Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(37) Orders

My head was spinning.

The pieces were falling into place.

I was so happy that Rian wasn’t there to ask because I wouldn’t know what to tell him. I couldn’t explain to him why I was ripping through files, remembering one little piece of information that had been teasing at me, until I realized what it really meant. Then I just felt like cold. I wanted to scream and rip at my hair and throw things but that wouldn’t take it back. I was looking down at the proof, and it was there.

I wiped away some of my tears, my face soaking wet, and I threw my head back and screamed.

Lying was one thing.

Lying was something else.

But this?

This wasn’t lying.

This was nothing less than a betrayal.

My hands shook as I held the folder.

One piece of the puzzle had always been missing, one paper gone from the pile to cut off the most important sentence. There was always one name missing, one questions always left unanswered at the end of the day—who murdered Naomi Addams?

For years I have considered my revenge. I had spent long sleepless nights daydreaming about how it would happen. There were a thousand things that ran through my mind about what could happen. I staged it so methodically in a thousand situations that there was no way anything would have gone wrong.

When it came to the man I would murder, I had imagined a thousand different faces, but I had never seen this one.

~*~

My phone had been going off for the last hour, but I only answered at the third phone call of the hour. I knew who it would be. I plastered on the fakest smile I could manage and pressed it to my ear, my stomach still turning.

“Hi,” I murmured. Jonathon, from the other side of the line, was startled.

“You haven’t been answering me all day,” he said, sounding relieved. “I was starting to get worried . . . and I am so sorry about how much of a stalker I sound like right now, but I really was concerned.”

I smiled a little. Not enough. “No, I understand. It’s alright. I’ve been sleeping most of the day; I’ve been so stressed out lately.”

“You needed that sleep,” he muttered, almost to himself, almost as if he was trying to reassure himself. But I was biting my tongue. I was so sick of the lies, so sick of pretending. The words I wanted to tell him were on the tip of my tongue but I knew that telling him a word of it would mean his death. It would mean all of our deaths, everyone I knew, and then it would mean my life, because they would want me to look at what my actions had done.

Just like my mother had done, when she had killed her best friend, and had aimed at the rest of her family.

I couldn’t imagine. I didn’t want to know.

I felt sick. All of the words that I had just dug up, everything that had tied together and made so much sense, kept coming back up to the surface, and I didn’t want it to. I tried to shove it back down but I couldn’t do it. Not when I realized it now.

“Caitie?” Jonathon called. “Are you there?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and forced a carefree laugh. “I guess I’m still a little tired.”

“Have you been sleeping all day?”

My eyes cut to the window. Nighttime. “Yeah, pretty much. I haven’t been feeling good today.”

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked me, and he was so concerned and desperate and eager to help me in any way that he could that I somehow felt even sicker. I smiled dryly from my side of the line and pushed myself to my feet, pulling on a pair of comfortable boots over my tights and large dress shirt and belt that I had shrugged into to make myself feel more put together. I hopped into the shoe, glancing around quickly for my gun.

“No, no, I’m alright,” I assured him hurriedly, frowning when I couldn’t find it. “I’m thinking about coming over—is that okay?”

“Absolutely,” he chirped happily. “I missed you today. Parker just told me I was being a tool.”

I smiled for real this time. I imagined the expressions to go with the discussion, and it was enough to make me laugh, if only a little. “You two are like two old ladies in a nursing home, the ones that are always racing wheel chairs.”

He laughed loudly. “Now that’s a mental image. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Why do you keep asking me if I’m okay? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied unconvincingly. “I’ve just had this really bad feeling all day . . . Never mind. It’s nothing.”

But it was definitely something. I had learned to trust gut instincts like that and knew that there was something real about that feeling of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning to face the worst day of your life. I understood the truth behind our minds, no matter how mysterious. So when he mentioned that, I stopped moving. I froze to the point I must have looked like a statue, one leg lifted off the ground with my hand on the top of the boot, my phone to my ear, my face emotionless.

“What kind of bad feeling?” I asked softly.

“I guess that something bad is going to happen,” he told me, and then laughed it off. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just psyching me out because I had a bad feeling the day with my mom and brothers, you know?”

My skin went cold.

“It’s nothing,” he tried to reassure me, but now the blood had drained from my face, and my own bad feeling returned twice as strong. I straightened up completely, glancing anxiously to the window as if to spot a scope, checking my room again in search of my gun, listening carefully to make sure that Rian hadn’t slipped in without me noticing.

“Are you home right now?” I demanded.

“Yeah, I’m in my room,” he said. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes. “Caitie, I’m fine.”

I didn’t believe him. “Well, I’m coming over, okay? I’ll be there in ten minutes or so.”

“I’ll see you then,” he murmured. “I—”

Silence.

“Jonathon?”

Silence.

My ears were ringing. I couldn’t blink.

“Jonathon?” I cried.

I heard him moan in pain from the other line before it disconnected.

I cursed loudly, my hands shaking as I pressed the center button of my phone. And there, on the screen, one of the buzzing of my phone that I had ignored, was an encrypted message that stopped my world from spinning.

It’s time, it read. Tonight. Ten. Kill the target.

I slowly turned to the clock, barely containing myself from screaming.

It was one minute after ten.

My feet hit the ground, and I was running.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OH EM GEE.

x Riley