Page 6

6

Not Entrapment, Enticement

T he very instant Chase secured our hesitant agreement to check out this sketchy-sounding “special school” of his, his people swarmed into the room to get us ready to roll. Unease pricked along my skin as a nurse attempted to whisk everyone else away so she could prepare me for discharge. No surprise: none of my friends were willing to leave my side. Chase excused himself while Brady, Hunt, and Griffin looked away. The nurse removed the IV line and stripped me of my hospital gown and gauze. I discovered I now sported five angry pink scars the size of nickels across my chest—narrowly missing both my boobs. Fuck Chase hard for that, though at least my girls were safe. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Layla helped me into a set of scrubs that matched theirs. Griffin alone wore street clothes, the sole one of us to not have a single bullet hole marring his beautiful skin.

The five of us crammed together on the long bench seat of Chase’s limousine, leaving the billionaire alone on the equally sizable seat across from us. I barely dared to look away from him, though he was theoretically the one who was vulnerable here. We were the supposed immortals, not him, and although Hunt still carried a gun, Chase ordered Jaggar and Raynar to ride in the matching black Cadillac Escalade that tailed us. The medical staff rode along in another Escalade.

Our convoy resembled the standard bad guy parade in pretty much every movie I’d ever seen. According to Hollywood 101, this scene made Chase a drug lord, mob boss, or worse—the secret big bad who pulled everyone else’s strings, letting them do the dirty work while he raked in the benefits.

“Where are you taking us?” Layla asked.

The windows were tinted but I could still make out the forested outskirts of Ridgemore as we swept past. We were headed in the direction of the Fischer House, which sat at the edge of town.

Chase crossed an ankle over his knee, his charcoal slacks sliding up to reveal a crisp argyle sock that looked as expensive as everything else about him. He tipped his head to one side and studied Layla. “I already told you where we’re going.”

“You told us we’re going to some school. I want to know where said school is located.”

“Yeah,” Brady said, backing up his twin without hesitation now that we had a common enemy.

Chase arched a brow. “It’s in Ridgemore, of course.”

Confusion was pinching my forehead when Griffin asked, “Ridgemore? You said we had to hurry to get out of there so our parents wouldn’t find us before we could learn the truth they wouldn’t tell us.”

“Again, not your parents.” He swirled the crystal tumbler he held casually with the fingertips of one hand, ice clinking softly in amber-colored booze that probably cost more per shot than I could fathom. “And we had to get out of there because it wasn’t fortified. None of them are soldiers, surely, but I don’t underestimate my opponents, especially not when they believe themselves to be well motivated. Since Brady first died, I’ve been preparing for this moment.”

An accusation burned on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to blame him for Brady falling atop that awful rebar, even though it had to have been an accident. There was no way he could have orchestrated Rich and Brady fighting, the balcony collapsing beneath them. It was random, an unpredictable tragedy.

Wasn’t it?

Chase seemed to think his reach was endless …

“Were you responsible for Brady dying that night?” I asked.

The stares of my four best friends whipped to me before narrowing on Chase.

“Well, were you?” Hunt pressed when the man didn’t respond quickly enough.

He sipped at his bourbon or scotch or whatever the fuck, then chuckled. “No, I didn’t do that.”

“It was your nephew who started it all,” Griffin insisted.

Again, Chase snickered. “Yes, finally Richard proved useful.” He drained his drink and leaned over to place the empty glass in a recessed cupholder built into the polished wood interior. “Had I been aware of your capabilities at that time, I likely would have engineered Brady’s death. The death of one of you, anyhow.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet I flinched at the boldness of his admission. On either side of me, Griffin and Hunt tensed, their thighs rigid against mine.

Chase tapped his fingers on his knee. “But no, I didn’t know. Not then. I’d been searching for you since you were first taken from me, but my former employees proved surprisingly adept at concealing you from me. It was only after Brady’s death that I knew where to find you.”

“So you could kill the rest of us,” Brady snarled.

Chase merely met his accusatory glare without reaction. “As I told you, I’m the devil you know. Isn’t this better than the endless lies?”

“That remains to be seen,” I muttered bitterly.

A part of me wanted to grab my friends and jump from this car while it was still rolling. Were we being absolute morons right now? Were we truly better off playing along?

