Red Handed (14 page)

One wrong move, and I could fry any one of my new friends. One wrong move, and any one of my new friends could fry
me
. I'd probably have nightmares. And yet, it gave me an even greater sense of power than before, the thought of firing an actual weapon. Of being tough and lethal. Of facing down my enemy—fake target though it was.

“You're free to rest in your rooms or relax in the Common,” Kadar said then. “Your next class isn't for another hour.”

Remaining in line, we filed from the room. Or rather, I tried to. Kadar grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. I blinked up at him in confusion and dread. He wore a serious expression, his eyes dark, his beard stubble more prominent. “Something wrong?” I asked.

“I'm sorry, but you can't go with the others. You have an appointment with Angel. She's a…doctor.”

“What? Why? I'm not sick.”

He didn't explain. “She's in room eight, and she's waiting.” He gave me a gentle push toward the door. “She doesn't like to be kept waiting.”

Freaking great. Another drug test, most likely. I hated that I was being put through that when I hadn't done anything wrong. I hadn't done anything to cause these A.I.R. agents to lose faith in me.

“I'm not going to stand for this,” I told Kaden through gritted teeth.

His mouth twitched, but he didn't smile. “Just go to room eight, little girl.”

 

“So…how are your new classes?”

“Good.” I shifted on the plush red couch, a glass of water in hand. Angel was not a medical doctor as I'd assumed, and she hadn't given me a drug test. No, she was some sort of psychiatrist. And she wanted to probe my mind.
How do you feel? Are you sad? Blah, blah, blah
.

I'd been to what felt like hundreds of this type of session, where a kind, gentle,
understanding
soul tried to learn all my secrets, all the reasons I did the things that I did.

I could save them the trouble: it had seemed fun at the time. There was nothing more to it than that. Okay, maybe I'd been pissed at my dad. Maybe I'd wanted to lash out at him. Maybe I'd wanted to forget and feel something besides pain. That didn't mean I needed therapy.

“Having any trouble?” she asked.

“Nope.” God, when would this end?

“I'm glad,” she said.

“Yep. Me, too.”

She was a very attractive woman, though she lacked the stunning beauty of the other ladies I'd seen here. She had light brown hair that was pulled back in a twist, brown eyes, and lots of freckles. Very unassuming. Very unthreatening. And yet…

There was something about her. I couldn't look away. Didn't want to look away. She radiated a trust-me vibe, a gentleness that was very soothing.

“Do we really have to do this?” I asked with a weary sigh. “I'm doing good, I feel good, and I haven't done anything wrong. I even passed the drug test.”

She
tsk
ed under her tongue. “Regardless of how good you feel, regardless of what you've done and what you haven't done, regardless of what you've passed, we really have to do this. So drink your water, please, and relax.”

“I'm not thirsty.”

“You just left a very grueling combat class, followed by an intense weapons class. I don't want you becoming dehydrated.”

“Fine.” I drained the glass and held it out for her inspection. “No more dehydration worries.”

One corner of her mouth curled. “Should I give you a gold star?” She didn't wait for my response, but claimed the glass and set it beside a cup of blue-tinted liquid resting on a nearby table.

“Why do I need a therapy session, anyway?” I grumbled. “None of the other girls have to do it.”
That I knew of
, I silently amended.

“All the girls will speak with me at one time or another.”

“I'm lucky first, though, right?”

She didn't try to deny it. “None of the other girls are former Onadyn users,” she stated bluntly.

Mia was fond of reminding me; Ryan was found of reminding me. It wasn't like I'd forget. My eyes narrowed on her. “The key word is ‘former.' I no longer use.”

She shrugged, unimpressed with my fervency. “A user is a user, dear. There is no such thing as ‘former.'”

I gritted my molars.

“To be honest,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, “I'm surprised you were even allowed into the program.”

Not that again. None of them were really giving me a chance. “I deserve to be here.” The complete opposite of what I'd first thought about the camp. But as I spoke, a wave of
something
swept through my brain. Something odd. A fog, maybe. A sense of acceptance. My shoulders relaxed into the couch, and all of my muscles seemed to melt into the soft fabric. My blood warmed and my heartbeat quickened. “I'm having…there's something wrong with me.”

“No. You're fine.” Her face swam in and out of my vision. “Breathe deeply,” she said. “That's it. In. Out. You're simply tired from physical exertion.”

With every breath, my strength
did
return. My eyesight cleared, and my heartbeat slowed.

“Good?”

I nodded.

“As to your deservedness, we'll see.” Her stare was intent, probing. “This is a tough place to live and sometimes severe stress can send an addict back to their habit.”

True. It had happened to me once before, the first time I left rehab. Only two weeks had passed before I'd started using again. The temptation had been too great. I'd fallen when I'd overheard my mom talking on the phone to my dad. She'd called and asked him to take me for a drive, to a movie, something, anything to get to know me again, telling him I needed a male influence in my life. He'd refused.

I'd cried and cried and cried, and then I'd gotten high. The downward spiral had once again begun. Drugs, boys. A total lack of concern for the people around me.

My hands clenched into tight fists. “I'm not going to fly,” I told Angel. “I'm not going to drink Breathless. I'm not going to puff it or inject it. I don't like the girl I become when I do.”

Angel's chin canted to the side. “What kind of girl is that?”

