Who Knows the Dark (26 page)

Cade—exhausted and with no hope of finding a rock bottom any time soon—dropped next to Rachel for something very close to cuddling. He didn’t want to look at Alec, who, despite being still alive, hadn’t woken up from the blow to the head. He left LJ with his laptop, the storm overhead preventing them from venturing out. Given the way the trailer rocked and moaned, they would be lucky not to slide into the water by morning.

Maybe they could float to the island.

Rachel lay quietly, rag still around her throat, tucked under a duvet of canvas. He didn’t ask for permission, and she didn’t shove him away—proof at least that he wasn’t pushing a limit by resting his head against her shoulder.

“Do you think he’s dead?” he whispered, pressing his nose against the dank oily smell of her borrowed clothes.

Rachel coughed as she tried to speak, then shook her head.

“Me neither.”

LJ’s clicking and occasional chortles of delight ran counterpoint to the anger of the storm around them.

“You and LJ, you should leave,” he told Rachel in hushed tones. Even with his eyes closed, he’d lost the ability to pretend this wasn’t the subbasement of hell.

A sting made him jump—Rachel had pinched the back of his hand.

“Shut. Up,” she mouthed when he looked at her.

“You could go somewhere safe.”

She rolled her eyes, eloquent even without words.

“LJ’s a good guy. He’ll make a good husband,” he murmured, unable to keep a straight face as Rachel’s glare turned murderous. “White picket fence, maybe a dog—ow! Ow!”

He checked to make sure she hadn’t torn off the flesh with that pinch.

Cade settled back down against her shoulder, the crunch of the tarp beneath them almost comforting. The windows rattled, and LJ let out a “hot damn” before resuming a stream of muttering under his breath.

A fool’s errand, a surefire way to end his damn life. He seemed to be unable to stop touching this burning hot stove with the potential to kill him. Logically he should take LJ and Rachel, get into Alec’s car, and drive to his aunt’s cabin. The intelligent choice—cut his losses, turn his back on a world of madness and riddles he had no part of.

He could walk away, because this wasn’t his mess.

But Nox’s face—angry, dangerous, confused, tender—was imprinted behind his eyes, and every time he touched the path that led him away, something pulled him back.

Foolhardy.

The worst decision he could make.

Clearly, it was love.

“Momma and Daddy would be so proud,” LJ announced, startling Cade out of his hazy pit of confusion.

“What?” he asked as he sat up.

“I’m a goddamn fed.” LJ grinned at Cade and snapped a salute as well. “They’re uploadin’ the new info to the card’s chip, and then once this storm settles, we can set this little passion play in motion.”

“So you’re a fed, and I’m your prisoner. What about Rachel?”

“She’s one of your victims.” LJ
tsked
and shook his head. “A hostage, Mr. Creel? You’re a fucking dick. I hope they shoot you.”

“Don’t joke—that’s a very good possibility for all of us.” Cade crept across the floor toward LJ, sparing a glance for Alec, who was curled up with his eyes closed in the corner. “I’m thinking the District cops don’t much like the feds.”

“Probably not. Which is why I’m gonna have to act like a douche bag who has information to sell.” LJ clicked on his laptop, nodding to himself. “One of my friends suggested that.”

“Tell your friends to use their skills to hack the police station mainframe.” Cade sat next to LJ, trying to make sense of the stream of data in several different windows. Chats were going on, a rapidly moving conversation in tiny white print on a black background. Another showed a progress bar at 75 percent, while still two more appeared to be satellite maps of the area.

“Already working on it, but that is some complicated shit. Got my buddy Lenny workin’ on those money records we found before. Backtracking through the deposits, see if we can’t find out exactly who’s been stashing money there for so long.”

“Jesus Christ—if I wasn’t so grateful I’d be terrified of your little anti-American hacker circle.”

LJ seemed to take umbrage at the characterization. “Antigovernment—I like America just fine.”

“T
HE
STORMS
happened, Nox. I had nothing to do with that,” Carson said, his slick, used car salesman tone at odds with his expensive suit and haircut. “Things were moving so quickly.”

