Vigilante 01 - Who Knows the Storm (13 page)

He lays the baby on the front seat, then reaches back carefully for the bag. There’re some diapers, a baby bottle of water, a pacifier, and some baby clothes, all much bigger than his newborn brother. But everything is dry, and that’s better than what they have now.

One ear out for Jenny, Nox jury-rigs the diaper to fit the tiny infant and swaddles him in layers of the clothes. After a few stressful moments, the baby drinks some of the water, his little mouth working around the nipple. Finally, the pacifier is a godsend as the baby sucks himself to sleep as soon as he’s warm, dry, and hydrated.

Outside, the storm rages on. Nox hears the roar of a motor and headlights flash by.

The Hummer. Jenny has taken off.

Relief courses through him. They’re safe for now.

I
N
HIS
room, Nox sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the rug. He’d had the same carpeting since this was a nursery, a royal blue with thin stripes of gray. Sometimes the lines were lanes for his race cars. Sometimes they were a high wire he was balancing on precariously. He graduated to using them to measure how tall he was—if his feet were against the wall, how many of them had he grown since last time he checked?

Back then this house wasn’t a prison.

“Dad, you should lie down,” Sam said from the doorway. “I’ll go get you some food, okay?”

Nox shook his head. “I need to talk to him again….”

“He’s asleep.”

“Sam….”

The teenager didn’t answer; he turned and disappeared from view.

Another bit of his control slipping away.

He did lie down finally, the gun next to him in the folds of the blanket. Nox eased a pillow under his knee to take some of the pressure off his lower leg, then stared at the ceiling until he drifted off.

Interlude

N
OX
WAKES
with a start. Something woke him up, something….

Quiet.

The rain has stopped.

He leans up from his curled-up position on the floor—checks the baby, who is still asleep in his little nest of clothes and Nox’s jacket on the seat—and looks out the window.

In the light of day, the devastation is obvious. Water everywhere, as if someone awkwardly placed a city in the middle of a lake. Several buildings are missing their roofs, and streams of water are cascading out of windows—up to the third and fourth floors. Cars float by, slamming into storefronts on the avenue.

Nox needs to get out of there.

He rewraps the baby, waking him, to his great annoyance, before sliding him into his shirt. The jacket goes back on, his backpack over his shoulders, with everything left in the diaper bag tucked away—he is ready to go.

The sound of a truck rattling past makes him drop down again. He peeks up and spies a National Guard transport slowly making its way through the flooded streets.

They are saved. Actually saved!

Nox throws open the door and shouts for help.

Chapter Fifteen

C
ADE
WOKE
up in his underwear, with a headache and five blissful seconds where he thought maybe it was because of a wild party with a client. Then he remembered.

“Shit.”

The side table held a lamp spilling low light and a bottle of water, damp with condensation, so it had probably been sitting there for a while.

Cade drank the water down, then tested his legs and head with actual movement. He was still a mess of aches and pains and a terrible headache, but he could manage that. Now he just needed some damn clothes so he could get the fuck out of here.

The past twenty-four hours had not been good for his wardrobe.

“Never mind. Designer clothes won’t really be necessary on the farm,” he muttered bitterly as he stood up. Fuck, he was so fired.

A grandfather clock began to bong out the hour—ten o’clock, which meant he was a full hour late for his shift, without a call.

So
fucking fired.

He should probably steal something to sell for all his troubles before he got the hell out of here—and then call the police to take this lunatic into custody, he thought, working his way towards the shuttered windows on the other side of the girly room.

“I guess you feel better,” someone said. Cade whirled around in surprise.

The teenager—Sam—was standing there, looking exhausted.

“Yeah,” Cade said slowly. “I need my clothes back.”

The kid seemed to suddenly realize Cade was standing there in his underwear; he blushed a little and averted his eyes. “They’re in the wash. I can get you something in the meantime.”

“Awesome,” Cade sassed. “You’re a super helpful kidnapper.”

