Page 201 of Mangled Memory
Not one.
The house is eerily quiet and so still to the point it unnerves me.
Fueled by coffee and rage at being trapped in a room when there’s zero danger outside, I grab the remote and check out the apps. There’s one that is missing from our tablet in the bedroom. It’s gray and black with a simple eyeball logo. There’s no name or description below it.
I tap and a password firewall pops up. How the hell am Isupposed to know this? Even before my current memory issues, I wasn’t great at remembering all my logins. How would I know this one? Had I known about this room before?
I grab my coffee and toss back half of it, wishing I hadn’t waited. It’s lukewarm and the powdered milk seems to have congealed on top, sticking to the lip and oozing back down. I’ll stop complaining about Georgio. His espresso drinks never do this.
There must be a clue. I flip through the tablet. It looks standard enough, but there’s no messaging, no phone, no video conferencing apps. The eyeball taunts me.
I tryChristianand should know how insecure that is.
Incorrect. The password box shakes side to side as if disappointed in my failure. I tap my fingers together around the coffee cup as if the movement will spark a memory that can break the surface of my brain and grant me access.
Movement catches my eye, and I watch Fitz exit Christian’s office.
Odd that I couldn’t see him.
Odd that he isn’t with my husband.
What’s more odd is that he looks around and then leaves the house via the patio doors, the opposite way from me in this room.
The metal and diamond from my wedding ring on my right hand perform in staccato on the mug and echo in the room as I watch the back of the house for Fitz’s return.
He doesn’t.
Thirty minutes pass until headlights paint the house in a bright swirl as if a car passes too slowly. It cuts its lights and pulls behind the tree line. Two figures stalk around the backyard, looking ghostly in the night vision.
What these guys are not is untrained or unaware. Every time they get near a camera location, they turn, putting their backs to the lens. It’s an odd waltz with our security system. I’m enthralled as they outmaneuver the state-of-the-art system.
Black jackets and black gloves round out their wardrobe of black pants and black boots. Sunglasses cover what could beseen of their flesh through the black hoods that cover their faces. To my novice eye, there’s nothing that would indicate their identities.
And our head of security is nowhere to be seen.
A snick of a latch sends cold panic through me and has me jerking awake.
My body is stiff and cold. The beaded straps on my dress are the same and have rubbed me under my arms until I have chaffed, red marks. My neck screams at falling asleep in a stiff chair.
The sound, though, triggers the fear I was fighting when I first got into this room. That is, until the adrenaline left my system and left me weary, eventually allowing only fitful, wretched sleep. I reach for the gun that slid down my lap during the course of my nap. I may not know much about it, but like any new cell phone camera, there’s no doubt it’s point and shoot.
I look over my shoulder for one brief second to the wall of videos showing me the house and see absolutely nothing. They want to be sneaky? Okay, try me.
I lift the cold metal in my hands and force them to stop shaking with nerves. I aim for the secret door panel that became my unwitting jailer however long ago that was and rest my finger on the trigger. When the door swings open and the hulking form pushes in, I don’t think twice.
I fire.
13
pithy and flirty
Ayla
Role reversal is an ironic bitch.
I sit at my husband’s bedside in a hospital close to home. He’s been asleep the whole time I’ve been here. Doctors come and go. The smell of industrial cleaner and the infernal beeping are enough to drive me mad… and they trigger some deep, dark emotions in me. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths, hating that I can taste the tang of the antiseptic in the air.
“Don’t forget everything.” It’s a plea into the ether from my chair. “We’re well and truly fucked if Georgio is smarter than both of us.”
