Sightlines Page 3

  “Are you ready?” Richard asked.

  “For?”

  The door opened, and Chase’s hands tightened into fists.

  Frick and Frack, dressed in tactical gear as they’d been since the “invasion,” dragged Elijah in by his arms. He was barefoot and wearing nothing but a thin white T-shirt and a pair of compression shorts, even though the outside temperature was frigid. There was a bandage on his arm from where he’d been shot, but it was clear the two fuckers handling him hadn’t been using the best of care.

  His lip was swollen, half his face was bruised, deep-bronze skin dull and slightly ashen, and he sank to the plush carpet despite them making a weak attempt to toss him in an armchair. Elijah landed awkwardly on his side and hissed out a breath, cradling his arm.

  He was breathing so hard and shaking so violently, that he didn’t even seem to register who else was in the room.

  A flash of anger shot through Chase too quickly for him to mask. He could tell the moment Richard felt it, which proved something Chase had been suspecting for the past several months. Since he’d made the desperate decision to reach out to Nate.

  His own feelings for Elijah made him weak.

  He schooled his face, gathered all the fragments of his asshole armor, and sneered down at Elijah. “Look what you did to yourself,” he managed to spit out. “You should have never gone with those idiots.”

  Elijah looked up, squinting through the pain. His big dark eyes widened slightly upon seeing Chase, but they quickly flicked to Richard and back again.

  “Chase . . .”

  Elijah struggled to push himself up. Judging from his mobility, Chase was willing to bet the gunshot had thankfully been a flesh wound, but it didn’t stop his body from tensing with the need to go to him. He wanted to help Elijah up, pull him close, and tell him roughly, while burying his face in all that wavy glossy hair, what an idiot he was. But instead Chase held himself still and forced himself to look at Richard for direction.

  “Sit down,” Richard said. “We’re all going to have a chat.”

  Chase sat on the edge of the bed. Obedience made him ragey, but he’d already gone off too much about Jasper to get away with giving any more attitude to Richard. His loyalty wasn’t believable if he spent the entire time talking shit to everyone.

  “And you . . .” Richard’s gaze grew distinctly chillier once aimed at Elijah. “You hold still.”

  The two guards started to drag Elijah to his feet, but he twisted away, sneering at them. “I can do it myself. I guess it’s a good thing you have shitty fucking aim.”

  The male sibling tensed, his own expression creasing in a scowl. His sister gave a minute shake of her head. Then she glanced at Richard. He didn’t say anything, but there was something in his demeanor they read as a warning because neither of them lashed out at Elijah.

  Chase suspected they were the type who would let their new roles as head guards get to their heads, unlike Six. But apparently, Six had been Ex-Comm all along, so maybe this was how all staff at the Farm got once they realized the people being held for “realignment” were nothing more than prisoners waiting their turn to be brainwashed. If someone was a fucking monster, it probably wasn’t hard to stop seeing people as people once their free will was stripped away.

  Chase would love to get the two guards in a room alone. Psychic powers neutered or not, he’d been in enough fights to fuck him up a pair of dead-eyed psy kids.

  “You’re probably wondering why you’re here, Elijah,” Richard said once Elijah was sitting upright. “Why you’re being held in the silo. Why you can’t go home . . .”

  “I know why.” Elijah tossed his disheveled hair out of his face. Even sweaty, battered, and clearly in pain, he had a way with a condescending bitch stare. “Because I know what you’re doing. What the Community is really about.”

  “And what’s it about, Elijah?” Richard asked, crossing one leg at the knee. “Enlighten us.”

  “It’s about you collecting psychics. Community Watch, an organization designed to help people—” the words like me were unspoken in the air, but the heavy weight of them still took up space nonetheless “—is being used by you and Beck and Jasper and . . . who knows who else, as a honey trap. A lure for psychics in need. It’s all a game to you. A hunting ground. Just like Evolution.”

  “Interesting theory.” Richard was trying to be light, but it wasn’t working. He wasn’t as charming as Holden, or as two-faced as Chase. Not as good an actor as his wife. He couldn’t keep the ice from his tone. “What’s the goal of this game?”

