Restrain (Siren Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter
Two

Camilla “Milla” Greenwich

After spending so long penned with the animals, it's strange trying to return to daily life. Where I once found myself lost in my work, admiring the cold beauty of the ships I help repair, now the metal's pale and lifeless. My senses are dulled, having only recently come alive doing the work I was meant to be doing. After years of watching them bleed us dry, I'm helping the parasites who've done their damndest to kill my community and my family get a taste of their own medicine, dying in neglect and preventable accidents.

When I'm aboard the
Siren
, watching their struggles, I am
alive
. I am
powerful
. I am vengeance.

When I'm in the Roane Industries' Shipyards, I'm an ant, following the trail without question, even when I know it leads to my death. You can't really call it living.

After decades of disuse, my active imagination finally earns its keep, reminding me of every sensation, every stimulus burning their deaths in my mind. The wet crack as George Roane's head crashed against the side of the ballast tank I lured him into. The metallic clang and
snap
of impact when Denise fell. The soft give as I stabbed Calder's driver, to keep my secret safe. I
still
smell the corpses when I shut my eyes. Whether they're burning, or rotting in water, who can say what's the nastiest one? And I've smelled them
all
. Not just the metallic tang of a child's blood and stomach and intestines, a pungent odor that haunted my dreams for
years
after my sister Mara's death.

No one knows what my secret smile hides, but they like the change. At least, they did before I informed my manager I had mono, and was going to be at home for a matter of weeks, unable to work. Grudgingly, he agreed to accept the doctor's note once I'm better, since I said they didn't want to risk me infecting other patients in the office. By the time my lie catches up with me, it won't matter.

I haven't spent any time at home; the
Siren
is my home. Even if the parasites I've trapped there are just stewing, it's still better to be watching, waiting for the moment they crack.

Calder seems to have lost his will to go on. Certainly, he's lost the fight he once had; you'd never know he once fixated on giving me the finger by destroying my cameras. That was what originally forced me to put the sheepskin on. So his newfound meekness... it's a victory that's given me a lot more privacy. I don't have to pretend to be one of them. I don't have to indulge my attraction to him. I don't have to worry about whether he likes me, or likes me
too
much.

It's not as satisfying, sure, but it's for the better. I was getting too close to the trees to be able to act in the forest's interest.

Our sleep schedules don't always match up, since I have the privilege of spending time in
daylight
, but when it works out, I take my time bringing their food, not hurrying in and out.

I sit at Calder's shoulder sometimes, while they sleep. He's drugged into submission, admittedly, but it's still strange seeing how little real emotion there is on those beautiful features, now etched with stress and loss. The new lines only make him all the more handsome to me. And that's a
bona fide
problem. I never had to fake the chemistry between us; I only had to figure out how to channel what was already there into the appropriate reaction to manipulate him. It frustrated me and violated me, the confusion he provoked.

On the one hand, sitting next to him, my hand on his forehead, it grounds me, reminds me that behind the pixellated images there's a visceral truth, one I've fought damn hard to bring into reality. On the other hand, I don't know that I need to be reminded that in
slightly
different circumstances, I'd be here kissing him awake.

It's not right, him having so little motivation. It's not right, him lying there, day after day, letting the others explore and interact. It's not right watching him reject the food I've made for him over and over again.

I think I've
finally
broken Calder Roane. That was always my goal, but now I'd do
anything
to have broken him a little
less
.

Chapter
Three

Calder

A glowing face above me, clean and untouched by decay or violence. I strain to open my eyes, bring its features into focus, but my eyes won't cooperate. My head spins, and I can't move my limbs.

Gentle hands on my forehead, smoothing out a crease. Tracing my cheekbones, and my temples. The soft touch is a godsend, an anchor, one that makes me feel full of strength despite my paralysis. Silky hair falls around my face, casting the one above me into shadow, a new moon, full of potential and horror. I try to cry out, but the gesture's moot. One of the hands retreats from my skin and swipes the hair back over her shoulder.

