Chapter 30
MASON
I stare at the door Keely just walked out of and calmly acknowledge that the feeling spreading its way through my bloodstream is panic.
Not the crash and burn type that leaves just as quickly as it arrives. This is the slow, insidious type that taunts you with its possibilities and ability to grow extra appendages to fuck you with.
It started with the left-field question about Hani. Then grew when I realized how the thought of her interaction with Morton made me feel.
The little shit doesn’t have a spine worth crushing, and I’m sure Keely can hold her own more than adequately.
And yet none of that matters. The protectiveness that welled up in my chest, and which is still present, beacons a chaotic sequence that’s been building since I told her about Toby. Since she let me purge on her.
I recall a conversation with the tribal priest in Roraima. He told me I’ll never find peace for the chaos that reigns in my heart. I informed him that peace is the last thing I wish for, or want. He told me he would pray that my chaos never quietens.
My chaos isn’t quietening. It’s mutating into something less virulent and less murky, which makes me see through the dense jungles of pain and rage.
She’s looked into my eyes and witnessed what I’ve done. Or at least she suspects. She hasn’t called me a monster despite knowing what lives in my soul.
I’m not sure if the open acceptance is better or worse. All I know is I crave her beyond imagining, whether she’s trapped beneath me, giving me what I need, or out of my sight.
The Hani issue isn’t a problem.
The thought that it might keep Keely from me is. Keely is all I need.
“Have you heard a fucking word I’ve said since Keely walked out that door?”
I inhale my irritation and turn to Zach. “So besides bringing your fiancée to help clusterfuck my evening, and then soiling my eardrums with goddamn small talk , why are you here?” I ask Zach.
He lifts his beer and takes a long pull. “My staff alerted me that I have a Titus-Morton-shaped problem that needs to be dealt with. Know anything about that?”
“Yeah, the guy’s an asshole. He’ll be a lifeless asshole when I get my hands around his pussy neck.”
“You see, talk like that is why I thought I’d better come and check on my investment before you turn my yacht into a killing field or start throwing guests overboard.”
“Great, I suggest you go take care of your problems and let me deal with mine.”
“I think it might be too late, buddy,” he mutters.
I glance sharply at Zach. “Care to shed some light on that declaration?”
A hard, almost regretful smile twists his lips. “My soon-to-be wife—if she ever stops nitpicking every motherfucking detail of this damned wedding and gets round to actually marrying me—and your… What is she to you, exactly?”
My teeth smash together. “Get to the damn point, Savage.”
Zach shrugs, unconcerned by the seething volatility raking through me. “My Peaches and your Keely are close. Closer than you or I will be comfortable with, if you two survive the shitstorm that’s coming long enough to become a thing.”
The roar of the chaos increases, and panic deadens my limbs. “What shitstorm? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Keely called last week, after you dumped her.”
“I didn’t dump her.” I can barely speak through the poison tearing through my bloodstream. “What did she say when she called?”
“She wanted to know whether there were any bare-assed skeletons in your closet.”
“ What? ”
“You can freak out in your own time when you’re chasing rats the size of lions in that shit of a jungle you’re so crazy about.
Right now, shut the fuck up and listen, because I know one of two things is going to happen in the next five minutes.
Right now, my Peaches is spilling her sweet little heart to her best friend—despite promising me she won’t—about what happened to Peterson after you got your hands on him. ”
“ Mother of Christ! ” I charge for the door, but Zach gets there first.
I knock his hand away, intent on chasing down Keely, but he shakes his head. “It’s too late, man. By now she knows.”
“How? And how the fuck did your woman find out?”
Zach’s eyes gleam. “This is where I’m supposed to say I don’t have any secrets from the woman who holds every beat of my useless heart in her fucking hands, or some shit.
And yeah, it’s true. But the unvarnished truth is, she was freaked out with worry about her friend.
I couldn’t have that. So I asked a guy I know to look into things. ”
I shake my head. “Bullshit. I covered my tracks better than ‘a guy I know to look into things’ standards.”
Zach crosses his arms and leans back against the door. “Let’s agree to disagree on how good we are at what we do. Does Keely know you’re investigating what happened to her six years ago?”
My hand drops from the door in a dead weight. “Shit! How the fuck do you know that?” I spike my fingers through my hair, certain in the knowledge that if there was any hope of salvaging anything from the first piece of shit news, it’s just gone out the window with the second.
