Who Knows the Dark (17 page)

O
NE
BY
one, they converged in the space in front of the guesthouse. Damian and Sam emerged from the house, as shell-shocked as the rest. When Mason made a beeline for his son, Nox not-so-subtly beat him to it, laying a comforting arm around Sam’s slender shoulders.

“You okay?” he murmured as Sam nodded nervously.

“Yeah. That was just a little scary.”

Nox rubbed Sam’s shoulder, glancing toward Mason at the other side of the group. The kid looked pissed, but he wasn’t moving from his spot.

“What happened?” Cade asked, directing the question to LJ, who couldn’t seem to wipe the grin off his face.

“He said there was a raid up in the District,” Lee Sr. answered instead, his voice gruff. “Police got a tip, went into this house, and found the Vigilante fellow. Got killed in a shoot-out.”

The bottom dropped out from under Nox’s feet. His gaze went immediately to Cade, who was dead white.

“What? That’s not possible.”

“Said the guy was dead. They found enough evidence to prove he set the bombs,” LJ interjected. “Said it looked like he worked alone, which means….” He ruffled Cade’s hair like his little brother had just gotten an A on a test.

“Which means there are no warrants, which means y’all are fine. Praise God,” Amelia said delightedly, throwing her arms around Cade’s neck.

Sam whooshed a sound of relief next to him, folding into Nox’s embrace. “Oh my gosh,” he mumbled into Nox’s shoulder. “We’re safe.”

Nox didn’t celebrate, but he hugged his son tightly, his focus on Rachel, who stood on the other side of the little celebratory huddle of Creels between them. Her expression was like the visual of how his insides were twisting and calculating at this very moment.

For the second time in his life, someone was making sure Nox was safe by claiming he was dead.

“W
E
HAVE
to talk,” Rachel murmured to him as they went into the house with Amelia. “This isn’t good.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

Nox kept walking past her, locked in on Sam, who’d already circled back around to get to Mason.

“Mason? That’s your name, right?” Lee Sr. suddenly called out. “Come here.”

Detoured, Mason walked over to the back door, casting a glance over his shoulder at Sam.

“Why don’t you ask Amelia if you can help her with feeding everyone,” Nox said quietly, and Sam—being Sam, kindhearted and unquestioning and eager to contribute instead of lying around—perked up at the idea. “If you’re feeling up to it.”

Sam gave him a dazzling smile. “I feel so good right now.”

He shuffled over to the stove, where Amelia already had Damian on fetch patrol to the pantry.

Cade ducked around LJ and the suddenly crowded kitchen to reach Nox’s side. “My father’s going into town to speak to the sheriff, make sure the feds aren’t setting a trap.” A tiny smirk—a smirk Nox had dearly missed—twitched against his lips. “And he’s taking Mason as company.”

“What a great idea.” Nox reached out to touch Cade’s face but at the last second realized the crowd and the moment.

Cade’s expression fell slightly. “Rachel’s in the sunroom waiting for you.”

The fact that it was Rachel he needed at this moment….

Nox swallowed the irony that burned his throat. His stomach bubbled unpleasantly, even as the reassuring sound of Lee Sr.’s pickup leaving the farm echoed. A little more time, another set of stories to weave, another layer to protect Sam.

In the sunroom, among the plants and tidy wicker furniture, Rachel waited, perched on the edge of a sofa that had seen better days. She still carried herself like nothing fazed her, nothing could touch her.

He knew better.

“I’ll just skip accusing you of this,” he said lightly, clearly catching her by surprise.

“Did you just make a joke? Fuck, it is end times.” Rachel sank back into the blue calico cushions, weary. “What do you think that was about?”

Nox shrugged. “Smells like a trap. Why would they make a show of coming here and telling the Creels?”

“They want us to think we’re off the hook. I’m pretty certain they’re going to come back from Sheriff Cornhole’s office and tell us yes, the District police are saying the Vigilante is dead. And that means someone is manipulating us.”

