Dark Sins and Desert Sands (16 page)

“Just do what he says,” Layla told her, but the woman’s hand was already lifting and punching numbers of its own volition.

“Who are you?” the clerk asked Ray. “How are you doing this?”

“You don’t know who I am,” Ray replied, staring into her eyes. “You didn’t see us come in and you don’t remember punching in any access codes.”

Layla winced. It was one thing for Ray to force
people to his will—quite another to see him toy with their memories. Seth had done it to her and she wasn’t sure she could bear to see it happen to anyone else. The blood would follow, she knew. From his nose or his eyes or his ears. Minotaurs were short-lived creatures and she didn’t want him to spend any more of his life than he needed to, so she didn’t even ask him if he could undo the damage.

Meanwhile, Ray shoved the industrial door open. “Missy!”

But there wasn’t anyone inside. Instead, the room was filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes. As the disappointment passed over his face, he asked, “Is there anywhere else they’d be keeping her?”

Layla shook her head.

“What about in Arlington? You said there was another facility there. A compound?”

“It’s more private than this office, Ray, but it’s also more secure.” If Seth really had kidnapped the girl, she could be halfway around the world on a private jet to Dubai, but Layla didn’t want to get Ray more worked up than he already was.

“What the hell is all of this?” Ray asked, pointing to the boxes.

“Notes from contractors in the field,” Layla said.

“You think there’s anything here about Missy? Maybe about my case?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But we don’t have time to look. We have maybe five or ten minutes.”

“Let’s make the most of them,” Ray said, yanking down the nearest box and riffling through it.

Layla wanted to tell him not to bother. It was the needle in the proverbial haystack. On the other hand,
she remembered one salient fact about her master. Seth’s guise as an officious government contractor alone proved that he believed in security through obscurity. “If there’s something here about your case, Seth would’ve mixed it in with something mundane, something that he thinks is clever.”

“Like a yellow box?” Ray asked, yanking a banana-colored container from the shelf. “For Ray of Sunshine, since I’m such a sunny kind of guy?”

“Something like that,” she answered, meandering down the rows looking for boxes with place names. She found one from Crete—home of the more famous minotaur. Another one from Spain, which was famous for its bullfighting. They dumped records all over the floor, and the more files Layla opened the more horrified she was. Ray wasn’t the only man that Scorpion Group employees had tortured. He wasn’t even Seth’s only pet project.

It was Layla who found the file first. Plain manila with a black sail upon it. Just like the one that the hero Theseus mistakenly flew after having slain the Minotaur of Crete. “I think I found something,” she whispered, flipping it open and gasping at the contents. “Ray, we have to get out of here now.”

“What the hell is in that file?” Ray asked, trying to snatch it from her, but Layla was already at the door. She started at a full run and he chased her as she retraced their steps and exited the building before Seth’s security team roused themselves from their puzzled stupor.

“Do you need to unriddle them, or whatever?” he
asked, glancing at the men who still sat behind the marble security desk, still as stone.

“They’ll come out of it on their own,” she said. “Now hurry!”

“What’s in the file?” Ray asked, running by her side. “Is there anything about Missy?”

“No, nothing,” she said, her boots pounding on the pavement as she raced to the truck.

Ray wasn’t sure how many more dead ends he could come up against and retain any semblance of sanity. “Then why the hell are we running?”

“Because there’s a note inside,” she said. “In Seth’s handwriting. It says ‘Keep looking, Rayhan.’ He knew you’d come for it.”

They flung open the vehicle doors and leaped inside. As Ray peeled out of the parking spot and sped away, Layla kept her eyes on the rear window, as if convinced the dark god of Egypt was going to come lashing his chariot out into traffic. Instead, they both saw blue lights of security cars racing toward the Scorpion Group offices.

“So it was a trap,” Ray said, grinding his teeth. Between the security footage and eyewitness accounts of their break-in, they’d gambled and lost. There was already a manhunt in progress for him—and now the authorities would have an even better idea where to look. In fact, he half expected to see a helicopter hovering overhead.

