Who Knows the Dark (16 page)

“I wish we knew what we were doing,” Sam whispered, slipping his hands into Mason’s hair and holding on for dear life. He wanted to be embarrassed for how turned-on he was, but Mason rocking his hips told him he wasn’t alone.

“We’re doing fine,” Mason said softly before slotting their mouths together once again.

A
S
THE
sun set, Cade walked back to the house to return the basket of dirty dishes to his mother. There was a strange intimacy to watching Nox fill the walls with the narrative of this journey so far—odd to see so many terrible things reduced to squares and arrows and names.

Caught up in his thoughts, Cade almost missed the emergence of Mason and Sam from the trees, clothes rumpled and faces bright red. He didn’t need full sunlight to catch those details—they were bright and shining as the neon signs in the District. They didn’t see him, hand in hand as they walked in the opposite direction, off toward the barn.

Oh crap
was all he could think. Nox wasn’t going to like this one bit.

In the kitchen, Cade found his mother serving coffee and cake to Rachel, Damian, and his father, whom he ignored entirely from the second he walked in until he was done filling the empty carafe.

“What are you crazy kids up to?” Rachel asked, breaking the silence sitting heavy over the room.

“Just putting together some notes.” Cade screwed the top on the carafe and then glanced at Rachel. “Maybe you can help, actually.”

There was a hint of strain around Rachel’s eyes and mouth—maybe it had always been there, hidden by makeup, or maybe everything was catching up with her. Whatever the reason, she had knowledge, and if he could keep her and Nox from killing each other, they might just solve another piece of the puzzle.

C
ADE
KNEW
Nox would make a face when he entered with Rachel, but it was far more muted than he had expected. Another half of the wall had been filled, this time with a map of the island. Nox glanced over his shoulder briefly, acknowledged Rachel, then turned back to where he and Mason had labeled casinos and neighborhoods.

“What the hell?” Rachel asked, even as she drifted closer to the walls, her eyes going wide. “This is….”

“I was thinking you could add some stuff,” Cade said, sinking down onto the floor, out of everyone’s way. “You’ve been there for most of this.”

That got another head turn from Nox; he locked gazes with Rachel, their expressions similarly matched—a little pissed, jaws locked. Then Nox reached into his pocket and pulled out a red marker.

“I’d love to see what you know,” he muttered.

R
ACHEL
STARTED
in the middle.

She added three names next to Nox’s family tree—Marat Aglaya, Vera Aglaya, Galina Aglaya.

“Galina,” Nox said as Rachel wrote out
Jenny
below it.

She drew a line between Carson and Jenny, then began to draw boxes in a new pyramid format.

“So here’s a little story about how some Russians freelanced their services out to a Dominican drug cartel.”

Interlude

J
ENNY
IS
fifteen when her parents die. She comes home from school to find the door of the Brighton Beach cottage kicked in, the smell of blood choking her as she wanders into the bedroom. Marat and Vera are dead on the bedroom floor—head shots, then two to the heart. She is dazed and devastated until a calm falls over her.

They had prepared her for this possibility since she was six years old.

Jenny takes her bag from the closet, the money tucked in the freezer, and the Beretta from the hollowed-out Bible on the bookshelf.

Her father was a Krysha—an enforcer. His job was to protect the cartel from other groups who wanted a piece of the business. Vera’s father had been a Pakhan, and while it afforded her protection in Moscow, that didn’t extend to America.

They were living on borrowed time and trained Jenny accordingly.

She takes the subway to Manhattan, then down to Wall Street. Once a month Marat took her on the trains, and they mapped out every route she could take—straightforward and to lose a tail—to get to the offices. Once there, she’d invoke a promise made to Marat and Vera by the American contact for the cartel.

Chin up, shoulders back, Jenny tells the guard she is there to see Carson Boyet.

Carson is handsome and neatly dressed, regarding her with curious blue eyes over his glass-topped desk. He doesn’t ask many questions except “Can you use a computer?” and “Do you speak Spanish?”

Yes and yes.

Two years later, she doesn’t remember her life before being Carson Boyet’s assistant. She spends every waking hour in the office, answering his phone in her cheerful fake voice, or running “errands” around the city, a gun in her pocket and a cool smile on her face.

She sits in a car and snaps pictures of a member of the city council trolling for crack in the Village. She bugs hotel rooms and cyberstalks politicians and the city elite. She knows everyone the mayor fucks, including his stepdaughter. She has files on everyone.

When she isn’t creating a blackmail database, Jenny is dealing with things Carson doesn’t care about. Like paying the household bills and making sure Natalie’s stay at the mental hospital is always the deluxe package.

Carson doesn’t share what he’s doing, but Jenny slowly comes to realize that all his hustle and bustle isn’t for their Dominican bosses.

He’s got a plan.

So Jenny creates a database of her own. Insurance, in case something goes wrong. And when, a few years later, a man calls one day, when Carson is at Gracie Mansion with the mayor once again, Jenny answers his questions truthfully. She knows what happens to snitches—but then, she knows even better what happens to people who skim off the top.

One head shot, two to the heart.

C
ADE
HELD
his breath as Rachel finished her story.

“My father…,” Nox began, then stopped.

“He laundered money for a Colombian cartel,” Rachel said, still staring at the wall.

“They had him killed.”

“Skimming profits is frowned upon.”

Cade held his breath, watching Nox and Rachel in a frozen tableau.

“I didn’t do it, if that’s your next question.” Rachel recapped the marker and dropped it on the floor. “The cops came and told me to identify the body. Then when I got back to the office, there was a gun on my chair and a message on my phone.”

