Holden slept for only forty minutes because that was all his brain would allow.
Between tossing and turning, he dreamed of his parents. In each dream, his mother had no mouth and his father had a gaping hole in his chest. It was fitting but terrifying, and he jerked awake, remembering things about his childhood that had apparently existed in a dark alcove of his brain for the past thirty years.
Before they’d moved to the apartment in the CW building, they’d lived in an enormous mansion on the Upper East Side, complete with an elevator and servant’s quarters. His parents’ bedroom had been the size of Holden’s entire apartment, and they’d had separate closets. On Holden’s tenth birthday, he’d found his mother crying in hers. She’d been standing in front of a row of beautiful dresses while sobbing as if someone had completely broken her heart. He’d asked her what was wrong, and she’d lied through her tears.
“I stubbed my toe,” she’d said. “Don’t worry, darling.”
She’d been an accomplished psychic and had blocked any attempts of his to reach out with his gift, and he’d taken her at her word despite the bruises on her arms and her strained expression for the rest of the night. His father had acted like he’d noticed nothing amiss, but after that day, Holden hadn’t been able to stop noticing. Suddenly, he found his mother crying or staring blankly or clenching her hands into white-knuckled fists with a frequency that had sunk his stomach.
When he was twelve, he’d snuck out of his bedroom after hearing a heated argument in their mammoth-sized one.
“I don’t like this,” his mother had hissed. “This is not who we are. It’s not who you are.”
His father had shouted back with frustration evident in every word. “This was always who I was. I’m doing what we need to do.”
“You don’t need to do any of this, Richard. It’s sick. And if this was your plan all along for the Community, you’re sick too.”
Even as a child, Holden had felt the imminent danger crackling in the air. It’d twisted his guts, sickening him so badly that he’d had to bite his lip to keep from crying out at the sharp pain ripping through him.
The last memory had been after they’d moved to the CW. It had been the night before his mother had gone to the Farm. Richard Payne had looked at Holden, smiling coldly, and said, “Say good night to your mother, Holden.”
Even without knowing what was coming, the ongoing cycle of his mother coming and going upstate before living there indefinitely, Holden had been unsettled by his tone. But he’d been more unsettled by the look on Chase’s face. Chase had stared at Richard Payne, arms crossed and lips twisted in a sneer. Whereas Holden had been confused and afraid, Chase had understood.
There had never been a smoking gun buried in Holden’s mind, but there were enough repressed or . . . realigned fragments of moments to culminate into ugliness. A fuller picture of his parents’ relationship that went far beyond what he’d already known. Something dark and abusive and frightening that had resulted in his mother being sent away and turned into a mindless drone of the Community. Or more accurately: of Richard Payne and Jasper.
Holden wondered if the other founders knew, or if they, like so many others, were caught up in the constantly evolving lie where Richard was the hero of the Community and anyone who questioned him was a danger.
Holden forced himself to get out of bed at ten o’clock. His eyes were so bloodshot he looked like he’d been hot boxing with a joint rather than tossing in his oversized bed. A shower didn’t help. Neither did coffee. There was nothing he could do to unwind and get the kinks out of his system when he was slowly coming to the realization that Lia, Elijah, and Six were right.
His father was a monster.
Holden’s initial plan had been to storm Richard’s office at the CW, confront him with evidence or at least his assumptions based on clues, and ask what the hell was going on. But the more his brain unlocked the pieces that had been carefully tucked away and hidden, the less that plan made sense. Because Six was right.
If Richard would send away his beautiful and talented wife, and the son who had at least four known talents, why would he spare Holden? The mediocre gay one with the troublesome club. The one he was already trying to use as a scapegoat for the fact that some of his own shit was finally floating on the surface.
Pulling out his phone, Holden stared at Nate’s number for a long moment before hitting Call. It went straight to voice mail.
“Fuck.”
Next up was Lia. Her phone rang several times before also going to voice mail.
“Goddamn it.”
Holden paced again, running a hand over his unruly hair. He’d been yanking his hands through it all night, and it was full of snarls. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Holden pulled at the tangles while staring at his phone. Six was the only other option, but would the man even talk to him again after the way their night, morning, whatever, had ended? With Holden icing him out due to an inability to digest the information Six had forced on him, and Six losing patience with Holden’s failure to get with the program and stop trying to talk reason with Big Daddy Payne.
And he’d been right to lose patience. Maybe.
Unless this was all bullshit, and Holden was being massively mind-fucked by Ex-Comm as well as the Community.
“Fuck this,” he whispered to himself. “I’m doing this my own way.”
