Chapter 30
R iordan
The car Shade had kidnapped me in came to a rumbling halt, off-road by the sound of the gravel under the wheels. Unlike my previous experience, courtesy of Cassie, this time I was wide awake and able to move, though my hands were still constrained and my face covered.
Nor was I afraid. I knew who had me and what his intentions were.
I’d spent the car ride going from anger to something settled.
I couldn’t judge the skeleton crew wanting proof of my loyalty. I’d been a member for five short weeks yet had been on the rooftop when Arran made the call to Red. I had access the other members could only dream of. They’d be fools to trust me.
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
My door popped, and a cool breeze brought in the scent of autumn leaves plus something earthier. The river. The rushing water was loud enough to be heard however far back we were, which meant it was high tide.
My recurring nightmare came to the forefront of my mind. Being hunted through the city. Ending up with my back to the river, a bullet to the chest taking me down under its surface.
Mixed in with that was Tyler’s musings on gang initiation rites, and Cassie’s information about how Shade and Arran handled the worst of the city’s offenders by ending their lives.
My thoughts were cut off by a strong arm pulling me from the car then guiding me to walk ahead of him. Two people, possibly more as I’d heard a second engine cut out.
We closed in on the sound of the river, and my shoulders stiffened. If I strayed too close to the bank and fell in, I’d die. With my hands tied up, I had no way of freeing myself.
At least in that I had a solution. Sinclair had showed me how to free myself from being taped up. I’d take a risk on zip ties breaking the same way.
Sucking in a breath, I raised my hands above my head and brought them down in a sharp motion to my raised knee.
The zip tie broke. I was free.
I wrestled with the bag over my head, holding still for fear of falling in the water and dying after all.
“For fuck’s sake,” one of my captors griped.
Arran. So he was here.
A hand circled my wrist, stilling me. “Hold up. I’ll do it. Ye have to climb the steps anyway. I’ll save your shins.”
Shade, this time. He shoved my head down and undid the cord on the bag, lightly slapping my head for good measure as I came back up. I reared back, blinking in the darkness.
Arran and Shade regarded me, both wearing the same determined expression and tensed as if I was going to make a break for it.
I dragged an unimpressed look from one to the other. Fuck them, I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Behind me was a dilapidated wooden building. Not the riverbank after all, but obviously our destination. I jerked my head at it.
“Let’s get this over with, then.”
I stomped up the steps, waiting for Shade to unlock the door, then dove inside.
The wind cut out, but the rushing of water intensified. I moved through the building, following the two men across a concrete floor and through a surprisingly well-maintained interior, until the sound made sense. It was a boathouse, clearly disused for that purpose for a long time, but with a new purpose.
We rounded a wall to discover an open end to the structure, dark water flowing underneath a metal walkway, and a figure hanging from a hook over a drop.
Naked. Bloodied. Gagged but not blindfolded. He blinked, his eyes crinkling at the edges, then moaned.
My stomach roiled.
“Fucking hell.” I turned away.
Shade took a fistful of my shirt and brought me back. “Talk to Arran. He has a few things to say.”
I faced the leader of the skeleton crew, glad I hadn’t eaten, and got my words in first. “I know this is a test of my loyalty. I know why you need it, too. I didn’t join your crew because of devotion to what you do. I didn’t know about this.” I pointed to the hanging man. “Cassie filled me in. She’d eat this shit up for breakfast.”
“Where you wouldn’t.” Arran relaxed in his position of watching me, understanding in his eyes. “Like it or not, you made the choice to accept my job offer. I don’t know if you thought it would work as a temporary thing, or if you took it in order to keep a closer eye on Genevieve. The fact is, you had a choice. You made a decision.”
Steely resolve settled over his face. “But I can’t have a hanger-on. I lost two friends recently, both crew members for over a decade. Alisha and Convict were important to me for different reasons, and the fact they were both wiped off the planet showed me how vital it is for me to keep close those who give a shit about me and what I’ve built. As well as to push everyone else the fuck away.”
Beside me, Shade folded his arms, no humour in him now.
Arran continued, “I accept my fault in their loss. It’s made me fucking angry and more determined to do what I think is right. Back to you. You’ve impressed me in a number of ways. You’re loyal. You work hard. What you did for Gen is more than most brothers would. So in view of the respect you’ve earned, I’m again offering you a choice. The Four Milers are going to be reeling from Bronson’s confession and death, and Red is fighting for his life to rebuild. If I cut you loose, the risks of them scooping you up are small. It’s a risk I’m willing to take. I’ll also pay you three months’ salary to give you space to find another job. Take the offer and walk away. You’ll still be able to see your sisters and date Cassie, if she wants you, but you’ll be an outsider and treated as such.”
His proposal was too good to be true. The money meant I could find a place to live. I could have everything I did now but freedom from life in the shadows.
Then there was the flip side of the coin.
It meant not working with Cassie. Visiting the warehouse rather than that building and the people in it being the centre of my life. I’d barely started understanding what Arran did, but a certainty formed in me. I respected it.
Slowly, I looked from him to the hanging man. “What did he do?”
Shade gave the explanation.
“His name is Leslie Kantoro. His kid rang the cops when he moved on from her to her little sister. Saved the younger one from a lifetime of being fucked up by a rapist dad and saw him locked up. Unfortunately, not for anywhere near long enough. The women are twenty-three and nineteen now, and when this piece of shite was released from prison, he applied for grandparents’ rights to visit the eldest’s baby girl. The prison considers him rehabilitated so the courts can’t block him. His phone is filled with child abuse pictures.” Shade’s lip curled in disgust.
I stared at Leslie, disgusted, horrified, and with anger brewing inside me. He should never have got out of prison.
