Page 7 of Catch Me
“If you allow me to ask another question, lass, I promise two fantasies fulfilled at once.”
I snorted with laughter but then noticed he wasn’t joking and the sudden images and ideas that filled my mind had my body tightening with desire. But I shook my head. “I don’t know that we have time for more questions or fantasies fulfilled. Don’t you have to get back to your team soon?”
A look of disappointment seemed to pass over his face, but before he could argue, I continued on. “So I’ll accept an IOU instead.” I grinned. “Did you really think I’d pass up an opportunity like that?”
He laughed. It was deep, rumbling, and another part of me lit up like a live wire. “Aye, lass, I’d expect no less from you.”
I shrugged. “I know a good deal when I see one. So, what’s your next question? And don’t think you’ll be getting out of your bargain. I fully intend to collect on it.”
His features stayed soft, but his eyes grew serious. “What did you learn about Sybil?”
I flinched, and my eyes involuntarily flew to the photo of us on my bookshelf. For some reason, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to take it down. Even after I’d left my parents’ house and learned the truth about our family and its secrets. Somehow the revelations hadn’t really surprised me, however, as if the knowledge had been there the whole time and I’d just ignored it. Shoved it down to create this fictional world where my family was perfect and my sister was the star of our story. Or maybe that was the world she’d convinced me to believe in. My eyes turned from the photo to the books that lined my shelves. Maybe that was her fantasy, and I’d just been forced to live in it.
Simon shifting on the sofa made me realize I’d been silent for a while, but he didn’t press me. Just watched me in that quiet way that I was becoming thankful for.
I cleared my throat. “Honestly, nothing that I didn’t already know. Sybil has always been Sybil. Just that when we hit our teen years, she became fantastic at pretending she wasn’t.” I stood up and moved towards the shelf, plucking the photo from it, my fingers tracing over the frame. “I thought I’d kept her killing Daisy a secret from my parents like she wanted. But they still found out.” I sighed, remembering how hard it had been for my Mother to speak to me when I’d gone home to confront them. She’d wanted to dismiss my questions and my accusations as ‘twisting’ my memories of the past. When my dad realized that she was reaching the point of hysteria, he’d asked me to step outside and wait for him while he calmed her down. I’d been sitting on the front porch swing watching the neighbors’ cows graze behind their fence when he’d come back out with a cup of coffee and sat next to me to tell me the truth.
“They told her that either she stopped tormenting me or they were going to institutionalize her. And I guess she must have realized their threat was serious because after that, she acted like a normal sister. Sort of.” I sighed and placed the picture back. “Sybil was never normal, though. We were never normal. I just didn’t realize it until now.”
Simon stood as well and came to stand behind me, his arms coming around my waist, his chin resting on the top of my head and I relaxed into the muscled warmth of him. But even as I soaked up the contact and the intimacy, I reminded myself that this was just for now. And that it would not, could not, be forever. His voice rumbled in my ear, “So your parents knew Sybil had a mental illness, but did nothing to help her?”
I shook my head. “No, they never said that. In fact, I think they couldn’t say it, because it wasn’t true. My dad just said that once they confronted her with everything they knew, they’d told her that either it stopped or that they would have her sent away. And once they threatened that, the torture and the attacks stopped. At least the physical ones.” I reached out to touch the photo once more, and I wasn’t really sure if I was speaking to him or myself. “It’s like you said. Sometimes there’s no explanation for why someone does something terrible. It’s just who they are. I’ve seen insanity. I’ve seen people driven by greed, by desperation, by guilt. I’ve seen them do terrible things. But I think, in Sybil, I’ve truly seen evil.”
I pushed away from him, needing the distance from the photo and my thoughts. After the talk with my parents, I’d gone over every memory, every interaction, and every word Sybil had ever spoken to me. I didn’t know that I’d ever truly be able to accept that my sister was the person she was. But the truth was staring me in the face. Sybil was evil. A monster wrapped up in a pretty package. One that I knew I’d have to face again one day. I glanced down at my coffee table, remembering her text messages from earlier, and frowned.