“You weren’t kidnapped. You got beat up on our doorstep.” Sam tilted his head. “Why were you on our doorstep, by the way?”

Cade opened his mouth, then shut it, giving himself a moment to think. What if this skinny kid was in cahoots with Mullens? He just wanted to get out of here, and he wasn’t about to trust anyone in this house.

“I wanted to see you, actually,” Cade said carefully. “Try to figure out why me dropping off a note to you got me into so much shit.”

“Oh.” High spots of color appeared on Sam’s face. “Sorry about that. I didn’t—I mean, I don’t know who this Mr. White is. I’m not even sure how he found me, to be honest.”

Well, that didn’t help.

And it kind of made things worse.

“Maybe we can talk a little and figure out what’s going on?” Sam asked. “You’re kinda stuck here for a while because of curfew—I’ll get you some clothes and food, okay?”

Cade rubbed his face with both hands, nodding helplessly.

He was fucked. Might as well be warm and fed at the same time.

N
OW
DRESSED
in a set of threadbare black sweats, Cade followed Sam through the dining room—no table, the burgundy walls stacked with books and boxes—and into the expansive kitchen. Everything gleamed and sparkled, from the out-of-date appliances to the vintage countertop.

“You have a damn nice house,” Cade said, surprised that such luxury still existed in the city.

“Thanks. Dad has lived here since he was born—I mean, here in New York. We moved in here when I was a baby,” Sam said quickly, opening the refrigerator and ducking inside.

“Is it just you two?” Cade trailed his fingers over the countertop, eyeing the various coffeemakers and old-fashioned appliances—dated, but still nicer than anything his mom had ever had. Let the interrogation begin.

“Yeah.” Sam brought a package wrapped in white paper to the island. He tore the paper open, revealing a few pieces of chicken, small and thin—it had probably cost them a fortune.

“Divorce?”

“What? Oh God. No.” The kid smiled nervously. “I mean—I call him Dad, but it’s not biological or anything. That was why… uh—your friend, Mr. White. He said he could help me find my real parents.”

“Oh. Wow.” Cade didn’t know what to do with that. Mr. White, eccentric old man, terrible gambler and white-glove fetishist, trying to help a kid in the Old City find his birth family? Did not compute.

“Yeah.” Sam reached over to the pot rack and pulled down a frying pan. “I know it’s a long shot and I know it’s crazy, but—I want to know, if he can really do what he says. I want to know their names, at least.”

Confused, Cade leaned against the cabinets, arms folded over his chest. “Don’t you have a birth certificate or something?”

“Most of that stuff got destroyed in the floods, plus—I was born on Evacuation Day. So you know—zero chance there’s paperwork to even have survived. My dad found me in an abandoned car while he was going to the dock to get on the ferry and, um, he pulled me out.”

“Holy shit.” The asshole in the hood who also liked to handcuff boys to beds had a heroic past.

“And because he stopped, he missed the ferry.” Sam dropped his gaze, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the pan. “The one that sank.”

Cade shook his head. “That’s—he stopped to help you and ended up helping himself.”

Sam looked up at that, a melancholy smile on his face. “We saved each other that day.”

“But you still want to find out about your real parents?” Cade asked as Sam moved around the kitchen. Into the pantry for a bottle of olive oil, then back to the stove to prepare the chicken.

“I’m really grateful to him.” The kid stopped, scrunched up his face as he made quick work of pouring the oil and placing the chicken in the heated pan. “I’m just… curious. What were their names? Where did they live? Why was I in that car alone?”

“You know you probably won’t find out those things,” Cade said frankly. “Some people just… well, you know. They never found them.”

The chicken began to sizzle and pop in the pan. “Yeah, true. But if I can find a name, maybe there might be pictures online or something. I’d at least love to see what they looked like.”

A name and some faces. That was all this kid wanted. Something about the sad slant of Sam’s mouth and the longing in his expression touched Cade right in the center of his chest.

Cade knew the Creel family tree back to the 1600s. His mother’s Natchez ancestors—he knew them too. There were bound books of lineage and history from both sides of the family in the library, with pictures and census information.

