Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series) (22 page)

“I
want
to be responsible for you, Liberty,” he said, looking down at me. “You are my whole world now. You are the only thing left that matters to me.”

My heart stopped when he said this.
Stop,
I thought at him.
Don’t say it: don’t make me think you mean forever.
The thing was, I
did
believe him; but I had learned the hard way that there was no such thing as happily ever after. And once you learned that, you could never go back.
I couldn’t let myself hope for more. It would kill me when it didn’t come true.
I had to shove the image of those three adorable babies to the side, the idea of that security and comfort.
Even if a miracle occurred and that happened, it wouldn’t be perfect: he would still be out, risking his life and my sanity.
I shoved the beautiful image of what I longed for, my heart’s greatest desire, to the side again.
That was the only way I was going to get through this alive.

“Do you have any idea how alone I’ve been?” he asked. He was being so honest, so emotionally raw, that I had to look him in the eyes. I let myself listen, without steeling myself against him, without letting myself think about the future. I was going to hear him out.

“After Catherine’s mother and I split up, I let myself get cold,” he said, sitting down on one of the long, low benches. “I thought that I loved her, but I realized after we had the baby that I didn’t, and I hated myself for that. Who wants to bring a child into the world, and then screw that world up for them?” He looked at me sympathetically, and I looked down. “I didn’t want to be that person, but there I was, in a position I had never pictured myself in, with a beautiful daughter and a girlfriend I felt completely out of touch with.

“She was the one who left. I didn’t blame her in the least: we had nothing in common, just our beautiful little girl. I came to realize what we’d thought was love was just youthful infatuation. It happens, and you’re young and that’s okay — but you need to not get pregnant. Because then someone else’s life gets complicated, and they never asked for their troubles.”

“Is that like us?” I asked, throwing caution to the wind, just wanting to know the truth. “Without the pregnant part. Are we an infatuation? An attraction?”

John looked at me and shook his head, an incredulous expression suddenly clouding his face. “You don’t feel what I feel?” he asked, grabbing my hand and placing it on his heart.

“I love you. It’s real,” he said.

“It’s real for me, too,” I breathed,
and it always will be.
I put my head on his chest, over his beating heart.

“I told you I believe everything happens for a reason. It’s taken me years to get to a place where I can see where my life has been, and where it’s heading,” he said, clutching me to him.

“I can understand if you don’t see it yet — you’re so young, there’s so much that’s tumultuous, it was like that for me, too — but now, for me, the timing is almost too perfect. You came to me when I had given up hope; I had certainly given up the hope of ever finding someone to love. And yet, I love you,” he said, bending to kiss me tenderly on the cheek.

“It’s as natural for me as breathing. I couldn’t write down a list of what I was looking for — I
wasn’t
looking for anything — but I met you, and you were so beautiful, and so instantly, crazily important to me. It was like someone flipped a switch. All of a sudden, I wasn’t lonely anymore. I wanted to wake up every morning to find out what would happen, to see if I could make you smile. I didn’t want to punish myself anymore for all the things I hadn’t done, or that I’d done wrong,” he said, stroking my hair. “You were more interesting to think about. Do you understand? You brought me back to life. So even if you don’t want me to be responsible for you, I want to be. It makes me happy.”

I just sat there and looked up at him, my eyes wide. “It’s exactly the same for me,” I said, my voice choked. “I was alone, I had nothing, and then I saw you. It was like I was being resuscitated, only I didn’t know how far gone I was.”

It was true,
I thought then, and I knew it even in my secret heart.
He did love me.
He believed it. It was real.

Now I was just going to have to find a way to let
myself
believe it. Before I found myself flatlining again.

After that, the shooting practice went okay. My hands were numb and shaking afterward, but John worked with me for a couple of hours, and by the end of it, I was feeling more confident with my aim. I was at least hitting the target. John said we could work on getting closer to the bull’s-eye the next morning. Which brought me to my next question.

“How many mornings do we have left here?” I asked. I was sure I didn’t want to know the answer: I never wanted to leave. I would run ten miles every day for the rest of my life if I could stay here with John, in Never-Never Land,
watching fireflies and having sleepovers. I would live in a barrack and put up with Matthew’s teasing and core workouts and target practice.

I knew it was coming to an end, though. And I had never been as afraid to face a change as I was now.

“Two more days, tops,” John said. He was cleaning out the guns we’d used, separating them and wiping them down meticulously. “We’re about to let Darius go. Once we do that, we just have to pack up and get everyone’s travel arrangements made. And I have to make sure my father has everything he needs before our trip.”

“You’re letting Darius go?” I asked, eyes wide with surprise. “Go where?”

“Back to Brazil,” John said, continuing to look down at his work. “He’s agreed, tentatively, to act as an informant for us.”