“Oh, and a trip planned to Thailand with an apartment booked for six weeks in one of the poorest areas,” he added.
“What does that mean?”
He sighed. “Ye have a lot to learn. The question is whether ye want to.”
He glanced over at Arran, the two of them having some kind of conversation without saying a word, then came back to me.
“You’ve been offered an out. A good one with respect from us both if ye take it. No hard feelings. Now let’s walk through the alternative. The skeleton crew protects women. At the warehouse, with Cassie slowly trying to take over at the helm, and with people like Tyler who disrupt trafficking routes and help lost souls find freedom with us. If they want to sell their bodies for a living, we let them do so in safety. If they want to dance or clean fucking kitchens, the job is waiting. If they want out, we arrange it. Whatever the world thinks about us doesnae matter, but those who are closest to the cause should be there because they’ll fight and die to defend it.”
That fierce focus held me in its grip.
“There are hundreds of lasses and bairns who have been spared pain at the hands of men like Leslie and the countless others who’ve been washed away by Deadwater River. Ye can be part of something that makes a real difference in the world. Whether it be here or in one of the other support roles. You’re already too close for comfort and still an outsider. So my question is, would ye kill a man like this to save a stranger? What about to save Cassie? Let’s find out.”
From the back of his jeans, Shade produced a gun.
On the hook, Leslie moaned and rocked his naked body, the chains rattling, and his shrivelled dick doing its best to creep up inside his body.
Shade offered out the weapon. Automatically, I took it from him, the same matte black model I used and the weight familiar after Struan’s lesson.
The implication was clear.
Either I dispatched Leslie and helped send him to a watery grave, committing myself to the skeleton crew life, or I walked away from all but the weakest connection to it.
My mind jumped to Cassie’s goals. If I managed to keep her, or if she kept me, she’d come home bloodied and exhilarated, or maybe hurt and broken over a failure. This was what she wanted—to have her own list of predators to work on. Like Shade, she’d use people to support her. It didn’t have to be me.
Except all of that fell away when I considered saying no. My thoughts weren’t just for Cassie’s sake and my growing obsession with her, but for the want of being a part of something much bigger. Of that compelling picture Shade and Arran had painted. A brotherhood with them. A family, perhaps, with the wider crew. More than I thought possible.
Centring on the two crew members, I gave them my decision. “I always thought that being part of Deadwater’s underworld was a bad thing, but now I know there are layers. What you do has more value than most could ever know. Thanks for the out, but I respectfully decline.”
I closed in on Leslie, held the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.
Sometime later, I slouched out of the boathouse, wired from what I’d seen, grossed out but not sickened, and with Shade tossing me another unfamiliar grin.
Blood smeared his cheek. It made me think of Cassie.
“Sorry again for faking ye out.”
I stuck my middle finger up at him, earning a laugh.
Arran paced at my other side, directing me to a burning canister on the right side of the boathouse. He stripped his ruined shirt as he walked, revealing a muscular form. “If you want to kill, Riot, you’ll have to earn it. If you don’t, that’s fine, too, but you need to know what happens on my crew whether you’re in a supporting role or actively hunting. We’re a family either way, and I’ll get a full training programme worked out for you.”
“Appreciated,” I muttered.
Of course, the gun Shade gave me hadn’t been loaded. Leslie had flinched then sobbed while I stared at the fucking thing and tried again, the two men watching me and cracking up.
No matter. They’d shown me how they preferred to do the work. Leslie was read a sentence and carved into pieces that the river claimed. I got to watch. Learn.
More importantly, I was a member of the skeleton crew now.
A real one. It felt fucking amazing.
In the car, Shade checked his phone and smirked, the night flying by where Arran sped us back to Deadwater, two cars of skeleton crew providing an escort.
“Cassie’s informed me I’m a dead man if I hurt ye. Good thing I’m bringing ye back in one piece.”
I rested my head back, lust flowing through my veins as quickly as adrenaline had. “That woman’s going to be the death of me.”
“Try to avoid dying on duty, aye? Messy business cleaning up after breakups.”
He was joking, but annoyance rushed in on my already too-high emotional state. “We won’t break up.”
I meant it. Even if I had no idea how to make it happen, or the lengths I’d go to ensure it, though the tracking device, somehow still in my pocket, went some way to reassuring me.
We cruised back into Deadwater, every mile getting me more keyed up to find Cassie. To start on a plan to change her mind. One where she didn’t drift out of love with me and instead only fell deeper.
The time we’d spent at the boathouse meant afternoon had changed to evening, the darkness only intensifying the scene outside the warehouse.
Cars littered the road. The blue lights of a couple of police patrol cars mixed with the neon pink of Divine’s and Divide’s signs, bouncing off the red-brick building and the cobblestone road. There were people everywhere, cameras and ring lights illuminating faces, snatches of their broadcasts making it through our closed windows.
“…the killer unmasked at last,” one woman gushed for her internet audience.
“I have all the shocking and disturbing details,” another claimed, speaking louder.
“Fucking hell.” Arran spun the wheel to take us around the approach road, heading to the rear car park. “Even from the afterlife, Bronson is a pain in my ass.”
From my vantage point, I took in the waiting police officers. Not moving in on the front doors of the clubs, but not leaving either. “Why the cops? If they’re after Cassie, I need to know.”
“I’ll call Detective Dickhead and ask.”
But right as we passed out of sight of the front of the building, I spied something that sent my blood pressure skyrocketing. The door opened, and three women in the club’s black-and-pink uniform emerged with trays of what looked like cocktails, presumably as a gesture of goodwill to the assembled masses.
Cassie was leading the way.