Her? Yes, her. My head is in a warm lap, with the vaguest brush of shapely breasts against my forehead, as she looks down at me. A faint shadow caused by scars on the side of her temple tells me who it is, though I wish I could fixate on her eyes.

Milla heaves a sigh, air streaming past full lips. “
Now
, do you understand?”

I sit up, wishing the dream could have lasted longer. But Marquel and Allen are already gone, exploring, or beating their brains out against the wall, or something. And in the quiet, I have nothing to do but remember it, relive it, as though if I believe in it enough, I'll open my eyes and Milla will be in my arms.

I don't remember the last time I heard Marquel laugh, a machine-gun patter that you
had
to believe was sincere, because it sounded too stupid not to be genuine. Being here, well, it's not really living. It's not really dying, either. Yet.

My mind is stuck on the room where Denise died. The air rushing around me as I fell, and the painful impact. The words scrawled on the wall, and my desperation to get out.

Trapped in that room with two bodies—my best friend and an unhappy mother—a piece of me died.

My fingers still itch from my efforts to tear their clothes, piece together a rope. And when I had it finished, when I had the choice to hang myself, or try to get up the hole in the ceiling I came, I chose to fight. I chose to run. And I failed.

Maybe I would have failed, even if I chose the other, but if I had it to do over again, I don't know that I'd make the same choice.

Realistically, if I really wanted to kill myself, I could haul my sorry ass up that steep ladder-stairway hybrid to get into the ballast area. I could throw myself into that tank, and rest with my brother and the woman I wanted to love.

I don't know how much longer I have before I'm that desperate.

Footsteps echo at the other end of the room, the others getting back from their day. They were able to remove the blockade and get into another room. I haven't convinced myself to go look, yet, but it must be interesting since they've been going back there for the better part of two days. 

Allen looks at me. “What? No 'how did it go today?' No 'thank you for your hard work trying to save
all
of our asses?'” The snappishness is out of character, a reminder of the man he was at first, the man that Milla was afraid of.

“What's up
your
ass?”

“Ten seconds to guess. Take a
real
good look,
Cal
.”

I stare at him. Nothing new to see. Gray hair frizzling free, its haircut long outgrown. Filthy clothes draped limply off him. Even with me eating less, the others have still lost weight, too. He's aged a decade in a matter of weeks, his skin hanging lustrelessly around panda-bags beneath his eyes.

“Handsome as ever? So what the fuck's your problem?”

Allen sighs, recognizing that I'm not up for games and aggression. “It's Marquel. He's—He's—” It takes him several tries to get a full sentence out. “He's not coming back. He's gone too.”

That
gets my attention. “
What
? How?”

“The other room's a dead end, but there was a pipe that we thought
might
be big enough for us to get through. We were exploring it, and it went quite a ways. Marquel went first, and—” He bites his lip. “It must have connected to a fuel line. I don't know
what
sparked it, but—”

I nod, and resume staring at the wall. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

“It wasn't anything like Alex,” he says, his voice strained. “I thought
for sure
you'd hear us both yelling. He screamed so
long
—” He looks at me expectantly. I'm not sure if he's expecting a hand on his shoulder, or for me to punch something, like I did when Milla and George passed. “I thought
for sure
you'd recognize the smell...”

That
gets a reaction, if an invisible one. My stomach's knotted with pain at the very thought of throwing up from that smell.

“That's it? You two were friends, right?” Allen's brows knit together.

“Yeah, we used to be.” I flush, angry that I'm apparently not affected enough for him.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I
should
be openly grieving. But I just can't. I don't have any emotion left. We're all dying here anyways. It's not like I'm gonna be any
more
mourned than Marquel.

Allen pats my shoulder and retreats, leaving me space.