My cheeks heated, but I didn't soften the truth. “A liar. A thief. A…slut. Violent. Untrustworthy.”

“And what kind of girl do you want to be?”

Uh, duh. “The complete opposite. Honorable. Trustworthy.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that.” She tapped her bloodred nails on her bare knee. Her skirt had ridden up, revealing several inches of her thigh. “I'd really like to continue our conversation about your classes. You never answered me. What do you like about them?”

I propped my elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands.
Just tell her the truth and get it over with. I want to be trustworthy, remember
. “I like most of it. The instructors need to do a better job of treating us like adults and some of the stupid rules need to be rescinded.”

“Which rules?”

“All of them,” I said, not wanting to single out the dating rule.

She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about your classmates. Do you like them?”

“Yes.”

“Even Emma? I hear she hasn't spoken a word to you.”

“She's not bad,” I answered truthfully. I didn't know what else to say. I didn't dislike Emma. There was something about her that struck a cord inside me. Sympathy, maybe? I knew what it was like to be the girl everyone hated.

Angel shifted in her seat. “I heard you fought a group of Sybilins a few days before you arrived at camp. Is that true?”

“Apparently you hear a lot of things,” I muttered. She made me feel like I'd been spied on.
Hello. I probably had been
. “If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about that night.”

“Phoenix.”

That was it; that was all she said. But I found myself sitting up, shoulders squared, spine straight. “Yes?”

“You want to answer my question.”

Yes
, I thought, a little dazed, I wanted to answer her question. “I did fight a group of Sybilins,” I found myself saying. I frowned.

“Did you feel guilty afterward?”

I shook my head, bringing myself out of that strange bemusement. “For?” I relaxed against the couch. Thank God she hadn't asked about Ryan. If I admitted to being attracted to him, would I be ordered to stay away from him?

“Did you feel guilty for hurting another living thing?”

“No. I didn't.” Truth.

“Why is that, do you think?”

“I had to stop them. They were evil and would have killed my friends.”

Again, she arched a brow. “And not you?”

“No.”

“Interesting.” She lifted a digital notebook from the table and balanced it on her lap. Typing, she muttered, “That's very interesting.”

“Not really,” I said.

Pausing, she glanced up. “And why is that?”

“I wouldn't have let them.”

Slowly her lips stretched into a smile. That smile lit up her entire face and made her…beautiful. Somehow more beautiful than even the perfect Le'Ace. Her skin glowed, her eyes became alive. Liquid amber. This woman was mesmerizing. “Good answer.”

“Honest answer.”

She typed something else in the notebook. “Let's talk about your mother's rejection of you the morning after the fight.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. No way. I was
not
going there. “She didn't reject me,” I managed to say. Lie. She had. She'd practically pushed me out the door and hadn't cared enough to say good-bye. That knowledge still cut deeply.
She'll love me again. Once I've made something of myself
.

Angel frowned over at me. “Yes, she did and you know it. She kicked you out of her house and out of her life.”

“So?” I jolted upright, pinning the doctor with a fierce stare. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I rubbed my temples. “What do you want from me? What do you want me to say? Yes, she rejected me. Yes, she kicked me out. Happy?”

She gave no outward reaction to my fury. “Why the hostility? I merely asked you a question.”

“And I asked you a question. What exactly do you want from me?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, showing no mercy. “I want to hear about your mother and how you felt when she called the camp.”

Fine. She wanted to hear, she'd hear. “Like shit, okay? I felt like shit. She knew how my father's abandonment hurt me, and yet she treated me the same way.” The words poured from me, and I didn't even try to stop them. “I'm her daughter, but she couldn't wait to get rid of me.” Tears filled my eyes, burning. I angrily swiped them away. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” she said, surprising me. “Anger is good, Phoenix. Anger is very good.”

“Why? Aren't we supposed to let go of our anger?”

“Only after you've dealt with it. Besides, if you'd felt nothing, that would have meant you were suppressing your emotions. If you were suppressing your emotions, you would one day have a breakdown. And when an agent has a breakdown, bad things happen, to the agent and to everyone around her.” Angel dug in the pocket of her suit jacket and slapped something on the coffee table between us.

I glanced down, and my jaw fell open. Need and fear raced through me. A tremor traveled the length of my spine. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“How do you feel, looking at that?” she asked, remaining in her seat.

I tried to look at her, but I could not tear my gaze from the vial of Onadyn lying so innocently in front of me. It was small and clear. Beguiling. My mouth watered. “I feel…thirsty,” I said honestly, hoarsely.

“And?”

“And I hate myself for that thirst.” The words tore from me.

“Why?”

“I told you. I know what happens when I use. My brain begins to malfunction and I can't think clearly. I do such stupid, horrible things.” God, did I do stupid things. Sadly, that day on the school steps wasn't an isolated incident. I'd degraded my mother in front of so many people, time and time again.

More than that, I'd once woken up in bed with a boy I hadn't known. Hadn't wanted to know, really. And I hadn't been able to remember what we'd done. I'd once stolen a bottle of scented enzyme mist from a store and was arrested within minutes.

The list could go on and on.

“Take it away,” I said weakly. “Please.”

“No. I want you to pick it up.”

“No.” Violently I shook my head. Tendrils of hair slapped at my cheeks, but didn't tear me from the Onadyn's spell.