Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(68)

“Oh,” I say. It explains a lot. The holes in his understanding of things.

“Nate made up a lot of guessing games out of reading that stuff. Not exactly an education, but it felt like fighting back. Like saying, you can’t take everything from us. Not much of an education, but—”

“It’s amazing,” I say. “Because you fought for it and it’s yours. And it’s amazing how you guys got each other through.”

He slides his finger along a metal shelf.

“Why didn’t you go back to your foster family?”

“They never felt like mine the way the guys did. When you’re in something like that for so long, you can’t get a bond fiercer. It was us against them, against everyone in the world.”

His pain pierces me.

“That’s a gift that those perverts gave you. Brothers who are more than brothers. More than a family.”

“Don’t candy coat it. Those animals that took us, Abby…they took a lot.”

“No,” I say.

He looks away, and this image comes into my mind of a time I was up north with my mom. We were in this slummy neighborhood and all night the sirens were going—from a house burning down, we learned the next morning. We walked over to look and it was this massive blackened shell, hung with icicles like diamonds against the blue, blue sky. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Grayson is like that house. Stunning in his destruction.

He studies me with haunted eyes. “Maybe they took too much, you know?”

I put my hand on his arm, over the battle-axe scar. “They didn’t, Grayson. Don’t say that.”

“Why shouldn’t I say that? Sometimes I look at other people, like the guys I met in prison, and they’re different. They have something I don’t have—I don’t know what it is; I just know…” He shakes his head.

Did they take what makes him human? What makes him civilized? That’s the question he’s trying to articulate.

The library twists in front of me like the mirrored walls of a fun house, reflecting f*cked-up versions of Grayson back at me. Reflections of myself, because I’m here with him. Everybody would say we’re wrong in everything we’re doing. But we don’t feel wrong to me.

Did they take what makes him human? What makes him civilized?

Grayson looks at me with one part hope, one part dread. He wants my answer. He really wants to know. I pull him closer and shove my hand into his dark hair. “They didn’t take anything important, baby. They didn’t take what’s important.”

A strange expression passes over his face, one I haven’t seen before. “Let’s get those floor plans.”





Chapter Thirty-Three




Grayson


Abby leads me through the library. First we look behind the front desk to find out where things are stored. This is a large city library with enough desks and stations for an army of librarians. I try to imagine it bustling with people, but all I can see are orange jumpsuits shuffling in formation.

They didn’t take what’s important. I keep going over and over that in my head. Like what? I want to ask. What did they take? What did they leave?

Is it enough?

It’s times like these that I get how much distance is between us. A caveman—that’s how she sees me. Barely human, she said to me once. I guess that’s my answer right there. The answer of why she’s dangerous, why I should cut her loose.

I never felt like I wasn’t enough before Abby showed up. Pissed off, yeah. A f*cked-up stranger in the world, yeah. But never like I wasn’t enough.

That’s part of why Stone wants her dead. If we get the blueprints, he said before we left. We don’t need her anymore.

But I need her. I won’t tell Stone that because he’ll see it as a weakness. And maybe it is, but I’m beyond caring. They don’t get that she’s the missing part of me.

The best part of me.

Nate doesn’t like her around either. It’s not about protecting me with him; it’s more about not bringing more people into the madness. And then there’s Calder. The Saint, which is a f*cked-up name considering he’s more lethal than anyone. He got the name because he doesn’t f*ck anyone. Or hasn’t, since our milk-carton-kid days. He definitely doesn’t like Abby around. None of the other guys do, either.

But I’m back in action, almost one-hundred percent, and anybody going for Abby goes through me. I’ll always come for her and I’ll always protect her and she knows it.

We bypass the elevator and go down the stairwell to the basement where she thinks the historical documents are kept. I angle my flashlight, helping her find her way through the stacks until she pulls out an old thick binder and holds it up to the beam. “Found it.”

I raise my eyebrows. “That was fast.”

“Well, it’s one of these sheets. I don’t know which one, and it will take time to find it. So I figured we can just take them all now and look for it back at the Bradford.”

“Take them all.” That makes me laugh. “I think I’ve had a bad influence on you.”

She shrugs. Maybe she thinks so too. That shouldn’t bother me. I grab the binder and study the numbers and letters.

She turns back, humor lighting her eyes. “They don’t use the Dewey decimal system to store these.”