Who Knows the Dark (24 page)

“They hire hackers,” LJ added, finally ungluing his eyes from the screen. “If you have a rep you can break them, they put you on their payroll.”

Cade shook his head, a hand going to his exhausted, gritty eyes. “And if you say no?” But he already knew the answer.

“If you say no, you’re still in no position to hack them, because you’re dead,” Rachel said slyly.

“What about Nox’s guy? He managed to have passes and credit that got him into the Butterfly. They had to be the best….”

Rachel perked up at that. “True. Unless Damian….” She said the name with a steely, venomous hiss. “Maybe he knew it was fake and let him in anyway.”

That didn’t make sense to Cade. But then again, neither did Damian’s betrayal. He had been sending information to someone—who’s to say it wasn’t someone inside the city?

“Alec said Damian wasn’t a fed.”

“And he clearly wasn’t just working for Zed.” Rachel tapped her heavy boots against the floor. “The drug people?”

“I’d ask for a raise—he was still in the casino when the bombs went off. And with the doors locked, he would have been killed if we hadn’t gotten him out.”

The
tap, tap, tap
of Rachel’s boots got louder. “Maybe he works for the cops?”

“I thought the cops worked for the drug people,” interjected LJ.

Cade groaned. “It’s like a fucking chess game. Why isn’t this like the movies where someone just declares they’re the bad guy?” he bitched tiredly. The paper and pen went flying across the room and hit the wall with a satisfactory thump.

“I wish we’d been able to bring the wall with us,” he said eventually. “All that information—”

“Is photographed and uploaded to LJ’s server,” Rachel added. When Cade looked up, she shrugged. “What? That was a lot of work and valuable information. After I was finished, LJ covered it all with paint.”

LJ gave Cade a thumbs-up from over the screen of the laptop.

“You guys are good at this stuff.” Cade threw Rachel a shrewd look. “Well,
you
I knew about.” He didn’t know the full extent of her past, but given her actions since everything went to shit, he knew he wanted her to always be on his side.

“You have no idea,” Rachel drawled before dropping her head against LJ’s shoulder. Her gaze didn’t leave Cade’s face, though, and he thought maybe he could read her mind a little bit better.

If Cade didn’t know, then LJ most likely didn’t either.

Finally Cade broke the staring contest. He felt restless, sluggish—tired of waiting for something to happen. For a man who’d spent so much of his life with his head down, Caden Lee Creel had forgotten what it was like to not step into the fray.

He struggled to his feet, his lower half pins and needles from sitting so long. The ten-foot-wide trailer didn’t provide much room to pace; a huge desk and piles of boxes (files, plans, tools they had no interest in) created a cramped path—certainly not conducive to pacing.

Cade considered outside, but the rain cut that option out of the picture. Instead he leaned against the small north-side window, his vision locking onto the misty outline of the city.

Somewhere in that mess of corruption and chaos was Nox. He’d come this far—no way he was going to stop until he found Nox.

The rain lulled him into a state of drifting, brushing against memories, until the first blow came against the door. Pounding soon followed, as if someone on the other side wanted to bring the cheap door down with the power of his fist.

Interlude

H
ER
NEW
name is Rachel Moon, and all the identification Mitzie Haze pushes across the pockmarked desk says so. Buying fake credentials in the basement drug den of a former strip club feels like the most normal thing Jenny—Rachel—has done in forever.

The National Guardsman—Scott, kind and idealistic, utterly foolish, and enraptured with her body—is being deployed elsewhere. New York City has been declared a lost cause for the moment, and there are too many other cities still limping toward recovery, with many more citizens living in crisis and itching to riot. He asked her to come back with him—to Connecticut—and for a moment, she almost said yes.

But Jenny—Rachel—can’t be sure what lies beyond the borders right now. She has nothing but a price on her head, and far too much information to be left alive. Making herself known would be suicide, and no fucking way is she going out like that.

No way.

