Who Knows the Dark (15 page)

“The chief, I guess.” Mason shrugged. “I don’t know. Some people never get asked and, well, I assume no one’s ever said no.”

Nox shifted his weight, tapped his boot against the floor. Finding honest cops like Mason might not be as hard as he’d thought.

“Francis, the one who tried to frame Sam for the construction site bombings….”

“Oh man, he’s the worst. He doesn’t even pretend, you know? He brags about how much he makes off the casinos, how he can do whatever he wants.”

I’d like a few hours with him
, Nox thought.
I’d make him tell me what I want to know and enjoy every second of it.

“But he was forced to let Sam go,” mused Nox. “Someone higher than he was got Sam out of jail.”

“The mayor?” Mason asked. “He and the police chief are always together, thick as thieves.”

Nox stood up, unable to keep still another second. “So the police chief gets his orders from the mayor. The mayor gets orders from the casinos….”

A small object plunked against his side. He looked down at his feet to see a fat black marker.

“Write it down. Draw a diagram,” LJ called, already back at his computer. “Use the wall. Stop talking so loud.” He gestured wildly, leading Nox to walk around to the far wall, where he discovered a large empty room with just four white walls—no windows—and an overhead light fixture in the center of a ceiling fan.

Mason joined Nox, sharing his bemused confusion. “Use the wall, the man said.”

Nox shrugged. “What the hell.”

He put his coffee down, uncapped the marker, and went to work.

Nox started with some simple organizational charts based on Mason’s observations. The mayor to the police chief, to each of the crooked departments and the names of the people involved. Judges were next, in a set of squares to one side. By the time he’d filled half the wall, sweat crept under his arms and over the back of his neck, and Mason had had to go back to the house for more coffee. Twice.

Standing back, Nox stared at the compiled lists and various arrows. He felt almost… unburdened by the act, as if seeing it laid out made it somehow less threatening than the incredible force of the unknown he’d been fighting.

It made him think of his father. And Jenny. Mr. White.

LJ had left a small pile of markers in different colors in the corner; Nox grabbed a dark blue and moved to a second wall. At the top, as far as he could reach, Nox wrote his parents’ names: Natalie and Carson Boyet. He added the years they were born and the year they died. He wrote his name and then stilled his hand from adding Sam’s.

A moment of sorrow blurred the wall in front of him, and then Nox began to write once more. The chronology of his mother at Morningside Sanitarium. His father’s ever-increasing hours away from the house. The years after the storms, his encounters with the Dead Bolt dealers in his neighborhood.

The escalation made his hand shake.

Interlude

N
OX
IS
thirteen. His mother is having a good month, and that is rapidly turning into a good two months, a thing almost unheard of these days. It means his father has started coming home for dinner twice a week, and Nox thinks his heart might explode from happiness.

His friends bitch and moan about family dinners and vacations, complaining about all the time they’re forced to spend with their parents. Nox never says anything—he’s not going to reveal the delight he feels when his father is at the breakfast table or his mother sits down with him to watch television at night.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to get too much parenting, only too little.

It’s summertime and gorgeous out. His father is wearing casual clothing so alien that Nox wants to take a picture—this is how Carson Boyet looks without a tie. His mother puts on a green dress, and when his father says, “Nat, you look gorgeous,” she blushes and giggles. They hold hands walking down the street, with Nox in tow.

Tonight they’ll eat and laugh, and Nox will see his parents kiss for the first time in so long he can’t remember the last time. They’ll sit on the stoop when they get home, eating frozen yogurt and talking about maybe taking a trip over the Christmas holidays. Skiing or maybe Europe or someplace tropical. Nox doesn’t care—he’ll gladly stay home if he can have this forever.

And if his father takes a phone call after they return to the house, a call that leaves him locked in his office until after midnight—that’s fine. It doesn’t mean that things can’t stay as wonderful as they’ve been.

The weekend is coming. They’ll spend time together then.