“Maybe they’re trying to smoke us out.”

“This is like the guy on the boat—why send the least logical and efficient way to get us? I’m not convinced these people are bumbling idiots.” Rachel picked at the fabric of her sweater, arms crossed over her chest. “That leaves yet another version of my question, Nox. Why haven’t they just killed you? Who the fuck is protecting you?”

The note of hysteria in her tone—Nox felt it up his spine.

“You know.”

She shook her head wildly. “No.”

“You suspect.”

Her eyes grew wide, and when she looked away, the hair on Nox’s arms stood up.

“We need to go back to the guesthouse. I… I need to figure something out,” she finally answered.

They didn’t give much explanation as they breezed through the kitchen. Cade and LJ hovered behind them, but Nox didn’t invite them to follow. He couldn’t afford to pause for Cade’s angry expression or the stares they received as the door slammed behind them.

Rachel practically ran to the house, and Nox stayed at her heels, resisting the urge to grab his gun from the small of his back. The danger that had followed them from the city, the things he’d been hiding from for so long, seemed more present in that tiny guesthouse than they had at home.

The gun would do him no good anyway.

They hurried into the house and then around to the wall with their notes. Rachel fumbled on the floor for a marker, the orange one in her trembling hands as she picked a clean section.

Down the middle she drew a line, shaky and uneven.

“Why did the Colombians kill your father?” she asked, startling Nox from his rambling mind, his fantasies of grabbing Sam and getting the hell out of there before Mason came back.

“What?”

“Why did they kill him?”

“You said… you said because he was stealing,” Nox spat. He hadn’t processed that accusation; that his father would work for these people was horrible, but the fact that he stole from them….

“Right.”

Rachel wrote
Colombians
at the top of one column.

Then:
Carson
.

“Why did they kill my parents?”

“How the hell would I know?”

She wrote their names under
Carson
.

“Why did they want to kill you?”

“Jesus Christ, Rachel.” Nox wished there were something in the room to throw or kick. His lack of answers already tasted like poison. More questions plucked at his sanity.

Nox
. His name in orange with the rest.

“You’re alive because I lied. You’re alive because of a fluke, them thinking you were on the ferry with Jenny. But they wanted you dead,” she murmured. He could see her shaking, the hunch of her shoulders.

Nox bit the inside of his mouth. “They wouldn’t be protecting me now.”

“If they wanted you dead at sixteen and stupid, why the fuck would they want you alive full-grown and meddling in their business?” Rachel turned around slowly.

“The Colombians aren’t running Dead Bolt.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The man who grabbed me, who warned me off—he knew about Sam, and he knew about my mother.” Nox walked backward until he could point at the timeline. “Someone from my father’s office, someone he trusted.”

“There was me and there were freelancers when we needed something. After my parents were gone, Carson moved everything a little tighter together. He wanted as few people involved as possible.”

“What about someone from the cartel who—I don’t know, changed their mind about me?”

“Do you think they were hanging in our office, drinking wine?” Rachel scoffed. “You don’t socialize with the guy laundering your drug money.”

“So you never met them?”

Rachel’s frown deepened. “Just phone calls.”

She turned back around, marker poised.

In the second column, she wrote
Carson
.

“What…?”

Rachel ignored him.

She started writing a list, her handwriting sloppy as she hurried from one line to the next.

Mayor’s office.

Gabron Holdings.

Mutual Holdings Ltd.

American Patriot Insurance

“Rachel.”

“I wish I had my fucking files,” she muttered. “I should have made a copy. I thought there would be time….”

Roland White

Nox stepped forward.

“You knew him, from before?”

“He was a board member of your father’s company. Crazy but with enough connections to make him valuable. They gave him side projects to keep him busy.”

“He said….” Nox swallowed, wishing he could kill the man a second time. “He said he flooded the sanitarium to kill all those people. My mother would have died either way.”

