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A woman with Amethyst’s hair is at an airport ramp, running toward the camera, her features hidden beneath a mask. Herarms are encased in a straitjacket, and she’s fleeing from a burly man in a flat cap and navy-blue uniform.
He tackles her to the tarmac and wrestles her onto her back before picking her off the ground and slinging her on his shoulder like a rucksack. Then he charges the camera, and the video ends with a thud.
There’s no way Amethyst was the woman willingly boarding a plane with a blond man and also the bound woman at the airport, desperately trying to escape.
I shove my phone in Jynxson’s face, knowing even my devil’s advocate has to admit this truth. “Tell me again why you think my twins theory is bullshit?”
His eyes widen. “Fuck.”
“Twins separated around the age of ten. One goes to school, while the other survives multiple snuff movies. Don’t you think there’ll be some resentment?”
Jynxson gulps, finally seeming to agree with my theory. “What do you want me to do?”
I send a message to Tyler, demanding the flight information for all the private jets that left the airport at the time of takeoff.
“Help me out of this bed. Then ask Isabel for my meds while I’m out of shooting range. It’s time to get Amethyst back.”
FIFTEEN
AMETHYST
I stand on trembling legs, staring into the cold blue eyes of Xero’s dad. The tent lights make my vision go strange, but I blink away the glare.
“What do you like to be called?” he asks.
My lips part, but I can’t make a sound. Delta’s presence is so intimidating that he swallows up my words and makes my tongue feel like lead.
He chuckles, but it’s a hollow, heartless sound that makes my skin erupt into goosebumps. Did he laugh like that when his sons beat Xero half to death? Or when he relegated Xero to a windowless box and made him eat scraps?
How about the children he groomed into becoming assassins? Did he laugh like that when the little girls returned from missions traumatized?
“Amethyst, is it?” he asks.
I manage a feeble nod. His gaze is so piercing, it feels like being trapped in the coils of a snake that hypnotizes its prey.
“Then let me give you a choice, Amethyst. I can make this experience pleasant or add to the trauma you’re likely sufferingfrom having been exposed and humiliated in front of your twin sister and half a dozen men.”
I flinch at the reminder, my eyes squeezing shut.
“Now, lie on the couch like a good girl, and we’ll talk,” he says in a voice so smooth that it slips through my defenses.
Swallowing hard, I walk across the swept floor toward the peculiar looking tent and lower myself onto the bondage furniture upholstered to look like a psychiatrist’s couch. A voice in my head is screaming at me to do anything else, but it’s dull and far away.
Delta points a remote toward a camera mounted on a tripod on the other side of the room. It whirs to life with a small red light indicating it’s recording.
Shivers travel across my skin at the thought of appearing in yet another movie clip. I glance back to Delta as he activates smaller cameras hidden within the tent’s metallic structure. Their tiny lights remind me of spiders’ eyes.
He pulls up a director’s chair and positions it at the foot of my couch. “Lie back. Locke gave you a powerful herbal extract from the nightshade family to help make you more obedient and to reduce your inhibitions.”
My stomach lurches at the realization of just why I feel so out of control. Is this where I’m raped and killed, like Lizzie Bath? Or does Delta have something else in mind?
“Why?” I whisper. “Don’t you make snuff videos?”
His breathy laughter makes my skin crawl. “This session is for me, not the movie. I plan on taking you deeper into your subconscious than you’ve ever gone before, so I would prefer if you would recline before your body collapses.”
A rapid beat echoes through my ears, and the blood racing through my veins heats. Sweat breaks out across my brow, and my head swims. I don’t want to know what’s buried in my mind, and I sure as hell don’t want to be vulnerable to this monster.
The words from earlier trickle into my skull, and I blurt, “Locke gave me deadly nightshade?”