Chapter
Four

Milla

Flames crackling, limbs flailing, clothes burning, so intensely that the pixels where the flames are mostly glow white, and the mic pickup is intermittent. I can almost smell it, acrid and smoky. I can almost feel the heat. Marquel stops, drops, and rolls, but the flames won't go out; there's too many fumes in the air around him, and the floor of that section is coated in oil.

He yells as the fire spreads, searing his skin. He struggles back into the pipe, but his grip fails as he tries to pull himself up.

Allen reaches for him, tries to help despite his own risk, but his grip fails and Marquel falls to the floor, getting more oil on his clothes. The flames have seized the opportunity, however, and spread to the lip of the pipe, where Marquel's oily hands grasped. Allen must be thanking
fuck
he's not wearing long sleeves. At the least, his hand's gotta be singed.

Marquel looks behind him and realizes the grand finale—the tank in the back that the flames are eating at. If there's even a little crack in it—and why
would
there be a crack in hardware on a derelict ship?—it's gonna blow. He screams at Allen to get away, to get the fuck away. I can almost taste his fear. But more than that, he's resigned. He knows he's gone. He knows that he can't fight for himself, only for Allen.

If only he had that kind of team spirit toward the constituents George served, rather than to the lobbyists who paid their bills.

Fuck
, I wish I could have been there. Behind Allen, obviously. But still. I guess I got spoiled, seeing everything firsthand. Still, the distance's been good for me. It's cemented my certainty in my work.

And
surely
this'll revive Calder, remind him of the urgency of the situation. He was supposed to go down
fighting
. It's impossible to recognize the force of nature who almost ruined things, who strong-armed me into risking exposing myself. There's nothing left of that man in the zombie still
exactly
where I left him this morning.

I want to punch him, to slap his chest in disgust.
This is
all
?
Fuck. If only I'd known it'd be so easy to crack him. Maybe I wouldn't have bothered. But for all I've put in, I
need
the payoff. I need him to fight me. I need him to know what it is to struggle and fail, not just to lay down and die.

What the hell, Calder?

Okay. So I rushed when I threw myself into that ballast tank, celebrating when George took the bait and jumped down after me. I overreacted to the prospect of being trapped between both of the Roane brothers, with my affections volleyed back and forth among male egos too big for the room. If I'd been thinking, I'd have popped up from the second tank, staggered over to them, and convinced them that I'd found a secret pipe that had saved me from everything they did to mess with the tanks.

I overplayed my hand, to avoid having to face what I felt in his arms. I took the easy way out, and it could ruin
everything
.

My work is more important than myself. It's more important than my confusion over accepting Calder's affection. It's more important than the possibility of being trapped between men who could easily overpower me. It's more important than the loss of my control and will when Calder kisses me.

I have to go back in, but to do that, I need to retcon some shit. If I just come back, mysteriously alive, Calder will never buy it. He needs to believe I've suffered just as much as him, in his absence.

*              *              *

“Have you ever thought about hurting yourself?”

I know what she's looking for. It was just a fistfight at school, but now everyone thinks I have “problems” and are looking to see how deep they go. But that shit, it's for attention seekers. It's for people who don't know that the pain inside is the real stuff, the worthwhile stuff. It's for girls who want the
world
to know Daddy touched them instead of looking at themselves now that he's
not
.  It's for people who wallow in the past.

Unfortunately, that seems to be where they want
me
.

“Really? That's
really
what you're gonna ask me?” I know the way they look at me, alternately pitying, confused, and curious.

She stares at me a minute.  “Okay, then. If you want to talk about that. What did you think, Cammie? What was the first thought that went through your head when you heard the shot and found your dad?”

“What do you
think
, asshole? I thought he was a fucking coward. And I
told
you not to call me Cammie.”

Maria blanches at my language. For a therapist who's supposed to
specialize
in troubled children and teens, she sure sucks at actually relating to them. “You weren't surprised?”

“You think I'm stupid? We
all
saw it coming.”

“And why's that?”

