Who Knows the Dark (23 page)

When he swam back up into the light, Nox braced himself for reality. Maybe he was still on the floor of the abandoned school. Maybe he’d never made it out of the Iron Butterfly, and the past few weeks were a fevered second before his life extinguished entirely.

Because his father was dead, and this could not be real.

Eyelids like concrete, Nox blinked into painful existence. The bright overheads were gone, replaced by a muted glow from a wall lamp across the room.

A hospital room.

The hint of artificial roses tickled his senses further; he managed to turn his head to one side, to where a shadowy figure sat, back to the door.

Lips glued together, throat tight and scratchy, Nox watched his guard stir and then slowly rise from the chair.

“You awake?” the man asked, a booming whisper from very high up.

No words formed from Nox’s tired vocal chords, just a noise. The man stepped into the weak puddle of light, and Nox saw a mountain of humanity, ripples of muscles trapped beneath an expensive sports coat.

And the unmistakable bulge of a firearm under his arm.

“I’ll tell the boss,” the man intoned, looking down at Nox with a curious expression. After a weighted pause, he turned and left Nox’s sight.

The door opened and closed.

He wondered where the hell he was.

The wait was long enough to allow him to drift back to sleep. When Nox woke up again, a young man in white scrubs and gloves was peering under the dressing on Nox’s side.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Boyet. Nice to see you awake,” he said cheerfully, his whole Midwestern demeanor and rosy cheeks at odds with the cold terror that enveloped Nox at the sound of his name.

“Wh….” He coughed, crumpling in pain as he jarred every muted injury awake with the force.

“Easy, easy. Let’s try a little water, okay?” The nurse put a straw to Nox’s lips, and Nox slurped enough to ease the sandpaper of his throat, the burning sensation down to his stomach.

“There you go, lie back now.” With pleasant efficiency, he got Nox back in a comfortable position, with pillows rearranged to raise his head a bit more, and the thin blanket pulled up to his shoulders as the exertion made him shiver. “You’ve been through quite a trauma, Mr. Boyet. You need to take it easy.”

“Ssstop….” Nox shook his head, aggravating the ache. “Not… my… nnname,” he said, a mouthful of gravel and the desperate need to protect himself.

The man gave him a strange look. “Let me get the doctor, all right?” A quick pat to the arm and he was gone, just like the armed man from before.

Nox didn’t even try to move, but that didn’t stop his mind from imagining a scenario where he threw himself off the bed—the IV and catheter lines miraculously disappearing—and dashed out the door….

To where?

He didn’t know where he was or who owned this hospital. He heard nothing beyond the door—no sounds of rattling carts or announcements over the PA. What if this was a private house?

Did he make it out of Jersey?

A small flicker of fear began to bubble up, thoughts speeding up and crashing together.

Cade.

Did he make it out of the school?

Even premature, unsubstantiated, the flurry of grief threatened to drown him. Thoughts of rolling out the door, grabbing a gun, shooting his way out—they were overwhelmed by the idea that Cade was dead.

And Sam.

Headed to the mountains with Cade’s family and Mason, away for a new and safe life with a new and safe family.

Nox was alone.

The scrape of the door startled him; the cast of unknown characters returned. The mountain with a gun. The cheerful nurse. Behind them, a gangly figure in a white coat, sporting a thick gray beard and a Sikh Dastaar.

“Mr. Boyet!” His accented voice boomed through the room. “Good morning to you. We were afraid you might sleep another week.”

The name made him wince; the length of time filled him with dread.

“I….”

The doctor put up his hand. “No, no. Don’t strain yourself. I’m going to examine you, ask a few questions. I am Dr. Khanna. You are a patient at my clinic.”

Nox nodded, his gaze drifting to the large man who rested against the closed door.

A clinic with an armed guard.

“Mr. Sutherland says you were a bit confused about your name,” Dr. Khanna said, conversational and chatty as he felt Nox’s pulse. “Nox Boyet is not your name?”

The tone was light, but Nox tensed under the man’s fingers; he saw the flicker in Dr. Khanna’s dark eyes, even as he smiled.