  Elijah’s eyes lit for a second—that psy-kid glow that indicated he was seeing a flash of the future—before he set his jaw. Apparently they hadn’t bothered to put him on psy-sups.

  “You want to use us to shape the world, and you’re totally willing to betray your original goal, and the other founders, to do it.”

  Chase wanted to smack him.

  His nostrils flared, eyes narrowing, and by default he tried to make a mental link with Elijah. To reach out with his gift and whisper into Elijah’s mind: We’ll win the fucking battle if you quit fighting so loudly.

  Trying to go head-to-head with people on the Farm had always called for guerilla warfare. Staying low, trying to be invisible, and then getting over or getting out.

  That was how he’d gotten off the Farm as a kid. How Six had been trusted enough to slip away after years of servitude. And it was how Stepmama Payne had managed to live out nearly a decade with them decreasing her tranqs and psy-sups over time because she’d seemed so placid. But not Elijah. He had to kick, scream, and spit. And Chase wasn’t able to tell him just how suicidal that was.

  Not directly, anyway.

  “The Community saved your worthless life, you idiot,” Chase said. “Or did you forget?”

  Elijah’s attention whipped from Richard to Chase. He blanched, making the purpling bruises stand out more on his delicate face.

  “What?”

  “Three years ago, you were nothing but a runaway from fucking Wisconsin who was pickpocketing faggots at the pier by West Fourth and had downgraded even more to hanging around the Brambles to try your hand at sucking dick for pocket change.” Chase kept his tone even, his eyes as dead as the guards, and locked gazes with Elijah. “The Community saved your life. Without them, you’d have wound up in jail, a career whore, or dumped in the Hudson.”

  Elijah’s lips moved, but he seemed to have trouble forming words. Chase didn’t need Holden’s hyperactive empathy to see the naked hurt on Elijah’s face. The way his eyes had grown damp.

  “I don’t understand how they’re able to control you like this,” Elijah whispered. “You’re the most powerful psychic I’ve ever known, and they turn you into their fucking puppet.”

  Chase wanted to shake him. He was so good at his own act that Elijah couldn’t tell it was an act. Which meant Elijah was going to keep doing all the wrong things instead of jumping on the pretend-to-be-mind-controlled train.

  “You shouldn’t have come here with your little friends,” Chase said. “You shouldn’t have let them turn you on—”

  “They’re your friends too.”

  Elijah shot to his feet, or tried to, and had to swing out his good arm to brace against the wall. His head seemed to swim because he wavered, and then almost collapsed to the floor again. The female guard grabbed him before he could fall.

  “Will.” Richard looked at the male guard. “Prepare another room for the boy.”

  Chase dug his fingers into his palms. He tried not to snarl once Will passed him on his way out the door.

  Richard nodded at the other guard. “Put him in the chair, Kyra. And keep him there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Elijah gave little resistance as he collapsed in the armchair, sweating, but his big dark eyes were still conveying his betrayal.

  “Chase,” Richard said. “Tell me about our friend. When we first brought him in, you were a little . . . preoccupied, and he
refused to talk.”

  Preoccupied had been more like sedated when he wasn’t being mentally skewered by Jasper. All he’d known was that Jasper had dangled Elijah in front of him like a threat. And now they were going to do it again, unless he and Elijah got on the same page.

  So Chase nodded, not breaking Elijah’s stare as he relayed all of his information like a fucking soulless computer. “His name is Elijah Estrella. He’s from Wisconsin, and ran away at seventeen. His mother’s boyfriends were abusive, and he’d seen the Community, and New York, in a premonition. But he’s not powerful. That’s why no one notices him as anything other than a twink with a nice ass who hangs around with the right people.” Elijah flinched, but said nothing to interrupt Chase. “But we noticed him at the club. Set him up with a job, rented him the room in my apartment, and introduced him to the band. For the past three years, Elijah was a success story. An example of the good the CW could do.”

  Elijah closed his eyes, but he didn’t disagree. He couldn’t. He’d sung the Community’s praises so many times in the past, even to Theo and Nate, that there was no denying how infatuated he’d been. How loyal.