Nox laughed, bitter and cold. “Moving so—I realize it was seventeen years ago, but I remember it very fucking clearly. You were away for months. You left Mom in that disgusting asylum. You left me at the house.” He narrowed his gaze as the memories of those days and the sheer unadulterated terror of meeting Jenny and the men trying to kill them washed over him. “You sent Jenny to kill Mom and me. Don’t you try to deny it.”

It was a calculated move. His trust of Rachel was tenuous, but the stark reality resonated inside him—he trusted her a thousand times more than his father.

Carson’s eyes widened, his body stiffening at the accusation.

“Jenny? My assistant wouldn’t do anything like that,” he said, recovering quickly. “She died on the ferry, Nox. Poor girl.”

“Really? You didn’t know?” Nox tipped his head to one side, ignoring his vulnerable position, pinned to the bed by his injuries and at the mercy of a man who hadn’t told him a lick of truth in possibly his entire damn life. “She came to Morningside to kill Mom, but she was already dead.” His heart fluttered, but his voice stayed calm. “Then she tried to kill me, but I managed to buy her off to leave me there.” Nox watched his father with as much focus as he could muster, very aware of every bead of sweat creeping along Carson’s hairline. “This was all before her tragic death.”

When he finished speaking, the room was utterly silent. He felt every breath controlled in his lungs, the sparks of pain from his wounds mere flickers compared to the growing rage.

“She—I mean, I’m shocked,” Carson said faintly. Finally. “Jenny was such a sweet young girl….”

“Who did your dirty work, compiling blackmail material on government officials.” Nox finished Carson’s sentence and watched him go pale. “I assume she killed for you as well. I saw her in action—getting rid of whatever henchmen were sent along. At least four.” In a conversational tone, the words fell out of Nox’s mouth. “Did you send them as well? Roy Grimes, the guys at the rendezvous point. I’m just curious. Dad.”

Carson’s shoulders went back, the first defensive move Nox had seen from him. “So you think you know everything,” he said, leaning his hands on the small table at the end of the bed. “You think you have all the answers.”

Nox shrugged, a twinge of pain shooting down his spine. He didn’t even flinch. “I know enough.”

His father’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table, going white with tension.

“You don’t know anything.”

“Is this where you tell me the whole sinister plan? I assume it’ll be quite justified, after which you’ll blow my head off or dump me in a pit of alligators.”

With every poke, Carson’s expression grew angrier.

“I kept you and your little brother alive, all this time,” Carson exploded. “I let you play fucking superhero on the streets. I let you interrupt my business. You should be dead about a thousand times over, and don’t you ever forget that.”

Nox couldn’t hide his derision. “Fuck you. You should have killed me,” he snapped, rage coursing through him.

“Oh really? I should have? Then what would have happened to the kid, huh? You think I was going to waltz in and raise Natalie’s bastard?”

Jerking his torso off the bed, Nox reached for his father with both hands, fingers itching to close around his throat, to snap his neck like he had Mr. White’s. He bit his tongue as the anger waged war with the ravages of his weakened state.

“I protected you,” Carson spat, not even flinching as Nox wrenched his body in a vain attempt to get at him. “I’m protecting you now. The Vigilante is dead, your friends are free, and I scraped you off the fucking pavement. You don’t want to be grateful? Fine. I’ll dump you on the street and let the District cops throw you in jail. I’m thinking some of the inmates might be interested in learning who you are.”

With that, Carson shoved the table to the floor, the clattering sound echoing as he stormed to the door, wrenched it open, and left. In the space of the door going from open to closed, Nox caught sight of Antonio laughing.

Nox fell back against the pillows, furiously twisting against the tangle of the bedclothes.

No one came to check on him, not Kyle, not Antonio or the doctor. His IV dried up, and his head began to pound with the withdrawal from whatever they had been injecting into his line. The pain, exacerbated by his encounter with his father—Jesus, his father—wrecked his ability to think about or deal with what had transpired. Time seemed to drag on until he felt the burning pain of fever, the swollen tongue filling his dry mouth.

