Page 26 of Antihero (Tregam’s Fractured Souls #3)

Chapter ten

I lie face down on the examination bed, my chin propped on my forearms. My shirt is pulled up around my ribs as Dr Goodry checks the bandage. It stings as he lifts it off.

“Wound looks good, no infection. This might sting.”

It does. I press my forehead into my wrist until the pain, lancing across my waist, fades. Then, I make myself ask, “Anything back about it yet?”

“Not yet,” Goodry muses as he pulls the bandage all the way off, “Had to send the marrow off to Tregam. They’re slow at the moment. Try not to think about it.”

I snort. “Sure.” I wish I didn’t have to be here today. But then, I wish that every day that I’m here, this damned clinic, these fluorescent lights and that smell, like, but not quite like, lemon cleaner. A different smell to the asylum.

“I saw the memorial put up out front. Harry Lester died?” I ask as he rubs something over my back, wiping away the bandage residue. It’s cold.

“Yes,” Goodry says with a sigh. “It’s hard to keep up with all the deaths of late.”

A moment of quiet passes. “Do you think it was him?”

“Him who what, dear?”

“Who did this to me?” My jaw works. “Sterilised me.”

I feel him pause out of my sight. Another sighed sentence. “I don’t know. He was at the asylum around the same time, of course. But I don’t know if he did that. Or just the lobotomies.”

I inwardly flinch at that word, too. “Your son went in around that time too.” Another pause. “Did you ever think Harry could be the one to treat him?”

Goodry finishes applying the new bandage, fixes my shirt and steps back as I twist to sit up.

“Paige,” he says in a tone familiar enough that I know he’s about to tell me to live and let live.

“Dwelling on these things, imagining them… it aids nothing. What would knowing the answer to that do for me? What would knowing do for you?” I open my mouth, to counter that ignorance can’t always be bliss, but he goes on, closing his pen on the top of his clipboard, “You should enjoy the time you’ve got, dear. Not be wound up with the past.”

I lower my gaze, feeling berated but not deterred, and sit on the edge of the bed. I think Harry killed Goodry’s son, just like I know he killed my sister. If he was the one to sterilise me too, all the better. He lost. He’s dead.

“I’ll call you in when we get the results,” Goodry offers with a kindly smile. “Try to relax.”

“Mm.” I don’t waste time leaving. The sooner I’m out, the better. I’ve got things to be doing, things that are in direct contest to Goodry’s words.

Out in the reception room, I pass James, who breaks off from his anxious stare around to room to beam a big smile at me. “How are you, Miss Paige?”

I give him a smile back. I regret being so hard on him in the past. It’s not his fault he got a bad genetic hand when it came to smarts. He’s been nothing but kind to me, after all. Maybe Tristan, all the sex, the ‘sleeping’ together have started making me soft. Or into a better person.

“I’m good, are you alright?” I ask, because like me, James is here .

He grimaces. “Just in for a checkup.” He lowers his voice, but not by much, and asks in the middle of the room, “I hope you haven’t had any more break-ins, Miss Paige.”

“Shh.” I hold my finger to my lips, and he ducks his head, glancing around. A couple of old ladies reading their magazines give me a look but say nothing. “That’s our secret, right?”

“Right,” he nods enthusiastically. “Our secret.” He grins.

Turning for the door, I give his arm a friendly pat. “See you around, buddy.”

***

Needler

I’m already waiting for Paige when the window rattles.

I cross my arms, leaning back on one of the twelve fancy cars in this giant basement-garage, and watch as the frosted glass, too small for me, but just big enough for her, silently lifts open from the outside.

It was going to be one of the windows, and now that I know which one, I’m quite happy to wait for her to drop herself right in.

The hood of her black hoodie has been thrown back off her head as she lowers herself silently to the cement floor, still blissfully unaware of me here, waiting and watching.

A mirror, the full height and width of the back wall, reflects the cars, making it look like there are twice as many of them.

It’s garish, to say the least, as are the coloured lights rimming the ceiling, on a constant rotation between every colour.

Right now, it’s melting from orange to red, towards purple.

On the wall Paige catches herself against, back to me, full-size posters of women in various states of undress leer into the garage.

If taste alone was enough of a sign of guilt, I’d have to let Paige at the owner of this house and all these fancy cars.

Paige rights herself, turning into the garage. That’s when she sees me.