“No,” Layla said, her knuckles white as she gripped the folder in her hands. “If it was a trap, we’d both have been caught. He’s toying with you. He doesn’t want to capture you in an office building in the middle of the
city where people might hear you scream. He’s egging you on, trying to lure you somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Like the compound in Arlington,” Layla snapped. “It’s a little out of the way. He has medical facilities and panic rooms and all sorts of places he could torture you some more and no one would hear you scream. It’s a good place to hold prisoners.”

“Prisoners like Missy,” Ray said. “Maybe we should have gone there first.”

Layla twisted toward him in the passenger seat. “You’re not going to break into Scorpion Group’s compound in Arlington.”

“What the hell other choice do I have?”

“Ray, I don’t think Seth has Missy. Look at this note. He didn’t think you’d come after the girl. He thought you’d come after a
file
. He thinks the most important thing to you is finding out who the informant was who turned you in.”

“It is,” Ray said, emotions roiling. Well, it
was
anyway. Ever since he’d found Layla again, his priorities had shifted.

“Ray, you can’t fight a
god
. Neither of us can.” Even over the roar of passing traffic, he heard the quaver in her voice. She was scared.

When he’d been down in that hole, Ray had forgotten other people. They’d kept him in darkness so long he wasn’t sure he could even remember his own mother’s face. He’d started to think only of himself, only of his survival, and only of his pain. They’d turned him into this, and he’d let them. These rages were making him more of a minotaur every day, but he wasn’t a mon
ster. Not completely. Not yet. Making love to Layla had reminded him of that.

He was still man enough to realize he wasn’t the only one who had been hurt in all this. He’d involved Jack and Missy in his escape, and now they were both in danger. He’d be damned if Layla would suffer anymore than she already had. She’d remembered painful truths. She kept telling him that she didn’t want to remember, and now he knew why. For his sake, she’d let him dredge up all the awful things that sent her down to the shower floor, broken and sobbing. And today she’d walked right into the belly of the beast—risking being captured by Seth.

He couldn’t blame her for wanting it all to end here and now.

“You don’t need to be involved in this anymore, Layla, but I’ve got to clear my name.”

“No, you don’t,” Layla whispered. “You
want
to clear your name, but you don’t
need
to. You can live a good life without a name. You could run. You could just leave the country.”

The truth was, with his powers, Ray probably
could
get on a plane and disappear. Besides, after all his country had put him through, why should he care what people thought about him here? But he
did
care. He wasn’t sure how to explain that to someone like Layla, who had lived long enough to see thousands of nations rise and fall and probably felt allegiance to none of them. He loved this country, in spite of everything. “Layla, I can’t leave everything behind.”

“I’d go with you,” she said. “If you wanted me to.”

As traffic crawled, Ray risked glancing over at her. It was too much to hope for. She was this timeless,
exotic creature. How could she really want to stay with him? “Layla, how can I leave my family behind?”

“I think your family would rather know that you were safe and alive. They’d go on without you.”

They’d go on without you.
That’s how his brother had justified killing himself, and Ray couldn’t believe Layla had echoed the same sentiment. “You don’t have any family, Layla, so how would you know a damned thing about it?”

Her mouth snapped shut and he caught a glimpse of pain flash behind her eyes before she lowered them. He’d been an ass. He’d hurt her feelings and had no idea how to fix it. “Layla—”

“No, you’re right,” she said, her voice icy. “I don’t have a family and I can’t pretend to understand mortals. I think that’s why I went into psychology. I
wanted
to understand. I never could fathom how men could whip themselves up into such a frenzy that they’d kill complete strangers on a battlefield. I never was able to wrap my mind around the horrors of war that Seth loved so much. I never could understand how soldiers would slaughter civilians. Maybe you can explain it to me.”

He felt his heartbeat skip. Did she know what’d happened? What he’d done for Jack Bouchier? In answer to his unspoken question, Layla flipped open the folder to reveal pictures of the massacre in Afghanistan. “Seth’s note isn’t the only thing in this file.”