“P-Patrick Mullens,” Nox answered, defiant even in his weakness and fear.

The resulting smirk from Dr. Khanna didn’t help to soothe him.

“Now, now, there’s no need to lie here. You’re safe, Mr. Boyet.” The doctor took the chart offered to him by Mr. Sutherland. It was large and silver, like a set relic from an old television show. Dr. Khanna flipped through, nodding occasionally.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

A calculated risk, but Nox shook his head.

“You were shot by undercover federal agents who were seeking you and your party for the bombing of the Iron Butterfly,” Dr. Khanna said matter-of-factly. “You were rescued by….” He trailed off for a moment but found his footing quickly. “You were rescued and brought here, to be made well under my care.”

He snapped the chart shut.

“Five bullets removed, the torn ligaments in your knee stabilized, and a severe concussion we have been keeping an eye on.” Dr. Khanna’s eyes twinkled. “That would account for your confusion, I’m sure. Do you have any questions for me?”

The swirl of questions was almost too enormous—Nox was in the center of a tornado and had no way to remove himself physically. There was only one question on his mind.

“When… can… I… go?” he ground out.

The sharp bark of laughter from the door made him jump.

Above him, Dr. Khanna sighed. “That is not a question I can answer.”

He patted Nox’s shoulder. “Rest. You’ll have some important visitors shortly.”

Nox closed his eyes; he listened to the three men take their leave, a murmur of voices and the door opening and closing. Alone, he breathed as deeply as his injuries would allow.

A momentary setback.

He would get better.

He would get the hell out of here.

He would find out what happened to Cade and the others.

He would finish what he set out to do.

C
ADE
LAY
on his back, staring up at the construction trailer’s ceiling. The torrential rain had driven them back into a trailer, this one a bit farther down, where Hoboken used to be, and clearly abandoned for a long time. The refuse of squatters was unmistakable both in smell and debris; Rachel claimed she would sleep outside in the mud, but another thunderstorm pushed her inside.

She and LJ were curled up under the window, illuminated by the newly revealed moon. His older brother formed a protective barrier around Rachel, putting her between him and the wall, as they slept in a nest of tarps and canvas drop cloths. It would be both sexist and tender—except Cade knew Rachel had at least three box cutters hidden on her tiny body, and anyone stupid enough to look twice at LJ would end up dead before they hit the floor.

If he weren’t so terrified about Nox, he would think it sweet.

Getting back to the District was proving to be difficult. After the bombing of the Iron Butterfly, security had been ratcheted up to a near state of emergency. From the vantage point of an abandoned construction skeleton, LJ had observed water patrols around the island, armed men on boats seemingly on alert for an attack. Checkpoints were going up on the ferry side of the city.

Even increased patrols here in the middle of a coastal wasteland seemed to point to a heightened sense of urgency.

Cade couldn’t figure out how to get them across the water.

In quiet dark moments, he considered going back to Alec, pleading and begging and playing on their past connection for help in finding Nox. He thought about stripping down to nothing and dropping to his knees, coaxing cooperation with his mouth and pretty eyes.

He’d do it if he thought it would work.

They’d snuck back to the school where Alec had captured them, and found a carnage of broken glass and busted doors and, yes, blood in the far stairwell where Cade knew Nox had been.

But if the feds didn’t have him, who did?

Sleep eluded him until he could barely put together three lines of intelligent thought before his mind drifted to worry and panic and confusion.

He needed to rest. He couldn’t rest.

The damp, dirty smell of the trailer, the rot of the pile of molding refuse they sat on—Cade closed his eyes against LJ and Rachel, against the teasing moonlight, praying for just a few moments’ respite.

None came.

Rachel stirred first, appearing from the cocoon of LJ’s body like a grumpy-faced butterfly.

“The accommodations just keep getting shittier,” she murmured, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Her red hair a tangled mess over her shoulders, Rachel pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. “I need coffee in the worse way.”