For a brief moment, she’s like a shocked rabbit. She can’t go out the way she just came in, the window is too high, and the only other exit… Her eyes give her away before she’s made so much as a move, flicking towards the door and the stairs up into the mansion proper.

But she’s not getting away that easily. When she springs, I’m ready.

There’s a car between us. I dart around its hood, landing myself between her and her escape route. Paige course-corrects fast, lunging backwards and keeping a Porshe in my way.

Casual, ready to dive for her at any moment should she make a move, I straighten, waiting. The predator to her prey.

“You were supposed to be busy,” Paige says, though I don’t miss her glance towards the huge roller door. Firmly shut, the manual controls are on the other side of the garage. Even if she could press the button, opening the roller door would alert her potential victim. Make this harder for her.

I shrug and cross my arms. “You’ll have to think of something more creative than a firecracker in my rubbish bin if you want to buy yourself time.” A week of her clearly choosing to keep a distance from me, and that’s what I get from her.

So much for giving her the space she needs. There’s being nervous about commitment, and then there’s arson. Like always, she’s done things by extremes.

Paige’s jaw works. “How did you know to come here?”

“Like you said, I was a detective before anything else.”

She squints. “I was checking to make sure you weren’t following me all week.”

“I wouldn’t be very good at stalking you if you saw me, now would I?” I lift my chin, tilting towards the door and the man who lives somewhere behind it. “Why are you here?” She knows what I’m asking. Why here? Why him? I need the reason.

Paige spreads her hands, glancing around at the garage, the hoarded wealth like a dragon’s lair. A dragon who likes boobs the size of basketballs, anyway. “Look around. Does this seem like the home of a good person? Who needs this many cars? It’s a fucking island .”

I start to step around the bright yellow car she’s put between us. “That’s not enough.”

“That’s all you’re getting,” she shoots back.

I grin at the double meaning she didn’t mean to give her words, the same meaning I’m going to embrace. “Cutthroat,” I say with a low laugh. “You’re wrong. I’ll get more.”

That’s her licence to make a break for it.

She dives for the cover of another car, ducking low.

But whatever the mirror doesn’t reflect, the painstakingly polished bodies of the cars do.

I find her, and she makes a good go of keeping distance between us, in the end unable to avoid the corner I’m working her towards.

Or at least, the corner she thinks I’m working her towards it.

I know she won’t let herself be cornered so easily.

My fingers brush her sleeve as she spins to put a Lamborghini between us, rushing up towards the hood with me safely on the other side. “You should know, I really like the chase,” I taunt.

Paige practically hisses at me. “Not if you don’t get to catch me, asshole.”

My mouth twists in a mocking grin. She shouldn’t have set my bin on fire if she didn’t want to get caught.

Paige watches me, hopefully imagining what I’ll do when I catch her.

She’s primed to dodge and run from whatever direction I go in.

I feint left, towards the back of the Lamborghini, and she makes a break around the nose.

When I turn back to lunge right instead, sliding across the bonnet, she tries to jerk back in the other direction, but it’s too late. I slam into her as I come off the front of the bonnet, catching her back against the side of a taller, older car.

“Ugh!” Paige grunts, wriggling as I catch her between my body and the car door. As soon as she tries to bite me, I press my hips hard to hers, forcing her still from there down, then catch her hands. Her nails dig in before I squeeze them into fists inside mine.

I lean closer, pinning her hands back, and trace the soft skin of her jaw with the tip of my nose, whispering tenderly, “There’s nowhere to run, Cutthroat.”

“Let. Me. Go,” Paige seethes as she tries to wrangle a hand free to go for the knife I’m sure is secured somewhere on her. My grip tightens. If only I had handcuffs. “I thought we had a truce!” she gasps.

“We did. Until you avoided me, tried to set my apartment on fire and then came to strangle poor Mr Filan here.”

“ Poor . Please.” She rolls her eyes.

Still bracing on her hands, I let space between us, looking her full in the face. “Will you run again?” I ask, letting my tone tell her I’d take savage satisfaction in that.

“Not immediately,” she tells me through her teeth.

I loosen my grip, hand snatching towards her waist as I take half a step back, her knife now in my grip. I hold it up until her eyes lock on it, then lean down to secure it in my boot.

Frustrated, Paige shoves my chest, to no effect. “Gah! Why are you so damn stubborn?”

I flick a hand up and bat hers away. “Answer my question. Why him? Then we can revisit how stubborn I’m being.”