Cipher

Chapter Nineteen

Her face was sticky.

Kat dug her teeth into her lower lip to hold back a whimper. She wouldn’t break. Wouldn’t cry, and it didn’t matter that tears had been leaking out from beneath her closed eyelids for hours or days or weeks, however long she’d been handcuffed to this chair while Ben-No. She tried one of Callum’s calming breaths and regretted it, because everything smelled like salt and metal. Tears and blood, and it hadn’t been days because Julio was still slumped in the corner. He stirred from time to time, muttered sounds that weren’t quite words, but Kat couldn’t bring herself to speak to him. If he woke up, if he looked at Ben’s body, looked at her, then it wouldn’t be a dream.

It had to be a dream. A nightmare. Something new to replace the terror of replaying Andrew’s near death over and over again. Catharsis. Her psyche spewing out the stress of the past weeks, like it did after controlled burnout. That was all it was.

Ben was not dead. His blood was not on her face, on her body, in her hair. Just like before, just like with Andrew, only this time it wasn’t only blood but pieces of him, and Franklin wouldn’t come and save the day. Ben wouldn’t climb to his feet as a wolf because bullets didn’t remake lives, they ended them.

Gone forever. Game over.

No. Just a dream. Soon, she’d wake up. Wake up.

Wake up, please wake up.

Julio made another noise—a groggy sound that was almost a word this time—and a scream crawled its way into her throat, scratched and clawed until it burst free in one pained cry that raked across her nerves.

This was it. This was what it felt like to break.

“Kat.” Julio coughed and whispered her name again.

Her irrational need for him to stay asleep vanished, swallowed whole by the desperate need to not be alone in her nightmare. “You need to wake up, Julio. It’s important. It’s really important, okay?”

He raised his head, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. “Where are we?”

“In a garage, I think.” Her lips were dry, but she couldn’t wet them. Not when her face was covered in — Stop it, Kat. Stop it. “I think someone from the cult must have us. You and me and—and Ben.” Her voice broke on the name. “They shot him.”

The words kindled no recognition, but his head snapped up. This time, his gaze focused on the chair beside her.

On Ben.

Julio made a low noise and jerked against the chains as he started to breathe faster. “They want the thing, right? The collar.”

“Yes.” If they had a telepath, they would have plucked the thoughts from her head already. Or maybe they just hadn’t had one strong enough to break through the natural psychic defenses she and Ben had. It didn’t mean they didn’t have a clairvoyant…or a good old-fashioned bug. “They could be listening to us.”

His expression didn’t change. “Did you tell them you don’t know where it is?”

She couldn’t tell if he was lying, confused from the drugs or honestly didn’t know…and there was no way to ask. “Yes. They didn’t believe me.”

His gaze flickered to Ben. “How long was I out?”

“I don’t know.” Shame twisted with horror, made her queasy. “I freaked out, Julio. I’m still freaked out.”

“It’s okay.” He looked around the room for a moment and cocked his head as if listening. The chains shook again as his shoulders flexed. He strained against his bonds, grunting from the effort, then relaxed with a curse. “They must have used magic. These things are solid.”

“I’m handcuffed.” It was inane. Everything she said was inane, everything she thought was inane, but it was the only way to stay calm. To keep from following Julio’s gaze to where Ben sat a foot away.

No, not Ben. Ben’s body.

“Kat, look at me.” His tone brooked no argument. “I can’t break these chains. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay. Okay.” God, she would have given anything for a wisp of her empathy, for the power to reach out to him, to ground herself in his unshakable strength. “They’ve got someone here who’s blocking me. I can lower my shields, but it doesn’t matter. They’ve got me penned in.”

“We’ll figure that out. But you’ve got to stay with me, okay?”

“I know.” She had to get back to Andrew. If something happened to her, he’d never come back from it.

She dragged in a steadying breath out of habit, and wished she hadn’t. So much blood, and she had to tighten her neck and shoulders to keep from turning to look at Ben. “Can you hear anything outside of these walls?”

“Footsteps.” His expression tightened. “Whatever you have to do, Kat. Remember that. Whatever—” The door opened.

A woman this time, not the man from before. She carried a small leather case, which she set down not far from Julio’s chair. “Good evening.”

Julio remained silent, even when the woman took an extra chair from the corner and brought it close to his, sat down and opened her case to reveal the wicked glint of metal.

Staged. It was all perfectly staged, straight out of a movie script, and Kat knew it was meant for her.

Not that they wouldn’t torture Julio—with Ben’s blood dried on her skin, she believed they’d do anything —but the precise movements, the slow reveal, the sheer theatrics of it all… They were trying to fuck with her head.

It was working.

Kat squeezed her hands together, even though she could barely feel her fingers. “I told you, I don’t know where the collar is.”

“Really?” The woman pulled out a thin knife, almost like a scalpel. “From what we’ve heard, you planned to take it to Wyoming. Did you?”

They knew too much, and yet not enough. Kat’s mouth went dry. The blade looked sharp, cold. The woman kept turning it this way and that, letting it catch the light. More theatrics, giving Kat ample time to speak as dread closed around her.

She’d seen the movies. She knew all of her lines. Quips and taunts. Sorry, I was too busy banging your mom, or something even cockier. Is that the biggest knife you’ve got? No wonder you’re overcompensating. No, that one didn’t even make sense, because it was a woman, not a man, and how in hell was she supposed to laugh in the face of danger when danger wasn’t coming anywhere near her?

No, they’d killed Ben, and they’d slice Julio to pieces next. Because she was the empath, the squishy-hearted one, and she’d break under someone else’s pain.

The scalpel dipped toward Julio, and Kat let out an embarrassing squeak. “Wait. Wait, don’t.”

Julio growled. “Kat, no—” The blade sinking into his skin silenced him.