactly who I was the entire fucking time.
Did she purposely seek out Alec and a position with Dark Water Security when she learned I was one of the owners? Did she manipulate her way into our company the same way she’d been manipulating me since she walked into the conference room for the interview?
The sad part is, I thought the kiss on the beach the other night was real. She fucking intrigued me like no one ever has; I found myself wanting to spend more time with her. Especially after the trip Alec fucking sent us on, I wanted to know more about her. For all the time I spend wondering about her little quirks, about what had happened to her to make her the way she is, it ended up being a complete fucking waste of time. Because I knew all along…the entire time I fucking knew why she was always on edge, always waiting for something to happen, and her need to search every corner of every room the moment she entered it. Because she was waiting and preparing…in case the lights were turned off and she was trapped again.
“Fuck!” I slam my hands on the steering wheel.
I don’t know what the fuck to think. On one hand, it all makes sense, but on the other… none of it fucking makes sense. Why would she do this? Why not just reach out and contact me? Why the fucking games? Why the secrecy and manipulation? Why not just come out and say who she really is?
I’m so fucking sick of people I think I trust playing games and manipulating me. My entire life has been one fucking game to someone. My fucking deadbeat parents, the social workers who were supposed to find me a safe place to live, the foster parents who weren’t supposed to see me as a paycheck, and the fucking state of as a whole. When it came to light just how many people fucking failed me, even the judge was in disbelief.
And now the girl I thought was my saving grace, ends up to be the same way. Maybe this is just payback… maybe this is what I deserve considering the pain I brought her in the first place. After all, if it weren’t for me, she never would have known the horrors of that house. Maybe karma’s just a fucking bitch.
I turn the car around and drive away from the one place I swore I would never see again. Back on the highway, I’m heading toward the airport again, but I have no intention of getting on a flight tonight. Not if there’s any chance of running into her there. So, instead, I check into a hotel for the night, one that has a bar which I’m in as soon as I drop my overnight bag in my room.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks.
“A whiskey, straight up.”
“Sure thing.”
The bar is busy with no tables available, which is no surprise since it’s the closest hotel to the airport. I open a tab and quickly down the cheap liquor before requesting another. Just the taste of the whiskey takes me back to a time where that was the only way I knew to deal with the shit that had happened. For the last year I was in foster care, I bounced from house to house, too angry to give anyone a chance, before I ended up at a group home where I discovered alcohol. Those months are a blur; I barely went to school, and instead opted to skip and get drunk with the other kids from the home. I was buying my time until I turned eighteen and everyone there knew it. The staff and social workers were too afraid to do much to me, not after my lawyer sued the state for their many fuck ups on my case.
The day I aged out of the system, I joined the Army but my drinking didn’t stop there. At least not at first, I learned the hard way that you can’t function enough to be there when you’re drunk off your ass or hungover ninety percent of the time.
From there I turned to fucking. It seemed like a great idea at the time, especially since there were so many single girls looking to hook up with someone in the service. I cut back on my drinking, and spent far too many nights in the back of someone’s car or against the side of a building trying to fuck the memories out of my head. Unfortunately, no matter who I fucked, no one came close to feeling the way Em had.
Fuck.
Another whiskey is in front of me before I have a chance to request it; I nod my thanks to the bartender. It was my first tour in the sandbox that put my head on straight, that forced me to find another way to deal with the shit going on in my head. Sure, the state had sent me to therapist after therapist, but nothing worked. Nothing stopped the guilt from eating me alive, the nightmares from keeping me up at night, or the memories of how it felt to hold her against me while we both slept. Even now, all these years later, I haven’t found a damn thing that works – nothing feels like she did.
I spend the next two days at the hotel, doing the same thing: I sleep, shower, eat a little and fucking drink. I know the bartenders by name and they have my drink waiting for me before my ass hits the seat. I manage to get a few hours of work in each day, but I know it’s nowhere near enough. It’s the guilt of putting the extra work on Alec that finally has me flying back to Virginia.
Alec calls as soon as I land. “Nice of you to come back to us.”
“You had her track my phone?” It’s the only way he could have timed his call so well.
“Had to. You weren’t returning my calls.”
“I’m back now. Just need to grab a change of clothes and I’ll be at the office.”
“Don’t bother, no one’s there.”
“Why not? Where the hell is everyone?”
“Considering it’s after eight at night, I’d hope at home.”
“Shit, I didn’t realize how late it is. Look, I’m sorry for disappearing like that—”
“Want to tell me what the hell is going on with you and our new computer security expert? And what you think she knew all along? And what the hell you were doing kissing her?”
“You heard all that?” I cringe, forgetting the com had been on the entire time.
“Yeah, I heard. We all did.”
“What do you know?” I sigh, preparing myself for what I know she told him.
“Nothing, she’s as clammed up as you are. According to Margaret, she’s been working nearly round the clock, only stopping to eat when Margaret orders food for her.”
“Shit.” As pissed off as I am at her right now, I hate that she’s doing exactly what I’ve been doing the last few days. We had both resorted back to our old habits to deal with…this mess.
“Tell me, am I going to lose the best IT person we’ve ever had? As much as I don’t want to, if you need me to fire her because you two can’t work together, say the word and I’ll do it.”
“You can’t—”
“Look, I can find someone else if need be. They won’t be as good as she is, but I can find someone. Just tell me, can you work with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Understood. Want to tell me what the hell happened after our friends showed up at the rest stop?”
“Not really.” I sigh. “Let’s just say, I realized that I actually knew…Emily…before she came to interview with me.”
“You knew her? How? And what do you mean you realized it at the rest stop? You didn’t recognize her before then?”
“We hadn’t seen each other in more than ten years; she looks a lot different now than she did then.”
“You went to school together? I thought you were from Texas? She’s from…Oklahoma, I think, before she moved to California for college.”
“I…” Shit. “When I was fifteen, I was kidnapped and held prisoner for more than eighteen months.”