Target 84 (11 page)

“I give you everything I am, all my broken heartbeats, until I know you'll understand.”
CHRISTINA PERRI – “DISTANCE”

My head screams with pain. I was sure my nose was broken, but after I cleared away the blood, it seems it’s just a nasty gash at the bridge. She’s a fighter. A damn good one too. While she was unconscious, I cradled her in my arms and felt the strangest sense of belonging. I’d set her on the cot, chained her other ankle to the pipe as well, and left for a much-needed break. Leaving the confines of the abandoned building and heading to the hotel had been hard. She was hurt and I’d caused it. I should have left a glass of water for her or perhaps a rag so she could clean herself up a little. I don’t want her to die. I laugh at my wandering thoughts. She’s the enemy. I need to stay focused. The hotel bed is plush. Too plush. It's a cheap room in a lousy part of town. I order room service and shower while I wait for it to arrive. I’m starving.

Over my burger, beer, and fries, I check my emails, texts, and voicemails. I’m going to need to leave soon. I’m needed back at the club for the last of the fittings on the surveillance. No mention of Pepper has been made so far. Dominic has kept her far away from the new club. I’m grateful. It’s one less thing to worry about. I need Greta to break. It’s been three days. I only have two days before Clint comes looking for me. I can’t afford to return to Sabotage without any answers. At eleven o’clock I pull on a tee shirt and sneakers and head back to the warehouse.

She sits with her chin on knees, her arms wrapped tightly around her shins, staring across the room at the far wall. I feel like a voyeur watching her through the glass pane in the door. I pick up the first aid kit and unlock the door. Her head snaps up, eyes meeting mine, but she remains still. I kneel at the edge of the cot and open the kit. She doesn’t even flinch as I swab the blood and dirt away from a deep cut in her forehead and apply a dab of antibiotic ointment. I sigh and slump back from my knees to my heels.

“Just tell me,” I demand.

“Why?”

“So this can be over.”

“You’ll kill me either way,” she states.

“You don’t know that,” I answer even though she’s right.

“Don’t I, though?”

I take in her no-bullshit approach.

“I’ll make you a deal. You tell me why you want me dead and I will let you go on one condition,” I say. She snickers at my offer.

“What exactly would this
condition
be?” she asks, her voice strong even though her body looks broken.

“The name of who hired you. If it’s who I think, you’re dead.”

Greta’s laugh fills the air, her head tossed back, body shaking. The potent mix of emotions this woman engenders in me has me shaking. I’m actually turned on slightly.

“I don’t know who hired me. I personally don’t give a shit if you live or die. I have no idea what you’ve done to warrant a death sentence. I have no idea why you’re paranoid. You’d be just a paycheck to me. A name texted to me. An assassination to complete.” The sincerity in her voice unnerves me. She’s being truthful. “So, masked woman beater, do I get to go now?” she spits out.

“Not until I find out
who
hired you.”

“That’s impossible,” she says, teeth gritted.

“Sucks for you then, doesn’t it?” I retort. Her blue-ice eyes freeze over, spearing me with rage and hate. A cocktail that, if she were unrestrained, might have me worried for my safety.

“I don’t even
know
who
you
are. How the hell do you expect me to answer your redundant questions?!” she screams with fury. I rip the mask from my head, tossing it on the floor as I reach for my gun.

The sound of a magazine being pressed into its mag well with a harsh metallic clack brings her focus back, the noise of the slide as a bullet slides into the chamber. Metal sliding against metal. I press the gun to her neck. Her pulse beats against the metal of the gun.

I pick up the glass of water and hand it to her. I place my fingers on the bottom of the glass and gently push the glass upwards. “Drink up, psycho Barbie. I don’t want you passing out from dehydration.”

Her nostrils flare and her eyes narrow, spearing me with a murderous look. It turns me on. There’s something about her that is familiar to me. She reminds me of a time I’ve worked so arduously to forget. I push the impressions from my head as she takes three large gulps of water.

The sedative will kick in shortly. I don’t want to risk her making too much noise at odd hours
multiple
days in a row. Although no one’s around to hear it, I don’t want it to be the one mistake I make. I turn, striding to the door purposefully. Without looking back, I close the door behind me, lock it and then double check the locks. Scrubbing a palm over my face, I let the weight of the stress I’m carrying sink into my shoulders. This
has
to be all Delanti’s doing. There is no other logical explanation. I rest my forehead on the door, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.

Then I hear her hum.

