I really must have lost my mind.
14. SEE JANE KILL
The dark shadow we hide in makes me nervous. He places a hand on the small of my back, leaning in to whisper in my ear, "Jane, the dark is your friend. Only in the dark can you hide and sneak and watch. The dark is on our side."
It's chilling, but I know he's right. We creep along the side of the large house. It was a fourteen-hour drive here, but it will be one tick off the list of people who can make us disappear. I have come to an us-against-them mindset.
He reaches around me, opening the door with a turn of the knob. He lifts a gloved finger to his lips. I nod.
We creep inside. I can't believe a man from the CIA would sleep with his house unlocked. The sensors detecting movement in the kitchen and hallways might be the reason. I freeze when I see one, but Derek steps up to a panel and punches in a four-digit number. The light on the panel turns to green. He gives me a grin.
We sneak along the dark hallway, tiptoeing up the stairs where he tiptoes directly to a specific room, again turning the knob silently. He creeps into the room, where a man snores and a woman breathes deeply.
He drops to his knees at the bedside of the sleeping man, pulling back the covers slightly. He slips a needle from his jacket, shaking a tiny vial. He fills the syringe with the liquid from the vial. Then he takes a piece of wood and a small packet from his pocket. He wipes the arm with the cloth from the packet, numbing the skin. He drags the piece of sharp wood along the spot he's numbed and injects the needle into him, covering the needle hole with a second drag of the wood. He pulls a plastic bag from his pocket, placing all the items into the plastic bag so silently I'm actually baffled. Baffled and disgusted. The fact that a man is about to be killed makes me feel varying emotions, at least one of which is sadness. He's lying in his bed, asleep and snoring next to his wife. He's at peace. He has kids and a dog. He's a man, a regular man, and we are here to end that.
I don't like it.
But it's us against them, and he's on their side. My freedom depends on his death, whether I like it or not.
Derek gets up, leaving the room, but I stand there, wishing I could tell the dying man to kiss his wife good-bye. I feel sick for them both. Derek comes back, taking my gloved hand in his and pulling me from the room. We slip down the stairs, an argument brewing in my head as we exit the house after setting the sensor alarm again.
"What was that? He's still up there snoring away. Why did you do it this way? It seems sick to leave him like that, a ticking time bomb for his wife."
"He takes a sleeping pill at night. There's no waking him until his eight hours are up. That specific poison mimics the flesh-eating disease. He was with his family in Virginia Beach yesterday. There was a news report that several beaches along the East Coast had the flesh-eating bacteria, vibrio, in the waters. Now, to the common coroner or doctor, he has flesh-eating disease. I would diagnose that. The poison will kill him in the next two hours and eat away at the spot on his arm. He'll die looking like he has suffered a major onset during the evening." He smiles wide, making my heart skip beats.
I don't know what to say. He's a sick, sick man. And yet, he's a genius. We turn and leave the property as I fight the desperate need to vomit. "How did you know his alarm code?"
He glances back at me as we enter the woods. "There are some people in this world who should never be trifled with. They should be left to live in peace because they are far too dangerous for the average human being." He opens the car door for me as we reach the back road we parked on. "I am one of those people. When I decide to kill someone I learn everything. I have several possible outcomes mapped out in my head. I force myself to use the kindest means possible, depending on the person. Don was a good man. He never screwed me over on purpose. He just knew it was time to retire me. His version of retirement and mine differ. I let him retire his way." He closes my door, and I realize he isn't boasting. He isn't like that. He is sincere in his words and his actions.
We drive to an older part of DC, where he parks next to a building that is a bit rough for my liking. He gets out so I follow. When he enters the building from an unlocked door on the side, I pause. I don't want to go into the run-down building, but the streets surrounding us aren't any better. He pokes his head back out of the door, giving me a look. "It's nicer inside."
I follow him into the building, trying not to flip out at the slight noises in the distant corners I cannot see. It's a warehouse type of building, not an apartment. It isn't at all what I imagined. We climb some metal stairs to a large door. When he opens it the sight confuses me. It's a beautiful flat that should be where the office for the warehouse is. He holds the door open, looking smug. "See!"
"Look, you've been lying to me for a long time. You murdered Ronald; you were putting my aunt on a flight to Colorado, not Austria, where we were going; you murdered people for fun and for a living; and you've erased my mind twice, but there are things in there I can't explain. I remember torturing my father. You've told me I kill cats in my sleep, but I don't think that's true. So wipe that smug look off your face." I stalk into the flat, slumping down into a chair. I'm exhausted and starving.
He presses his back against the closed door. "I never killed Ronald. You did. I wasn't lying." He looks down. "You get confused sometimes. It's only since the amnesia set in. You sleepwalk, but it isn't sleepwalking. It's real. You're awake, and you are old Sam and paranoid. Very paranoid."
My eyes lower to my hands. "What did I do to him?"
"You stabbed him. I followed you, but I got there too late. So I stabbed over and over, making the wounds inconsistent. I took you home and I cleaned you and put you back to bed."
"The next night I woke covered in blood again."
He nods. "I don't know what you killed. I was truly at work. I thought since the threat was gone, old Sam would be at peace again. She only comes out when there's a threat. I keep your world as peaceful as I can. You can't run into people you might know, and you can't get stressed in any way. It makes it worse."
"But I haven't done it since I started finding everything out. I haven't been sleepwalking."
He shakes his head. "No. It doesn't mean you won't."
I never imagined I would be as much a threat as he is, or even more of one. "Are you scared I'll hurt you?"
"Sometimes I worry about it, but I like to give you the benefit of the doubt, considering who we both are in this." His tone is dark and eerie. It matches us. We are both dark and eerie.
"Am I still a murderer if I don't remember doing it?"
He shakes his head.
"When did I torture my father?"
He winces. "You didn't."
"I remember-"
"The man looked like your dad. He was a man from Paris who made the mistake of touching you in a way you didn't want. He looked similar to your dad. You didn't kill him, I did."
"Oh God. I'm an animal." None of it feels real. None of it makes sense. "Did I really kill cats?" He nods slowly as my entire world falls apart. "I'm an animal."
He walks to me, dropping to his knees on the hardwood floor in front of me. "You are a sweet person. A good person. If you were awake and fully conscious, you wouldn't hurt an innocent person. Trust me."
"Why did it start when you erased my memory?"
He shakes his head. "I don't know. I exhausted the research on it, but there is no way to specifically answer questions about the brain and the subconscious. We are more than we know. Layers are in there, in our minds. We can't always see inside the layers. We can't stop being who we are in there."
"Like you with the killing?" Did I just justify his being a killer? Does it matter, with the track record I have?
He lifts me up, scooping me into his arms. He kisses the side of my face, breathing me in. "I love you, Jane. I loved you when you were Andrea, I loved you as Sam. I will love you with whatever name you choose for the next time. I wasn't lying to you when I said we found each other in the dark and we made light. That's what you are for me. You are possibility and light and love and everything I never had before I met you."
Andrea? I wrap my arms around him. "I don't know how to be a normal girl. I just want to be normal."
He shakes his head. "What's normal? We were raised by the normal people out there in the world. Every house has secrets, even if it looks normal on the outside. Every house has a notch hole, Jane. Look what normal made us." His eyes are more green than gray, shining with what might be the light we make together.