Underworld (18 page)

I glanced at John and Mr. Liu, who were, it was true, standing over him somewhat menacingly. But Alex had attacked John first.
He
was the one being the most offensive.

“These are my friends,” I said indignantly. “And they came with me to help find you because I was so worried about you.”

Alex’s voice cracked. “You disappear without a word to anyone, then come back because you’re worried about
me
? Why?”

“You’re my cousin,” I said, hurt by his incredulous tone. “You’re someone I care about a lot. I get the sense that you’re in trouble. Your dad told you I was home, and that he’d like
you
to come home, but you sat here in the dark and kept playing
World of Warcraft
by yourself. Don’t you think that’s a little worrying, Alex? Don’t you think
that’s
a sign that something weird is going on?”

“God, you are so self-centered,” Alex said with a laugh. John’s eyes weren’t the only ones flashing. Alex’s looked unusually bright, too. But his eyes were brown. “So you disappear for a while, and then come back, and I’m supposed to drop everything to rush home to see you? And because I don’t, you gather this search party of freaks to come looking for me, because
I’m
in some kind of trouble?”

“That doesn’t make her self-centered,” John said, in a cool voice. “It makes her probably one of the few people in your life who actually cares about you.”

“None of this has anything to do with her,” Alex said with a scowl. “It happened over twenty years ago, and my
dad
is the one paying the price for it — continues to pay the price for it, every day. It’s nice that you want to help all of a sudden, Pierce — your mom, too, moving back here to play house like everything’s hunky-dory. But you’re both a little late to the party.”

It wasn’t until the end of this speech that I figured out why Alex’s eyes looked so bright: They were filled with tears.

He was crying.

S
hocked, John released his hold on Alex.

Instead of trying to get away, however, Alex slumped forward in his chair, burying his face in his hands, weeping soundlessly.

I exchanged astonished glances with Kayla, uncertain what to do. I’d hoped that since she’d spent more time with him than I had, she could give me some insight into how to deal with him.

I could tell from her wide-eyed expression, though, that she had no idea either … nor, judging from the looks they gave me, did anyone else.

Except John, who said, in a considerably kinder voice than he’d used before when speaking to or about Alex, “He’s had enough. Someone ought to take him home now.” I think he could tell that Alex was wounded, far more deeply than I’d ever realized, because Alex had always acted as if he didn’t care about anything — or anyone.

But evidently he did care, since he groaned at John’s suggestion. “No. Please.” He didn’t lift his face from his hands. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Wait,” I said to John, and righted one of the chairs that had been tipped over when Alex had flipped the table. Then I sat down in it, and laid a hand on Alex’s back. “Why don’t you want to go home, Alex?”

“Would
you
?” he asked, his voice muffled because he was still speaking into his fingers. “If you had to live with
her
?”

I knew exactly who he meant, picturing the way she’d stood at the bottom of the stairs by the newel post, reaching into her purse for the pepper spray. She’d never pepper-sprayed Alex, to my knowledge, but she liked to lecture him on what she considered his faults.

“No,” I said. “But your dad is there now. And when he gets a job, you two can move out —”

“He’s not going to get a job,” Alex groaned. “No one will hire him, because of his prison record —”

I’d actually walked in on my mother having a similar discussion with Uncle Chris. Mom had offered him a loan — she’d even offered to buy him a boat, so he could start his own charter fishing company — but he’d refused. He appreciated it, he’d said, but he didn’t want any handouts. He was going to make good on his own.

“— and he’s probably going to get charged with Jade’s murder.”

I realized with a sense of frustration that Alex was right.

“We’re working on that,” I assured him.

“Working on that?” He was still speaking into his hands. “How are you
working
on that? You’re a spoiled rich girl from Connecticut who died and came back to life a mental case. Everyone knows it. Now you’ve run off with your roid-head boyfriend. You’re not exactly Nancy freaking Drew, all right?”

That stung. Not that I’d ever wanted to be Nancy Drew, except maybe when I was ten. And John wasn’t a roid-head.

“Pierce.” John’s face was hard. “Let’s go. He doesn’t want our help.”

John was right, I knew. You couldn’t help someone who wouldn’t accept that help or even help himself. But still …

It wasn’t until Hope fluttered over and landed by Alex’s feet, peering questioningly up at him, that he finally tore his hands away from his eyes.

“Oh, my God,” he said, sounding disgusted. “Why is there a
bird
looking at me?”

“That’s Miss Oliviera’s bird,” Henry volunteered cheerfully. “The captain gave it to her as a present.”

