Page 4 of Darkness of Mine

“And then I’ll have to take you to the hospital to save your stubborn ass, they’ll register you as a patient, and Oz will track you down in minutes.”

I shove myself up to sitting and bury my numb hands in my hair.

Carmen drops a black ski jacket on my feet. “Put it on.”

I don’t move.

She sighs, her own jacket rustling as she sinks down to sit beside me. “I shouldn’t have ambushed you.”

I shrug and risk a glance at her. Carmen is tiny and sitting down only makes her look smaller, but I’ve never met someone so small yet so deadly. Her dark hair is pulled back in two French braids that thin as they hit her shoulders.

She’s got sharp cheekbones and her eyes, so dark they’re almost black, scream ‘don’t fuck with me’.

I thought she was an assassin when I first met her and honestly, if they ever get her to take up their offer, the CIA would have a field day with Carmen. She’s got her own mission though. The whole operation she’s built here is systematically disassembling the child trafficking industry.

If I’m honest, I’m not surprised Carmen tried to manhandle me into therapy. She’s got somewhat of a savior complex. But if she didn’t, then she wouldn’t have taken me in when I turned up on her doorstep after faking my own death.

I pick up the jacket and wrap it around my shoulders.

Carmen stares out at the light snow falling on the Montana mountains. Ragged peaks reach up into the sky, the green trees and slate gray rocks melding together in stunning striations onthe mountainside. “I think I maybe let you down when you first came to me,” she says into the sky.

“What?” I shiver, the heat of my disagreement bringing feeling back to my cold body. “You saved my life,” I argue. “Taught me how to take everything that happened to me and use it. Own it.”

Carmen props her elbow on her knee and rests her head on her hand as she looks at me. “I saw myself in you. The same pain, the same anger. Sure, I gave you all the physical skills you needed, helped you focus, but I think I was wrong. I sent you out to fight your demons too soon.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing here? Fighting your demons.”

Carmen gives me a half-smile. “Yeah, but I had a shit ton of therapy first.”

“Oh.” I slide my arms inside the coat and fiddle with the plastic toggle on one of the cuffs.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing help, kid.”

Tears sting my eyes, and I blame it on the biting cold air. “The last time I let people help me, I was forced to give them up,” I say into the soft breeze.

“Yeah. Do you think maybe that’s worth talking about?”

My teeth dig into my bottom lip, and I tug on the toggle. “I’m not sure what will happen to me if I let everything out.”

Carmen nudges my knee with hers. “I’m not sure either but I am sure that keeping it all in is slowly killing you. You may be okay with that right now, but I’m not. So do it for me. If you can’t live for yourself right now, live for me.”

I swallow, my throat as rough and jagged as the mountains I’m staring at.

“What do you say?”

Carmen’s officehas glass walls on two sides. Bullet proof glass. The room juts out of the edge of the mountain with a 400-meter sheer drop on the other side of those walls. The inside though is all cozy like a log cabin, with a stained oak desk and an armchair by an old wooden coffee table.

I snag a Twizzler from the jar of them on the desk and take Carmen’s laptop to the big wingback armchair. I bring my legs up, wincing as I scrunch my toes together. Now they’re warming up, they itch like a motherfucker.

I rearrange myself a few times, getting up to pull the drapes closed when the sunlight reflects off the screen, grabbing a bottle of water from the minifridge in the corner, tying my hair back. Eventually I run out of ways to delay the inevitable and click on the link to join the meeting.

An older man with deep umber skin and a gray receding hair line appears in a little box on the screen but I barely look at him. I’m caught staring at my own reflection.

My ginger hair is tangled, my freckled face so pale it’s pasty and dark circles cling under my eyes. No wonder Carmen’s worried.

“Freya, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Alistair.”

I blink and pull my gaze back to the shrink. His eyes are focused, intelligent, but the fine wrinkle lines on his forehead and the trimmed white mustache and beard soften him.