Ray couldn’t bear to look at those pictures and hated the chill in her voice. If what she’d seen in that file made her doubt his innocence again, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. “I’m not responsible for killing those people, Layla.”

“Then who is?”

That was a question she’d never asked him when she’d been his interrogator. She probably could’ve forced him to answer her now. She could’ve used her riddler’s power. But she didn’t. “War isn’t pretty, Layla. Bad things happen.”

Tears hovered at the corners of her eyes. “
Bad things happen?
Ray, that’s what everyone at Scorpion Group said about your imprisonment and torture. The government said, ‘We’ve gotta get the bad guys before they get us, and if that means that a few innocent people have to suffer, so be it.’ Is that the way you think?”

It hit him like a punch to the gut. He didn’t know if she’d used her powers on him or not. He only knew that the breath went out of him. His chest seized with squeezing pain and it was as if the truck became a kaleidoscope of twisted metal and prison bars. He went hot, then cold, then hot again as he fought for control. What the hell was wrong with him?

“Ray?” she asked as the wheels slipped and the truck began to sway out of control.

Shit
. It was happening again. Just like in the phone booth, but worse. He had to get out of the truck. He had to get some air. Frantically, he pressed the button to lower the window, hitting every one of them but the right one.

“Ray, you have to calm down.”

That made it even worse. “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

He managed to screech the vehicle to a halt on the shoulder of the road while angry commuters leaned on their horns. It didn’t matter that he’d pulled over at the top of an overpass. It didn’t matter that traffic was
whizzing by dangerously close to his door. He had to get out. He had to get out or he was going to die right here. He shoved open the door and flung himself out.

“Ray!” Layla called after him.

It wasn’t until he was standing by the side of the road, gulping deep breaths of air, that he even realized she’d followed him. “Count—”

“I don’t want to count my fucking breaths!”

“Ray, you can’t let yourself lose control. You need help. You need treatment.”

“What do you suggest? A little couple’s therapy for fugitives?”

“You need treatment for your anxiety. Maybe medication.”

“I’ll get right on that,” he said, hands on his knees as he bent over, the pavement swimming before his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have pressed you.”

He hated how she was always so willing to believe that everything was her fault. She’d only asked the same questions anyone would have asked him. She deserved an honest answer. Unfortunately, it was the one thing he couldn’t find the courage to give her. He managed to stand up, buffeted by the force of air that passing cars sent his way. Layla’s dark hair was whipping her face and his. “You have to get back in the truck, Ray. I’ll drive and we’ll keep all the windows open.”

“No,” Ray said, taking her cheeks in his hands, kissing her as if it would somehow substitute for all the things he wanted to say to her, but would never find the words to express. “You’ve done all you can for me. You need to take the truck and get out of here.”

Her eyes flew wide. “A minute ago I told you I’d go anywhere with you and now you expect me to just leave you standing at the side of the road? And go where? Do what?”

Once, he’d felt entitled to hunt her down and drag her into this mess. Now all he wanted was for her to be free of it. He didn’t want her to see him degenerate into some brutal, unthinking, rage-filled killing machine. He didn’t want her to watch him bust into people’s minds and slowly lose his own. Ray took her by the shoulders. “Listen, Layla, when I found you, you were desperate to get away from Seth, and if it weren’t for me, you’d have escaped him. You need to go. Run.
You
leave the country.”

He felt her tremble, then visibly calm herself, a fierce determination in her eyes. “I’m not leaving you here.”

He traced her chin with his thumb, then gently pressed the keys into her hand. “You’re going to have to leave me here because I can’t get back in that truck. I just can’t do it. It’s too confined. What’s more, I need you to get it off the side of the road before we attract any more attention.”

He started to turn, but she grabbed his elbow. “We could meet somewhere. I’ll get rid of the truck and we can find each other—”

“After all this is over, I promise I’ll find you, Layla. But not until it’s over.”

She looked stricken. Abandoned. Ray knew that she’d loved Seth and he’d cast her away. Now she looked as if Ray were hurting her even worse. “Why are you doing this, Ray? Why won’t you let me stay with you?”