Shay Savage: Otherwise Unharmed

This time, whatever dreams I had weren’t enough to wake me. As I regained consciousness, I could immediately feel the difference even before opening my eyes. The fog was gone and so was the dizziness. My head still throbbed, but the beat was slower and the intensity less.

I could think again.

More importantly, I could feel Lia all around me.

Her scent covered me—relaxed me. I could hear her slow breaths, which further calmed me. Her fingers tugged gently through the strands of hair just behind my right ear, and it was as if each stroke over my scalp was removing pieces of the pain, the guilt, and the damage inside my brain.

I could have stayed right there—cold floor be damned—for the rest of my life. The scent of her electrified me. The touch of her fingers soothed me. The length of her body pressed against mine excited me.

I moved my hand a little farther up her back and caressed her skin with my fingers before I turned my head and looked up at her. Her dark eyes met mine, and I pulled air into my lungs to speak.

“Hey.” It wasn’t much, but it was probably better than I had managed before sleeping.

“Hey, yourself,” Lia replied. “You’ve been out a while now. I was afraid I’d have to move in here.”

“Fuck no,” I said. “No way would I let anyone put you in here.”

There must have been a little more venom in my voice than I had intended because Lia shrank back a bit.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “It’s just…this place is…well, it sucks. Let’s leave it at that.”

“I think that’s part of the deal, yes.”

The door clicked as it opened, and Mark Duncan peered around the corner of the frame to look at us.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

I fought the urge to give him a flippant, obnoxious reply. As my mind focused and understood better where I was and what was going on around me, I knew Mark was going to be my key to getting out of here. Moretti’s lawyer could only do so much without my shrink saying I was safe enough to be out on the streets. Without his recommendation, I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I feel a lot better.” It was easier when I didn’t have to lie. “I feel like I can think straight again.”

I glanced back and forth between Lia and Mark a few times and let my eyes widen.

“I really fucked up,” I said. I shook my head a little before glancing back to Mark. “Shit—did I hurt anybody?”

Mark let out a long breath.

“No, Evan. You didn’t hurt anybody.”

I nodded slowly, internally pleased that he was none the wiser about my actual activities. All I had to do now was keep myself in check—calm and collected—until Rinaldo and his resources could get me out of here.

That didn’t end up working out so well.

Mark Duncan left us with the guard so he could go to the warden and discuss some paperwork. I sat up and leaned against the wall of the room with Lia sitting next to me, rubbed at my eyes, which were thick with sleep, and tried not to let the grit remind me of sand.

“How are you really feeling?” Lia asked quietly. She glanced up at the guard and then back to me before she reached over and placed her hand on my thigh.

“Better,” I said honestly. “My head’s a little clearer, anyway.”

“You woke up a couple of times,” Lia said. “I wasn’t sure what I should do, but you settled down within a few minutes. You seemed to sleep pretty well after that, though.”

“I remember,” I told her. “How long was I out?”

“Almost six hours.”

Maybe it wasn’t a full night’s sleep, but it was a hell of a lot better than I had been getting. I couldn’t have said I felt right, but at least I knew what was happening around me. I leaned my head against her shoulder and touched my nose to her neck. I wanted to turn her toward me and kiss her the way I knew she liked it but not with the guard watching over us. I wasn’t much for public displays.

“Evan?”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me what happened.”

I tensed, wondering for a moment if she meant what I had done from the balcony of my apartment but understood pretty quickly that my display there wasn’t what she wanted to know. I knew it before she even had a chance to confirm it.

“Tell me what happened to you over there.”

“Fuck.” The word escaped from my throat like a rifle blast. My hands clenched into fists as images of tanks, uniformed enlisted troops with their eyes wide and nervous, and sand filled my mind. I shook my head to rid myself of the images, but it didn’t work.

“Please—I want to know.”

“No,” I said. I pushed myself up using the wall as support and stumbled a little as I gained my footing. Lia stood with me, her hand reaching out to touch my arm.

“Evan—I need to know so I can help you. How else am I supposed to know what to do?”

I stared at her, breathing through my mouth and trying not to hyperventilate. The thing was, I wanted to tell her—desperately so. I wanted to tell her everything—even the shit I never told the military during debriefing. But could I do it? Could I relive all of it over again for the sake of total disclosure? The guilt? The pain? The heat? The fucking sand?

The door opened, and Mark stepped in. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to assess the situation. The noise and movement startled me, and I swallowed hard before taking a step back and breaking my connection with Lia completely.

“No.”

“Evan–” she called as she reached for me again.

“No!” I screamed and shoved her away.

She stumbled, and her back hit the wall behind her. Mark stepped up and reached for her, his hands grasping her arms to steady her and keep her from falling. Without hesitation, the guard grabbed me, yelled for backup, and wrestled me to the table. I didn’t resist—I knew when a fight was pointless. I knew that all too well.

“Don’t ask me.” I kept eye contact with her, pleading from the tabletop. “Please don’t ask me that.”

Lia stared at me, wide-eyed with tears forming on her lashes. I didn’t want her to be upset, but I couldn’t do what she was asking. I couldn’t go through all of that again.

Two other guards came in, but it must have been evident that I wasn’t protesting because they only helped get my hands back into the cuffs so I could be led out of the room and away from Lia and Mark.

Keep the crazy man away from the public.

Shit, this wasn’t going to help at all.

I closed my eyes as I was yanked back up to a standing position and pushed toward the door.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Lia responded. Her hand reached toward me, but with the guards in the way, she couldn’t quite touch. “It’ll be all right.”

I shook my head and smiled a little, wishing I could believe her words as she watched me being hauled away from her in cuffs once again. How could it ever be all right? As long as I worked for Moretti and the organization, Lia would be in danger if she were associated with me.

Nothing could be done to change that.

As we reached the cell block where I was housed, the guard from the visitor’s room decided he didn’t need backup anymore and dismissed the others. He was quite a bit rougher than he needed to be as he shoved me down the hall, apparently trying to cause me to trip over my own feet. He sneered and curled half his face into a nasty little smile, and I remembered how he seemed ready to tell Mark about my connections. I glared at him as I sized him up.

He was in his mid-forties, overweight, and bald. There was a wedding ring on his left ring-finger and a scar on the back of his left hand that looked like it would have required several stitches, but the wound had obviously occurred a long time ago. His uniform was neatly pressed, and he had a closely trimmed moustache but no other facial hair. He had recently shaved his head, and there was no discernible stubble anywhere.