Page 42 of Gold Mine (The Diamond Trilogy 2)
He wants to prove that he’s evil? Let him.
I shove the bag back to him. It slides through the bars, beyond my reach.
He stops and turns back around. “What are you doing?”
“Fighting you.”
He looks pitying. “That’s only going to make you weaker.”
“Yes. It will kill me if you wait too long.”
“So you think I’m going to release you if you don’t eat.”
“Or drink. Yes. I don’t think you’re as terrible as you want me to believe. I don’t believe you’d let an innocent woman starve to death. That’s something your father might have done, but you’re not like him. No matter what you say.”
Shadows flicker through his green eyes, and I have the sense that he isn’t fully in the present. Memories are dragging him back. They may even claim him for good. It’s a war I’m fighting. For the man inside him who wants to be honorable.
I believe he’s there, even if Elijah doesn’t.
He turns and leaves the basement.
My throat constricts as if to remind me how thirsty I am. The bag of water sits a couple yards away from the bars. Far enough that I can’t reach it, but I can look at it.
When I look back, Adam is looking at me with a mixture of amusement and dismay. “Hell,” he says. “You might have consulted me first.”
Guilt gnaws at my insides. “I’m so sorry. And you’re injured.”
He laughs. “It was worth it to see the shock on his face. He didn’t see that coming. And don’t worry. I’ll live. If only to spite Elijah North, I’m making it out of this cell.”
I curl up on my cot and fall into a deep sleep of exhaustion.
Dreams come in the form of an endless black ocean. I’m falling, crashing into the water. The impact leaves me breathless. Water swirls around me. Bubbles escape my lips.
When I can finally see, there are nets all around me. Beside me, beneath me.
Even above me, keeping me from the surface.
The nets pull tighter and tighter, until they trap my arms against my body. They wrap tight around my tail so I can’t swim anymore, and then I’m falling, sinking into the black abyss.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Adam
Apparently I’m on a hunger strike.
It wouldn’t have been my choice, especially with the bleeding coming from my side, but I’ll stand in solidarity with Holly. Or sit, which may be my only option. Lying down also works.
Holly is sleeping so deeply that she didn’t stir even when I used the bucket in the back corner, thank God for small favors. Now she has a gentle snore that somehow sounds cute.
There’s a creak at the top of the stairs, but she doesn’t move. I stand and move between her and the stairs, ignoring the throb in my side. It’s ridiculous, really, the idea that I could protect her. A hard wind would knock me over. Now I understand why Elijah was intent on defending her in that French church.
Holly Frank has a way of bringing out the protective instinct in a man.
Elijah has shed his suit jacket upstairs. He’s wearing shirtsleeves rolled up and rumpled. That doesn’t make him look nearly as casual as his socks. Black dress socks. He’s not wearing any shoes. It’s like he got drunk on the sacramental wine and then came downstairs.
Which is a real possibility.
He stands a few feet away from the bars. Far enough that I can’t lunge for him. Smart man. Even with a bullet in my side it wouldn’t stop me from trying.
“Have you come to play more games?” I ask, my voice polite.
He nods, his eyes a dark and stormy sea.
That makes me laugh. “How far are you going to take this? Or haven’t you thought that far out? Will you make me finger fuck her? Eat her out? Are you really going to stand there and watch as I fuck the woman you love?”
“I don’t love her.” I don’t love anyone, comes the unspoken corollary.
“You’re going to lose her.”
“She’s already lost.”
“Christ.” I shake my head. “When I met you, you were just a stupid kid intent on getting himself killed. Now we meet again all these years later, and you are the same.”
“Spare me the French accent.”
“So you know my true identity.” He doesn’t just know my true identity. He lives it. Which means I need to leave this goddamn cell. I need to leave New York City. Because wherever Elijah North is, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Jefferson isn’t far behind. “And I know yours. Do you think we didn’t run a background check? The good kind. Not whatever you put on the form when you enlisted.”
“Stop.”
“Seeing your mother killed when you were three, that had to be hard.”
He takes a step closer to the bars. “I said, stop.”
“Being beat to shit by the same man who killed her, every goddamn day, that must have been hard. Watching your brothers leave, one by one. They abandoned you.”