For all his mixed emotions when it came to his family, he could identify his great-great-great-grandmother from a black-and-white picture, and this kid didn’t even have his mom’s first name.

Fuck.

“Listen, I can get in touch with Mr. White and I’ll let him know, okay? That you want his help.”

The kid lit up like Christmas morning. “Thank you.”

Cade leaned against the counter. “So maybe you can help me in return?”

Sam dialed back the glow a little. “How?”

Chapter Sixteen

N
OX
JOLTED
awake. He breathed deeply to steady his panicking heart as he stared up at the ceiling fan. Dreaming of that night didn’t help his muddled brain, and it made that skittering paranoia rise up like the tide, swamping over his rational thoughts. The fact that there had been no knock at the door was reassuring, at least—if Cade was their advance scout, he sucked mightily at it.

At some point Nox would have to confront the kid, find out what he knew, and make a decision about how he was leaving this house.

In the middle of this grim train of thought, the door rattled. A second later it swung open, revealing a delighted Sam, smiling brightly as he carried in the old breakfast tray.

“We made chicken and some rice,” Sam said as Cade trailed in behind him. “And tea.”

Nox glanced from his son to the man lounging in the doorway like he was posing for an ad, dressed in some old clothes of Nox’s. Scrapes and bruises aside, he looked better than before—and very fucking smug to be out of that room.

“I’m going to have to send you guys a crate of vegetables,” Cade said, arms crossed over his chest, his hip cocked. “That kitchen is a festival of carbs. By the way, I’m not your little prisoner anymore.”

Sam helped Nox sit up carefully so as not to tip anything over—the tray was dressed up with the good china and silver, a cloth napkin draped over the side.

“You were never—” Nox started to say, but Cade held up his hand.

“Me, underwear; you, lock door. That shit is kidnapping.” He gestured toward Sam, who was still fussing with the tray. “Fortunately you have a really awesome son and I’m considering not raining down the cops on your head.”

Nox dropped his hand to the Sig tucked under the covers next to him. “You were the one trespassing on my property,” Nox said slowly as Cade sauntered fully into the room.

“True. And you were the one who left me handcuffed facedown on the bed—also half-dressed—while you ran like a coward,” Cade retorted.

Sam made a sound.

“Out,” Nox barked at his son, who didn’t need to hear that twice.

The door slammed.

Nox opened his mouth, but Cade held his hands up in surrender. “How about we call a truce?”

Nox fingered the Sig but nodded.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here, because right now I have about five different versions of you, and I’m not sure which one is real,” Cade said, sitting down in the desk chair across from the bed. “Asshole in a hood doing some street justice. High-rolling Mr. Mullens with a domination kink….” He shrugged. “Douche-bag kidnapper. Coward in a crisis—but who saved a baby during a flood. How many of you are there?”

Laughter bubbled up in Nox’s chest, but he tamped it down—Cade would probably add “psycho” to that list if he heard the sound that was trying to escape. “First things first—why did you come up here?”

Cade rolled his eyes. “Which time?”

“This truce isn’t going to last very long if you’re an asshole….”

“One of my regular customers asked me to deliver a letter to Sam. That’s it. I said yes because I like big tippers who treat me nice.” Cade regarded Nox for a second. “After that I got accosted—by you. Then I got felt up and cuffed to a bed—by you. When I came up to find out what the fuck was going on, I got mugged. Then you know the rest.” He leaned back in the chair, looking ridiculously good in those old messy clothes.

Nox regarded him carefully. He’d become a very good judge of character over the years, a habit honed from being lied to over and over again until he could spot tells like it was a sixth sense. Young Cade was all sass and bravado for someone put into one ridiculous situation after another.

Ballsy.

Maybe he was telling the truth.

He hoped he was telling the truth.

“Who’s the customer?”

“Jesus Christ,” Cade muttered under his breath. “Mr. White.”

No bells went off. Not in any sphere of his life, not over all these years. Which meant it could be an alias.