  “And your relationship with him,” Richard said. “What is it?”

  Here it was. The real test of whether Chase was willing to say anything and everything. Whether all their years of programming had fully brought him under their control. So he let his shield slip, just a bit, like an accident, and allowed Richard to feel this truth.

  “He started fucking me because Holden wouldn’t give him the time of day,” Chase said flatly. “He sees me as a convenient dick, and Holden as the prize.”

  Elijah shook his head, eyes growing rounder. “Chase . . . no.”

  “And how do you see him?” Richard asked, speaking over Elijah.

  “As someone I love.” Humiliation wasn’t an emotion Chase experienced very often, but it scorched through him without remorse. “But it doesn’t fucking matter. Because I’m the freak—”

  Elijah shook his head more vehemently, his lips trembling, eyes red and damp. “It’s not true.”

  “—in the family. Just someone he’ll hop on when he’s horny and bitter over Holden. ’Cause he knows I’ll never turn him away. ’Cause he knows I would do anything for him.” The amount of vulnerability needed to strip himself this bare, to show his insides, made Chase want to throw himself out the window. Sweat trickled down his face, and his body felt cold. “I’ve never told him because he doesn’t think I’m capable of feelings. He thinks I have no heart.”

  Elijah looked so stricken by the words, so absolutely fucking broken that Chase felt sick. Even though it was true. All of it was true. He’d been the one to beg for a job for Elijah, the one to offer his apartment, the one to bully Jericho and Lia into giving Elijah a shot at joining the band even though auditions had been over. But Holden had gotten all the credit. It was Holden, in Elijah’s mind, who had saved him. And Chase was just there to fuck him when he was bored.

  Richard put a hand on Chase’s shoulder and squeezed. Was this supposed to be a comfort? Could he feel how Elijah had spent the last couple of years digging a larger and larger hole into Chase’s chest every time he’d dismissed him for Holden? Every time he’d talked about Holden right after they’d fucked?

  Heh. Richard could probably feel it all. And more. But his compassion was hilarious given Chase wanted to rip his fucking face off.

  “So, you fell in love with a runaway who used to be a thief, and you betrayed me for him?”

  “No.” Things were getting dicey, but Chase left his shield down. Because this was true too. This was how stupid he’d been, along with everyone else. “I thought all the shit at the club, the disappearances and Theo’s murder, was only Beck. And I left the silo with them the other night because I was half out of my fucking mind, and I wanted to protect Elijah.”

  Richard’s hand tightened on his shoulder again, and Chase slammed the gate closed. That was all he had for his father. Not the soul-crushing—as pitiful as his soul was—realization that Beck had been scouting multitalented queers for Richard. And that he’d sent her to Evo, because he was evil enough to know that most of the more powerful queer psys didn’t have anyone but each other, and he could snap them up because not many people would miss them if they were gone.

  But Richard hadn’t anticipated Theo. Or Nate. Or even Chase trying to stop it. Apparently rebellion ran in the Black family genes.

  “So what do we do with him now?” Richard walked closer to Elijah. He dragged a finger down Elijah’s damp cheek, shaking his head when Elijah jerked his face away. “He’s aligned himself with Ex-Comm. Shows utter contempt for us. And he’s in love with Holden, who has also betrayed me.”

  “Realign him,” Chase said sharply. “He’s not far gone. A few months ago, he was basically a Community evangelical, spreading the goddamn word to every psy he came face-to-face with. Then your wife’s people got to him and talked him and Holden into the invasion.”

  Richard’s entire body tightened.

  Bad move, Chase. Don’t bring up the wife.

  “Let me work on him,” Chase pleaded, allowing all his desperation to seep into his voice. “I’ve spent most of my life on this Farm. I know how to realign someone. And he can be. I know it. He’s not like Holden, who always kept himself separated in his special fucking club.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Elijah cried. “Do you actually believe this or are you not . . . you? Holden cared about you. He came for you!”

  Chase cast him a withering look. “He came for his mother. He just happened to find you first. Or did you really think he gave a shit about you? About either of us.”

  “You’re his brother. He loves you.”

