The Darkest Corner (Gravediggers #1)(27)

He tortured himself the same way every day. Three miles underground until he reached the end and used the ladder to climb out, and then lie flat on his back as he gulped in breaths of fresh air. The cool mud seeped into his clothes and the rain chilled his overheated flesh. His eyes were sensitive to the daylight, so he kept his eyes closed.

They owned the abandoned lake property, and there was no danger of others seeing him there. So he lay there and let the seconds tick down in his head while his heartbeat slowed and the blackness ebbed away.

He allowed himself exactly four minutes to lie there before dropping back into the tunnel and starting the three-mile trek back to the house. Maybe someday he'd be able to make it in each direction without having to stop and remind himself he wasn't dying. He'd made a lot of progress in two years. But there were some things-some horrors-that stuck with a man forever. And the day he died and rose again was his perpetual nightmare.

The last mile was always the hardest, when he was so close to the end but the urge to quit rose up inside of him. By the time he reached the door and coded himself back into the carriage house, he'd broken out in a cold sweat and his hands were shaking. But they weren't shaking as bad as they had been the day before. Or the day before that. 

A cold blast of air hit him when he entered the kitchen and Axel was sitting at the table, his iPad in his hands and a cup of coffee within arm's reach. He quickly blanked the screen when he saw Deacon, but Deacon pretended like he didn't see it and went to the fridge for a bottle of water, guzzling it down in one long gulp.

The kitchen was large and built family-style, though it was rare for all of them to be in it at the same time. They were all solitary by nature, and had their own habits and ways of doing things. But he'd lived in worse places, and no one could say that Eve Winter didn't provide for the men who owed her servitude.

The kitchen was bright and airy and extremely modern, which Deacon didn't particularly care for, but it was more than functional. The floor was big slabs of stained concrete and the walls were a horizontal wood paneling. The appliances were stainless steel and oversized, and every dish in the cabinet was white. Once a week several boxes were delivered that contained groceries for the week. They all foraged for themselves since no one was much good in the kitchen, and Tess was even worse, so there was no use trying to bum a meal off her.

The kitchen was in the back corner of the house and looked out onto a courtyard garden protected by an eight-foot stone privacy fence. There was a fountain and a couple of benches hidden between shrubs and flowering bushes, and more often than not it was the most likely place to find Axel at the end of the day, just as the sun was going down.

Of all his brothers, Axel was the one he was closest to. But he didn't know how his friend did it. How he managed to wake up every morning and get out of bed-put one foot in front of the other-knowing his wife was a thousand miles away, going on with her life under the assumption that her husband was dead. Axel had watched her grieve. He still watched her grieve. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. He was hanging on by a thread, and one day it would snap.

The stakes were too high for Gravediggers. They were dead men. Their lives belonged to Neptune and the talking heads who were playing a game of chess with real lives-at least they belonged to them for the ten years they'd signed on for servitude. Or until they died for real. But you didn't sign your name to that contract without understanding the ramifications of what happened if it was discovered that you weren't as dead as the rest of the world seemed to think you were. That was why it was so important to stay away from anyone in their former lives. The second their true identity became known, not only their lives became forfeit, but the lives of their family as well.

So Axel watched the woman he loved from a distance, using satellite imagery and the surveillance cameras that he'd had installed. He'd watched her grieve with such intensity that the child she'd carried hadn't been able to withstand the stress on her body. And he watched her still, as she tried to put the broken pieces of her life back together. Axel wasn't a man of many words. He did the job, and did it well. But there was a loathing rage inside him that bubbled just beneath the calm surface. And Deacon couldn't blame him one bit if he decided to erupt one day.

"How's the new guy?" Deacon asked.

"About how you'd imagine. It never gets easier. Bringing them in and watching them, knowing what they're going through."

"On a scale of one to ten, how pissed is he?"

"About a fifteen, but he's hiding it well. He's a dangerous son of a bitch. You read his file?"

"Yeah, I read it. And he'll be a hell of an asset. If he doesn't try to kill me. Eve's not very good about the transition once she has their signature on the contract. All of a sudden you're surrounded by men who hold you down and inject you with whatever the hell that stuff is."