In the twilight of his pain and delirium, he sank into his too few memories of Cade, catching and trying to hold on to them as they slipped through his fingers. He felt Cade in his arms, the pressure of his head against Nox’s shoulder, the simple peace Nox gained from touching him. Maybe that was the dream and this was purgatory, an endless wheel of paranoia and darkness, where respite came in the form of a tease and a man with blue eyes.

N
OX
COULDN
’
T
quite grasp what was going on; the rattle of metal and then he was moving, the bed was moving, released from its mooring and banging against doorjambs and walls he could see as his eyes flickered open. In his hazy vision, he could make out Dr. Khanna at his side; when he tried to speak, nothing came out.

“You’re being moved,” Dr. Khanna said, and that was when Nox became aware of a thudding noise, a growing whine filling the air. Something—machinery perhaps.

Then the smell overwhelmed him.

The white walls and lighting gave way to darkness, the dank smell of rot and decay hitting his nose and irritating his gag reflex.

“Turn on a flashlight,” the doctor snapped. Nox heard fumbling, cursing, and then a bright flash of light trained over his head revealed crumbling pink plaster and peeling walls.

Another nightmare. He knew this place.

The wheels of the bed ground through something, their forward movement slowed as the men pushing tried to get it free. The sounds grew louder, forming into a memory for Nox.

Construction equipment.

A shove and the bed came free, and they started moving down the hallway again. At a corner, they pivoted, sending Nox into inky black darkness.

He waited for lights, for Dr. Khanna to issue another terse order, but nothing came. The light moved—away from him, away from the bed. No voices save for one whispered thing before the door slammed shut.

“Don’t bother screaming.”

Interlude

C
ARSON
B
OYET
comes home from Harvard for his twenty-first birthday. It’s also Christmas, but he could care less. Twenty-one means inheritance, a big fat check delivered into his hand and freedom from beneath his father’s thumb.

He can taste the South of France on his tongue and feel the soft, bronzed skin of an eligible model under his fingertips.

So close.

Oh, he’ll graduate Harvard. He might even apply to graduate school. An MBA from Wharton sounds about right. But it will be for him, for his résumé and his bragging rights, not his father’s.

The grandfather he never knew is his ticket to freedom.

He all but skips through their Upper West Side apartment to his father’s study, anxious to get this meeting over with. Once he gets the details settled, there’s a party to attend downtown.

Carson knocks twice, then waits for his father’s sharp “enter.” He pulls his most “devoted son” expression and walks in, a pleasant smile across his face.

His father points to the uncomfortable guest chair in front of his desk, and that’s when Carson realizes there’s another man in the room.

The suit is Savile Row, the moustache unfortunate, and the accent South American. That’s what registers first, as Mr. “Smith,” as he’s introduced, begins to give a historical overview of the long-standing relationship between his family’s business and the Boyets.

Carson doesn’t give a flying fuck, but he’s been beaten into perfect manners by a long line of nuns, nannies, and his mother. He can pretend he cares.

Then, when Mr. “Smith” has concluded his recitation, Carson’s father clears his throat.

It’s time, he says, for Carson to know the true nature of the family business. And what happens next for Carson.

Confusion clouds his mind. What happens next? What happens next is he gets drunk in the parentless apartment of his fraternity brother Louis Ravek, fucks a prostitute, and celebrates the fact that he’s about to come into money his father cannot touch or control.

That isn’t what happens.

None of that happens, and Carson doesn’t even get that MBA from Wharton.

Two weeks after he graduates from Harvard, he marries a slender, fragile girl named Natalie von Zandt, whose family controls a solid third of the real estate in Manhattan priced at a minimum of twenty million dollars. The von Zandts welcome a frozen-faced Carson into the family, happily signing over control of their assets to their daughter’s new husband, a faint whiff of relief permeating the room.

Carson’s father is pleased. So is Mr. Smith.

Two years later, Nox is born. Six weeks afterward, Carson returns home to the posh Ninety-First Street townhouse to find Natalie barricaded in the basement, screaming about the invading forces while the baby wails from the nursery upstairs.