“So you’re just going to let him go, on his word?” I asked. I knew John didn’t trust him, and neither did Matthew. It seemed too easy for Darius to just make a promise that he had no intention of keeping.

“No, my dear, not on his word,” John said, looking up at me finally. “He’s going to have to be secured first.”

“
Secured
?” I asked. I had no idea what he meant, what he had planned.

John blew out a long breath. “Really, you don’t want to know,” he said, gently. I held his gaze unflinchingly and he sighed.

“This is part of what I have to do. I have to keep my client safe, his family safe, and with respect to this particular asset, the general population safe.”

I shook my head at him. This wasn’t good enough. I needed to know the full truth. “John, we’re going to go get Ray after this. I need to know what I’m in for,” I said. Really, it was more pressing for me to know what exactly John was capable of. I knew he had a good heart.
What I didn’t know, for sure, was what he was capable of in a situation like this.

“You really want to know?” John asked, and he looked resigned.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then come with me, now. And bring that gun. We’re probably gonna need it.”

“I have another question,” I said, my voice coming out in puffs. I was struggling to keep up with John as he strode purposefully towards where they were keeping Darius.

“Of course you do,” John said, and smirked at me. “Go.” He was in full-on military mode.

“Who’s the client?” I huffed, barely able to keep pace. No wonder John ran so much: apparently, walking normally was way too slow for him.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, looking straight ahead, not slowing down. “Trust me. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

“It’s my sister isn’t it,” I said, panicking. “Is she okay?”

“Your sister is not the client,” John said, as if he was ripping a bandaid off swiftly, so it wouldn’t cause me any more unnecessary pain. “I’ve been in contact with her, briefly, and she’s doing fine.” He looked at me sideways and saw my jaw hanging open, my mouth agape. “She’s the one who told me what sizes you were, and what books and food you liked.”

I couldn’t process this.
She was alive! She was okay!
Somehow, deep down, I’d known she was. She was probably just trying to move on from mom, pretending that everything was all right. But she wasn’t the one who’d hired John to take down Ray?
I didn’t have anyone else!

I stopped walking then, and threw up my hands in frustration. “Who then?” I asked, and I was desperate. Desperate to know. “Who cares enough about me?
Who?
Who even knows that I exist?
” I asked, I yelled, not caring who heard me.

John stopped and hung his head. “
I
do,” he said quietly. “
I
care. But right now, we have work we need to do.” He grabbed my hand firmly and lead me to the holding chamber.

Matthew and Sean were seated outside the locked door, playing cards, drinking bottled water, and cradling shotguns between their legs.

“We’re going in,” John said, still holding my hand firmly. “Call Michael and have him come here immediately and be on stand-by, please.”

Michael was the medic. My palms started to sweat.

“You’re taking her in?” Matthew asked, a bit incredulously,
nodding at me.

“Mind your own fucking business,” John said, lethally, and Matthew leaned back as if John had hit him.

I saw him look at me, though, as John lead me away, and his look told me to be wary. It was like he was taking a mental snapshot of the way I was — and his look warned me that I would never be the same again.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” John quietly asked me just outside the door. I heard real doubt in his voice, none of the bravado that he had just fired off at Matthew.

“You go, I go,” I said, even though I was afraid.

He smiled at me then, in spite of himself. He opened the door and, still holding my hand, led me inside the darkened room. I could feel the pistol he’d insisted I bring in the small of my back, where I’d stuck it into the waistband of my yoga pants, as instructed. I noticed briefly that I was sweating there.

I looked around the room and saw that the windows had the blinds drawn, blocking out the midday sun. It was plenty bright enough for me to take in several unpleasant things, however: a lone toilet in the corner; a sad, flat cot with a rumpled blanket on the floor; and Darius, sitting alone and stricken, tied to a chair, at the far end of the room. He looked like he’d been beaten. Regularly. Recently.

“John,” I breathed. This was horrible. I knew Darius was bad, but these conditions were disgusting. “John,” I said, keeping my voice low, “you can’t
do
this.”

“This,” John said, motioning around the room, “
is
what I do.”

He looked at me then, steadily,
and in that look I could see so much about him. Yes, it was true, he tortured people. He’d killed people — some in the line of duty, some because he’d been hired to. Some of them he thought were pure evil and should be taken from the earth.
He needed to move past this, I thought, in order to heal. I needed him to move past it, in order to be with him.

We were going to have to figure this out.

He squeezed my hand and pulled me towards Darius’s slumped form. “Darius?” he said, softly, warily.

Darius’s chin jerked up, and he opened his swollen eyes a fraction. Looking at him up close, I could see that his face was puffy and bruised all over. My stomach rolled and I had to look away.