Page 57 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

“Man, why do you keep doing this? You know we can’t free her,” Manny told me later that evening, unwinding over pints in a cool, dimly lit, wood-paneled pub in Arlington called O’Winsbury’s, highly frequented by the feds and the handful of slave consultants working with them.

Since one of those former consultants now owned the establishment, it wasn’t hard to put in place an unspoken agreement that we were allowed to socialize normally as long as we remained discreet about our status in public.

A year ago, I would have laughed to imagine the very government responsible for having instituted slavery and keeping it running all these years might be willing to throw out their entire rulebook for someone like me—someone who’d broken the rules more consistently and enthusiastically than just about anyone else I knew.

But when it came to the government, I’d been surprised to discover, virtually every single page of that book was highly negotiable, as long as you were providing them with something they wanted.

And in return, they’d provide you with something you wanted.

As a result, I had all the European streaming TV, takeout tacos, and moderately priced bourbon I could consume.

Of course, what I really wanted was something they couldn’t provide.

What I really wanted was not to be tortured every goddamn minute of every goddamn night, agonizing over everything I was missing.

Over whether anyone was standing there beside her in the place I wanted to be, just watching her—watching her smart, watch her be moral, watch her be brave.

Not, for once, because she had to be but because she was .

And whether this same faceless replacement douchebag’s hand was currently lost in perpetual curls, manicured fingers claiming timeless curves my own rough ones had claimed first, whether some disembodied magic dick was plunging into her, causing her to joyfully vibrate as the amorphously repugnant asshole it was attached to taught her all the filthy and divine things I’d dreamed of teaching her, of teaching both of us, but had never had either the time or the permission to do it.

Whether she’d found someone who could actually make her feel safe to finally let go, to breathe, to open her eyes and say, hey, life and love don’t have to be twenty-four seven torture!

Someone to make her feel as safe as she deserved to feel, the kind of safety I’d never, not once, been able to give her.

And someone who could actually spend time with her in something other than secrecy and fear, and remind her of the bliss she could have right now instead of yet another dose of endless, excruciating waiting for someone who’d have nothing to offer her even if by some miracle she did wait.

Someone who’d given her permission not to wait. Because as much as I couldn’t, I couldn’t not.

But if I paused too long to think about everything I really wanted, I was certain I’d snap the blinds of my apartment shut and either collapse onto the sofa in grief or start kicking doors off their hinges with rage. And then my chances of ever getting any of it would go from slim to none.

On the bright side, the electronic ankle monitor they’d strapped on me—which gave me nearly a 100-mile radius, far enough to drive through the night most weekends in the disgustingly sensible but decently fast Ford sedan they’d given me, chasing the sunrise over the long bridge over Chesapeake Bay and walking for hours in the cold flume of the Delaware coast—was a hell of a lot more comfortable to walk in than shackles.

And was concealed fairly well by a pair of jeans or one of the more practical suits I wore when I wasn’t playing Sébastien Pomerleau, suits my stipend had just barely enabled me to afford.

And that I’d had to pick out myself , not that I minded.

That aside, the best thing about the monitor was that it wasn’t a metal bracelet or a microchip.

Which was the only reason I hadn’t ripped it off.

Yet.

Besides, I’d been assured I wouldn’t be given either a chip or a bracelet, as long as I behaved myself.

Which was getting harder and harder, especially as the monitor’s clunky dead weight constantly reminded me that I: A) was still a slave and B) that, providing I did behave myself, I had exactly two years, four months, and three days to go before I was free.

And that there was no guarantee that anything, or anyone, would be waiting for me when I was.

If I was. Because even though they’d promised it, I also had perfect faith in my ability to find ways to fuck it up. Hell, I’d already found some. And after the discovery I’d made on the Delaware corporate registry, I was about to find more.

It kept me awake at night, but even before that, I hadn’t been sleeping much.

That’s why I spent my nights driving. At home, it was all that time to fill—no sinks full of dishes to wash or blazing-hot fields to hoe, no hours to be counted down until my body was too exhausted to fight sleep—and my dim, silent, sterile, empty apartment, and the nightmares, and the pain, even though the agency was sending me to physical therapy so my body could actually function in the field, and giving me effective meds so my brain could function, too.

I tried not to complain. I really did, even though there were so many better places I could be. But there were so many worse ones, too. In this job, I saw them all the time.

Manny tapped his pint glass against mine, a sharp clink snapping me out of my thoughts. “You gonna answer me, or just sit there brooding into your beer all night?”

I smirked. “I do love a good brood.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He took a sip, watching me. “But seriously. This is what, the third one you’ve saved this year?”

“The fourth,” I corrected him.

“Jesus.” He exhaled through his nose. “Look, man. I get it. I really do. I know what you’re trying to do, and hell, I respect it. You know how I feel. That’s why you’re here. But you’re on thin ice.”

Thin ice. As if I didn’t know. As if I didn’t feel it cracking beneath me every second of every day.

I feigned a nonchalant shrug. “Flamm was a greedy, sadistic little prick. He deserved to get played.”

“You were one step away from getting yourself played, Monsieur Pomerleau.”

At that, I just smiled and tipped back my glass. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Manny groaned, rubbing a hand down his face. “Goddamn it, man. Didn’t you learn anything in training? It’s dangerous to let your personal experiences affect your decisions in the field.”