Simon seemed to notice the direction of my thoughts. “Have you heard from Sybil since you’ve been back in the States?”
I looked up from my phone to him and then back down, hesitating on whether I should wiggle out of the question by using our bargain or if I should be honest. I decided I liked the openness we’d been sharing and nodded. “Yes, actually, right before you arrived. She texted me a warning.” I picked my phone up off the table and opened it, her messages still on display, then handed it to him to read.
I watched his eyes scan through the text, and then he looked back at me. “She texted this tonight?” I should have been alert to the change in his tone and the way his body had tensed, but I was relaxed from the intimacy we’d been sharing, so I nodded. “Yeah, like I said, right before you got here. Wait, what are you doing to my phone?”
But he wasn’t listening because suddenly he’d slammed the phone down on the table with such a force that it shook and the phone exploded in several pieces. “You have 3 minutes to pack a bag and get whatever you need to take with you. You’re not coming back to this apartment.”
He grabbed the pieces of the phone, sorting through them, until he found the sim card and pocketed it in his jeans. I snapped out of my shocked silence. “Um, I think the fuck not. What the hell Simon! I just got that phone!”
But he wasn’t listening to me and instead had turned his attention to tearing apart my lamps, turning over pillows and then grabbed a stool from my bar top table to stand on and look into my ceiling fan. He moved in the frantic but thorough way of one who knew exactly where to look for bugs and wiretaps.
“Simon, you have to stop. I’ve already looked this place over from one end to the other. You don’t think I didn’t do that as soon as I got back? I already took care of it.” And then I walked over to a little side table and opened up a drawer, showing him the small microphones and wires I’d found planted throughout my apartment upon my return from Helsinki.
He stopped, looked at the drawer and then back at me, but none of the tension left him. “It doesn’t matter. You need to get your bags packed now. I’m not giving you another warning. We’re leaving.”
I slammed the drawer shut and stalked toward him until I was inches from him once more. “What. The. Fuck.” My finger jabbed his chest with each word, but he didn’t flinch. Just continued to glare at me as if by his gaze alone he could force me to do his will. “I’m not going anywhere, Simon. So you can take this macho over protective bullshit you’ve got going on and just fuck right off with it.” We glared at each other for a few heartbeats. Our faces so close that our breath mingled, and I tried not to get distracted by the fullness of his lips or the way his body heat made mine react. Finally he spoke, his jaw clenched so tight I thought I could hear his bones grinding. “I can’t protect you here, Hannah. I can’t keep you safe from her.” I blinked in startlement.
“I don’t need your protection. I know who my sister is.” I softened my voice just slightly, but still held his gaze. “I’m not Victoria.”
He flinched, stepping back slightly as if by speaking her name I’d put a barrier between us, and searched my gaze in that intense way that left me feeling open and exposed. Go ahead and analyze every inch of me, buddy. I’m not Tory. I’ve got nothing to hide. And I’m not afraid. After a moment more, he nodded. “You’re right. You aren’t Victoria.” He paused again, his jaw clenching and unclenching as if he was searching for the words to say. “I have to go.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Hannah
It felt like the walls we’d torn down over the evening were being slammed back into place. “Go? What do you mean?”
Someone knocked loudly on my apartment door, but I was the only one who jumped at the sudden sound. My eyes flicked from the door to Simon, whose face was once again an unreadable mask. Gone was the intimacy from earlier. Gone was the softness and the tenderness. Simon the Ghost was back. The knock came again, and I looked at the door. “Expecting someone?”
He said nothing and so I went to open it once again, blinking in surprise. “Colonel Abrams, what are you doing here?”
The tall man was no longer in his military uniform, but rather a dark blue button-down shirt that stretched across a broad chest, sculpted shoulders, and made his sapphire colored eyes gleam in the hall's dim lighting. The only thing that would have clued anyone into the fact that he was a military man was the cut of his hair and the way he carried himself. He was commanding, even standing in my doorway. He gave me a charming smile, his gaze flicking over my shoulder to Simon, who was standing like a dark shadow at my back. “I’m his….” But he was cut off as Simon interrupted him.