If Richard Payne had taught him anything, it was that grabbing the bull by the horns was the only way to get things done. In this case, the bull was the Community. More specifically, the staff at the Farm. Everything sinister connected to the property upstate. Everyone who needed reprogramming or punishment ended up there. And it had started at Richard’s property, which was likely why the other founders never stepped foot onto it. They seemed to trust him to carry on with his plans and believed every word he said.
How could so many people—intelligent, talented people—be fooled by one person? Were they that desperate for a leader? Someone they could look at as a hero who would save them from a society they’d been groomed to fear? Fear had laid the foundation for so much in the Community. Holden had grown up being taught to be afraid of voids, to not trust the government, be wary of unconnected psys, and to truly believe that everyone was out to get them. He had been raised to believe they all had a special secret and a special mission to protect each other from the rest of a menacing world. But all along the menace had been inside, leading them unknowingly into whatever nightmare had been unraveling at the Farm.
Nobody called Holden back as he changed his clothes and headed out to the nearest car rental place. He was texting Kamryn while filling out the needed paperwork to rent an impressively bland sedan to drive to upstate New York for the day. He was on the road within the hour, but his phone did not ring until he was out of NYC proper and was speeding along the increasingly snowy Taconic State Parkway.
“Holden, where the hell are you?”
“Hey, Kamryn.” Holden put the phone on speaker and shoved it in the awkwardly shaped center console. “Going on an unexpected trip. I should be back by evening if all goes well.”
He hadn’t planned on what would happen if all . . . didn’t go well. His only plan so far was to flash his face, drop his name, and act like it was completely normal that he’d shown up asking about his family members and friend.
“‘If all goes well’? What’s that mean?”
“It just means if I don’t get held up.”
“I see.” She hummed. “You sound weird.”
“I’m fine, but thank you for noticing I’m weirder than usual. Is something wrong at the club?”
“The fire marshal is here.”
“Fuck.” Somehow, in the midst of everything else, that sentence was the icing on the cake. On a good day, fire marshals were pains in the asses. And this was definitely not a good day. All of the doors they wanted to stay unlocked were likely locked, and there were probably objects obstructing pathways and fire extinguishers in all the wrong places. “Are we fined yet?”
“She just started snooping around. I was hoping you could come in and deal with it, but I guess you blew off work to go on a day trip . . .”
“I knew my lovely general manager would be able to handle it,” Holden said through a yawn.
“And who might that be?” Kamryn asked. “Because my pay isn’t really—”
“If you want the position, it’s yours. We can discuss salary when I return.”
There was a silence punctuated by loud voices in the background and the fainter murmur of a song. “Holden, is this for real?”
“Yes. You’re business savvy, are more responsible than I am, and I’m coming to realize that I can’t do everything that’s needed to keep the club running. We can hire another bartender—”
“But I like tending bar!”
“Well, then we can hire someone else part-time so you’re at least sharing the shifts. Either way, I want you to help me run that damn club. If anything happens to me, there has to be someone—”
“Um. What now?”
Sleep deprivation was making him stupid. Holden tilted his head back against the seat and watched the road through slitted eyes. His head was pounding so powerfully that he could feel and hear the beating of his heart.
“Anything could happen to anyone at any moment. Take my current situation—I’m driving on a bridge while running on forty minutes of sleep. My eyes have shut twice since I started driving. I could end up—”
“Okay, shut up, Mr. Morbid. You’re not driving off a fucking cliff while on the phone with me. You better hang up first.”
“That’s your concern?”
“Well, I don’t want you to die, but I also don’t wanna go through life having heard the splash of your car falling into a river.”
“It’s a reservoir.”
“Holden . . .”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m in a weird mood, and it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Right . . .” The background noises fell away, and Kamryn huffed out a long sigh. “As your potential new general manager, is there anything you want me to do today besides scramble around trying to fix things we’ll get fined for?”
“Honestly, Kamryn, I can’t think right now. Just make sure Six is careful about who he lets in the club tonight.” He paused, wetting his lips, and considered his next words carefully. “I’ve gotten several complaints of men coming into the club and just . . . watching people. And then following them outside. In fact, tell Six and Stefen that—”
“Six isn’t here either.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. He’s usually here about six hours after last call even though he doesn’t need to be. Maybe he should be your general manager.”
“Fuck that. It’s you or no one.”
“If you keep gassing my head up like this, you may live to regret it.”
“Never.”
They hung up after Kamryn promised to text him as soon as Six walked through the doors. It was strange that he hadn’t shown up yet, but there was no way to figure out what to make of it. Either he was sleeping in to commemorate the morning after his first fuck, or he was off taking an entirely different bull by an entirely different set of horns.