They were subsisting on tepid bottles of water, granola bars, and bags of crushed chips liberated from one of the trailers. The eeriness of the lack of people was outweighed by the supplies they were able to find—clothes, backpacks, sharp objects that Rachel seemed to take extra delight in, another laptop, tools, bottled water, and food. Now they traveled with full backpacks and claw hammers in their back pockets.

Just in case.

“No one’s around here,” Rachel said, crawling over a still-sleeping LJ. “That’s weird, right?”

“It was all over the news—a month? Two months ago?” Cade sat up, twisting around until he could lean against the trailer wall. “New developments on the waterfront.”

“Another ferry.” Rachel walked on unsteady legs toward him, her small body buried in layers of men’s work clothes in an attempt to stay warm—and pass for a man. “No one’s here.”

“The weather, maybe.” Cade shrugged. “I don’t know. It looks like people just didn’t come to work one day.”

“Mmmm.”

Cade looked at Rachel’s expression; he knew what calculation and suspicion meant.

“Something scared them off.”

Rachel dropped down, mirroring his position so they were shoulder to shoulder. “Looks like it. Everyone left stuff behind. Valuable stuff. They know how shitty this area is—just junkies and squatters. They shut the door and assumed they’d be unlocking it the next day.”

“Security maybe—the explosion at the Butterfly, everyone thinks it’s dangerous to build right now.”

“Mmmm,” Rachel said again. “The patrols look like they’re here more to keep folks from working—not destroying the buildings. I mean, do you think we’ve just been lucky no one has found us?”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” He laughed mirthlessly, looking at his dirt-black hands, the too-long cuffs of his olive jumpsuit, the boots so big he needed to stuff them with extra socks. “Nothing makes any damn sense.”

Rachel sighed next to him, echoing his sentiments without speaking. He felt it in her slumped posture, matching his own.

A
NOTHER
TORRENTIAL
rainstorm kept them indoors for the day. LJ had both laptops gutted, each piece carefully laid out on a bright blue tarp, a pile of the most delicate of the found tools nearby. Rachel had fallen asleep after their lunch of bottled water and beef jerky, curled into a tiny ball under the window like a cat.

Cade pressed the end of his pen against the watermarked pad of legal paper in his lap. He wanted to get his thoughts down, out of his racing, aching head. Formulate a plan, come up with other ideas—because sitting and waiting was starting to sliver off bits of his sanity with each passing day.

They needed money, first off. That was LJ’s current assignment—get a laptop running and into a hacked network so no one could find them. His antigovernment friends just needed the impetus to start drilling holes in secure sites and finding them leads.

A way into the city. Cade scratched “workers” on the top of the page, underlining it twice. With some fake IDs, maybe they could get at least one of them through security. Bribes would be difficult since they had credit not cash—the latter definitely preferred by those getting their palms greased in the District.

LJ again. The only one of them without a recognizable face.

Once inside, LJ could arrange transportation—except he didn’t know anyone in the District, and everyone Cade trusted was either in this shitty trailer or….

He choked down another sigh and began to draw a passable version of the Iron Butterfly going down in flames.

Cade dozed off, his “work” for the day just a pile of words and sketches, each crossed out with an increasing amount of pressure, ink blotting the pad like droplets of blood.

“Got it,” LJ said, delightedly, startling Cade out of his hazy state. “We’ll be up and running in a few minutes.”

Cade looked over to find Rachel at LJ’s side, the closest thing to a look of affection he’d ever seen on her face. It hurt so much he looked away.

“My contact is waiting for me. We’ll get what we need,” LJ muttered, already clicking away on the keyboard. “I just need this security to hold until I get into their….” He drifted off in midsentence, biting his lip as he concentrated.

“IDs,” Cade said as Rachel stared intently at the screen.

“Yeah, but they have to be better than these yokels can manage. They’re used to getting past government checkpoints. This is the best money can buy.”

“They’re city cops,” Cade started, but one deadpan look from Rachel shut him up.

“You really think the District security is from the government? They can’t afford what guards the city. It’s private, paid for, and the only people who can break in are the people they have working for them.”