Chapter 16
LANDON
Awooden cane appeared outside my bedroom.
There was no note attached to it, no explanation of how it got there, no one watching me as I regarded the odd gift.
But I know it was from Ryker.
The bastard returned shortly after two in the morning, and though I didn’t see him, I heard him stumbling around.
He must’ve seen my grimace the day before—must’ve noticed the way I struggled to walk due to the pain in my stomach—and stolen this cane on his way back home.
Love and appreciation for him fill me.
The sly bastard will claim to hate everyone aside from Ellie, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s a secret softy at heart, always performing small acts to show he cares.
I use that cane now to hobble down the hallway, toward the staircase.
One problem of living in a half-completed hotel—there’s no elevator.
There are dozens and dozens of floors, but the only way down is a dank stairwell.
Fortunately, Raymond moved all of us into rooms on the first floor.
Unfortunately, the lack of an elevator makes it immensely difficult to stalk people the way I desire to.
Ryker and Zane make stalking look easy, but the truth is, it’s hard fucking work. I constantly pull at the wound in my stomach while trying to duck behind pillars and disappear down the end of corridors.
But I need to know what Raymond is up to.
He’s been disappearing more and more often, sometimes for as long as I day, and I have no idea why. Is he planning something to help Ellie? Meeting with his fellow FBI agents?
Betraying us all to POP?
I hate the fact that I can’t be with Ellie now, but at the very least, I can protect her this way. I’ll discover what her uncle is up to and then end him, if that’s what it takes.
The carpeting muffles the clack of the cane against the floor as I move down the hallway. I last saw Raymond disappear around the corner on the sixth floor, though I have no idea what’s up here.
Sweat beads on my forehead, plastering my brown hair to my temples, as I finally round the corner.
There’s a door at the end, and the sign above it reads “pool and hot tub.”
Is Raymond taking a daytime swim?
And why the fuck is the pool on the sixth fucking floor? What’s the reasoning behind that? The first floor, I understand. Even the second floor, I could see. But the sixth? Was someone drunk when they made the floor plans?
I press my ear against the door, waiting, but when I don’t hear anything, I tentatively push it open.
The air smells faintly of concrete dust and damp wood.
At the center, an empty pool yawns—a rough rectangle of pale gray concrete lined with rebar at the edges where the tiles are meant to go.
The bottom is littered with a few discarded screws, a plastic water bottle, and a curling blueprint corner that’s gone soft from moisture.
Beside the pool rests an empty hot tub, smaller but equally raw, its fiberglass shell dull and streaked with grime.
Overhead, a single dangling wire swings gently where the light fixture should be. The room’s unfinished ceiling reveals pipes and ducts running like exposed veins.
Across from the door, an entire wall is missing, leaving behind nothing but a wide-open frame that looks out into the forest beyond. Sunlight pours in through the gap and washes everything in a pale gold that does little to warm the chill in the opening.
It’s there Raymond stands, a cigarette dangling from his fingertips. “I know you’ve been following me, boy. Can’t even have a damn smoke break, it seems.”
“I wasn’t exactly being subtle,” I drawl, hobbling forward.
He snorts and finally turns to stare at me, offering the cigarette. I shake my head, and with a shrug, he puts it back into his mouth.
“So, you wanted me to know you were following me. Noted.” He blows out smoke, focusing his gaze back on the forest, a patchwork of brown and muted green, color finally returning to the trees after a relentless winter. “Can I ask why?”
“I think you know why.” I move to stand on the opposite side of the opening from him, leaning my shoulder and hip against the wall.
“You don’t trust me,” he theorizes, dropping the cigarette and stomping on it with his boot. Now that I’m looking closely, I can see that there are hundreds and hundreds of cigarettes littering this ledge. “You think I’m going to do something to hurt Ellie. My niece.”
“You used us to get what you wanted,” I point out, frowning at him. “We were just kids, and you made us into killers.”
He snorts, and a gust of wind ruffles his salt-and-pepper hair. “I never made you into anything. You boys have always been killers. I just made sure you went after the right people.” He slides his blue-gray gaze in my direction. “And it worked, didn’t it? We were able to keep Ellie safe.”
“We were able to keep Ellie safe,” I correct, my temper flaring before I corral it. “Me and the guys. You did jack shit.”
An unfamiliar darkness blankets his features. “You have no idea what I’ve done to protect that child. And you have no idea the lengths I’ll go to ensure that protection lasts.”
“You’re using her like you used us,” I remind him. “You had no problem sending her straight into The Divine One’s lair.”
Raymond’s jaw clenches. “Don’t put that one on me, kid. I didn’t ask her to do that, and I wouldn’t have, even if we had no other choice. The Paragons of Prosperity took everything from me. They murdered my own brother. That child, that little girl, is the last piece of him that exists.”
His words strike a strange chord in me, though at first, I can’t say why. But then I replay his words in my head, and a realization occurs to me.
“What about Fischer?”
Raymond freezes like a lightning bolt has been shot through him. “What about him?”
“Isn’t he a piece of your brother too?”
Raymond doesn’t answer, keeping his gaze on the trees swaying in the gentle breeze. I don’t see any houses or roads. Not from here. It’s almost peaceful, like the rest of the world can’t touch us in this fortress we’ve created.
But that’s not necessarily true, is it?
The world has touched us.
Fucked us over.
“Is Fischer your nephew?” I ask bluntly, turning to stare at him. I want to see every microexpression on his face, every twitch of his lips and slant of his eyes.
Raymond’s mouth thins. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“According to you, your brother had two children with Aria—Fischer and Ellie. So why do you only seem to give a damn about her?” Questions and theories begin to froth in my mind, but I don’t know how to vocalize them.
“Who said I only care about her?” Rigid tension lines his shoulders.
“Is Fischer your nephew?” I repeat.
He spears me with a look that would make a lesser man shit himself.
But I’ve been best friends with Zane Lorenzo since we were kids, for fuck’s sake. Not a lot scares me.
Raymond turns away, pushing himself away from the opening and meandering back toward the door.
“Next time you want to follow me, maybe don’t bring that damn walking cane. It makes a shit ton of noise when it’s not on carpeting,” he calls over his shoulder.
Then he’s gone, leaving me with more questions than answers and a leaden feeling in my gut.