“I thought you were the smart one,” I say, shaking my head. He turns his narrowed eyes to me, and I can’t help but ask, "Haven't you put it all together yet?”
CHAPTER TWO
WREN
"Haven't you put it all together yet?” Elias asks, sounding both annoyed and a little hurt.
I may not have seen him in over seven years, but before that, I’d known him my whole life. I could always tell when he was upset or if something bothered him, even if he wouldn’t tell me what it was.
I’m seated in the back of our new SUV, and Elias is all the way in the front, but my eyes are glued to the back of his head, hoping to get another glimpse of his face whenever he turns around. I can’t believe he’s actually here. I thought he had forgotten about me, that he’d graduated and moved on with his life, maybe even be married with kids by now.
“Why don’t you explain it to us?” Pete asks from in front of me. Unlike our last SUV, which had two back rows of seats, this one has a bench at the far back where Dex and I are currently sitting, then, in front of that, two captain's chairs where Pete and Jagger are seated, with a small space between them.
“Where do I even start?” Elias says as he turns to look at the side window.
“At the beginning,” I say, loud enough that he’ll hear me. He quickly turns to face me, and when those deep brown eyes meet mine, it’s like a jolt to my senses, the same as it was when I first realized who he was at the safe house. Licking my lips, I add, “You stopped calling.”
His brows pinch in pain, and he shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, Wren. I begged them to let me call you, but they refused.”
“Who?” Pete voices my question.
He sighs, running a hand through his tousled brown hair to push it out of his face as he takes a moment to think.
“Do you remember what subject I was studying at University?”
“Of course,” I answer instantly. “Computer Science.”
He nods. “I chose that subject not just because I was good at it, but because I wanted to find out more about your brother.”
“Why would you want to look into him—” I cut myself off as realization hits. “You knew, didn’t you? That he was grooming me?” I can’t hold back the hurt as I ask, and Dex grabs my hand, squeezing it with reassurance.
“No, Wren, I didn’t know he was doingthat. But I knew he was lying to you, about a lot of things. When we were young, my parents just said he was being overprotective because you both had lost your parents, that it was nothing to worry about. In high school, other kids talked about him, spoke about him like this powerful, dangerous man. I begged my parents to help me get you out of there, but they said he wasn’t doing anything illegal and you were perfectly safe there.”
Pete lets out a grunt of disapproval, but I ignore it as I motion for Elias to continue. I haven’t been able to talk to Elias without my brother’s eyes on us since we were around eleven or twelve. I want to hear everything he has to say now. Everything he’s had to hold back for over a decade.
“That’s when I started learning more about computers and hacking. When I was in my second year of University, I was approached at school one day by a couple of federal agents. They took me back to their headquarters, where they told me they knew I was hacking into systems to find info on Robert. I was terrified. I thought I was going to jail. But instead, they offered me a job. Said they wanted my help taking Robert down. The catch was, I wasn’t allowed to contact you, not even to say goodbye.”
I can see in his face how much that hurt him. It had devastated me. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and to suddenly stop talking was like losing a leg and learning to walk again. Especially since he was my only support. Without him to lean on, I had nothing. At least he knew the reason why we weren’t talking. I’d thought the worst of him, that he had abandoned me. My stomach tightens as a knot of guilt sits heavily in my gut.
“So you just abandoned her?” Sly asks, sounding angry on my behalf.
“What was I supposed to do, man? I wasn’t even allowed to speak to her without her brother listening in.”
“Couldn’t you have just told her you were going away for a while or something?” Dex asks, but Elias shakes his head.
“I guess they didn’t trust my acting skills. They thought I’d let something slip and blow their entire operation.”
“What happened next?” I ask, wanting to know the rest of the story.
“I started working for the FBI while I finished my degree. And when I graduated, they recruited me full-time. I spent all my time hacking into Robert’s cameras and making sure you weren’t being physically harmed. I kept trying to get you out of there, but they said he wasn’t physically abusing you, so we couldn’t take the risk.”
“Psychological abuse can be just as bad, if not worse, than physical,” Sly says, his hands tightening on the steering wheel in anger.
“I know that!” Elias barks back. “But it wasn’t my call to make. And even if I could somehow break into that house, and magically get her out… Then what? I had nowhere to take her. No money, no resources. We’d be caught within days.”
“Hold on,” I say, seeing Jagger signing frantically. I rest my hand on his shoulder as I lean forward. “Sign that again.”
“He said he was watching you on the cameras. Explain.”
