Chapter 43 #2
I face her, putting my water on the island as I contemplate her question. Placing my palms flat on the cool granite, I give her a long look, trying to figure out her angle, if there is one.
Instead, she reflects back a whole lot of nothingness.
“Lakeland was…” Shit. What the fuck do I say about this girl’s dead father? The man whose death I orchestrated?
I settle on telling her a version of the truth.
“Lakeland was evil. He was a devil with a smile. People thought he was charming, and he liked to fly too close to the sun.”
My fingers flex against the stone.
“I think he figured he’d never get burned,” I finish.
Skai gives me a blank stare, and something in my brain tells me not to look away from her—almost as if we were playing predator and prey. I’m just unsure which character I am in this situation.
“He never gets burned,” she says softly, the words seeming to fall out of her mouth. “Why would demons be afraid of fire?”
That sad statement lands hard.
“Yeah,” I say, leaving it at that.
Skai continues to stare at me but then turns to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water for herself.
“I just wanted some fresh air, by the way, and the meds make me thirsty,” she volunteers, and I nod in response. Instead of walking off, she stands there with me, uncapping her drink and downing the entire bottle in large gulps.
When done, she crinkles the plastic in her palm, flattening it with her bare hands. For the first time, she looks energized, awake.
And angry.
“He hurt me. He hurt me a lot, because he’s an evil, terrible, demented man,” she says, then she smirks. “Therapy’s been helping me see that.”
She stares at her hand, examining the empty, crushed container.
“Thank you, by the way,” she says, still not looking up at me, but embarrassment colors her tone. “I’m sorry I—when I’m…scared…sometimes I?—”
I wave her words away.
“No need to thank me. I know we’ve had completely fucked examples of what family is, but that word means something to me.” I don’t tell her that it took a lot of coaxing by Axel to get me to step in. She doesn’t need to know that.
She hums in response.
“Well, good night,” I say, aiming for the exit again. I’m almost past the threshold when she stops me again.
“Storm, wait.”
After a silent breath, I say, “What’s up?”
She smiles, but it falls just as quickly as it appears.
“I’m not like him, you know. Yes, I’m…I’m sick, but I’m not like him.” Her bottom lip trembles, and I don’t know if she repeats the words to convince me…or herself.
I don’t know how to respond. Opening my mouth to say something, anything, she cuts me off by giving me a flicker of a smile again.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and then she’s out of the kitchen.
My phone buzzes again, and I pick up speed to head to the office. Axel wouldn’t send a message without at least cracking a joke somewhere in there, so I know some shit’s going down.
Sliding into the room, I pause when Axel and Riale look at me with twin worried expressions.
“Who died?” I ask.
“It’s more like who didn’t,” Axel says, and my eyebrows slam down.
“Explain,” I grind out. Riale straightens, walking over to put his hand on my shoulder.
“We’re not sure that Lakeland’s dead,” he says.
It takes a second for the words to make sense.
“What?” I ask, my voice flat, deflated. Then, like being hit with a Taser, every nerve ending comes alive, registering the danger. “What do you mean you’re unsure?”
Lakeland’s not dead?
I knew it was too easy.
“We found there was a secret tunn?—”
“Fuck!” I shout, throwing the full water bottle at the wall so hard it explodes, raining its contents over us.
“My CPU!” Axel shouts, and Riale whirls on him.
“Fuck your CPU!” he yells.
I just stand there, glaring at the wet floor as if it could make the mess in front of me disappear.
“Everybody shut up,” I say, putting a hand to my chest and breathing slowly. Panic. I’m fucking panicked, and that’s exactly what I need not to be.
Axel and Riale freeze their bickering.
“Axel, tell me what you know,” I say. “For certain. ”
Axel gives Riale a hard look and stands in a smooth movement. He walks to the utility cabinet in the corner and grabs a fresh package of Bounty rolls. With methodical movements, he opens the plastic and begins blotting up the water around his computer components.
“What we know for certain,” he says, folding the towels into large squares, “is that there was a tunnel we didn’t know about until after the explosion site was fully cleared.
We also know from Misha’s team that there was a heat shield over the tunnel, preventing fire damage and also preventing anyone from getting a heat signature—not that we would have been able to since there was, y’know, a fire and all. ”
He rips another few sheets from the roll.
