Still Reyna and Jodie didn’t move.
Not for another ten minutes while they waited to see if anyone would follow.
Then the cab door slid open. A sliver of light shot over the body bags, and Meghan’s voice rang out. “We’re in the clear, ladies. Come out of there.”
They both yanked down the zippers and tossed the bags aside with eager excitement. It was done. It was over. Finally.
“We’re free,” Reyna whispered. Her eyes moved to Jodie’s equally dark ones. “We’re really free.”
“I can’t believe it,” Jodie said. “When y’all said you were getting me out, I thought you were full of shit. But it really worked. We’re really gone.”
“I dreamed of getting out. I even plotted for it. But I never knew if it was really possible.”
“I didn’t even dream,” Jodie whispered.
Reyna frowned at that statement. She wondered how long Jodie had been cooped up inside Visage. How long a person had to be held captive before they gave up any hope of being rescued or escaping.
Then Meghan came forward with a switch knife. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“What…?” Meghan snatched up Reyna’s arm without warning and dug into her forearm. “The fuck?”
Reyna howled and tried to get her arm away from Meghan but she held Reyna steady. She was strong and powerful for her size and Reyna couldn’t get out of her vice grip. Meghan stuck the knife into the wound she’d created and out popped a tiny piece of metal.
“Sorry,” Meghan said. She held the little tracker in her hand. “We can’t take any chances.”
“A little warning next time!”
“You don’t like needles or blood. I wasn’t going to take my chances with you being squeamish,” Meghan told her. She was already bandaging up the wound with the efficiency of a nurse. Reyna wondered which parts of her personality were an act and which parts were reality.
“I’m not squeamish,” Jodie said, offering Meghan her arm. “Get this sucker out of me.”
Meghan made quick work of removing Jodie’s tracker as well. After Jodie was patched up, Meghan dropped both of the devices into a plastic bag and sealed it shut.
“What are you going to do with them?” Reyna asked. She was applying pressure to her arm in the way that Nancy had shown her dozens of times with the IVs. She was practically a pro at blood loss. Such a strange thing to feel like a champ at.
“Decoy. They already know that you’re missing.” Her eyes darted between Reyna and Jodie. “One of you at least. If not both of you by now. We’re going to need to get rid of these before anyone realizes where you are.”
“So like…who the hell are you people?” Jodie asked.
“Elle,” Reyna answered for Meghan.
“What the fuck is an L? Like a capital letter?”
Meghan sighed. “It’s a long story. Elle, like the name, is the underground rebellion organization opposed to Visage. It was started by a human named Elle who was against Visage’s rise to power. She was killed in Elle’s Rebellion a decade ago and we’ve been working as a rebel group ever since. Our goal is for vampire and human autonomy and equality.”
Jodie snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“We broke your ass out of prison. I think you could start with a thank you and check your attitude at the door before we take you to our headquarters,” Meghan snapped right back.
“I’m a realist. I appreciate y’all saving my ass back there, but no one is taking down Visage.”
Meghan blew out a frustrated breath. “Whether you believe that or not is up to you. Some of us are risking our necks to try to make it a reality.”
“All right.”
Reyna could see the tough girl routine for what it was. She was scared. This behavior was bulletproof armor against the world. Reyna knew what that was like. Had endured situations where she had needed her own armor. It was necessary. And shedding that would be hard.
“Just leave it,” Reyna told Meghan.
“Okay. But be ready to move when I tell you to. Tye is going to give us the signal and then I need both of you on me. We have a short drop window. Hopefully we haven’t already missed it.”
Everyone fell silent at that. They weren’t at headquarters yet, which meant everything could still fall apart. As the truck bumped along, the three women stood tensely in the back, waiting.
Finally, the vehicle started to slow and rolled to a stop atop a gravel parking lot that sent the women and all the equipment bouncing. Reyna reached for the side of the truck to steady herself, but Meghan was already launching herself into the back of their getaway car.
“Are you coming or what?” she snapped back at them.
They both darted after her, and as soon as they jumped down out of the back, they were blasted with frigid air. Reyna did the math in her head. She’d been kidnapped in September. The leaves hadn’t yet started changing in the park outside of Beckham’s penthouse. The colder temperatures barely graced the evenings.
Now, it was November…after Thanksgiving. It was bitterly cold with thick dark clouds overhead and a slow drizzle. Not quite cold enough to freeze, but cold and wet enough to be annoying. Eight weeks of constant temperatures, and Reyna’s body was not used to this drastic change. Not at all.