Kayla punched me in the arm. “John’s got his captain’s license?” she whispered. “You are so lucky. Frank says he just loads cargo.”

I glanced at Frank. I wondered if Kayla would like him as much if she knew the “cargo” he loaded was human souls.

To Alex, I said, “What did you mean just now when you said something happened over twenty years ago that Uncle Chris is still paying the price for? You mean his arrest? What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing,” he said, sullenly. “I changed my mind. I
do
want to go home.”

I didn’t believe in his sudden change of heart. I knew he was trying to avoid the discussion. I had never seen Alex so emotional, although I suppose I should have always known that he was. That’s why he, like me, had been in New Pathways.

“I know,” I said. “And we’ll make sure you get home. But tell me something first. Tonight I found out that my mom and Seth Rector’s dad used to go out when they were in high school … that they were going to get married. And your dad and Farah Endicott’s dad and my mom and Seth’s dad all used to hang out … up until your dad got arrested. Then my mom and Seth’s dad had some kind of falling-out and broke up. Did you know about all of that?”

Alex gave me a sarcastic look, despite his red-rimmed eyes.

“Pierce,” he said. “You must be the last person on this entire island not to know about that.”

“I didn’t,” Kayla volunteered. When everyone looked at her, she said, sheepishly, “Well, my mom and I haven’t lived here that long.”

I smiled at her briefly, then glanced back at Alex. “I know Mr. Rector and Mr. Endicott are still friends. They’re building that new private housing development out on Reef Key together. They asked if my dad wanted to invest in it.”

Alex regarded me coldly. “Wow,” he said, his voice as sarcastic as before. “I had no idea I was related to such an accomplished detective. Is that where you were the past couple of days? Doing undercover work? Tell me, Detective Oliviera, what else did you and your CSI team learn during your amazing investigation?”

“She learned,” Mr. Liu said, taking a menacing step forward, “that boys who smart off to ladies often get slapped.”

I blinked up at Mr. Liu in surprise. I would have expected that kind of response from John, but from his crew it was quite surprising. Even John was looking at his bosun with gratitude.

Alex, cowed, said, in a more normal tone, “Twenty years ago, before there was such a thing as Homeland Security, the Island of Bones was a major entry point for smugglers … not only for illegals, but for drugs. They still come across the gulf from Mexico and Colombia by submarine, because the Coasties can’t spot those. But someone’s always had to meet them at the shore to pick up the goods, then hide them until they can be transported safely to Miami.”

“Is that what your dad did?” I asked Alex gently. “He picked up some … illegal cargo?”

“He was just a kid,” Alex said fiercely. “
Our
age, Pierce. But because it was the new war on drugs, and Dad was a local football hero, and only a Cabrero, not a rich Rector, or a fancy Endicott, and what he got caught doing was an embarrassment to the community, they wanted to make an example out of him. So he was given twenty years for possession with intent to sell on a first offense … no previous record, no weapons or violence or anything like that. But he wouldn’t rat anyone else out, because
some
people are loyal to their friends.” He shook his head, the tears still in his eyes bright, even in the fairy lights. “This is how he’s been rewarded. Some
friends
they turned out to be, right?”

The music had grown quieter. They were playing a Spanish ballad. The woman in the red dress was singing, her voice as liquid as the rain coming down outside the archway, and in between breaks in the canopy of leaves. But because the rain was light, and the leaves overhead so thick, it was dry inside the courtyard. Thunder rumbled overhead, sounding farther out to the sea than before. The storm appeared to be breaking up. Or at least, this particular band of rain was passing by.

The real storm, as John had said, was yet to come.

“So,” I said softly. “It’s not Seth Rector you hate at all. It’s Seth’s dad … and also Farah’s dad, and everyone else who knew Uncle Chris around the time he was arrested … maybe even my mom” — it hurt me to add this part, but I couldn’t blame Alex for feeling this way. My mom had abandoned him when he’d most needed us. Though she, like me, was trying to make things right now — “because you think they were involved in what he was doing, and they let him take the fall alone. Is that how it is?”

“Yes, Pierce,” Alex said bitterly, running his fingers through his dark hair. “That’s how it is. That money Rector is spending building Reef Key, and helping to put on this stupid festival tonight … even that hideous
mausoleum
their family has in the cemetery … some of that money rightfully belongs to my dad. He
earned
it, all that time he spent in prison, not saying who else was involved, the way a friend is supposed to. But have they offered him one cent since he got out? Have they offered him a job on their new development? Have they so much as asked my dad out to
dinner
since he got out of prison? Of course not.”