“Goddamn it, Storm. The least you could do is help,” he growls, and I wave his words away.
“Keep talking,” I say, but he gives me a hard, surly look, and with an eye roll, I head toward him, taking the towels from his hands.
“ Thank you very much ,” he says, but it’s delivered as if he said, Fuck you very much.
“None of the remains at the site were Lakeland’s, so we think he made it out.
Whether he was injured or not, whether he got out or had help or vanished into thin air, we don’t know. But we do know there’s no body.”
Axel and I finish cleaning up the water at the same time, and I stand, the world spinning.
“Okay, can you fuckin’ focus now?” I grind out, and he stands, sighing.
“I’m irritated,” he mutters. “We’re back at square one, but now we’ve shaken up the hornet’s nest.”
Axel and Riale share a look.
“Listen, don’t start that bullshit again,” I say, knowing what they’re thinking. “If you had it your way, we’d be waiting until the next millennium to make a move.”
“Let’s not play the ‘what if’ game,” Riale says. “Let’s just make a plan. Axel, do you have any leads on where he could be?”
Axel shakes his head.
“No, he’s a ghost right now. But he’ll slip up eventually,” he says, dropping into his computer chair and attacking his keyboard. “They always do.”
I pinch the skin between the bridge of my nose.
“There’s something else,” Axel says.
“Oh, goodie. I need more, of course,” I grumble, then with a sigh, I look up at Axel.
“Well, I solved a mystery. Turns out Zane wasn’t just a threat—he was legacy—Lakeland’s protégé.”
My eyebrows come together.
“How’d that happen?” I ask, blood starting to pound at my temples.
Axel shrugs. “Gibson took a liking to Isla Cara years ago as a teenager. Apparently, going to the island was a family tradition—father-son bonding time or some shit.”
“You mean grooming?” This comes from Riale.
Axel nods once, grim. “Yeah. That’s one word for it.”
I screw up my face, thinking of the type of person who’d take a kid to a place like Isla Cara for fun. Clearly, a monster set on creating other monsters.
“Lakeland took a liking to Zane. Helped him with his schooling, made connections for him, the whole deal,” Axel adds.
I hum.
“I see. So when Shae came into the picture, Lakeland probably thought it was fate. And when Zane saw her, he probably thought she belonged to him. A gift from Lakeland. A reward,” I say, my voice flat.
My jaw aches from how hard I grind my teeth. Rage sits just beneath my skin, making me want to kill him all over again.
“Probably more like his property. You know how Lakeland thinks. I doubt Zane would see women any differently from his mentor,” Axel murmurs.
All three of us fall silent, and the horrors, the what-ifs, threaten to make me sick.
“All right,” Riale says, straightening. “I guess that’s that. Can we put this topic to bed now, Storm?”
I don’t appreciate his attitude, but I set it aside because there’s more important shit to deal with.
“What’s the next step?” I ask Riale, and his face changes with relief before settling into his standard RBF.
“We lock everything down,” he says. “You, Shae, and the kids should disappear. Somewhere off-grid. Extra security, burner phones, the whole thing.”
I nod once. I hate running. But I hate losing more.
Shae hasn’t shared more than a few words with me over the past few weeks. Why would she go with me across the world? She’s ready to go back to her life, not start a new one with me.
“I’ll sort it out. In the meantime, triple the security. Axel, get the Russian to send over more of his people. Since this is his fuck-up,” I say.
Axel sighs.
“One, it’s Ukrainian. Two, he has a name, it’s Misha. And three?—”
I give him a hard look.
“I’ll get in touch with him,” he finishes.
I leave the room without trying to talk to the two of them any longer, my heart rate increasing with every step toward my empty room.
Things just got substantially more dangerous, and when I need to be on the same page with Shae the most, we’re living the most apart.
Fuck.
I fall into my bed and close my eyes, breathing in the fabric that still holds the faintest traces of Shae. Pretty soon, it’ll be gone, and I’ll have to face that I don’t have her next to me.
I’ll have to accept that whether she comes to me or not isn’t in my control. And I’ll have to live with that.