  “I’m a tool for him,” Chase snarled, voice rising. He didn’t know if it was the venom in his voice or the fierceness in his expression that struck him silent, but Elijah clammed up. “That’s all I ever was.”

  Chase exhaled and inhaled slowly, and allowed his eyes to fall shut for a second. There were dual urges working inside of him, and he was starting to have a difficult time discerning his plan from the seeds of resentment that had been growing for years. That had started from the very first moment he’d realized that Richard Payne wasn’t only his father. Off the Farm, in a beautiful Upper East Side mansion, he’d had a real son.

  “Whatever.” Chase turned to his father. “Elijah’s infatuated with Holden, and with the idea of the club, and it’s got him all twisted up and confused. Work with him. We can get him back to where he should be.”

  “You can’t make me like you,” Elijah said, struggling to get up from the chair and failing. “I spent so long being a puppet, and I won’t do it again. I’ll tell every fucking Comm member I meet that Richard Payne is a sociopathic monster who uses—”

  Chase swung out his arm and cracked his hand against the side of Elijah’s head. It seemed to stun more than hurt him, but Elijah’s face still reddened.

  “I can’t believe you’re this weak,” Elijah said, voice low with contempt. “I thought you were the strongest psychic I knew.”

  “You have no idea what it means to be strong, baby boy.”

  Chase could feel everyone’s eyes on him, watching and assessing his ability to follow through on his promise that he’d be able to get into Elijah’s head and realign him. Analyzing whether he was truly in line himself. But instead of looking at them, or focusing on convincing them, he stared into Elijah’s eyes and tried to make that mental link again.

  Just do what I say and we’ll get through this, you silly fuck, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t reach out far enough to make the connection. His shield kept anything from getting in his head, and the psy-sups kept his gift from projecting outward. All he could do was narrow his eyes and stare into Elijah’s lovelier and more miserable pair.

  “It’d be in your interest to try the usual route before you let Jasper lobotomize him,” Chase said again, directing the words at Richard even as he glared do
wn at Elijah. “Holden and them will try to spread the word that you’re using the CW for your own agenda. But if one of Holden’s own employees, a close one like Elijah, says Holden is just . . . trying to slander you out of resentment or bitterness, then his story loses weight.”

  Elijah’s gaze was so narrowed all Chase could see was a glimmer of deep-brown eyes. Elijah shook his head slowly, leaving little doubt he would fight Chase tooth and black-painted nail.

  “And what’s in it for you, Chase? Why are you so invested in this boy?”

  Will reappeared in the door, interrupting the answer. “The room is secured and ready.”

  Richard nodded, but his gaze never left Chase. “Answer me.”

  Chase grabbed Elijah’s good arm and hauled him out of the seat, jerked him toward Will and the doorway. Elijah ripped away and stumbled once before catching himself.

  “I told you he matters to me,” Chase said roughly. “And if this works, he’ll be mine. Holden will be a fucking memory.”

  It sounded bad. So bad, that as Elijah curled in on himself and shuffled by, Chase did the only thing he could think of. The most desperate, pathetic excuse of an inside joke they had. He smacked Elijah’s ass.

  Elijah swung around to stare at him, first with uncertainty and then with slowly widening eyes.

  He got it. Finally, he’d understood.

  Finally, they could figure out how to eventually escape together.

  As Will and Kyra led them to Elijah’s new room, Chase kept quiet and turned a sharp eye to their surroundings. He’d grown up on the Farm, and yet there were some parts he’d never seen. Even so, it all brought back bad memories.

  When he was a kid, back before they’d converted the silo into a full-on brainwashing factory, he’d stayed in the cottage for some of his tenure on the Farm. But back then the Farm hadn’t been exclusively used for “realignment,” and Jasper had just started fully practicing his . . . craft. After Chase’s mother had run away, Chase suspected he had been their first full-time test subject. There had been a few other kids who were “special,” but he’d always been treated like a ticking bomb, while the others had extra privileges. They’d gone outside, shared meals with adults, and he’d been isolated and alone unless Richard had come back from the city to see him. At those points, he’d been allowed to go on walks or for car rides, and his father had “explored” the woods with him.