Mitzie’s parents had been friends of Vera and Marat; they’d come over for arguments about Russian politics and strong black coffee every few Sundays. Ever the rebel, Mitzie chopped off all her black hair, dyed it white, and ran a strip club in Hell’s Kitchen with her girlfriend Ursula. Her parents declared her dead and went into mourning.

Now they were actually dead, swept away in floodwaters that had surged through their neighborhood in Brighton Beach. Mitzie and Ursula survived, staying in the city and refusing evacuation.

They had their reasons—they weren’t asking questions about hers.

“I don’t have money,” she says as Mitzie lights a cigarette. Her eyes are dark, sweeping over Rachel’s ragged hoodie and jeans, lips pursed as she leans back in her chair.

“You can work for me, Galina,” Mitzie murmurs in Russian, in a way that pricks at the back of her neck.

“My name is Rachel,” she answers, running her fingers over the documents.

“Raaachel.” Mitzie sounds out the word, and then Rachel knows exactly how she’s supposed to be paying for the documents.

She doesn’t hesitate, standing and reaching for the hem of her hoodie in the same motion. When her nude torso is revealed, Mitzie makes a soft sound of interest.

Rachel—Jenny, Galina, all of them—can work with this. She earns the fake documents on her knees with Mitzie’s fist in her hair.

By crawling and purring and being the perfect girl, she earns a cot in an abandoned top-floor apartment of the building Mitzie and Ursula have claimed as their own.

She takes over running the strippers—those that are left—and keeping the linens clean in the back when the National Guardsmen come in for some recreational fun.

A lonely general takes a shine to her, so she picks up some extra food and a whispered reveal across the pillows of several locations where supplies can be purloined and when patrols will not be around.

In less than two years, Ursula is gone and Mitzie is crawling around for her.

Rachel Moon rises from the ashes like a fucking phoenix.

“M
R
. S
UTHERLAND
is my dad—I’m Kyle!”

Nox had no interest in anything that perky, particularly not when a man he didn’t know was checking his catheter and smiling like an idiot. Nox turned his head to one side, trying to ignore the invasive tug. He gripped the metal railings on each side, attention on a small watercolor painting where a window should be.

His room had no windows.

No glimpses outside the door gleaned more information. He’d seen no one but Dr. Khanna, Kyle, and the mountain with the gun since he’d woken up. Weak tea and soup—provided by the ever chattering, no substance nurse Kyle—went ignored, and Nox kept his eyes closed as much as humanly possible.

Somewhere after his fifth nap of the morning, Nox realized the steady drip of his IV was more than just nourishment for his body. Through lidded eyes he’d watched Kyle inject something into the tubing, and almost instantaneously, Nox had drifted off again.

They were keeping him drugged.

Unable to fight it, he slept, long and blessedly dreamless, not fraught with violence or hallucinations of his dead father—at least until Kyle arrived for another round of uncomfortable touches.

“I’m going to give you a sponge bath, Mr. Boyet. You have a visitor coming later.” Kyle winked at him. “We want you looking your best, don’t we?”

Nox scowled. “Don’t… fucking… touch me,” he muttered, struggling to pull himself up into a seated position. The bed—and his body—didn’t cooperate, and he fell back down in a panting heap.

“That’s really no way to behave,” Kyle said sadly, shaking his head as he fussed with the blankets. “But no problem really. I’ll just get the restraints, and then I can take care of your… needs.” He licked his lips slowly.

A surge of anger drove Nox to move again. This time the adrenaline defied his injuries, and sweat-drenched and gasping, he pushed himself up.

“I… will… kill… you,” he spat.

Kyle’s face went white, and he stepped back, momentarily forgetting he had all the power. He said nothing, his pale face and red-spotted wide eyes betraying his confusion.

Did he take the chance and fight back, or believe exactly what Nox was telling him?

The latter won.

“I’m going to get clean linens,” Kyle whispered, then fled the room and slammed the door behind him.

Nox fell back, hazy with pain. The weakness overwhelmed him, the throbbing of his leg, his side, his head—he had to get out of this bed before someone a lot stronger than Kyle challenged him.