There were so many different avenues that could lead to, that Holden went right back to cursing himself for getting close to Six. Even for a moment. There was too much between them beyond mysterious connections and fantastic sex for him to seriously consider why he kept picturing Six nervously sitting on the edge of the bed with his fingers curled up. Feelings and attraction would have to take a back burner. For now.
The Farm was literally in the middle of nothing. Trees swallowed the road leading to the property and surrounded tiny towns distantly dotting the area around it. It was beautiful, especially now that it was covered in a dusting of snow, but the isolated aspect niggled at Holden. If something happened here, there were no witnesses. No one he could run to and no easy escape. He’d be trapped.
Slowing down, Holden eased the sedan to a stop on the side of the road a quarter mile away from the gates leading to the property.
He was being dramatic. As bad as this all looked, there was still the chance they were all wrong. That the Ex-Comm conspiracy theory was a complicated, well-thought-out plot by a bunch of paranoid psychics with too much time on their hands. Except, that was the complicated explanation. The Community having been turned into a cult by Richard Payne to further his own agendas was the simple one.
Holden put his hand on the shifter, fully ready to move forward again, but couldn’t do it. This wasn’t his first time on the property, but everything about the area put him on edge the way it never had before.
Easing his hand off the shifter, Holden sat back in the driver’s seat. Even with measured inhales and exhales, all attempts to find a trace of the calm confidence that had led to this moment were nowhere to be found. The adrenaline that had coursed through him in the early morning hours, fueled by nightmares and a lack of sleep, had been lulled by the car ride. Now, this felt like a very bad idea.
With his hands on the wheel, Holden closed his eyes and reached out with his gift. At first it was just a channel opening to his own car, but with each inhale and exhale, he expanded the breadth until he could feel everything in the vicinity. As a kid, he and Chase had tested it and determined if he pushed himself, he could pick up on the vibes from people within two or three city blocks. Out in the middle of nowhere, Holden should have picked up on nothing but the pitter-patter heartbeat of animals and whatever lingering traces had been left behind on the road and foot paths over the years.
Instead, there was a fierce pulse coursing through the channel, a turbulent mix of irritation, determination, and confusion, and it was growing stronger with every passing second. As if someone was coming right at Holden.
He dropped his hand on the shifter again and jerked it into reverse before doing a swift U-turn away from the property. The pulse was bigger and brighter with every breath he took, bringing the individual closer to the road where they would see him or at the very least . . . the license plate, which could be linked back to him. Every thought racing through his brain was packed full of paranoia and irrational fear, but if Holden had learned to trust anything in his thirty-some-odd years of being an empath, it was to trust the vibes he picked up from people. And these vibes gave him the same sense of imminent danger that his father had so many years ago.
A couple of yards down the parkway was an off-road path leading into the trees. He veered sharply onto it and sped through the narrow opening just as the pulse burst into a supernova of energy indicating another presence nearby. Instinctively, Holden eased open the driver’s door, removed the keys and the papers he’d gotten from the car rental, and scrambled behind one of the towering tree trunks while trying his best to call forth a mental shield that was slightly comparable to the one that made Six invisible. It was absurd to be taking this much precaution, but his gut was telling him to not be caught out in the middle of nowhere on this snowy January day by some of the Farm’s security.
Holden peeked around the tree trunk and spotted two people on the road. His suspicions were confirmed.
For years, he’d only thought of the Farm’s staff as it had been in his childhood. Dour, homely, and wearing bland uniforms—the types of people who gave their life to an organization like the Community because they didn’t have much outside of it. They relied on the routine and dedication of people at the Farm to give them purpose. As a kid, Holden had looked up to them. As a teen, Holden had thought they were fucking losers.
But Six hadn’t fit that mold, and neither did the two individuals on the road. It was very clear things at the Farm had changed.
He saw a woman with waist-length blonde hair wearing black leathers, and a man with fiery red hair who wore the same. They were riding the quietest motorbikes Holden had ever seen, and were staring down the road with matching frowns. Looking for him.
Holden’s heart sank, and his hands trembled as he gripped the rough bark. He watched them pace down the road while conferring with each other, pointing down the winding parkway that led to the bridge. If luck was on his side, they’d be obtuse enough to think he’d somehow sped away in that brief span of time. But Holden was a lot of things and lucky wasn’t one of them.
They both turned toward the side of the road. Panic exploded inside of him and, for just a moment, his shield slipped.
Their heads snapped up like hunting dogs who’d gotten a whiff of fresh blood.
He was fucked.
Holden pushed himself away from the tree and took a careful step backward. His back collided with something hard, and his mouth dropped open in an involuntary scream. A hand clamped over his mouth, yanking him back against a broad chest, and then the thick blanket of an impenetrable mental shield surrounded him.
“Stay quiet and come with me,” Six whispered in his ear. “Or you’ll end up like your friends.”