Page 55 of Deceive Me
Unfortunately the swinging door had no lock. And her male companions had no qualms about waltzing in behind her. Guess it really didn’t matter; both of them had seen her naked, though in very different circumstances—assignments didn’t always allow for privacy. But Dain and her team didn’t really look at her body; they assessed her strength and ability to work, her health if she’d been injured. Deacon didn’t look at her like that. There was something squirm-worthy about having her lover and the man she considered her father figure together in the room she was supposed to strip in, even when she was clothed.
“You didn’t answer me, Elliot. What happened?”
“Not much. They trailed me, cornered me in an alley, got their asses kicked, and Kivuli ran.” She shrugged. “I need to shower. You can go now.”
“No—”
She caught the slash of Dain’s hand from the corner of her eye, his own we can discuss that another time. Deacon rubbed roughly at his face.
Yeah, I get that reaction a lot.
“All right, then, how about another question.” Deacon surveyed her wounds, something akin to horror in his eyes. “What the hell where you doing out there tonight?”
She sat on the bench to one side and began to slowly unwrap the tape from one wrist, anything to keep from seeing that look on his face. “It’s called fighting.”
“It’s called punishing herself,” Dain countered.
The burn at the backs of her eyes had her tugging particularly hard on the tape. She bit back a curse as several layers of skin went with it.
“It’s what she does,” he continued. “Beat the emotion out of herself.”
Better that than let it kill you.
“You don’t deserve punishment any more than the rest of us, Elliot.”
She raised her head, staring beyond Deacon to the man who meant far more to her than anyone still alive on this earth. “I quit.”
“I don’t accept.”
Elliot shrugged.
“You see, Deacon,” Dain continued. “Elliot was raised on the run. Her mother escaped when she was three, on a boat with a captain she later married. For ten years they kept moving, kept hiding, always isolating themselves and their daughter in order to avoid Mansa’s vindictive reach.”
She balled the used tape up, tossed it toward an overfull trash can, and started on her other wrist.
“Except when she was thirteen, Mansa caught up with them. You guessed right,” Dain said. “The couple was Elliot’s mother and stepfather.”
A fireball of the hottest red and orange and yellow she’d ever seen. Screams ringing in her ears—her own. Her mother hadn’t had time to scream.
“And then Elliot followed the instructions her mother had ingrained in her. She traveled to the Colorado wilderness, where she was taken into a survivalist camp run by an acquaintance of her stepfather’s.”
She stood, threw the second ball, and turned to her locker. The slap of metal against metal rang through the room when she pulled the door a little too forcefully.
“A survivalist camp?” Deacon asked. He was still facing her, watching her; she could tell by the sound of his voice, the heat of his gaze. The skin between her shoulders, right over her tattoo, crawled like she was a bug under a microscope.
Dain wasn’t letting up. “A militia group run by an ex-general from Africa. See, Elliot has more real-life training than any of us—she was, quite literally, raised to it. Having emotions beat out of her is second nature. And when the general threw her out at the age of eighteen—”
“Stop it, Dain! Shut up. Just shut up.” She snatched her bag from the locker and rounded on the two men. “You don’t get to analyze my past. I’m not some psych experiment, and you’re sure as hell no therapist, so get the fuck out.”
Deacon took a step toward her. “Ell, don’t—”
Her glare was filled with all the rage boiling inside her, the hell of hearing that name again, the name he’d called her while he was inside her. Deacon blanched.
“Don’t you dare call me that. Don’t pretend you give a fuck. You hate me now; fine. I did what you wanted. Now leave me alone.”
“I—” Deacon clamped his mouth shut. The muscle in his jaw jumped as he seemed to fight with whatever words he wanted to say. “I don’t hate you, Elliot.”
“Really?” she scoffed. “You should. I put Sydney in danger. Just by being born, I put my mother in danger. She ended up dead. You should keep me as far away from your daughter as humanly possible.”