I lean my back against the solid oak door and rest my head on the hardwood. I conjure up my mother’s song and hum lowly for a short while. It seems to settle the sad girl behind the door somehow. I don’t know why I care, but I like that I do. A tsunami of emotion had swept through me when they carried her in. I thought she was dead, but I should have known better. Long, blonde hair draped down around his arms as she dangled lifelessly in his embrace. She was small. So small. Too small to be in a place like this. Rage had coursed through me as I watched him pass down the hall. None of us should be here, but something about her slight, slack frame made me feel as though she especially shouldn’t be here. My emotions meant I was breaking all the rules. We’re not supposed to
have
emotions. We’re supposed to be obedient little soldiers. I won’t let them break me, though. My acting skills have been perfected over the last four years here despite the horrors I’ve witnessed.

“You still there?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says after a moment.

“I have to go. My shift is over.”

“No, please. Stay,” she begs. I don’t want to leave her but I have to.

It can’t be.
My Jolly Sailor Bold
. The song my mother sang to me night after night while my father was out to sea. He worked on a rig. He was strong and burly and had a deep affection for the ocean. When he disappeared, never to be found, she never stopped singing that song. When we had no choice but to move into a trailer park, nowhere near the ocean, she still sat outside at night singing that damn song while she unraveled.

All she could ever do after my father disappeared was sing that song. She couldn't talk care of me or herself. I tried to keep our dissolving world a secret but I was only a child. When my uncle showed up with
those
men, she sang that song through her tears as they tore me from the trailer, from her. She didn’t even reach out for me. There was nothing in her vacant eyes that even resembled my mother anymore. Nothing but that damned
song
. No one knows that song.

No one besides me and
her.

A chill runs down my spine, conjuring images of a little sad and hollow girl milling about the school halls before I left.

Before I escaped.

“Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door
with such name as ‘Nevermore.’ “— Edgar Allan Poe
Silence. I’d forgotten how deafening it can be. He hasn’t come in a day at least. I’m hungry. Exhausted. Sore. My soul is bleeding. This torment is worse than living through it the first time around. I have no bearing on the hours that have passed. I think he drugged me again.

He
is Bentley.

He
is Target 84.

My body is weak. I curl up on the floor with the flat pillow and let myself drift off.

I can hear the humming just barely through the door from my bed. I scramble across the floor to get to him in time.

“Are you there?” I call.

“Shhh,” his voice hushes me.

“What’s your name?”

“How was your first day here, little bird?” he asks, ignoring me.

“Terrible,” I wail. “I want to go home.” Hopelessness overwhelms me. I want my mom.

“You won’t be going home, little bird.” His voice is sad and lost sounding.

“Why not? What is this place?” I ask quietly, resting my back against the door. My knees are tucked up close to my body and I set my chin on top of them.

“We all belong here. They only buy the ones that are worth it. We’re the elite,” he answers.

“Elite what?” I ask.

“I dunno really but they’re preparing us for something big. Now hush up.”

“Why?”

“You have to follow the rules here. You have to study hard and do what they say.”

“Why?” I ask again.

“If you don’t, they’ll punish you.” The threat in his voice is serious. It makes me wonder if he’s been punished before.

“What’s the song you hum called?”

“I don’t remember. My mom used to hum it to me when I was little,” he answers.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Thirteen.”

“I’m only nine.”

“I was nine when I arrived here, you’ll be fine,” he says. I don’t understand why all this is happening. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just want to go home. I don’t care that my mom can’t afford the nice stuff anymore. I don't want new clothes. I don’t want anything but my mom’s arms hugging me. I hate this place.

“Can you hum to me again? It makes me feel better.” He doesn’t answer but his voice, small and quiet, carries the same tune from last night. I wrap my arms around my legs, hugging them to me tighter than before and listen.

I put a hand down on the cold, concrete floor and rub it back and forth. I dreamt I was back in my room at Ravenbrook. The cold, rigid floor tells me otherwise. I push and lift myself up. My arms tremble and shake. I'm weak. Hunger and thirst are brutal. The dreams are worse.

The lock in the door turns. I turn my head like a feral cat. He eyes me like I’m nothing more than hand-me-down royalty. I want to attack but I’m weak. I scramble backwards to the corner near the cot. The light is too much from the opened door. I squint my eyes in an effort to let them adjust. He walks in ten steps and sets something on the floor then turns and leaves without a word.

I scramble across the floor to the tray. I reach out savagely for it. I look down at the food on the tray and laugh. It's hysterical and demented. I laugh harder. Tears form in my eyes. They don’t spill over, though. They never spill out. I’ve long forgotten what it feels like to cry. The horrible things I remember from so long ago seem impossible. They were the disturbed nightmares of a traumatized child. I am strong. I excel at my job. I am a perfect killer. I can still kill him.

I can. I just need to get my wits about me.

I’m unraveling.