Rachel sighed. In the first column, she added
Natalie
, then the word
Morningside
.

Then she wrote
ferry
, her hand shaking wildly.

“The ferry?”

“Right before… there was all this commotion. The National Guard was freaking out, shoving people on board. Then someone started shooting,” Rachel whispered. “We sank so quickly afterward—it must’ve been the crew they killed.”

A chill rolled through Nox.
What better time to commit a crime?
he thought, his mind racing. In the middle of a natural disaster, when your guilt would be washed away or crushed under a fallen building.

“A couple thousand people dead—no one’s going to notice a few more.”

Rachel dropped the marker on the floor. “If they flooded Morningside, if they capsized the ferry—the question is why.”

“The question is who. Who would gain from inflating the number of people who were killed?”

A cough caught Nox’s attention; he and Rachel turned to find a pale Cade at the edge of the wall, with LJ hovering behind him.

“Come and look at this.”

C
ADE
COULDN
’
T
wait in the kitchen another second; Amelia and Sam were bonding at the stovetop as Damian excused himself to lie on the sofa. He and LJ exchanged looks and seemed to be twitching as if synchronized—finally he grabbed the doorknob and burst into the backyard.

“What the hell is going on, Caden?” LJ’s long legs caught him up to Cade’s side in a few steps. “I thought you’d be glad to know your name is cleared. You and your friends can—”

“Can what? Go on with our normal lives? The fucking feds were an afterthought, LJ. Of all the people who have wanted to get their hands on me, law enforcement outside the District was pretty much bottom of the list.”

“Who the hell is after you, then?” LJ’s tone stopped Cade dead in his tracks. Because it was a good question—a great question even. He wanted to say drug dealers and organized crime, but those were just words. They were plots from a television show or vague warnings about bad things.

He didn’t know who these people were. And worse, neither did Nox.

Cade couldn’t look at LJ, even in the face of expectation. He kept walking, heading for the guesthouse.

“T
HERE
’
S
A
message from one of my contacts,” LJ whispered as they heard the rise and fall of Rachel’s and Nox’s voices on the other side of the wall. He sat down at his desk, clicking on his mail as Cade walked over to press against the wall between him and the conversation.

He didn’t understand about the ferry—though suddenly Rachel’s behavior on the boat made sense. The idea that people were purposefully killed during the storms and evacuation floored him. Mass murder, undetected….

“Cade, Cade!” LJ frantically waved from his seat, urging Cade over.

Words were unnecessary a second later as Cade leaned down to read over LJ’s shoulder.

The numbers.

The zeroes—Cade had literally never seen sums so high on a bank statement in his life.

N
OX
AND
Rachel followed them back to the desk; LJ didn’t even bother to sit down—he just pointed to where Nox should look, with Rachel peering around his side.

“What the hell is this?” Nox asked, bewildered, as he glanced back at Cade and LJ. “This can’t be my trust fund.”

“Move.” Rachel shoved him aside and dropped into LJ’s chair. She grabbed the mouse and scrolled down to the page where recent transactions were shown.

Cade couldn’t bear to stay away a second longer; he pushed into the tight circle, up against Nox’s side.

No one breathed as Rachel revealed line after line of steady transactions.

Money deposited at astonishing rates, with almost no withdrawals. Month after month, year after year, far beyond the time when Nox and Carson and Natalie Boyet were all presumed dead.

“Who does it say is making all those deposits?” Nox asked. His voice was steady, but he grabbed Cade’s hand and twisted their fingers together.

Rachel clicked a few times, then let out a string of expletives in what Cade deduced was Russian.

“I am.”

Cade kept a tight hold on Nox’s hand as a tremor ran through them both. He waited for Nox to explode, to threaten Rachel’s life, but nothing, just shocked silence.

“Who knew your log-in?”

Rachel swiveled in the chair to look back at him, eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”