A subdued Kyle returned with linens and the large man with the big gun—who seemed amused to be standing guard for a sponge bath. Kyle didn’t even make eye contact with Nox; he carefully divested Nox of his sweaty hospital gown one corner at a time, going over his skin with a large damp sponge. As quickly as he could, he finished and then got Nox into another pristine white gown.

“Underwear,” Nox muttered, but Kyle shook his head.

“Your leg….”

Nox let out a growl, and their guard began to chuckle.

“Get the man some fucking drawers,
Kyle
.” His emphasis on the nurse’s name—the derision—sent Kyle scurrying once again, darting around the man and out into the hall.

“Fucking pervert,” the man said, shaking his head.

Nox observed him carefully; he was middle-aged but massive and clearly in control of his movements and power. Everything about him screamed professional, and Nox had no doubts he’d killed many times and with great enjoyment.

“Not my type,” he said, cool as he could croak in the man’s direction, testing the waters.

The muscle regarded Nox with an impenetrable expression, then walked toward the bed with slow deliberation.

“Mine neither. Pain is business, not pleasure,” he said finally, flashing a shark’s smile.

Nox felt a sliver of relief—and an overwhelming need for a gun in his hand.

“Better with you here, then,” Nox offered.

“Don’t get your flirt on—you’re not my flavor either.” The man cocked his head to one side. “You got a sister?” he asked before tipping his head back and laughing loudly. He slapped his hand on the metal guardrail, sending the bed shaking.

Nox waited for him to stop, his face still locked in an unemotional mask. “You got a name?”

“Yeah.”

Nox rolled his eyes, eliciting another chuckle from the man.

“Name’s Antonio. You call me Tony and I let the pervert have at you with a sponge behind a locked door.”

“Duly noted.” Nox shifted uncomfortably, then sent a glance toward the door. “Are my visitors coming soon, Antonio?”

“Not my call.” Antonio regarded him with keenly interested eyes, tapping his meaty fingers on the metal railing. “You have no idea, do you?”

Unease pooled in Nox’s stomach. “You mean where I am or who my visitors are—I have some ideas,” he said, lying confidence with each syllable. “I’d like to thank my host of course—maybe see if I can get upgraded to a room with a view.”

Antonio’s predatory grin appeared again, crinkling his eyes and earning Nox an approving nod. “You got balls, I’ll give you that.”

The door opened to reveal Kyle, now pouting and silent as he returned with a pair of nondescript white boxers. Nox kept his eyes locked on the nurse’s face and projected a look of sheer disdain as the man’s shaky hands got the undergarments up his legs—including the one with the stabilized knee—and up over his hips. Antonio watched from a few steps away, clearly amused.

Kyle didn’t make eye contact—or stay. He rearranged the blankets once again and then fled, nearly getting brained by the door as he attempted to escape.

“I’m impressed you scare the shit out of him when all he has to do is press a pillow over your face to shut you up,” Antonio observed dryly, situating himself back in the “guard” chair near the door. “Glad I have a gun,” he added, extending his tree trunk legs out and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Maybe after I get a view, I can get one of those,” Nox muttered. He turned his head away from his guard and waited.

E
VEN
ANGRY
men sleep; Nox woke up yet again, fuzzy-headed and dry-mouthed, to an empty room. Antonio was gone, his IV was full, and a spray of white roses sat on a rolling table at the foot of his bed.

The bizarreness of his current confines seemed to be pushed over the edge by those goddamn flowers; they reminded him of the ones his mother had gotten when he was little, when his father would have to stay late “one more night” and she’d cry over the phone. It was among his earliest of memories—his father’s absence, his mother’s tears….

The memory of his father made that days ago—or was it hours, weeks?—hallucination of Carson Boyet all the more uncomfortable. He’d like to think in his hour of sadness he’d only think of Cade. Or Sam. Or his mother. A weird prickling sensation began to crawl over Nox’s skin like tiny electrically charged ants. Nausea began to build, a pressure behind his eyes.