I have been kept awake for so many days. Too many. When I finally drift to sleep, I am awakened abruptly. Eyes blink, staring vacantly from their doors. A heavy fog takes form in my brain. It hangs, lingering, preventing me from thinking clearly. Conversations with no one about nonsensical things are uttered into the air. My very will is haggard, my legs unsteady, eyes unreliable, and I just want to sleep. I want to sleep for days, months even. Sleep deprivation has led many of the others into a temporary state of insanity. They stare vacantly from their doors. I realize I’ve been humming. I don’t know the song. It sounds foreign to me yet familiar. So familiar. Others beg me to stop. Some are screaming, not at me, just screaming. I can’t stop, though. The tune is the only thing keeping me sane. I think.

I swear you can hear a metallic clink and feel the vacuum of air as I spiral head first into insanity.

“Satisfy my appetite with something spectacular. With diamond-like precision. Insatiable is what I envision
.”
Lisa Left Eye Lopez (TLC)
It is impossible. I’ve gone over every possible scenario and the only one that makes sense is that it is her.

The one I abandoned.

I couldn’t take her with me. I couldn’t risk getting us both killed.

I was just a kid.

Greta Billings does not exist in the United States outside of those damned apartments. She’s a ghost. She’s exactly what I would’ve been if I’d allowed Ravenbrook to mindfuck me. I’ve called in every favor I could and it’s gotten me no more information than I started with when I brought her here. I suck my bottom lip between my teeth, a terrible habit I haven’t been able to kick. I bite on the tender skin and clear my head. I need to think of any other possibility. My mind runs circles. Of course another person could know that tune. The coincidence leaves me with feelings of uneasiness, though. Ravenbrook memories rush back to me.

I pushed through the terror and continued forward on shaking legs. Cutting the green wire, I disabled the alarm to the cafeteria door. Shit. Nerves made my hands unsteady, unreliable. Sucking in a deep breath, I depressed the lever and pushed gently. Nothing. Relief swept through me.

For a moment I considered going back for her. I shouldn’t leave her here. Not with them. But if I don’t make it, I die. I can't chance being the one responsible for both our deaths. I watch the spotlight sweep the yard in front of me. Once. Twice. I count the seconds between patterns and swoops of the harsh light. I make sure I’m ready.

Then I run.

She’s curled on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hands. I stand still for a minute, looking down at her face. Why does she sleep on the floor? Her sleeping features hold the sweet innocence of a child. She looks like an angel. Blonde, long hair. Just like the girl’s was. Bright blue eyes, just like the girl’s were.
My
song.
My
angel.

Memories assault me furiously. I’d wanted nothing more than to save her more than a decade ago. I’d failed. This time, though, this time I’d do whatever it took to save her. I’d do whatever it takes to free her from the monsters of Ravenbrook. Anger-fueled adrenaline ripples through my body, white-hot and swift—taunting me, everything rising to the surface. All my rage at Ravenbrook. All my hatred and guilt for leaving her, so small and helpless then. All my pent-up anger over a lost youth and a re-entry into society that was so brutal I almost didn’t make it.

All because of
them.
The swiftness with which these emotions resurface unnerves me.

I’m losing my mind. Has Ravenbrook sent her to kill me? They don’t allow loose ends. No one escapes. No one lives outside of their control. Yet here I am, two decades later, alive. Her breath hitches and her hands clench the flimsy pillow.

She would get me. Understand me. She could
save
me.

I reach out and brush the hair away from her face. She takes a quick, sharp breath. Her eyes, so wide and blue, open and stare into mine. My throat feels tight. I want to wrap my arms around her to chase away the fear.

The fear I’ve put there.

Hold her close, bury my face in her hair, and not let go this time. But I can't yet, because there is something I need to do first. I have to be
sure
. I stand up and back away from her.

“I notice more than you realize. I wouldn’t underestimate me if I were you.” I can practically see what she’s thinking, how slowly her thoughts move, by reading the cues on her face. There is a crisscrossing knot work of narrow scars trace her inside upper arm, pale against her sun-kissed skin. She has a sort of stillness to her—a tendency to disappear into the background, avoiding notice. It’s remarkable for someone so stunning. “Thirty-three.” The name leaves my lips on a gritty whisper. Her head jerks back like I’ve physically hit her. Her jaw goes slack and her eyes widen.

“What did you say?” she spits in shock. I keep my eyes locked on hers. I’m right. My confirmation just slapped me in the face. The world crashes down around me.

It is
her
.

“It’s me, Twelve. It’s me, little bird,” I whisper and wait. Anxiety courses through me. Her mask stays in place. Her training is overriding her emotion. She stands and takes a quick step towards me before remembering her chains and stops.

Then she cracks.

A gaping hole so wide that I’m sure she’s going to split in half and swallow up the world in her wake. Her contemptuous, icy glare cuts across the space between us, spearing me as rage distorts her face. She screams a wordless, full-throated, guttural cry of lament. Her intense, silvery-blue gaze bores into me as she collapses to her knees and faints. Everything has unraveled.