Two days later the UPS driver drops off thirty boxes as Nox is coming home from school. The man’s expression of sympathy is all too familiar. Hair dank and eyes dull, Natalie flits around the house in a nervous panic, wringing her hands and checking the stove for a gas leak five, ten, twenty times an hour.

Carson doesn’t come home for two days. Two weeks later, Nox wakes up to find his mother gone and his father packing a bag in the master bedroom.

And Nox is left alone again.

W
HEN
M
ASON
returned for coffee a third time, Cade followed him back to the guesthouse. Since their little sexual encounter the other night, he and Nox had been doing an odd dance of silent intimacy. They took every opportunity in private to touch and be close, but the second they stepped outside the bedroom door, Nox threw up every wall he could until Cade felt like he was circling a fortress, futilely looking for an opening.

He couldn’t find one.

Inside his abode, LJ furiously worked on his computer, muttering into a wireless headset. Mason led Cade into the adjoining room with a quirk of his finger—and Cade’s jaw dropped.

Neat and efficient handwriting covered two of the four walls. Squares and arrows linking dates and names and locations in carefully ordered rows. And in the middle of it, Nox, stripped down to his tight T-shirt and jeans, the ever-present Sig at his back, writing what looked to be a chronology.

A timeline of his life.

Cade swallowed. He saw Sam’s name. Jenny. Mr. White. And then his, neatly tucked toward the bottom third of the wall.

The Iron Butterfly. Alec.

“Rachel said Alec left on his own,” he said suddenly, “because he was asking too many questions.”

Nox’s hand faltered for a second, and then he turned around slowly. “What else did she say?”

“People came to Zed. They wanted to deal Dead Bolt through the casino….”

Cade talked and Nox wrote everything down, eventually sinking to the floor to use the space. Cade paced, his hands shaking slightly when he mentioned Billy and finding Zed’s body.

He stood facing the untouched wall, back to Nox as he breathed deeply.

“He brought me to Zed’s rooms, I guess to turn me in,” Cade murmured, hands flexing into fists. “Billy was shocked when he saw Zed had been killed, and I managed to get away. But he uh… he kept coming after me. I made it to the closet, and then he was there. I grabbed the first thing I could find, an umbrella I think, and I just….” He choked as saliva filled his mouth; he didn’t want to be sick on the wall, so he breathed and breathed, big gulping heaps of air until he could speak again.

“I killed him.”

“You protected yourself,” Nox murmured, closer than Cade thought, and rested his hand gently on Cade’s shoulder. “He would have killed you—all you did was fight back.”

Cade nodded. Because logically, yes, he had defended himself. He took no pleasure from Billy’s death. But for all his nausea and sickening memories, he wasn’t sorry, and that was actually the scariest part. Because he was becoming more aware every day that he’d do it again—and not just because he was in danger himself.

Nox’s arms circled his chest, pulling their bodies close together.

“I’d do it again, if I had to,” Cade whispered, quiet in his confession. He leaned his head back, letting Nox take his weight for a moment.

“Good.” Nox’s breath was warm against his ear. “Because I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Cade couldn’t resist turning in his arms; he liked the look of bashful surprise on Nox’s face when they were facing each other.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you either,” Cade said, close enough for a kiss.

The quick flash of guilt in Nox’s eyes was unmistakable.

“Whatever you’re planning—” Cade started, but Nox silenced him with his lips.

Cade almost fell for it, almost fell into the slick heat of Nox’s mouth and Nox’s hands tightly clutching his back, but the distraction wasn’t enough to silence the nervous voice in the back of his mind. He pulled away, far enough from the temptation.

“What are you going to do?”

Nox took a shaky inhale, closing his eyes to Cade’s expectant gaze. “I’m going back to the city.”

The bottom dropped out of Cade’s stomach. “You’re wanted on a federal warrant,” he started, but Nox was already shaking his head.

“We have to clear our names. And I refuse to let them get away with what they did to my family.”

“Your family is here, right now. Sam is your family.” Cade’s voice faltered; he felt the anger and panic turning his face red-hot. “I….” He couldn’t make himself say it, fear cutting his words off at the source. “If you go back there, they’ll throw you in jail. Or worse. Is that what you want? For them to put a bullet in your head?”