“She’s important to Bethany, which makes her important to me. And before you throw a tantrum, Bethany doesn’t know about the investigation, or what Keely went through.”
My head snaps up. “She doesn’t?”
“No, and I’m going to make damn sure my little firecracker doesn’t find out from me. But do me a favor. Tell Keely. Trust me, things have a way of coming out whether you want them to or not.”
I thrust my hands into my pockets to keep from putting my fist into the wall. “I don’t intend to let the person or persons who violated her get away with it. But yeah, thanks for the hearts and roses and forgiveness sermon,” I snarl.
Zach bares his teeth. “Any time, pal. That code you wrote me ten years ago for tracking my stock made me a bundle and stopped my companies from tanking during the ’08 fuck storm.
And I won’t divulge which one, but one of the toys you invented for me makes my Peaches a very happy woman.
I figured the least I could do was give you a little man-to-man heads up that your life’s about take on epic clusterfuck proportions.
As for letting anyone get away with it, I’ll go after them myself if you don’t. ”
Our gazes meet, and an understanding passes between us. I nod, then pace in tight circles, noting wryly that Zach is still guarding the door. I can’t hear myself think over the roar in my ears. I want to see Keely, but I don’t know how I’ll react if she walks away from me.
I stop in my tracks as steel blades of irony slide between my ribs. I’ve been walking away from everyone who comes within caring distance all my life. Now, by attempting to care for Keely, and bringing her the justice she deserves, I’ve risked her walking away from me.
I see Zach turn sharply toward the door, and I lunge past him and yank it open.
When I see Daniel, instead of the woman whose importance has crept beneath the black noise of my life, I bite back a growl. “What do you want?”
The young guard looks from me to Zach, senses the volatile landmine before him, and hurries to speak. “We’ve a call to the captain’s office for you, Mr. Sinclair.”
I shake my head. “Take a message.”
Daniel grimaces. “That’s just it. She won’t leave a message, except to say it’s urgent.”
“ Who won’t?” I snap, although I know who he means before he replies.
“She said her name is Cassie McCarthy.”
“For the love of Christ,” I growl under my breath.
“Problems?” Zach enquires.
I veer toward him. “No.”
She isn’t in trouble—financially or health-wise.
I’ve made sure to keep an eye on her and my mother since my father died three years ago.
Seven is also programmed to alert me if anything happens.
Besides those parameters for keeping an eye on them, I consider myself free from obligation to Cassie and my mother.
“My ex-wife’s definition of urgent and mine vastly differ.”
“Are you sure?”
I spin around at the softly worded question.
Keely is framed in the doorway, her beautiful face pale and drawn. That air of fragility I saw in Montauk is back, and the eyes that track me as I close the gap between us are a dark, haunted green.
“What?” I ask, forgetting what she said as I’m confronted by the feeling I’ve only ever felt once before in my life. Hopelessness.
“I said are you sure your definition of urgent and hers are that different?”
I shake my head in confusion. I reach out to touch her hand, but she jerks away.
I ball my hand into a fist and lower it to my thigh. “What are you talking about?”
She dismisses Daniel with a nod and walks into the room. I vaguely register Bethany enter and cross to her fiancé’s side. Or that they exchange a whispered argument before Zach leads her out.
“Cassie called me.”
That jars in a way that unnerves me even more. “Why would she do that? She doesn’t know you.”
A frigid little smile touches her mouth. “Stop underestimating the people around you, Mason. You’re not the only one who knows how to track another human being.”
I search her eyes in a last, desperately futile attempt to save what’s coming.
Not so long ago, I proudly boasted that I have nothing worth salvaging and therefore nothing to live for.
Now everything I’ve flung away in my grief and murderous despair comes flooding back.
I feel my heart beat, my lungs fill, my soul raise its head and condemn me for abandoning it.
“You know,” I rasp through lips that want to beg for every single act of cruelty I’ve ever perpetuated.
Ravaged green eyes meet mine. “That when you caught up with Peterson, you kidnapped him and kept him locked in a cage for ninety days with just enough food and water to keep him alive? Yes, I know.” Her voice shakes with echoes of her own tortured past, and I die a million agonizing deaths in the face of her pain.