Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2) (15 page)

“Watch,” Rebel tells me. “The code is One Seven Six Three.” He punches the code into the keypad as I observe, my arms wrapped around my body. I’m starting to feel really shaky. Maria Rosa’s arrival and Raphael’s presence is catching up with me. I feel like the world is crashing down on my head and I have no means of stopping it, of holding back the tide.

The keypad is silent as Rebel presses the keys. He hits the green enter button and the door chunks and releases. Rebel doesn’t allow it to open properly, though. He closes it and holds his hand palm-up to the keypad, giving me a tight-lipped smile that holds absolutely no humor. “Now you,” he says. “Show me you remember the code. I need to know you can open this door.”

He’s incredibly intense. He’s clearly so stressed he’s not really functioning, and yet at the same time there’s an eerie calm resting over him. It’s way more frightening than if he were simply raging mad. I slowly punch in the access code to the door and hit the green button afterward, just as he did, and the door swings open.

“Okay. Good. Follow me.” Rebel moves through the door into the pitch-black darkness beyond. I hesitate a second, but then follow behind him, unwilling to push him even a little while he’s in this state. The heavy steel door closes behind us, and suddenly I feel like I’m trapped in a tomb. A dark, impenetrable tomb that I have no way out of. My chest tightens ever so slightly, the first strains of panic setting in, my heartbeat noticeably quickening.

“Rebel?”

His arms are immediately around me, his chest up against mine, his lips pressing against my forehead. He holds me in the dark and breathes. I can feel the impossible speed of his own heart beating against mine, and I know he’s having trouble holding himself together. So strange. He always seems so unflappable, like a bomb could go off right next to his head and he’d still be able to think straight.

“Fuck, Soph,” he whispers. “Just…I can’t…”

My cheeks burn, my head swimming as he draws me even tighter and crushes me against his body. Is…is he this freaked out because of
me
? Surely not. Despite Maria Rosa, Raphael, Hector, dead Bron and dead Rico, I’m selfish enough to enjoy this fleeting moment in the dark. My fear has completely vanished. With his arms around me, it feels as though nothing bad could ever reach me here. Such a bizarre feeling.

“If something like this happens again, Sophia, this is where you come. You hear me? You come straight here. Promise me.”

“But where—”

“Promise me!”

“Okay, yes. I swear it. I promise.”

Rebel draws back, pulling in a deep breath. He lets me go then, and the fear returns with the force of a freight train. It’s amazing to me that I can be this terrified as soon as his presence is gone, and yet no more than a second ago I felt so safe.

Rebel moves around in the dark, not fumbling, apparently sure of his surroundings, and then the blackness vanishes as a strip light flickers on over head, casting a stark white light over everything inside…inside the huge office we’re now standing in. It’s immediately obvious whose office this is. On all four walls, white board material has been scribbled over from the floor to the ceiling; nearly ninety percent of the scribble is mathematical in nature, and absolutely none of it makes sense. Well, not to me, anyway.

Two large desks, one at either end of the room, are piled with papers, and some seriously expensive looking computers sit among the madness, apparently gathering dust. In between them on the far wall, a huge server stands like a tall, dormant monolith, all dark metal and LEDs that remain unlit.

Rebel watches me as I walk around, taking in the weirdness of the place. He leans against the tidier of the desks—I assume it’s his—observing me like I’m some sort of endangered zoo exhibit. “What is this place?” I ask him.

“This place is bomb proof. This place can withstand all hell breaking out around it, and no one will be able to get in. This is where you’re safest if something bad goes down.”

“And the computers? The server?”

“Information. It’s all just information. Bank accounts. Blackmailing. Satellite images. P.I. reports.
Burial locations
.”

“So this…this is what you have on people. All of the dirt you’ve gathered over the years. This is all leverage?”

“Yes.”

In the distant recesses of my mind, I recall Julio discussing some files Rebel was holding over him, which was why the guy drove across the state in the night to pick me up from Hector’s place: Rebel was bribing him.
 

I quit my investigating, leaning against the other desk, facing him. “Very valuable, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“And you showed me how to get in here. You’d trust me in here all by myself?”