“If they were going to kill me, they would have already.”

“You can’t think—”

“Rachel was right. She asked me the night we sailed away—why didn’t they just kill me? All those years, all the money I cost them by destroying shipments of Dead Bolt.” Nox’s bewilderment was palpable, but Cade could see him building a head of steam over this train of thought. “I got in their way, and they let me live. I have to know why.”

“You have to know why you aren’t dead? How about this—you’re goddamn lucky. You are lucky to be alive. You have your son, and you have friends.” His voice cracked on the word. “You have a fucking chance to start over, and you would give that all up, for what? An explanation? Words? You want an apology because you’re alive?” Cade pushed out of Nox’s arms, bouncing off the wall behind him. “This is crazy. You cannot go back.”

Nox let him go. But the tone of his voice stopped Cade from storming out of the room. “I can’t go forward until I know,” Nox said quietly. “I can’t tell you what you want to hear until I know.”

Cade faltered at the doorway, unable to stop from looking back. Nox looked smaller, almost cowed by his admission. The pleading expression in his eyes made Cade’s stomach twist.

“You can’t tell me what I want to hear if you’re dead.”

D
INNER
WAS
a quiet affair, as half the party remained holed up in the guesthouse. Damian and Rachel, Sam and Mason, and Amelia had a pleasant meal, with sporadic polite conversation and a great deal of “pass the potatoes” filling in the quiet. Afterward Amelia sent the “boys” out for a walk before dark, with orders to get fresh air.

They made it just down off the porch before Mason reached out and took Sam’s hand in his.

Sam tried not to spontaneously explode on the spot.

They meandered over the property, trying and failing to make small talk, because Sam was too distracted by the way their fingers and palms curved together, the way his lips buzzed and his heart beat quicker, as if this were an intimate act and not just a simple touch of their hands.

“Let’s sit down?” Mason asked, startling Sam out of his daydream. He indicated a small copse of trees ahead, a canopy of branches over a thick felled trunk.

“Sure.”

Sam followed Mason’s lead until they were situated side by side on the log, the shadows chilling their hideaway.

“Why did you pick—” Sam began. Lifting his chin to look at Mason, he was quickly swept into a tender kiss. They’d kissed before, but not with this urgency, this sense of need. Sam leaned into Mason’s body, thrilled when Mason’s arms circled his chest. The bite of bark against his legs was the only thing that kept him tethered; he wanted to fly up and sing with delight at the soft press of his lips against Mason’s.

The tongue tracing the seam of his lips—that was a jolt.

Sam didn’t think, he just instinctively opened his mouth, gasping when Mason tilted his head and pushed in, sucking on the tip of Sam’s tongue.

Mason made a delicious noise, and a warm palm pressed against the inside of Sam’s thigh. The hot-cold flares of desire in the pit of Sam’s stomach became almost painful as Mason traced his fingers inside Sam’s pants, closer and closer….

Sam pulled away, trying to get air into his lungs.

“Um….”

“Sorry—I’m sorry.” Mason pulled his hands away, scooted his body until they were no longer touching.

That was not what Sam wanted at all.

He followed Mason, ignoring the roughness tearing at his borrowed jeans, the light-headed blur before his eyes as he moved too fast; Sam pressed against Mason’s body, trying to pull his mouth against his once again.

“You’re not making it easy to be responsible,” Mason whispered, his breath warm against the side of Sam’s face.

“You started it.” Sam made a decision, a second’s thought, and then he was straddling Mason’s lap, tucking his knees against Mason’s hips.

He hadn’t calculated Mason’s surprise, or the delicious rub of their bodies against each other. They tilted toward the ground, and Mason slid his big hands around Sam’s waist to try to steady them.

“Sam.” It was a glorious whisper; Sam’s chest heaved with effort and lust—he was pretty sure that’s what it was. Lust and pneumonia and being pressed up against Mason, chest to chest….