“Look, I know we can’t free her,” I admitted. “We can’t free any of them. But that job Nanette found for her in the federal budget office is cushy as fuck, and she can feed us intel while she’s there. She’s really smart,” he added. “And you have to admit, on my part, it was a good save.”

“A better save than when the congressman’s daughter caught you hacking into her dad’s computer and you told her it just broke your heart to think of her using a network without a properly-installed firewall,” said Manny, grabbing two more pints of Guinness from the bartender and handing one to me.

I’d recently discovered that a stout—though it didn’t compare to bourbon—was a good social drink.

Which I’d never needed, since I’d never been allowed to socialize over anything except a bowl of gruel in however much time I’d been allotted to eat it.

“Hey, identity theft is heartbreaking.”

“What about my heartbreak when Lindeman strangles you to death and I have no consultant? Ever think of that?” He paused. “Look, I’m not trying to imply this transition has been easy for you, but?—”

“Fucking hell, Manny, you think it’s about easy?

I wouldn’t even know what to do with easy.

” I took a breath, trying to steady myself.

“Look, we’ll still find the heiress,” I promised.

“There’s still a particular lead I want to follow, the one we got from that freed guy in New York.

” I didn’t mention that after tomorrow, the only leads I might be following were my own.

“In the meantime, you know there are plenty of girls and boys who deserve to be saved just as much as she does.”

“Of course. You know how I feel, man. And Lindeman was impressed with what you did for those kids last month in Baltimore. Actually, I think he’s impressed with you in general when he doesn’t want to toss you out a tenth-story window.

And remember, this is a guy who used to be the head of an entire division set up to find abolitionist fugitives. ”

Around us, the bar was starting to fill up with our colleagues and friends, who greeted us before finding seats. Manny raised his voice. “But the bottom line is that we’re a law enforcement agency, not a shelter for abused slaves.”

“Wait, we aren’t?” I asked with a wry sip. “Then how do you explain me?”

Manny laughed. “Dude, I can’t explain you. Nobody told me working with a slave would be like this. For some reason, I pictured a lot more bowing and scraping and less, well, going rogue.”

I set my glass down incredulously. “Dude, did you do any homework on me at all?”

“Clearly, not enough. At this point, I’d be happy just to get you to respond to your goddamn name at least once ,” he said. “All in all, I think I’ve had better luck getting you to answer to Sébastien Pomerleau.”

I couldn’t help but laugh because he was right.

I’d finally coughed up the name—her name— my name—because they’d threatened to send me back if I didn’t, but the fact was, I had always found it far easier to be Sébastien or Corey or Starling or Lucky Sevens or Rocket Boy or even boy or kid or man or mutt or whatever anybody else deigned to call me, than take on an actual identity.

My own identity, one that couldn’t be ignored, brushed off, or shed in an instant.

One I would answer to and answer for. One I could keep.

As absurd as it was, I wasn’t ready for that yet. And I didn’t yet know what the last step might be on the journey. Although I knew the first step had been hearing it from the right mouth. And I could only hope that that mouth would still care to say it.

I stared down into my glass, then looked up again to see that Manny’s face had turned serious.

“Bruh, you’re lucky and you’re good, and that gets you ninety percent of the way. But your problem, the way I see it, is that you still don’t know how to be a person. And most of the time, I don’t think you even want to.”

Well, ouch. I turned my glass in circles on the table. “I-I think you’re right. I don’t. Or maybe I still don’t know the person I want to be.”

“Well, I hate to break this to you, man, but you’re gonna have to bite the bullet, like every other human being on the planet, and figure it out. Because I know you do want your freedom, and I don’t want to see you put it in jeopardy.”

Freedom, which, as I had been frequently informed, wasn’t free. Look, I wasn’t that humble, but I was humble enough to know that the world was far from finished teaching me that lesson. Maybe it never would be.

And my stomach swooped as I thought about the burner phone I’d bought that morning and the call I’d made up my mind—right this second—to make that very night.

Because yes, I did want my freedom. Not with half of me anymore. With all of me. And despite it all, I wanted to be a person, too. I really did. But I also knew that it wasn’t freedom—at least, not just freedom—that was going to make me one.

A few more of our colleagues grabbed seats at the bar then—one of them being Daniela, one of the other slave consultants, a leggy brunette whose suffocatingly tight pencil skirt drew the eye to the pillowy space between said legs, one of which she hooked around my wooden swivel chair, propping her chin in her hand with goopy anticipation as she asked about my day.

Over her head, Manny raised his eyebrows, but I just ran a hand through my hair before hastily executing my escape from the air-conditioned pub and into the sultry heart of a southeastern night in late August, into the empty, moonless streets of a world where nobody knew or cared what my name was, or if I had one at all.

A world that, as a kid, was all the promise freedom ever held.

A world with a million more Danielas waiting for me, who would pulse and moan and call me anything I told them to call me, but never by my name.

A world that in the end would just be another cage.

I had a phone call to make.

By the time I got to work the next morning, I had five missed calls from Manny already. He met me just inside the door to our department, and for a moment, he just stood there frozen, his face as ashen as when he failed at something. Federal agents weren’t used to failing.

“Lindeman’s office,” he said, pointing. “I’m sorry.”