Prologue
Ben Parker felt the cold press of stone against his face and his gut churned as he forced himself to sit up.
Why was it so dark? Where the hell was he?
Something dripped down his face, and he reached up. Blood. His eyes were starting to adjust to the low light of the…? Cage? Was he in a cage?
His heart raced. His gut knotted. He was better than this. He had to calm the fuck down. He was a damn spy, and he knew panic was the real enemy.
Well, panic and Manny. Fuck. What had happened? Manny had done something. He’d been with… He couldn’t think about her now. He couldn’t think about the look on her face. He’d tried to save them all but the cost…the cost had been more than he could imagine.
Lou. She’d been the cost. He had to think about Lou. Was she here? He had to find a way to get Lou out because he knew exactly how badly things could go for her.
He moved along the floor until he managed to find a corner, his gut wrenching, likely because some asshole used experimental drugs on him. Or it could be plain sedatives, but he doubted it since Manny liked to play. He wouldn’t put anything past him. After all, he’d nearly killedKenzie’s twin twice. Ben had carried her out one time himself. He’d held her thinking she was Kenzie, held her close and gave her to her family and walked away.
Kenzie.
Kenzie was never going to forgive him. Never. Not if Lou was hurt or if she…
“Benjamin, you don’t seem to be taking to my new drugs,” a silky voice said. It floated through the air, coming at him from seemingly all angles. Like the voice of a cruel god. “Such a shame. It did work, though. How were your dreams? It does contain a bit of a psychotropic. The other patients have described the effects as nightmarish.”
The dreams. They welled inside him, shadows he didn’t want to catch, but they still came. They flooded back, each devastating image.
His head ached at the thought of the shadow world he’d been in.
In his dreams he was in the car again. He was in the accident that took his fiancée when they were in college. It had been the day he’d discovered her affair with the man who was supposed to be his best friend. Ben had been in that car, and he realized the brakes were gone and he was hydroplaning, the rain and thunder forming a soundtrack to what was almost certainly the last moments of his life.
Except this time it wasn’t Deanna in the seat beside him.
This time it was Kenzie Taggart. The love of his freaking life. The woman he’d chased across five continents and given himself to wholly. The one he was planning to marry and have a real life with.
He wished he’d told her.
It was Kenzie’s body that was thrown from the car, that he’d dragged himself through the mud to get to, that he found face down in shallow water, her face ruined by glass and branches and stone. Her beautiful face a mottled mess, but he’d tried. Even as his own body was failing he tried to bring her back.
In the never-ending nightmare of the last few hours, it had been Kenzie who coughed and came back and cursed him. Who told him she hated him and would always hate him.
It was Kenzie who died on the operating table, and her family who wouldn’t even let him see her, wouldn’t let him hold her.
He’d been devastated by Deanna’s death, but it was nothing compared to knowing Kenzie wasn’t in the world. He’d been hollowed out and ready to do whatever it took to find her again.
It had been so real.
“Did you dream about her?” Manny sounded curious, a hint of sympathy in his voice.
Manny was a sociopath. Any sympathy was performative. He was excellent at hiding the fact that he was a monster who wanted to eat the world.
Starting with Ben Parker.
“Where is Lou?” It was the only thing that mattered. Finding Lou. Getting Lou back, because if he didn’t Kenzie would never forgive him. Never.
What had he done?
“Rest assured, Louisa Ward is in good health. For now,” Manny replied. “We’ll see how intransigent she can be before deciding how much influence she’ll require to do the job. Don’t worry. I already have plans in place.”
The bombs. He’d used a couple in the last few months, destroying lives for fun and profit, building his new world order by decimating the current one.
He wanted Lou to build more. He needed her brilliance, and Ben had been the one to give it to him.
