Forsaken (The Secret Life of Amy Bensen #3)(59)

Gia steps to my side. “You okay?”

“Fucking beautiful,” I murmur.

“She’s safe. Sheridan is waiting on you. Faster is always better.”

But she’s wrong. And I believe Jared is right. Six years has bred greed and desperation in Sheridan. “If I don’t show up to that party, Sheridan will try to flush me out rather than risk losing me again. In other words, seventy-two hours from now, my sister could well become a target, and if Liam Stone is involved in this, then he could be the one to pull the proverbial trigger.”




WE FIND OUR way to bed at nearly four in the morning, and I fall asleep with Gia curled at my side, feeling the warmth of her body as a cushion against all things cold and icy in this world. I think I can’t sleep. I’m certain I can’t, but then somehow I’m in the middle of a nightmare, aware on some level that I’m asleep but unable to escape.

Smoke burns my lungs and I choke, shouting for my sister. “Lara! Lara!” I wait, the flames licking across the spare bedroom floor, eating away at the carpet and any time I have left. I wait, though, listening for a reply that doesn’t come, the heat burning my skin without touching me. Now my fear is shifting toward my parents, still trapped in their room, the sound of the fire trucks still too distant. I grab a tree limb that juts toward the house, using it to haul myself onto the roof and feeling sick as I observe flames consuming the opposite side of the house. They’re gone. My parents are gone. But Lara might not be.

I grab the tree again and don’t even think about the drop, jumping to the ground, my bones rattling with the impact. That’s when I see Lara, flat on the ground, with my neighbor and trusted friend huddled over her. I’m rushing toward her when a glint of something to my right catches my eye. I stop, searching the line of trees and bushes separating us from another house. I go low and move back to the edge of the house, where the flames have yet to consume it, smoke billowing just above my head. And I wait. The glint comes again and I don’t wait for another confirmation. Whoever set that fire is watching.

I gasp and sit up, my heart thundering in my chest, but I am still in that nightmare, replaying the moment I’d found the bastard who’d set the fire, plowing him with my body and going down on top of him. Remembering the struggle and my hands on his throat. Choking the life out of him, and enjoying it. Fucking loving it.

“Chad,” Gia says softly, and I become aware of her lying next to me, her body pressed to mine, her hand on my chest over my thundering heart, the moon casting a warm glow over us from outside the windows. “I’m here,” she murmurs. “You’re here, not there.”

I grab her hand and look down at it, so small and feminine, so fragile, and I don’t want her to be hurt. Not by Sheridan and not by me. She needs to understand how bad this is, how deeply embedded in hell she’s become. “I killed the man who set our house on fire,” I confess, without looking at her. “I choked him to death and then threw him in the burning house. My only regret is that I didn’t throw him in alive.”

She surprises me by climbing onto my lap and cupping my face, and when I look into her eyes I find understanding, not condemnation. “He would have killed again. He might have come after you and your sister.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking. I just wanted him to die for killing my family.”

“No one knows how they’ll respond in the midst of that kind of hell. No one can judge until they’ve lived the same nightmare.”

She presses her lips to mine, a whisper of unspoken acceptance in the touch. I expect that burning need to f*ck away my edginess to overcome me, but it does not. Instead, there is only a calm I do not remember feeling in what seems like a lifetime, a sweet sense of rightness that only she, it seems, can stir. I roll Gia to her side, me on my back again. She settles on my chest, her leg tangled with mine, her hand on my heart.

By the time I’m drifting back to sleep, I decide that she’s right. Alone isn’t better, but with the smell of smoke still burning in my nose as if I really was in that nightmare, I know that sometimes it’s the right thing to be.




MORNING COMES, AND as tempting as it is to visit the house where Amy is living, I resist, aware of the many eyes that will be on her, looking for me. I won’t risk being spotted and ruining my chances of getting her out of Manhattan safely. Instead, Gia and I research Liam Stone, looking for connections to Sheridan, or anyone who would want the cylinder. At least where Liam Stone is concerned, I am both relieved and concerned when we find nothing to better aid my decision as to how to handle him and Amy.

Worse, perhaps, is Jared coming up with the same result of “nothing” as he digs for more on Rollin, who we both worry is a sleeping giant that could come back to bite us in the ass. Why fake his death? Where is he, and what is his role in all this?

By late evening, the three of us are sitting at the glass-topped kitchen table, eating grilled chicken sandwiches we’ve ordered from the concierge service, and going over the plan for the next day. By the time bedtime arrives I’m keyed up, eager to see my sister again, even from a distance.

I use Gia to burn off the energy, but I’m starting to realize that what I do with her is not the kind of f*cking I’d do with other women. It’s not a blind lust I use as an outlet. It is passionate, burning-up-the-sheets sex, punched with every piece of emotional baggage I own and actually allow Gia to see. When it’s over, we are sated, exhausted, and I am certain I will sleep peacefully, but I do not. I have the nightmare again, the memory ripping at the frayed edges of my mind and doing more damage. This time, though, I somehow manage to wake without disturbing Gia.