Who Knows the Dark (11 page)

Nox drifted away again.

I
N
THE
morning Nox woke up to find himself alone again.

Or rather alone in the sheets. Amelia Creel was standing at the foot of his bed.

He sat up slowly, blinking as they made eye contact.

“Good morning,” Amelia said politely. She was wearing another variation of her clothes from last night, a thin floral sweater over jeans. The resemblance between her and Cade was almost startling—the cheekbones and warm eyes, the smattering of freckles, the same steely gaze that seemed to be zeroing in on his thoughts.

“Morning.”

They played the silent stare game another few moments. Nox shifted uncomfortably.

“There’s breakfast downstairs.”

“Thank you.”

She gave him a shrewd glance. “There’s no need for the rollaway bed up here, is there?”

Nox waited one beat. Then two. “No, ma’am.”

“Hmmm.” Amelia folded her arms over her chest.

“But if you wouldn’t mind, could you put that extra bed in the room with my son and his friend? I’d prefer a little more distance between them.”

“Your son? The sick one.”

“Sam, yes.”

“Mmmmm.” Amelia gave him another appraising glance. “Where’s your wife?”

“Don’t have one. Sam was, uh—orphaned. During the storms. I took him in and raised him.”

“I see.”

Nox pushed the covers back, then moved his legs over the side.

“So you don’t want your son and his boyfriend sleeping in the same bed?” Her dry tone made it very clear which of his parents Cade took after, right down to the inflection of bemusement.

“No, ma’am, I don’t.” He ran his hands through his bed head. “And I can go down and sleep on the sofa if it’s a problem for me to be up here.”

“I’m not sure Caden Lee would appreciate me moving you,” she said finally. “So I’ll pretend you’re not doing anything up here that might make me blush.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A
FTER
A
MELIA
stuffed him full of ham, steak, and eggs, Nox headed out to find Cade. Everyone else was still asleep, according to his hostess, but Cade couldn’t seem to settle down past dawn, so he had gone with her to feed the chickens.

Nox tried to imagine Cade feeding chickens.

Outside, a chill sat in the air, not yet dissipated by the risen sun. Nox walked through the dewed grass, marveling at the stretch of land in every direction. Over the ridge and through the trees, he could see the encroachment of the developments; behind him was the small white farmhouse with a simple porch and flowering bushes. Ahead, cookie-cutter mansions played like game pieces on a board of green.

He staked out the various buildings on the property. A newer structure—a shingled one-story guesthouse—sat a few yards from the main house. Two huge barns, weary with age and neglect, and several sheds dotted the rest of the space, with small fields stretching out beyond them closer to the road, which seemed to cut unnaturally into the landscape. The aforementioned chicken coop was angled near the house, surrounded by raised beds currently devoid of flowers.

A tiny country oasis, squeezed on all sides by progress.

The Sig sat heavy at the back of his jeans, hidden by the windbreaker over his sweatshirt. Nothing looked familiar, nothing felt like home—except for the tendrils of paranoia that dogged his every step.

“Hey,” a voice called out. From a copse of trees, half hidden by the smaller of the two barns, Cade sat, perched in the V between branches.

“You’re up early.”

“Farm living, resets my clock I guess,” Cade said, swinging his legs gently. “My mother feed you an obscene amount of food?”

“Yes.” Nox was still a little dazed by the fresh food, the alien lifestyle of normality. “I managed to escape before the coffee cake was out of the oven.”

“Ohhh. Yeah, you don’t want to escape that.” Cade slid off the tree and hit the ground with a thump. “It’s freaking amazing.”

Nox joined him at the tree; they did their little maneuver where their bodies angled toward each other almost instinctively, and Nox felt the radiant warmth of Cade settling in his bones.

“Everything okay last night?”

Cade shrugged, leaning against Nox’s side. “I can’t fuck for a living anymore, so there’s no money, my father is drinking because the farm is going under, and uh—yeah. Oh right, sorry—there are a shit ton of illegal guns in this barn.”

“That might be the best news since the coffee cake,” Nox said gravely.

Cade snickered against his shoulder. “I thought that would be your reaction.”

“I’m sorry about the farm.” He looked at the sloping hills and tall trees dwarfing everything with their sheer size. They’d been here so long, and now they were going to end up being cleared away so someone could build another ugly house.

“I’m actually not. I think this place is fucking cursed. Steal land from the Native population, grow tobacco, enslave human beings, then give people cancer. Seriously—becoming a prostitute was like a step up on the Creel family moral ladder.”

The quiet of the farm sat between them, a layer of birdsong and the chickens, the wind through the trees.

“You really think there’s a curse?” Nox asked, tipping his head back to look at the sky.

“Yeah, actually I do. I mean—when I left, my father was a taciturn dick, and now he’s….” Cade’s voice cracked. “I didn’t even recognize him last night. It’s like he aged ten years.”

Cade took a big shuddering breath and pushed off the tree. “Come on, take a walk with me.” When he extended his hand, Nox took it without a second’s hesitation.

T
HEY
WALKED
to the edge of the property, until the buildings and the trees were far behind them. The ground got rockier, the slopes more dramatic. Clearly no place to plant crops or build homes as the tangled earth gave way to a wandering creek.

“I used to come down here all the time. I know you’re never going to believe this, but I am a Grade A, top-of-the-line frog catcher.”

Nox stepped over a large rock as Cade pulled him deeper into the woods.

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

“Okay, LJ was better at frogs. I, however, could entice a jock behind the high school with one magic sway of my hips.”

“That I believe.”

Cade shook his ass as they walked along a pile of fallen logs.