He nods. “You think you’re a flight risk, Sophia, but you’re not. You’re as invested in me as I am in you.”

“I don’t think so.” I don’t know how invested in me he thinks he is, but regardless…I don’t want it to be true. Caring about this man will only get me killed; that much is obvious.

Rebel looks away, focusing on the wild, red text marking the wall by his head. He folds his arms across his chest. “You know why you resist me so much, Soph?” he whispers.

I narrow my eyes at him, trying not to let him see what I’m thinking. “Because you’re rude and arrogant, and you left me alone in a cabin for ten days?”

He smiles softly, allowing his gaze to fall to his feet. “Nope.”

“Oh no? Well, please enlighten me, then. Why do I resist you so much?”

“Because you’re in love with me, and you’re afraid.”

“
What
?” I consider picking up the large rock that’s being used as a paperweight on the desk next to me and chucking it right at his head. He is such an asshole. “You are dreaming, my friend,” I inform him.

“We’re not friends. We’re much, much more than that and you know it.”

“Jesus, you…you just have no shame, do you? Where do you get off saying stuff like this?”

“I find shame is usually a wasteful emotion. It occurs after an event or certain actions have taken place. There’s no sense in beating yourself up over something you can’t change or effect, right? I think you’re actually uncomfortable because I say what I think. I don’t sugar coat anything. And I’ve never been afraid to admit what I want, Sophia.” He rubs his fingers over the stubble on his jaw, piercing me with those blue eyes of his. “You, on the other hand… you’re afraid of admitting anything to anyone, ever. Must be exhausting.”

I don’t answer him. I don’t really know what to say. I want to be stubborn and hard with him, tell him he couldn’t be more wrong and he should keep his half-baked theories to himself, but I am so done. I don’t have the energy to fight or bicker with him. And besides, it’s becoming harder and harder to deny that what he’s saying isn’t actually the truth. Fuck him. Fuck him and his ability to see right through me. Rebel starts to laugh. “You don’t need to say a word, sugar. You know it’s true, and so do I. I can wait, though. If you ever feel like being honest with me, I’m ready to hear it.”

His voice softens out at the end of this statement, the laughter slipping away. He sounds muted, soft, almost pensive. I want him to put his arms around me so he can hold me and make the whole world go away again, but won’t that just be proving him right? Instead, I turn away from him.

My eyes land on a file sitting on the overflowing desk. Scrawled
across the front of it in black, blocky capitals is one word: MAYFAIR.
 

“What’s Mayfair? Is that, like, a code for something? A place?”

Rebel sighs heavily. I can hear his boots grinding against the bare concrete underfoot as he paces the length of the room; he takes the file from me and places it back on the pile of disorganized binders and papers. “It’s a name. A guy back in Seattle. Cade’s been looking into him.”

“Is he connected with Hector and Raphael?”

“No. He’s not someone we need to worry about right now, Soph. We have other things to take care of. Namely Maria fucking Rosa.”

ELEVEN

CADE

I learned how to waterboard somebody without killing them back in Afghanistan. There’s a trick to it. If you pour the water too fast, shove the rag down their throat too far, you’ll drown them straight away. If you go too easy on them, they can hold their breath and they’ll never break. As I fill up a four-gallon canister with water from the outside tap close to the clubhouse, I spend a moment reflecting on how little Maria Rosa is going to like this. That’s probably the understatement of the century. She’s going to fucking
hate
it.
 

The roles are usually reversed in situations such as these. She tortured the ever-loving shit out of me when she found me and Rebel snooping around her place in Columbia. I spent three days strapped to a chair while she tried to ascertain if I was there to try and kill her or not. The experience was a frustrating one for her. Being in the Marines, you learn how to withstand torture. You learn how to keep your damn mouth shut and give nothing more than your name and rank, and Maria Rosa wanted me to be screaming. I was a disappointment to her in the beginning, but then later she confessed my silent stoicism turned her on. Wasn’t long before she was straddling me, grinding herself up against my cock, torturing me in a different way. That seems like a long time ago now.
 