“Go and take care of my mother.” Nox’s voice dropped to something low and dangerous, but Rachel, clearly weary, didn’t even take a step back.

“No, that was something I decided to do on my own.”

“Kill her.”

“Hey,” Rachel snapped. “I wasn’t going to kill her. I just wanted to get her out of there, okay? But you were there, and the baby….” Rachel’s voice cracked, her face pale and damp. “I didn’t know she was pregnant, or I would have gotten her out sooner.”

The air crackled; Cade could feel his chest heaving with tension. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement—Mason, who must’ve come in unnoticed while Nox and Rachel squared off. He didn’t know how long, but Mason’s fingers fidgeted at his side, like those of a gunslinger unsure of what would happen five seconds from now.

And then realization fell over Mason’s expression.

“Oh shit,” he murmured, scrambling to his feet. “Nox….”

Mason kept blinking, then took a hesitant step back, as if his brain were clicking everything into its uncomfortable place. Cade tried to decide if he should grab Mason or throw Nox in the opposite direction, so unsure of what his reaction might be.

“You can’t tell him,” Nox started, but Mason’s face cracked from surprise to a firm-lipped refusal.

“I won’t lie to him.” Mason’s shoulders went back, the recurrent tremble to his voice gone. “I won’t do that.”

“He would be devastated to find out….” Nox was moving across the room, past the stone-still Rachel, past Cade, who couldn’t block his desperate stalk to stop Mason from walking out that door.

“Find out what? You’re his brother? No—he’ll be devastated to find out you lied to him.”

The whiplike strike of the remarks hit Nox; he stumbled a little, but even that didn’t stop him from grabbing Mason’s arm.

They were evenly matched—size, strength—and both, Cade realized, were fighting about the person they loved most in the world.

Sam.

“Hey, hey, let’s just—let’s just relax, okay,” Cade said, getting between them as quickly as he could. “This isn’t going to help the situation, and it’s sure as hell not going to help Sam.”

Gazes locked, neither man reacted to Cade’s words. Frustrated, he shoved at Nox’s chest, breaking his hold on Mason. Cade kept his hands on Nox’s trembling body, as if he could contain the anger and fear boiling below the surface.

From around the wall, a wide-eyed LJ stared, and Cade tipped his head toward the front door.

LJ disappeared quietly—Cade assumed his psychic plea to lock them in had been received.

“You tell him or I will,” Mason said finally, when the suffocation of silence and heavy breathing reached its breaking point. He was quiet and sure, his face the picture of disappointment. “My loyalty is with him, and I won’t let him keep on believing you’re a freaking saint when… when….”

“Hey, you don’t know the full story, so shut up.”

The three men turned; Rachel stood, framed by the words on the wall, arms folded over her chest.

“You think everyone has the right to know everything? That’s bullshit. Maybe Sam doesn’t need to know because the story is so fucking horrible it’ll ruin his life. Maybe not every kid has to know where he came from, okay?” she snapped. “Hey, your mother was crazy and your father was a fucking rapist—wow, what an amazing gift.”

Nox sagged against Cade’s hands, then straightened up again, eyes glittering as he glanced over at Mason.

“He’s my son, and I would do anything to protect him,” he said finally, the threat spelled out in every ice-cold syllable. “Don’t underestimate me.”

Mason shook his head. “Aren’t you just protecting yourself? He blames himself for all this, you know that! He thinks because he wanted to know who his parents are, that’s what got you into trouble! You can’t let him drag that around.”

A sudden commotion from the other side of the wall broke the moment. LJ popped around the corner, a frantic expression on his face.

“The feds just pulled into the driveway.”

T
HE
BLACK
SUV didn’t have a front license plate; it was a behemoth of tinted windows and vibes so dire Nox already had his gun drawn. He watched from his perch inside LJ’s house, tucked down between two desks piled with old computers and parts. Rachel and Cade were in the corner of the empty loft bedroom, while Mason—the only other armed person in the house—was at the back door.

LJ, scratching his stomach under his T-shirt and ambling like he didn’t have a care in the world, walked down the pathway to where five men in gray suits were getting out of the SUV.

Nox controlled his breathing as he monitored LJ’s deceptively casual movements. The bombardment of Rachel’s revelations and Mason’s knowledge set his teeth on edge—he almost welcomed the chance to rush through the door and engage in some sort of violent defense, if only to release the gathering force of his anger.

From the house, Amelia Creel hurried to meet the group, hands frantically fluttering. Before she even arrived, Lee Sr. came around the side of the house, the ever-present shotgun in his hands.

A conversation ensued; the tallest of the gray-suited men came forward, facing the menace of Lee Sr. without even bothering to acknowledge LJ or Amelia. The gun stayed pointed at the grass—just barely; it would have taken a twitch for Lee Sr. to blow the guy’s legs off—but there was no mistaking the firm set of Lee Sr.’s shoulders.

Three minutes passed. Five. Sweat pooled under Nox’s arms and down his back, his gun heavy, itching his palm. Amelia buried her face in her hands at one point as Nox kept his eyes trained on the four men who stood like silent witnesses to the conversation.

Seven minutes. Suddenly Lee Sr. stuck his hand out, and the fed shook it heartily. After a few nods, and just as quickly as they had come, the SUV of agents backed down the driveway and out onto the road.

Nox shook his head. A trick maybe? An ultimatum?

The Creels, however, didn’t seem to be panicking anymore. Nox watched Amelia and Lee Sr. embrace, and LJ turned toward the house with a huge smile on his face.

What the hell?

“What’s going on?” Mason whispered from behind him, but Nox was already up, already headed for the door. It flew open and LJ greeted him with a punch in the arm.

“Congratulations, asshole—they think you’re dead.”