A
T
THE
end of their trek, Cade brought Nox to the shallow pool, where the creek water collected and went still. The quiet of the farm was a cacophony compared to this; the silence seemed to rise up from the ground and wrap its arms around Nox’s body.

A jolt and Nox let out a breath.

They were in the middle of nowhere; what if someone went to the house and he wasn’t there….

“Stop,” Cade whispered.

They were standing at the water’s edge, Cade’s hand on his chest, and Nox sucked in a breath of cold, clear air.

“My brother is a crack shot, and my mom taught him everything he knows. Just… stand down for a minute, okay?”

Nox closed his eyes. The little paranoid voice in his head didn’t stop just on Cade’s word. The urge to run and check and hide didn’t go away.

But oh God, it felt so good to breathe.

And focus on Cade’s hand.

Just… stop.

He opened his eyes and found Cade’s smile waiting for him.

“It helps me when you freak out, gives me something to do,” Cade murmured, as if not willing to break the serenity of the moment. “Then I don’t freak out.”

“That’s sort of insane.”

“That’s why we work together so well.”

H
AND
IN
hand, they walked back, following the path they’d made. Nox’s neurosis hummed just under the surface, and he felt the gun at his back, the weight of Cade’s palm against his.

Balanced.

“Maybe we work so well together because my family has a curse too,” Nox said suddenly, as the buildings of the Creel Farm began to take shape. “All the money in the world and—look at where Sam and I are now.”

“Two curses, balancing each other out.” Cade stepped around a pile of decaying leaves. “That’s romantic.”

“Romantic?” It was a word so unfamiliar that Nox imagined it might be in a foreign language. “Like when I slammed you into a wall….”

“Saved me from a street gang.”

“Handcuffed you to a bed.”

“Saved me from asshole drug dealers.”

“Got you accused of being an accessory to a crime.”

Cade stopped and stood tall on the tiny rise beside Nox. Long gone was the slick boy in the tight clothes who had charmed him to distraction in alleyways and on the casino floor. They were in the midst of Cade’s roots—the place that had created him and informed him and forced him out into the world. Nox was seeing Cade for the very first time.

“Granted, it’s been a little top-heavy in the danger department,” Cade said lightly, his expression composed of tired eyes and a simple smile. “But I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do. I made a choice to help you, and I’m not sorry.”

“And what happens in the next few days? We can’t stay here forever.”

“No, we can’t.” Cade’s grip tightened on his, their fingers twining together intimately. “We need to figure out how to disappear I guess. All of us.” The pang of vulnerability triggered a tight pain in Nox’s chest.

Are we disappearing together?

“Maybe we need to figure out how to clear our names instead,” he said almost absently.

“What?” Cade laughed. “How the hell do we do that? Those feds are probably as bought and paid for as the cops in the District. You think a city like Manhattan gets privatized for sin without greasing every palm in the vicinity? We can’t afford those kinds of bribes.”

“Millions of people lost everything when the city fell to ruin. They didn’t get a dime of what came later. Maybe some of them would be angry enough to create a problem for the people in charge….” The argument didn’t even carry much weight in Nox’s head; he just spun the words as an alternative that wasn’t making him say
I want to kill them all by myself.

“So what? We go to the press? We go to the government?” Cade’s disbelief was written all over his face and woven through the incredulous tone of his voice. “Right after we convince them we didn’t blow up a fucking casino and kill a bunch of people?”

Hysteria began to tinge the words, and Nox instinctively drew him closer. “Calm down.”

Shaking, Cade pushed out of his arms. Something about the white pallor, the spots of red forming on his cheeks—Nox sensed a secret.

“What?”

Cade shook his head, digging his hands into his hair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You can tell me.”

And the second the last syllable fell from his lips, Nox knew Cade’s response. He could see the frosty wall forming, feel the words he deserved coalescing.

“Like you tell me everything?”

Cade turned and hurried up the pathway toward the house, leaving Nox to follow in his wake.

B
ACK
AT
the house, life waited for no insane plans or crazy relationships. Amelia ran a tight ship, now and forever, and even fugitives were expected to pull their weight. Nox disappeared with Mason to check out the stash of guns; Amelia recruited Damian to carry up jars of food and extra supplies from the basement. Sam was propped up on the couch, heavily dosed with Amelia’s best homemade remedies and covered with an array of colorful quilts.

At a loss for what to do, Cade went out to help LJ do the chores. Maybe normalcy would stop the itch of anxiety trying to burrow out of his chest.

“Where’s that Rachel girl?” LJ asked as he swung an ax through another log. “What’s her story?”

“Calling her
that Rachel girl
might get you killed, so I’d revise your way of thinking. Also, I can’t prove anything, but I suspect she was hatched fully grown in a mad scientist’s lab,” Cade said, stacking the split pieces on the ever-growing pile. He set up another log and stepped back.

“Momma’s got everyone working but her. That’s pretty impressive. I think if the president came by for dinner, Momma’d have him shelling peas.”

“Why do you care what Rachel is or is not doing?”

“She’s gorgeous. And kind of a badass.” The ax swung down as LJ whistled. “Like a secret agent or something.”

“She’s at least fifteen years older than you are, and once again, she is literally capable of killing you. Rachel’s dangerous.”

LJ gave him the suggestive eyebrows. “So’s your boyfriend.”

The ax cut through the air, and two perfectly even logs fell to the ground.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Cade said archly. “He’s just a—fugitive I happen to be keeping company with.”

Another log. Another split. Another level to the pile.

Laughing, LJ rested the ax on his shoulder, doing his best Paul Bunyan. “Maybe you’re the badass.”

Something uncomfortable bubbled under Cade’s skin. Was he dangerous? He knew he was capable of taking another life; he knew he could find a place of survival and brutality if pushed far enough….