She was unconscious when I carried her into the barn and down into the hidden basement, making sure to bolt the hatchway behind me when I came back up for the water. I trussed her up pretty tight when I tied her to the single, lone wooden chair down there, but she’s a wily one. No, not just wily; she’s a goddamn contortionist. I’ve had first hand experience of that. I’m yet to fuck another woman who can fold herself up into a pretzel the same way Mother can.
 

I try not to think about all the things Maria Rosa can do that other women can’t as I carry the canister of water back to the barn and unbolt the hatch. Down the stairs I carry the carton, along the badly lit corridor, water sloshing out onto the dusty concrete, onto my boots, not thinking about the things Maria Rosa can do with her tongue.
 

Jesus.
 

When I enter the very last room on the right, the woman in question is slumped forward in the chair, chin resting on her chest, a thick river of blood drying down her arm and her leg. She looks like she’s out cold, but if there’s one lesson I’ve learned in this life, it’s do not trust Maria Rosa. She’s a master manipulator. I’m sure Rebel would have a couple more very choice names for her, too.
 

She fucked with the club.
 

She fucked with my sister.
 

And now she’s fucked with Sophia.
 

It takes a lot to get Jamie to the point where he’ll bury you as soon as look at you, but we’re past that point now. I kind of feel sorry for the woman. He’s not going to go easy on her. Not even a little bit.
 

I pull the rag I found behind the bar in the clubhouse from the back pocket of my jeans and lean against the wall with the huge container of water at my feet, tearing the rag into long strips. This is where the boss finds me.
 

He’s not looking too shit hot.
 

“You tried to wake her up yet?” he asks.
 

I shake my head.
 

“All right. Let’s get this over with. I shouldn’t have reamed you out. I know you were only looking out for Sophia. I lost it. I’m sorry.”

I shrug.
 

“Don’t give me that shit, man. You’d have lost it, too. You’d have blown a fucking gasket if that had been Laura.”

I lock up at the sound of my sister’s name. We’ll go weeks, sometimes months, without speaking of her. Both of us just knows that she’s the reason we’re here though, neck deep in stinking shit that makes us both sick, drives us both crazy. We’ll never be able to get out until we find out what happened to her, one way or another. And then make whomever is responsible for her disappearance pay. Dearly. That day will be the day Jamie and I lose our souls for good.
 

I shoot him a shitty look. “So you’re comparing Sophia to her now, is it? You really must love her or something.”

Rebel’s eyes narrow so dramatically, they almost disappear entirely. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

I throw one of the balled up pieces of rag at him, and it hits him in the face. “You’re so full of shit, man. I saw the way you looked at her the second she climbed on the back of your ride in that fucking disgusting yellow dress and I knew we were all doomed.”

The ghost of a smile flickers across his face. Bending to pick up the piece of rag I threw, he grunts. “Like I said. Maybe. Maybe not.”

Maria Rosa groans. It’s not the kind of groan she’d fake. She’d want to sound sexy, even through her pain. No, this is the kind of groan someone makes when they’re in agony and their head’s not working right. Rebel turns his attention to her, and I catch a glimpse of how much trouble she’s in…
 

If the look on my brother’s face were to be categorized by a single act of violence in recent history, it would be codenamed Hiroshima. He’s going to kill her. I can read that fact in every line of his body. He’s wound so tight, I’d be surprised if he even waits for her to wake up before he starts on her.
 

“Are you okay, man? I can do this on my own if you need me to?”

“And you won’t end up fucking her brains out instead of teaching her a lesson?” He lifts both eyebrows at me, clearly convinced that this is what will happen if I’m left alone in a room with her.
 

“I can get it done.” And I can. Ever since Laura went missing, the closest we ever came to finding her was at Maria Rosa’s place. Too many people told the same story. Too many people said she had her. Rebel and I turned her place upside down once Mother let us have free rein, but there were those three days. Those three days where she was deciding if she hated or loved us. She could easily have had any girls she was hiding in her villa relocated, never to be seen again. Buried, thrown into a ditch somewhere for wild animals to pick their bones clean.