Page 75 of Dangerous Deviance
“Thanks for helping them,” I said.
“Anything for my girls,” she said.
I turned towards the hallway to find Ellie. Maybe there was a better alternative for her, than being forced to stay with me.
CHAPTER 19
Ellie
Wil appeared in the doorway. Billy tensed beside me, her cuffs jingling.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “He’s not going to harm us.”
“But what if he harmed them?” she asked, her voice loud. I glanced up at Wil. He swallowed hard. His eyes were on me, but his focus was somewhere else, as if he was looking past me, remembering a hard memory.
“He didn’t,” I said, confident in my words. I had no proof, but I knew it was true. The way he held me, pressing his body into mine. The headaches and the voice were becoming dull as time went by, replaced by my feelings for Wil.
Was it about him, or about what he did for me? The silence that he gave me. The stillness.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Billy. She nodded, her fingers clenched so hard that her knuckles turned white.
I followed Wil out of the room, and we walked down the long hallway to a door on the other end, which opened up into an unoccupied nightclub. Harsh fluorescent lights lit the main floor, exposing the slips in cleaning—a ripped napkin, a stain from a spilled drink, a garter belt on one of the chairs. To the side, there was a stage with a polished hardwood floor and beams of light fixtures hanging from the top. And on the other side, a bar with no one behind the counter. We sat on the stools anyway.
It was quiet between us, but I never stopped touching him, afraid that once we broke contact, I wouldn’t be able to make it stop. But then I thought of Dr. Mercia’s warning. Was I just replacing Dr. Bates’s voice with Wil?
“Does your family own this place?” I asked, breaking the silence. Wil grinned like I had asked something amusing. What the hell was I supposed to think? He was part of the Sage City mob. For all I knew, he could have owned everything in the city.
“We protect it,” he said. He swiveled his stool so that his back leaned against the counter, his arms stretched out, his posture facing the stage. “Are you okay with leaving them here?”
What other choice did we have? Even if there were more armed guards here, I knew it was better than keeping them caged in the woods.
“Yes,” I said.
Wil turned to me, holding my hand in his. I sighed deeply, trying to relax, to remember that we all had lives outside of this. The stage was empty, and though the spotlights seemed like they would be bright, I wondered about the women here. Did they have to deal with this kind of danger? Or was it purely an Adler thing? Was I just lucky?
“What do you need to feel safe?” Wil asked.
His words snapped me out of my daydream. The question puzzled me. Hadn’t we already discussed that? “Well, since the women are here, they can—”
“Not them,” Wil said. “You. What doyouneed?”
His dark brown eyes were pure, with light reflecting in them. And with his lips pressed together, he waited for my answer. For once, this wasn’t about him at all; he simply wanted to give me safety. But it had been so long that I didn’t know what I needed anymore.
It had started once my parents had died and got worse when Julie disappeared. If Julie had run away with a boyfriend like the police believed, it would have been so much easier to deal with. Easier to contact her. Easier to accept. But running away to an experimental camp? How I hadn’t talked to her, even after Dr. Bates promised me? How could I accept that?
I waited for that image of her body to show up in my mind, the waking nightmare. But it never came.
She had to be out there. Somewhere.
She had to be.
“I need to know what happened to my sister,” I said. “I know she was at the Skyline Shift too. But maybe she escaped,” my voice squeaked. I shrugged. “Who knows. She could’ve eloped with a boyfriend. Maybe fell in love with one of the guards, who ended up saving her. Or maybe she’s in jail in a foreign country.” I forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
But Wil didn’t laugh. “You mentioned those dreams,” he said, his voice calm. “The ones of your sister’s body?”
“Sure,” I said. The ones I was actively trying to suppress at that moment. I squeezed his hand. “What about them?”
“You know that some of our security team died in a similar way before the women showed up.”
