TORTURE ME_ The Bandits MC(6)

But here was Gage, bursting back in, breaking the protective bubble around her with just a few words. Fiona swallowed hard, straightening up in her seat to type out a reply. “Why don’t you just leave it to the cops?” she wrote.



As soon as she sent it, she leaned back in her chair, letting her neck bend backward as she tried to fight off the images that were attempting to flood her brain at the moment. Chains. Blood. The flash of a smile so sharp that it looked like a knife cutting through the gentle darkness. These were the things that made up her nightmares for over ten years now. These were the things that followed her, that haunted her, that made her remember that she wasn’t a normal girl. She was broken open. She was ruined. Even all those years as a criminal profiler, she never stopped blaming herself for it. She never got over it. At some point, Fiona started to think that was a myth: “getting over it.” She didn’t think that really happened, maybe not for anyone.



She rocked back and forth in the chair, breathing deeply to calm down as she saw another message from Gage. “You know what they’re like. Useless in a case like this. I need your mind, Fiona. I need to understand him. You know what I’m talking about.”



Understand him. The unspoken compliment was there, hidden between those two words, but it felt like an insult. The implication was that Fiona could understand the murderer. Of course, she could. She’d known one so well, after all, spending all those months making his acquaintance all those years ago. Fiona was practically panting for air now, fighting off the anxiety attack that she knew wanted to hit her in this moment. “Stop it,” she grunted at herself as she bent over, sticking her head in between her knees to fight the onslaught of nausea that was attacking her stomach. She could not afford to be weak. She couldn’t fall apart just thinking about what happened to her as a kid, even if this entire situation was triggering her like crazy. She was stronger now, right?



She finally straightened back up, her body now calm except for her increasingly labored breathing. Fiona slowly typed out another reply. “Why should I help you?” She knew it was overly harsh. Gage might have deserved a lot of things, but she wasn’t sure her rudeness was one of them. Even so, it was a shield, one last barrier between her and Gage, something to make sure that she wasn’t…tempted.



Fiona just stared at the screen until Gage’s reply popped up on the screen. “It’s not about me,” Fiona whispered out loud as she read along. “It’s about the girls. We can save them. Together.”



Fiona felt her heart stutter in her chest, that last word scaring her so much she might’ve actually stopped breathing entirely for a minute there. She knew she was a hysterical mess, a bundle of nerves masquerading as a person, but that realization didn’t help her calm down very much. Still, she inhaled deeply and leaned forward in her chair, putting her face as close to the computer as possible so that Carl wouldn’t see the messages if he snuck up behind her.



“We can’t save anything. We couldn’t even save our relationship. I don’t want to go to the city just to see two girls die,” Fiona typed back.



Gage’s response came back in what felt like mere seconds, even if in reality it was longer. Either way, Fiona knew he was doing exactly what she was, hovering over his computer, anxiously awaiting her responses. He was always as tightly-wound as she was. Carl was different. He was so relaxed all the time, so chill. He was the opposite of intense, in all situations. It was comforting, most of the time. But some of the time… Well, Fiona didn’t want to think about that right now, not when she was talking to Gage, at least.



“I know. But don’t you want to come see two girls survive? Just once?” Gage wrote.



Fiona sat back in her chair, focusing on the way her muscles ached, her body immediately feeling exhausted even when her brain was just considering going back into the murder business. When she first started victims’ advocate work, it was in the city, living with Gage. She’d meet up with murder victims’ families, tell them it wasn’t their fault, and help them hold up in court when they had to testify. And then she’d leave them behind as new cases emerged, new murders that just piled up and up and up as the months went by. No matter what, she couldn’t heal those families. She couldn’t restore them, not really, not ever. It was grueling, soul-destroying work, if Fiona was being honest. It was much easier for her to deal with the small-town troubles, the domestic abuse survivors. Instead of having to console people, she was able to take action here to prevent murders from happening by removing women from dangerous environments. This was the work that made her feel good, that made her feel whole.