Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games #2)(39)

“Capture-bonding,” comes the immediate reply. “Where hostages express empathy for their captors, to the point of defending or sympathizing with them.”

“Or falling in love,” I hiss, hackles raised.

Tabby ignores me. “It’s a form of traumatic bonding—”

“You’re saying he held you hostage?” I interrupt angrily. “For a year? While you attended school during the day?”

She ignores me again and keeps speaking to Harry in a cool monotone as if discussing the weather. “An adaptive psychological defense built into our DNA. Identifying with an abuser is one way the psyche defends itself, especially in women.”

Harry’s calmly nodding. I want to tear out every strand of hair on my head.

“When my uncle died, I had no one left. No one. The government put me into foster care. The first week I was there, my foster father came into my bedroom in the middle of the night and tried to rape me. He didn’t succeed—he was a fat f*ck, and I’ve always been strong—but my foster mother didn’t believe me when I told her. Neither did anyone at the DCF. I was denied transfer. The family had been fostering for years with no problems, they said. It must be me, they said.”

Her pause is fraught with anger. “He tried to rape me again a few weeks later.”

Listening to her speak, my rage turns to horror which then turns to a violent urge to take her into my arms. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as helpless in my life as I do right now.

“But that time was different, because someone was there to help me. Someone had been watching me carefully, and when my stepfather pulled the covers off my bed and I screamed, he got a very unpleasant surprise in the form of a baseball bat to his balls.”

Into the silence I say, “S?ren.”

Tabby swallows, and then nods. “He came through the window and beat my foster father to within an inch of his life, and I crouched on my bed and watched him do it. And did nothing to intervene. There was…” She clears her throat. “A lot of blood. Afterward, S?ren told me that he saw me in class, that he knew something bad had happened to me just by looking at my face, and that he wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me ever again. Then he left.”

Her voice grows quiet. “It didn’t occur to me until much later that I might not have been placed in that foster home by chance…or that my uncle’s death might not have been a suicide.”

Horrified, I lean forward. Harry murmurs, “Go on.”

As if gathering her strength, Tabby inhales and then lets the breath out slowly through her nose. “From my first memories, I was used to being different, which meant that I was used to being looked at oddly. That was a disadvantage. For all my precociousness, I never learned to recognize when a strange stare in my direction was dangerous. I was na?ve.”

Lost in some dark memory, she closes her eyes. “When I later investigated my foster parents, I found that they had multiple complaints against them which had somehow been erased from the DCF’s files. When I further investigated my uncle’s death, I found it troubling that there was no arsenic found in the house, and the level in his blood indicated he’d been ingesting relatively small quantities for a long time. Which—if you’re going to kill yourself, why do it slowly? He owned several handguns, could have shot himself, jumped from the roof, any number of options seemed more logical than poisoning himself over a period of months.”

“But there was a note,” Harry points out. “In his handwriting.”

Tabby looks at him. “And some people can forge a painting so perfectly not even an expert can tell it isn’t an original.”

I say in disbelief, “You’re saying S?ren met you at school, became obsessed with you, murdered your uncle so you’d be put in foster care, manipulated the system so a rapist would get you, and then waited for his chance to rescue you so you would then feel…grateful to him?”

“Pretty sophisticated for a teenager,” says Harry doubtfully.

“He was twenty-one,” replies Tabby. “And already a multimillionaire from stock market speculation. And yes, I think that’s exactly what he did, though I have no proof. All I know is that S?ren is a master manipulator. He can make people do things and convince them it was their own idea.”

There’s something strange in Harry’s face that I can’t put my finger on, something darker than doubt. Studying her, he tilts his head in thought. “Or maybe the master manipulator is someone else.”

Suddenly, I’m out of breath.

I look at Tabby with wide eyes. When she sees my expression, she looks as if she’s been slapped.

We stare at each other. My brain says No, no, no.

And then, more faintly, something not so unequivocal.

Into our silence, Harry says, “I have no proof this person S?ren exists, except for your insistence that he does. I do have proof that you’re perfectly capable of breaching extremely sophisticated network systems, because you’ve given me a lovely demonstration. I also know you recognized me the minute you saw my ugly mug, which strikes me as incredibly coincidental. Too coincidental. And judging by the way our boy here keeps staring at you, I’m guessing there’s a lot more going on between you than could be considered strictly professional.”

When he pauses, I look at him. He says, “Which may or may not also be coincidental.”