Still she hustled out into the rain and sprinted with Meghan over to a nondescript pickup truck. Meghan handed off the baggie to Xavier, a hulking man with dark features and a menacing glare. Vampire. It was written all over him. She knew that vampires worked with Elle—Beckham did, after all—but it was still surprising to see a vampire running a prison-break detail. Or getting into a piece-of-shit rusted-out car and speeding off into the distance with the trackers.
Tye hopped into the front seat of the pickup truck, and Reyna and Jodie followed into the backseat of the truck, behind Meghan. As soon as the door was closed, Tye took off like a bullet.
The ride was tense and silent. At one point, sirens blared in the distance. Meghan chewed on her lip and kept glancing out the window. Only when they were far enough away that the sirens were just a distant ringing, did Meghan straighten once more and exude all the confidence Reyna had already grown accustomed to.
“Sorry about this,” she said tossing Reyna a black mask. She dug around in a bag for another second and then passed a black strip of fabric to Jodie. “It’ll be safer, in case something happens, if you don’t know where the entrance is to headquarters. We blindfold all newbies.”
Jodie grumbled something vulgar under her breath and then tied the fabric around her eyes. “Congrats. I can’t see shit.”
Meghan laughed and then waited for Reyna to put her blindfold on. She stared down at the mask in her hands. It was one of those silk sleeping masks. Pretty fancy even. Her hands shook as she thought of all the times she’d been forced to wear one of these. Beckham taking her down to the Vault before the fires wiped out the club, when she’d been kidnapped from Everett’s apartment, and then the ball where Harrington had forced her to watch Beckham with Penny. As far as she was concerned, wearing a blindfold only meant bad things.
“Reyna,” Meghan said softly in her nurse voice. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said unconvincingly.
Nothing was okay. As she slid the blindfold over her eyes, she didn’t know if anything would ever be okay again.
Their truck came to a stop.
Reyna yanked the blindfold off as quickly as she could. She had an elevated heart rate and her hand had shaken the entire way. She hadn’t removed the blindfold before it was time, but it had taken great effort.
“Honey, we’re home,” Tye singsonged with a wide grin.
It had been so long since Reyna had seen anyone this genuinely happy. She honestly couldn’t even remember seeing a smile that vibrant before. Had his life been that much more pleasant? Joy was not something that came naturally to her. Even before the kidnapping. And now…well, let’s just say the glass was half empty.
Jodie pursed her lips at his enthusiasm, which made Reyna feel marginally better. Meghan and Tye got out of the front seat and then corralled her and Jodie out of the back.
Trepidation bit at Reyna. What was Elle anyway? What would she find on the other side of that door? What would they expect of her? Had she traded one prison for another?
One thing propelled her forward: Beckham was part of this organization.
If he trusted them, then she would give it a shot.
Then her heart fluttered.
Beckham.
All those weeks she’d had to put him away in a far-off place. He helped her through the tough moments, but she couldn’t think of him without breaking. So she’d had to teach herself to compartmentalize everything that had to do with him. Seeing him that night at the ball had been a punch to the gut…and also…everything. His face, that body, those hands, the eyes, the lips. It had all flooded back. And hurt so bad.
Through all of that…she’d never let herself think that she would really see him again. Be in a room with him, hold him, touch him, love him once more. She’d left that part of her life for her dreams. Those sweet toxic dreams.
But now she was here.
He was here.
She would see him.
They could be together again.
Her heart expanded with hope.
And it was all right behind that door.
Meghan looped her arm through Reyna’s and strode inside behind Tye and a fearless Jodie.
The door opened to a sky-blue room with wooden floors and paintings hanging from the walls. It was clear and light and even…comforting. No whitewashed walls or white tiled floor. No antiseptic or hospital smell. No bright blinding light overhead. Just…a room. An empty room at that.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting. A welcome party maybe? Beckham standing there with open arms? Anything would have been better than nothing.
“Welcome to Elle,” Meghan whispered to Reyna. “Welcome home.”
Home.
Home was only a foggy memory. Of her parents when they had still been alive and her two brothers wrestling in the yard. Of her house with a red door and a white picket fence. Home was multicolored leaves on the ground, fresh mown grass, and laughter in the air. The smell of pumpkin pies baking in the oven and the soaps on television in the background. It was crisp fall days bundled up and spring mornings. It was early morning dew and big bear hugs.
Home was that unreachable existence. Home would never exist again.
Brian and Drew had become her home. Wherever they were was where she belonged.
Until Beckham.
He had changed everything.
But home was definitely not this room.
Not without the people she loved.