Page 110 of Speechless
Dawn remained hours away and Sire would let her suffer without mercy or aid until the sun rose. Her only saving grace was that the pain would be over before the sun fully breached the horizon.
“I think we’ll just see how that asshole gets on without cash at his disposal,” Sire muttered suddenly, startling Jenna from morbid thoughts. He sipped his drink and set the TV remote aside, reaching for his laptop on the small table in front of the couch. A table she’d once polished with a solvent-infused rag clenched between her teeth.
“That’s how…you live…this life,” she ground out, forgetting herself. “Thief.”
Sire visibly jolted as his silence was disturbed, and he glared at her for breaking his most treasured rule. Blue eyes gleamed with malicious annoyance. “I will permit you to talk simply because there’s nothing of note to watch on the goddamn television.” The screen demanded his attention again. “Hopefully you’ll pass out soon enough and leave me in peace.”
Jenna coughed hard enough to wind herself. Her ribs jarred together, stealing what little breath she had left. Taking a few minutes to gather her wits about her, she wheezed, “You’re a thief.”
His eyes rolled in her direction with aYou again?expression. “I am, in fact, much more than a common thief, Twenty-Two. Technology is my ally, my weapon of choice.” He lifted his hands from the keyboard and wiggled his fingers at her. “Well, aside from these, of course.”
She flinched. No reminder necessary of what he did with those. “This is how…you don’t get…caught.”
“This is how I live a life of luxury, doing what I want. Taking what I want. Money, for one. All the money I could ever hope to use in my lifetime, multiplied by a thousand. I’m more than a thief—I’m a fucking genius.” His fingers resumed their manic typing before he hit one key with a flourish. “There. Let’s see how my protégé fairs without his ill-gotten gains at his disposal.”
Sire’s attention turned to Jenna fully. “I’m a hacker, Twenty-Two. A gift I have complete control over. The Pentagon, the White House, the FBI…” He laughed at that, and she knew he was thinking of the missing evidence Hadley had spoken of. It hurt to think of Hadley now, to know she’d been the cause of his death. The catalyst for three people dying. “Walking through their security is like taking a piss—and just as boring now. Banks, businesses, military compounds…whatever I want, I take.”
“W-Why?”
“Why am I like this?” he mocked. “What made me become this way?”
Suffocating from the inside out, she felt feverish and shivery. Luckily, Sire’s sarcasm needed no reply. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to formulate anything more than a few words strung together in barely coherent sentences.
“Such a cliché question, but I shouldn’t expect anything less from a number. A failed number, at that. Would you like me to sayI wasn’t always this way?I could, and I’d be lying.” He shrugged as though lying to a dead woman mattered. “The truth is, I like it. Years of grafting in the police force, mentoring cocky little assholes who should never have been given a gun, and all I got was a bullet in the back and a pathetic medical discharge. Eighteen months of being laid up with nothing but physical therapy and a laptop to keep me company. Boredom inspires a man to do things he ordinarily wouldn’t consider—it gave me the impulsion to delve into technology in a way I’d never imagined.”
Jenna’s stomach twisted. This monster had been apolice officer? An officer of the law sworn to serve and protect women like her? How messed up could this actually be? She wondered if Hadley’s team had thought to look through personnel files for forcibly retired officers, then let the thought slide as she realized she had no way of dropping them a hint.
They were smart, those FBI agents. They’d figure it out.
“By the time I could walk again, I’d siphoned off a hundred thousand dollars from various small businesses. Enough to live off while I acclimated to civilian life. Met a woman, married her. Killed her. Liked it.” Sire hissed through his teeth, the sound sexual and smug. “That was the start of my new existence. Fucking her with my protégé, throttling her, then wrapping a rope around her neck and swinging her from a beam on her porch was almost as satisfying as hacking into the morgue’s computer and amending the coroner’s report from rape and murder to suicide. After that, the thirst grew. Choosing women, plucking them out of their mundane lives and giving them a purpose within mine.”
He was so blasé about it. So unconcerned about the lives he’d left broken in his wake so he could slake athirstof blood and lust. As if he’d had the right to destroy a myriad of women in his pursuit of, what, the perfect woman? An addiction?
As her fever burned hotter, Jenna’s mind played tricks on her. The drone of Sire’s voice became a static hum, and her vision wavered with fuzzy red spots. When she blinked and they cleared, her worst nightmare loomed over her like an avenging angel, arms crossed over a bare chest, eyes dark with sorrow.
“Don’t,” she whimpered, fruitlessly trying to cover her damaged body. “Don’t look at me.”
The angel crouched beside her wearing Connor’s face, the face she loved so much that seeing it now hurt more than all her injuries combined. A golden hand extended toward her, cupped her face while his thumb caressed her cheekbone. “Baby, look what they’ve done to you.”
Her eyes burned with the need to cry, but no tears came. “Daddy.”
“I need you to hold on, Jenna. I need you to stay strong for me, okay?”
Delirious, she turned her face into the blessedly cool palm and whined softly. “I can’t, Daddy. Not even for you. I’m so tired. Everything hurts.”
“Baby, you can do this. I’m begging you to do this.” His other hand mirrored the hold on her face so he grasped her securely. “Don’t leave me, Jenna. It’s not your time.”
She stared into his eyes, unblinking, and willed every last memory, thought, and drop of emotion into those stormy depths. “I love you, Connor. I love you so much.”
Pain shattered the wonderful illusion and she choked on a mouthful of blood as the sharp backhand sliced her cheek against her teeth. There was a figure leaning over her, but it wasn’t her beloved. It wasn’t her Daddy, her Connor. He was miles away without a prayer of finding her. She was left with Sire, and the monster was mad.
“What bullshit are you babbling on about now?” he demanded furiously. “I’m talking to you, treating you like aperson, and all I get is a rambling mess of words I can’t understand? I don’t think so, Twenty-Two. I don’t fucking think so.” He grabbed her chin, digging his thumb into the tender underside of her jaw. “Don’t mistake my hospitality for kindness, bitch. The only reason you’re in here tonight is so that I’m not fucking a dead body in the morning.”
He might end up sorely disappointed on that score.
Jenna winced as the grip on her jaw turned into a spike drilling through her mouth, then just swallowed hard when he released her with a shove. The room swam in hazy shades of gray and white.
“I’m going to bed. I’m not wasting my time on a useless number who can’t remember her goddamn manners. The sooner I get rid of you, the better. You were supposed to be my shining star,” he told her bitterly, standing straight and kicking her leg in a petulant tantrum. “You’re nothing but another body to throw away.”