Puppet Master

Chapter Thirty Four

His eyes intent in the rear view mirror, he replied quietly, “Your seatbelt on?”

When she nodded her head, the car jolted forward at an unrelenting pace, pushing her entire body back against the plush leather seat with the force.

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The sky was a pitch black canvas by the time they reached her apartment building, with tiny holes punched through the surface. Before the key was out of the ignition, or Jayden had even moved to unclip his seatbelt, she was racing towards the glass double doors, frantically searching through the pockets of her slacks for the keys.

She heard his panicked voice shouting her name as he followed her, but it washed across her consciousness, oozing out of the edges of her mind, focused solely as she was on the thought of Shannon’s already broken body and soul being tortured and maimed by the psychotic sadist that Jayden had brought into her life. That Nate had driven her out there to.

She stopped short in the doorway to her small flat, staring into her older brother’s tortured steel gaze, watching the self recriminations fly through the gun metal grey depths as his steps faltered from where he’d been pacing backwards and forwards across the lounge, frozen like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

“Tor,” he reached out his strong, callused hands to her beseechingly, quietly asking forgiveness in the only way he really knew how – by demanding it – and her full, pouting lips turned up in a sneer.

“Just don’t Nate,” she looked back at Jayden, who stood at her back, his head hanging low as he heard her words, “I think I’ve already heard it all. Or as much as I’m interested in anyway. Now where the fuck is she?”

She watched the muscle tick in Nate’s jaw, watched his eyes assessing her, how much she could take.

“Just tell me damn it!”

“Davies said she was definitely there, one of the bartenders recognised her picture, but she left already apparently.”

Relief was a double edged sword, she knew how vulnerable Shannon could be in this state.

“How could you say that to her?” her voice was an angry sneer, but she was shivering with rage and fire that coiled in her blood, “Why? For God’s sake, Nate, what the hell did she ever do to you to deserve that?”

Big, burly arms crossed against his thick set chest, so that each muscle rippled beneath his pale skin, and his teeth clenched as he looked back at her, begrudgingly voicing his next words, “I’m sorry okay? I just ... fuck ... I’m not talking about this with you Tor, it’s between me and Shannon. That’s the end of it.”

Tori let his words wash across her – just for a moment. They settled in her mind, echoing and bouncing through hoards of memories. How many times would she hear those words from these two overbearing idiots before enough was enough?

Her slender fingers tensed into fists at her side, her body stiffening, she picked up a delicate crystal ballerina statue that sat on the telephone table and threw it across the room at Nate’s head with such a dead-on aim that he had to drop into a swift duck to avoid taking it in the eye. “I am not a fucking CHILD!” Growling her frustration, she dragged her hands through her hair, pulling at the loose, fine strands as they tangled around her fingertips, “Shannon is missing! She’s fucking missing! And two weeks ago she was raped! You say something like that to my best friend and you expect me to just say, ‘oh, that’s okay, say what you like! ... she’s out there alone? Recovering from a brutal sexual assault? Oh that’s okay! I’m sure she’ll be fine! Your absolutely unprecedented verbal attack was completely not a factor in any of this Nathaniel!!’ You are a pair of fucking morons if you think I’ll be okay with this!” Marching straight up to her husky brother, whose mouth was open in an almost comically bemused expression, she pointed her slender, manicured fingertips into his brawny chest, her voice was low, and threatening, completely alien to the quiet and demure tones of her youth, “You will fucking fix this, Nate. You will fix it, and you will finish it. Otherwise I swear, I will never forgive you.” Looking back over her shoulder at Jayden’s shattered expression she gave him a stern stare, “Either of you.”