“Why do you
think
? Because his wife was sleeping around, since he didn't want to give her another kid to replace the one who got shot. Oh yeah. That too. Because his favorite daughter got
shot
.” I sneer at her, unable to believe she's honestly this
stupid
. People've been acting surprised for
years
every time they hear my dad's alive. All of my teachers, my friends' parents.

“And what about you?”

“Like I said. I think he's a coward. He did the bad guys' work
for
them.” I catch myself before I can spill the beans. He made me promise
never
to say what the men who killed Mara told us. And I won't, at least not while they can still hurt my mom. I press lips coated in a thick coat of gloss together, counting down the minutes until she turns me loose. Evie said her brother scored some weed for her, and might get some for me too, if I made it worth his while. I took that for code that he wanted to be part of the party.

“Bad guys?”

I send her a blistering glance, and inspect my nails. Dad never let me wear this shade of red—he said it was too mature for a thirteen year old. But if he wants to stop me, he can just unshoot himself, grab the damn remover, and scrub it off me, himself.

Maria's obviously still expecting an answer, so I send her my most sultry smile, the one that makes the truck drivers honk at me. Her disdainful expression is worth it, but she's still waiting for that answer. “Millie—”

That was his name for me. He's the only one allowed to still say it.

I cut her short. “Don't
ever
call me that again. I'll stab you if you do.”

“Do you really mean that?” She smiles, still trying to be tender despite my hostility.

“Do you want to try me?”

A month later, Maria turned up dead, apparently having committed suicide. At the time, I smirked to myself that
it takes one to know one
, relieved I'd never have to sit in her stuffy office and poke around in my insides like an ancient diviner. Only later did I find out
why
, stumbling across it when one of the guys who came after my sister came after
me
, in the wake of it. He'd
also
cacked Maria.

He confessed that she'd taken me at my word, about the “bad guys”, and made an educated guess about the unidentified men who broke in and murdered Mara. She'd talked to the wrong people, a little too loudly, and they shut her up. Then, he tried to kill me for them, and the only thing that got me out alive was one of the neighbors thinking it was a domestic dispute and calling the cops, repeatedly, to make it worth their while to show up and shut them up. I ran when my would-be killer flinched at the sirens, and the cops never found me. Thank goodness my mom wasn't home.

That
was why Daddy always said we should pretend we had
no clue
why those men were there, who they were working for.

My entire adolescence, I prided myself on how healthy I was, despite it all. Why, I could drink, fuck, and top the best of them. I wasn't sitting there pathetically, transforming one kind of pain to another like a spiritual magician. By the time I realized that I
wasn't
healthy, that
none
of us emerged unscathed, I'd seen a lot more death and abuse, and learned to have a
lot
more empathy for those who'd experienced it. I never quite took to self-harm, but some of that was that I knew if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop. Life isn't a whole person, moving through it quietly. It's brains spattered on the wall, and a child choking to death as her lungs fill up with blood.

And that's the thought that gives me courage as I turn on the electric blade, and lower it toward my calf.

*              *              *

My leg aches, several shallow cuts across one side of it, and miscellaneous abrasions filling out the space between them. I remove the paper from the sander, and throw it overboard. Doing this on deck probably wasn't the best idea, but I thought the air might calm me while I did what had to be done.

My clothes are stained with blood, and I have the injuries to back it up. None of them are serious, but they look gruesome enough to pass muster, I think. I bite my lip and fight to direct my mind away from the remembered pain from the blade tearing into my leg, and the sander shredding the top layers of skin. Frankly, I'm still a little queasy. My hands hurt from squeezing the handle tightly to conceal the trembling.

When Calder goes to bed, I'll go down, do my best to put some fight back in him. He has to go down fighting, overwhelmed by sheer odds, not sleeping the remainder of his short life away. He needs me there to have something to fight for. That's the only reason I'm going; it's
not
that I'm attracted to watching people die.

But some part of me wonders if it's the other way around. What if I don't
want
to see him die unhappy? What if I can't accept my own success because I'm not strong enough to see it through?