He laughed. “I fucking hated you for showing weakness. It was your mother’s compassion showing through.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see her in you because she was my greatest weakness.”
Jillian closed her eyes. His words stole her past, leaving a void. Maybe it was better to feel nothing about everything than to harbor the anger.
“Something changed. You treated me like shit during my training, but what you did after the kidnapping … that was different. That was so much more. Why?” Jillian, Jessica, needed to make sense of something. Knox’s story crushed her in so many ways.
“She stayed.” He closed his eyes.
Jillian hated the door he opened, the one that made her see him as a human. A man in love with a woman. A broken soul. She knew that feeling. That wasn’t allowed. There could be no empathy for the man who raped her. Life was a cruel bitch because in that moment a grain-of-sand-on-the-beach part of her heart felt something for the monster, and it wasn’t hate. Maybe only another monster who had done some horrifically regrettable things, too, could feel it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jackson survived the trip to San Francisco without hearing a word from Luke. It gave him time to contemplate the identity of the man who would step off the plane. As the moist air dampened his lungs upon exiting the airport, he realized the duality no longer existed. The line between his past and present disappeared. Jackson was Jude and Jude was Jackson.
“If you want to go home, I have a few errands to run. I can pick you up later.”
Luke squinted. “Don’t give me that shit.”
“If you end up dead, don’t blame me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind … when I’m dead.”
They took a series of buses weaving them through the city then walked for several blocks.
“What is this?” Luke asked.
“It’s where I hide my bones.” Jackson tipped over an old bench and dug into the brush and dirt atop a hill in Golden Gate Park.
“Bones?”
“It’s a dog reference since I’m digging in the dirt. You have a dog, so I thought you’d get it. Apparently not.”
“If you need money—”
“Nope.” Jackson kept digging.
“A tracking device for Jess?”
He grinned. “So you think she needs one too? Well, that’s something we agree on.”
“No. I’m just trying to figure out why the hell you’re digging for ‘bones’ when we need to find out where they’ve taken her!”
“I know where she’s at.”
“What?”
Jackson clenched his fingers around a strap and tugged, unearthing a duffle bag.
“Answer me? Where? How do you know?”
He wiped the caked-on mud off the bag. “When we landed, I received a text.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you say something? What did the text say?”
“Nothing.”
“You received a text that said nothing? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It was an image.”
Jackson refilled the hole and returned the bench to its original spot.
“Well show me the fucking image.”
“No.” He pulled himself up and sat on the bench, dusting off his pants.
“No? Did you just tell me no?”
Jackson glanced up and sighed. The weight of the image nearly broke him, and he was unbreakable. It would destroy Luke.
“I think you should let me handle this. Preston? The man I killed? I saw the shock on your face. I tasted your disgust. And that was a simple case of taking out the trash. But you felt sorry for him. It was very humane of you.”
Luke fisted the collar of Jackson’s shirt and pulled him close. “Listen to me,” he gritted. “I don’t know what you think you tasted, but it wasn’t disgust. That wife-beating asshole got what he deserved. But I don’t want to talk about him. I want you to show. Me. The. Goddamn. Picture!”
“No.” Jackson silently applauded Luke’s ballsiness, even if it was futile.
“If she dies, it’s on you, asshole.”
Jackson clenched his teeth. “How do you figure?”
“You killed AJ. You let her leave alone, and then you failed to ask the right questions to the right people. But we don’t have time to argue about how I feel about you, so just show me the fucking picture.”
Grabbing the bag, he stood, keeping his eyes fixed to Luke’s, daring him to blink. He pulled out his phone and clicked on the screen, holding it six inches from Luke’s face.
The life drained from his face and his eyes as he swallowed back what had to be the contents of his stomach. It was the humane reaction. But he had to give him credit, he didn’t blink, not even a flinch.
*
Luke couldn’t breathe. Anger was a normal human emotion, but what he felt went beyond anger. He wanted to kill.
It hurt less when she was dead. Seeing her naked, emaciated, bound, bruised, and bleeding … it was beyond his worst imaginable nightmare. If her sunken eyes hadn’t been focused on the camera, he wouldn’t have believed she was alive.