I had no fucking clue, and I absolutely hated that. But attempting to resist, only to be forced to cooperate by this man with unlimited resources, didn’t seem any better.

“Kitty fucking Blanche led you right to us, didn’t she?” Griffin asked, his question sharp as a blade.

“She’s proven useful, yes.”

“I’ll just bet she has,” Brady added, venom dripping from every word. “Did you spy on us with a drone?”

Chase looked at us, his expression open, his eyes unshuttered, as if he had not a fucking thing to hide. That was a yes , then. “I reward my people well for their loyalty. There are few better uses for my wealth.”

“You can’t buy us,” Hunt said.

Fact.

“Maybe not. But I can prove to you that you’re better off with me than with thieves and liars.”

“At the school,” Layla said.

“For now, yes.”

“And where the fuck is it? How’ve you been preparing for this entrapment of all of us?”

“Not entrapment. Enticement, definitely.”

I huffed but didn’t bother arguing with the man’s twisted morals.

“When I finally found Brady, and therefore all of you, my immediate priority was to break ground on the facility where you’d all train. Ridgemore had plenty of suitable properties, and I wanted you to be comfortable.”

I snorted as Layla said, “You really expect us to believe our comfort played any part in your schemes?”

“No, I suppose I don’t.”

Hunt leaned forward. His still-healing wounds must have pulled along his torso because he winced and, more slowly, sat back again. “You wanted us out of that private medical facility or whatever it was.”

Chase waited, his gaze held on Hunt.

“You thought our parents, or whoever they really are, would come for us, and that place wasn’t fortified. But then you’ve apparently built an entire school for us and those like us within Ridgemore town limits. Makes no sense unless … unless you want our parents, whatever, to come for us now.”

Chase grinned, and the gesture was so disarming that I found myself leaning into Griffin’s side. Instantly, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. I settled into his warmth.

“Good,” Chase said as the limo rolled past the turn that led to the Fischer House. Automatically, my eyes went to Brady, who shuddered. Layla’s eyes grew haunted.

“I see you’re as smart as I’d hoped,” Chase went on. “Good. That will make everything easier. The people who deceived you into believing they’re your parents—that’s getting annoying fast. They’re like ‘The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.’” He chuckled at his own joke. No one else did.

“You could just refer to them by their names,” Layla suggested with a huff of annoyance that could have been in response to myriad things.

“I could,” Chase began, “but you and I know them by different names.”

My eyes widened before I could stop them from revealing my shock. If our parents had truly lied about who they were and what they were to us, it shouldn’t have been any more upsetting to learn they’d hidden their true identities from us as well. And yet, somehow, I hadn’t imagined it. I couldn’t think of them as anything but Monica and Reece Bryson, boring small-town nerd couple.

As the limo took a turn onto a road I’d never been down before, Chase studied us all. “I see you hadn’t expected that. Maybe not as good at seeing the big picture as I’d hoped. Testing of the intellect can’t portray a full spectrum of someone’s complete intelligence.”

“Fuck off,” Layla bit out.

“My point made,” Chase said, though I didn’t see how. “They remain the best of the best in their fields, especially now that I’ve confirmed they continued their research of you all this time. There are no other scientists as uniquely qualified to understand the many facets of your immortality. Now that I have you, I can lure them in again. I have the leverage.”

“Because they’ll want their ‘children’ back,” Layla suggested, but her tone was hopeful. Too fucking hopeful.

“Because they’ll want their prized experiments. Because they know their research could win them several Nobel Prizes if they were able to make it public. People like them, they live for those accolades.” He glanced out the window. “They’ll come for you. Without a doubt, they’ll come, and finally, after all these years, I can continue my research.”

Staring out the glass, he almost sounded like he was talking to himself. “After all this time, every step brings me closer. I can practically taste it now.”

While he salivated over our powers of resurrection, I exchanged looks with my friends in the resulting relative privacy. How many times had we heard our parents discuss the Nobel Prize like it was their combined life goal? Like it was nearly within their grasp, only just out of reach.

If what Chase said was true, then he was right. Our parents would come for us—for what we represented to them.

“This school …” Hunt drew out until Chase once again faced us. “… are you suggesting we finish out our senior year there?”

“I’m suggesting that once you see all it has to offer, you’ll want it no other way.”

