he’ll disappoint you again and again, until you wake up and realize you can’t build a life with someone who won’t give himself up to it. You can’t live a life built on the romantic imagining of a person.
Mount never held anything back; he wasn’t even capable of it. He was hopelessly open and honest, couldn’t lie or be fake if he wanted to. That’s why he didn’t get along well with people; that’s why he was always vulnerable to getting hurt. She let the fatigue take her, let a few tears drain from her eyes and spill down her face.
“Mount,” she said. “Where did you go?”
She heard it before she saw it; it was a slight creaking of the wood on the porch where she’d been standing just a minute earlier. Then a large shadow drifted past the glass. She was grateful that he hadn’t turned on the lights and then wondered if she’d locked the door behind her. She slid from her place on the couch, crouched behind the big overstuffed arm and took the Glock from the holster at her waist as the knob started to turn.
Lydia.”
The voice came from deep inside a long, dark tunnel; it was sweetly familiar and edged with worry.
“Lydia, come on.”
She felt warm hands on her shoulders, a soft palm on her face. She woke then with a start, taking in a ragged, gasping breath. Her eyes were open but it was still pitch black; she kept still, unsure of where she was or how she had gotten there. Her mind raced, struggling to make sense of what was happening. She thought of the hotel room they’d been in, the walk along the dark drive.
“Are you okay? Lydia, say something.” Jeffrey. She could feel him and hear him, she could smell his cologne but she couldn’t see him at all. It was that dark where they were.
“I-” she began. “What happened?”
“Can you move? Are you hurt?”
She lay flat on her back on a cool, gritty surface. For a second, she didn’t even want to try to move her limbs or lift her pounding head from the ground. She was afraid; she felt like someone had put her in a giant cocktail shaker and shaken mercilessly. What if she tried to move and she couldn’t?
“I don’t know,” she said, lying still. “Are you okay? I can’t see you.”
“I’m okay,” he said. “We fell. I don’t know where we are now.”
She tentatively moved her feet, then bent her legs. Same with her arms. Then she pushed herself up. There was a general feeling of physical trauma but nothing sharply or frighteningly painful anywhere as she came to a sitting position.
“Nothing broken?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders, her arms, then her legs, as if checking her for fractures he might be able to feel with his hands.
“No.” She put her hands on his face, still unable to see him in the darkness. “You’re fine?” she asked him again. “You’re sure.”
She felt him nod, then he took her into his arms. “A few bumps and bruises but okay for the fall we took.”
“Where’s Dax?” she said into his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” he said, moving away from her and then pulling her to her feet.
“You said we fell? Fell where?”
“We were walking and then we fell into some kind of a hole. Now we’re here.”
“At the bottom of the hole?”
“I don’t think so. Our guns and our cell phones are gone.” He took her hand and placed it on cold, smooth concrete; she felt the rough ridges and valleys of brick and mortar. “These are man-made walls. There’s no light coming from up above.”
“Is there a door?” she asked.
“Here,” he said, pulling her over. She felt cool metal. Her hand drifted down to a locked knob. She yanked on it hard but it acted like a big, locked metal door. She let go of a sigh.
“So we fell down a hole. Someone then came, took our cell phones and guns, moved us from the hole and now we’re trapped,” she said.
“I’d say that’s a fair guess.”
She let herself slide down the door and come to a crouch near the floor. “How did we get here?” she asked. “Again?”
She was thinking of Jed McIntyre’s lair beneath the city streets of New York, about the tunnels where he chased her and then she chased him.
Jeffrey sat beside her. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Really? When? While I was lying here unconscious?”
“I’ve been sitting here beside you in the dark for a while. As long as you were still breathing, I figured I’d wait for you to come around.”
She didn’t say anything, knowing he’d go on.
“I think we’ve made some serious errors in judgment.”
Given their current situation, she couldn’t really argue with him. He slid down beside her and she leaned against him. Just his nearness quelled the low-grade panic she felt at being trapped, her fear for where Dax might be. She rested her head on his shoulder.
“We’ve been following Lily’s steps, assuming that she was following Mickey,” he said.
“Right. An assumption that Grimm more or less confirmed.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure we can trust Grimm. He just wanted someone in here to find those weapons and give him a reason to come in guns blazing. Maybe he talked to Lily, maybe he didn’t. Anyway, stay with me.”
“Sorry.”
“We assumed that Mickey, prone to depression anyway, was an easy target for the people looking to put a hurting on Tim Samuels.”
“Right.”
“But what if Mickey didn’t get sucked in? What if he
She thought about it a second. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to help his stepfather?”
“But they didn’t get along. Why would he go out of his way to help him?”
“It doesn’t matter whether you get along or not-family is family. He loved Lily. He loved his mother. That was reason enough to help his stepfather.”
“Okay,” said Lydia. “But because he was prone to depression, they got to him?”
“Tim Samuels had a strong enough sense of self to break away from The New Day when he realized they were rotten.”
“But maybe Mickey didn’t?”
“Right,” said Jeffrey.
“But wouldn’t Tim Samuels have told us that? There was no way Mickey could know about his issues with The New Day unless Tim told him.”
She felt him shift in the darkness. “He’d probably feel pretty guilty about it. Maybe he didn’t want us to see him as responsible for Mickey’s death.”
Lydia was quiet for a second, turning the scenario around in her mind. “Okay. What if that’s the case? Mickey left his job on Wall Street and moved up there, hooked up with his dad’s ex-girlfriend and tried to infiltrate. He couldn’t take the mind-control techniques of The New Day; they caused him to snap and he killed himself. What difference does it make? He’s still dead and Lily was still trying to find out what happened to him when she disappeared.”
“Right, but the whole basic assumption shifts,” said Jeff.
“Huh? I’m not following.”
“Well, Samuels made it sound like The New Day was systematically stalking his children in order to force him to surrender, tugging at the strings of his life to see which one he couldn’t bear to lose.”
“Which one would cause him to say ‘Uncle.’ ”
“But what if, actually, it was Mickey and then Lily stalking The New Day?”
“Not doing such a great job of it, but giving it the old college try.”
“But if
“Then The New Day wasn’t targeting Tim Samuels?” she said. “But what about the IRS and the murdered