I found myself glancing, for some reason, at Kayla, the only outsider standing nearby who did not reside in the Underworld. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her with this highly sensitive information. In fact, when I was around her, the diamond at the end of my necklace turned purple, which it didn’t with anyone else … not that it was doing so now. It remained a dark, sludgy black, indicating that somewhere, evil lurked.

Still, finding out the empire of one of the most influential men in your town had possibly been built on drug money — that was pretty explosive stuff. I wouldn’t have been able to keep it to myself, if I were her.

What I couldn’t understand was how my mom had, for so long.

“Alex,” I said. “How do you know all this? Did … did Uncle Chris tell you it was true for a
fact
that Mr. Rector and Mr. Endicott were involved?”

He made a face. “Of course not,” he said. “He won’t talk about anything to do with his time in jail. But I’ve done my research. I
know
it’s true. Everyone thinks the Rectors are this great, respectable family, just like they think Isla Huesos is this beautiful island paradise. But I know the truth about the dark side that lies beneath this place.”

I couldn’t help glancing at John. He looked back at me, his gaze troubled. Alex wasn’t wrong about the dark side that lay beneath Isla Huesos.

He just didn’t know how deep it went.

“— all the lies and the greed and the murder. Yes,
murder
.” Alex’s own eyes glittered feverishly. “You can’t tell me Jade’s murder isn’t connected to all this somehow. It’s too much of a coincidence. If you don’t think she died because she stumbled onto something in that cemetery that she wasn’t supposed to see, you’re crazy. Or someone killed her to set up my dad so he’d have to go back to jail, where they think he’ll continue to keep quiet —”

“Oh, Alex,” I heard myself saying, my heart swelling with fear for him. “I’m sure that wasn’t what —”

“Yes, it
is
, Pierce,” he said. “And I’m going to find the proof. And when I do, I’m going to blow Seth and his dad — and this whole place — sky high.”

“And what good will that do anyone?” Mr. Liu asked unexpectedly.

“What
good
will that do?” Alex’s voice cracked again. “People will know the truth —”

“Sometimes it’s better to shield people from the truth,” John said, a faraway look in his eyes.

Wait … were we talking about exposing the truth about Isla Huesos’s
true
underworld, or the seedy criminal underworld Alex was insisting existed? Or were we talking about shielding
me
from the truth about John’s past? I could no longer tell.

In some ways, though, I could see John’s point. It might be better not to know. Look at all the people out on that dance floor. Would they still gather there as happily if they knew that beneath their feet loomed a cavernous waystation for the souls of the recently departed?

“Alex,” John said, before I could figure out a way to ask, “has your father ever said he wanted anything from the Rectors?”

“No,” Alex said, shaking his head. “That’s just it. He’s never said a single word about it, he just goes and fills out applications for jobs he never gets and visits his parole officer and attends his meetings.” He meant his dad’s Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “But it’s not fair. I know that’s where all Seth’s dad’s money came from. He
owes
my dad. But Dad’s too proud to ask.”

John shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, your father hasn’t asked because he doesn’t want it. Rector money is dirty money, tainted … not to mention, illegally gained. He knows that if he takes it, no good will come from it.
That’s
why he hasn’t asked, not because he’s too proud. Believe me.”

I wasn’t the only one who looked up at John curiously. Alex and Kayla did, too. He was speaking with such vehemence … almost as if from experience.

What did
John
know about the Rectors and their money?

“Money is money,” Alex said firmly. “Especially when someone owes it to you.”

“You’re wrong, boy.” Now Frank was chiming in. “Miss Kayla is right. You need to let this go.”

Miss Kayla looked delighted to hear Frank say she was right about something. She flipped back the edges of her cape and practically preened, the way Hope liked to do.

“It’s true,” she said to Alex.

Alex climbed from his chair, causing Hope to give an indignant flap of her wings and hop a few feet away. “None of you knows what you’re talking about,” he said bitterly. “Especially you, Pierce. You’ve always had money. And you don’t have to live with Grandma.”

He was right about that. But now I was living in the Underworld, with dead people. I wasn’t quite sure yet which was worse.

“If money is all he wants …”

I saw Frank dig into his pocket. In a flash, I saw what was going to happen next: He was going to hand Alex a fistful of Spanish coins that hadn’t been in circulation for over a hundred and fifty years … and from their pristine condition, clearly hadn’t been lying around some shipwreck Alex might have come across at the reef.

“No, Frank,” I said, stepping swiftly in front of him. “It’s very kind of you. But no.”