“We’d live at the school?” Griffin asked, his heartbeat thumping beneath my ear, steadying me.

“Like royalty. You’d want for nothing.”

“Except actual families,” Brady said, surprising me with his nostalgic tone. Of all of us, he was the least likely to long for the family unit, the one most eager to escape Celia Rafferty’s nightly family dinners—whoever the hell she actually was.

“You were never destined to have those,” Chase said without apology, running light fingers along a precisely trimmed sideburn. “You were born into this world as experiments.”

“Damn,” Brady grunted, then whistled. “Cold motherfucker.”

Chase’s eyes whipped to his. “Yes. Just like you, I was destined to be how I am.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Layla asked.

“It means we’re nearly there.”

I peered out the window beside Hunt. So far, all I could make out were thick old-growth trees against patches of azure sky.

Chase uncrossed his leg, placing both feet on the floorboard, preparing for arrival.

“If we do decide to live here,” I said, pretending we had a choice, “I have a dog.”

Gazing out the window, he answered, “A two-year-old pit bull male named Bobo. Yes, I know. All arrangements have been made at the house for him as well.” As he turned his head toward me, I quickly schooled my features to hide my surprise. Was there anything about us this man didn’t know? Fucking hell.

“When you’re ready, I’ll have him brought to the house for you.”

“What house?” Layla asked.

“Though there’s little that money can’t buy, and though I’ve certainly hurried along the construction as much as possible by oiling the gears and arranging work crews around the clock, the school campus isn’t quite finished. It’s getting there, but there’s still more to go. I had your house completed first. Again, I wanted you to be comfortable.”

So much to process. I couldn’t decide what was true anymore, what was even real. A part of me still expected to wake up from a very long dream that began with our arrival at the Fischer House party.

The limo slowed and turned onto a single-lane paved road, and suddenly an entire campus of buildings, connected by a web of single-lane streets, sprawled across my view.

“What the … ?” Brady mumbled. “How … how could you’ve built something like this without us knowing? You would’ve had to hire whole crews of construction workers, and people talk, especially in Ridgemore.”

“Yes. The joys of small towns. I have no idea why my sister loves it here.” His mouth twisted into a grimace. “I brought in my own crews, along with portable housing for them. You were busy with all your dying and coming back to life, and Kitty Blanche was very helpful in keeping everyone’s focus off what I was doing.”

“And on us,” Griffin said through gritted teeth.

Chase frowned. “Her tenacious nature got in her own way.”

“Meaning?” Layla asked.

“Meaning, since we’ll be arriving in moments and I don’t know how long it will take my former employees to locate their research subjects, I’ll make one thing abundantly clear right now.”

He glanced at his watch, pursed his lips, then looked back to all of us. “None of them are your parents. None of the women have ever even been pregnant. Well, except for the woman who now calls herself Monica Bryson, who got pregnant during an affair with the local sheriff, a Xander Jones. The pregnancy was terminated.”

Despite everything, despite sufficient shocks to numb me, my jaw dropped open.

“No way,” Layla whispered.

Griffin’s biceps beneath my head tightened before he asked, “And the woman I believed was my mom?”

Chase laughed, and dread pooled in my gut. “‘Mitzi Conway,’ was it?”

Griffin didn’t move, though his heartbeat sped up. I straightened and wrapped an arm around his waist, ignoring the tug of healing flesh across my chest.

“Mitzi never existed,” Chase said.

“Never existed,” Griffin repeated in a numb echo. “That … can’t be.”

“Explore the campus, your house, see what you think. Then we’ll talk, you can ask your questions and I’ll answer those I’m willing to answer.”

“And my dad?” Hunt asked anyway.

Chase arched a brow. “The one who supposedly died in a car crash?”

His jaw clenched tightly, Hunt gave a single, sharp nod.

“The only thing real about him is that your biological sperm donor had Eastern Band Cherokee heritage. Everything else was a complete fabrication. You’re not who or what you were led to believe. Not at all. You’re something infinitely better.”

The limo pulled to a stop. Seconds later, the door beside Chase was pulled open on silent hinges. He slid across the seat, and with a foot already on the ground, craned his neck around.

“Welcome to Ridgemore’s Institute for the Advancement of Immortals.” Then, he stepped out.

My friends and I gaped at the empty space he’d just occupied, for once entirely at a loss for what to say.