Page 65 of Torment

Mason.

For all these years, I’d tried to suppress my old feelings for him, but they didn’t fade away. They remained dormant in my brain, steadfastly waiting for their chance to break through the surface. It was no wonder I couldn’t turn him in now, even after all the awful things he did to me. Try as I might to forget or erase those old feelings, they were still there. Just like they’d always been.

Beck switched the recorder back on and leaned forward. “So it was a man,” she said sharply.

I frowned. “What?”

“You said: ‘why would I protect the man who kidnapped me?’ Not ‘person’ or ‘people’. ‘Man’. So is that something you remember? It was definitely a singular man who took you?”

I swallowed hard. Shit. That was why she turned the recorder off and riled me up. She was certain I was lying, and she was trying to provoke me into accidentally revealing a piece of the truth in the heat of the moment.

“No, I don’t know for sure," I said. “I just assumed. Aren’t most kidnappings carried out by men?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She narrowed her eyes. “So you definitely don’t remember anything?”

“I already answered that,” I said stiffly.

“I know. I’m sorry. I just need to be sure of your answers.” She wrote something down on her notepad before looking back up at me. “Can we talk about Mason Ashwood?”

A sudden coldness hit at my core. How much did she know? “Okay,” I said, twisting my hands in my lap again.

“Who is he?”

“He’s a friend of mine. He’s the one who gave the FBI all the information to expose the cult eight years ago. I helped him. We’ve stayed in contact ever since.”

“Your friend Lauren said you told her that you hadn’t heard from Mason in eight years.”

My heart began to thud so loudly I was sure Beck would hear it. “She must’ve been mistaken. Or maybe I did tell her that. I don’t know.”

“Why would you tell her that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I thought she would think it was weird that I was still in contact with him, seeing as he's so different to me. He’s older, too, by nine years,” I said after pretending to mull over it for a few seconds. “I’m not sure, though. I don’t remember talking about it with her.”

Beck’s shoulders slumped. She obviously thought she was onto something, but I wasn’t nibbling at the bait like she so clearly hoped for. “Does Mr. Ashwood have a spare key to your apartment?”

I hesitated and thought back to something Mason said a few weeks ago. Jolie, I followed you, I watched you, I stole your apartment key, and I even bought the fucking house across from you.

“Yes,” I said with a confident nod. “I gave him a spare key a while ago.”

Beck’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Right. I actually ran into him outside your apartment with your fish while you were still missing. He claimed someone left him a note asking him to feed it while you were gone. What are your thoughts on that?”

“I suppose it makes sense. He lives across the road from me, and he’s fed my fish on other occasions when I had to work late. That’s why he has the spare key.”

“But you weren’t working late. You were missing after being kidnapped.So how do you explain the note Mason claims to have received? Why would your abductor decide to make sure your fish was fed? How would they know about your friendship with Mason and therefore know to leave him a request to feed it?”

“I guess whoever took me is an animal lover,” I said. “And they were stalking me for weeks, so that would explain how they knew about Mason and the fact that he has a spare key to my place.”

Beck’s left cheek was jumping very slightly. I could tell she was getting annoyed with me, even though she was trying her hardest to hide it. I felt bad for her. From what I heard when I returned a few weeks ago, she’d worked her ass off pursuing different leads and angles in my case after I was reported missing. She clearly wanted to help me, but I was acting like a total bitch and messing with her investigation.

Despite my knowledge that I was doing the wrong thing, I still couldn’t bring myself to admit that Mason was the one who kidnapped me, and I remained adamant in saying I thought it was the Path of the Covenant.

Beck spent the next twenty minutes asking me other follow-up questions. Finally, she said I could go and that she’d call me if she wanted to talk to me again.

Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, I headed out to the rain-drenched parking lot and got in my car. Seeing as my old one was totally wrecked after being pushed into a swamp, I was still driving the Maserati Mason bought me a few weeks ago. I’d tried to tell myself a few times that I was keeping it out of necessity, but that wasn’t true. I kept it because it reminded me of him, just like every fading cut and bruise on my body.

I’d tried to settle back into life as a free woman over the last few weeks since my return, but I found it impossible. Every time I thought about Mason, my heart rate spiked, my skin tingled, and my knees went weak. I missed him terribly.

I kept thinking about the day he threw me out, too. At the time, I thought he was being cruel and forcing me to leave without talking to me about it because he didn’t care about me and simply wanted me gone. When he said he didn’t want to look at me, I thought it was because he found me disgusting.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized what was really happening that day. I kept thinking about the expression in his eyes when he met my gaze for those split seconds before looking away again. I knew what it was now, and it wasn’t disdain or disgust. It was pure, devastating guilt.

That was why he could barely look at me. That was why he stayed so calm and barely reacted even when I shouted, cried, and threatened to call the police and tell them what he did to me. He wanted me to hate him. He wanted me to turn him into the police.

He thought he deserved it.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I thought about it. I could try to adjust to society and act like a normal person all I wanted, but it wouldn’t help a damn bit. I didn’t fit in before my captivity and I didn’t fit in now, because I was missing a piece of myself. Mason. Without him, I was cracked and hollow, and I’d never fit anywhere.

I set my jaw resolutely and turned my key in the ignition. I knew what I had to do now.

I had to go back.

---