Chapter Two
Alora
An hour later, I turned off my headlights and guided my car onto the side of the dirt road. A thicket of trees provided enough cover that passing cars wouldn’t notice us.
Dylan cleared his throat, and I shot him a glare. He avoided my gaze and reached into the backpack he had brought. He was lucky I hadn’t stabbed him in the neck for sneaking into my car.
He sighed, his shoulders drooping. “I fucked up.”
The urge to console him was strong. Any other time, I would have told him everything was going to be OK. People make mistakes. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
When I looked at him, I still saw that cute little kid I had practically raised on my own. The one who’d try and protect me when Ray thought he could use me as a punching bag, the one who’d beg for my world-famous PB papers littered the floor, and there was blood smeared on the wall as if someone had tried to hold themselves up before sliding to the ground.
We had to get the hell out of here. I turned on shaky legs toward the exit, but stopped.
I couldn’t just leave someone down here. What if they were still alive? With the amount of blood covering the linoleum floor, I sincerely doubted it. But I had to check.
“Hello?” I called out softly. A part of me wanted them to answer, but the scared part of me wished they wouldn’t.
Careful not to step in any blood, I rounded the desk, my eyes widening at the man on the ground. He appeared to be in his fifties, with gray hair and a robust belly that had gashes going across it from where he had been cut. His eyes were closed, with one hand lying on top of his stomach as if to stop his bleeding. On the floor beyond his head was a medium-sized safe, its lid wide open.
Warning bells went off in my head as a familiar scent tickled my nose, barely there, but unmistakable.
Gasoline .
Run, Alora. Grab Dylan and run.
My breath came out in tiny pants as I kneeled. With trembling fingers, I reached for his neck, checking for a pulse. I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed there was a faint one. Maybe it was the fear or the adrenaline. Nothing made sense anymore. I ripped my mask off and leaned over him, trying to hear if he was breathing.
Warm breath brushed against my ear, and I jerked my head up just as his eyes snapped open. I screamed when he reached for me.
His face twisted in confusion as he stared at me, like he was seeing me, but not really seeing me.
“ Predatel’! Predatel’! ”
More words tumbled from his lips, urgent and confusing. Russian, I realized, although I couldn’t understand anything he was saying.
He gripped my wrist with a surprising amount of strength. I tried to yank free, but it was no use.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I don’t understand.”
His other hand fumbled into his pocket and pulled out a coin that glinted in the moonlight. He pressed the coin into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“ Predatel’ ,” he whispered, his eyes boring into mine, desperate for me to understand.
Unsure of what to do, I nodded and repeated the word back to him. “OK. OK. Predatel’ ,” I whispered.
He glanced over my shoulder, his breath coming out ragged. “Run… run.”
As quickly as it had come, his strength left him. His hand dropped from mine to the ground. There was an emptiness in his eyes that left my heart pounding.
“Alora!” Dylan barreled into the room. “Alora?” He rounded the corner of the desk, his eyes widening at the man dead in front of me. “We need to move now; the house is on fucking fire.” He grabbed me by the shoulders and tugged me up. “Is he…?”
“Yeah.” I shoved the coin into my pocket.
Dylan’s eyes lit up when he saw the opened safe. He rushed over and rummaged through the contents. It didn’t sound like jewelry and, based on the frustrated groan he let out, it wasn’t. He threw some small bundles into his duffel bag and slammed the lid shut. “Let’s go.” He gripped my hand and dragged me up the stairs.
Holy shit.
There was smoke everywhere. It looked like it was coming from the second floor. Panic gripped me as I realized the police could show up at any minute. I covered my mouth and nose with my forearm, the smoke heavy in my chest as we rushed out the back door.
Dylan threw the duffel bag over the fence and boosted me over next. Once on the other side, he grabbed the bag and my hand, and we ran back the same way we had come. No lights were popping on in any neighbors’ homes, nor did we hear any police sirens as we ran.
Once inside my car, I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t over yet, though. We still had to get off the island and home without getting caught. Now was not the time to panic and get pulled over for speeding.
“What was in the safe?” I asked as I tugged on my seatbelt.
Dylan closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “Don’t freak out, OK?”
Obviously, when someone tells you not to freak out, you’re going to freak out.
He unzipped the bag and my eyes widened. There had to be at least eight white bundles in there, all with gray tape around them. It didn’t take a genius to know what the hell that was.
“Did we just rob a drug dealer?” I looked from him to the bundle in his hand. “Did we just steal someone’s drugs?” My voice rose with each word.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and zipped the bag back up. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I swear I didn’t know, Alora. He said it was jewelry.”
“That’s real convenient, Dylan.” I wanted to believe him. But after all the lies he’d been telling lately, I didn’t know if I could.
My knuckles were white as I gripped the steering wheel and pulled off onto the road.
Let’s just get home safely, and we can deal with this.
We’d barely made it a hundred feet before a deafening boom rang out so loud we both flinched. I stopped the car and we both turned around as the sky lit up with a massive fireball.
“Oh, fuck,” Dylan whispered.
I could barely hear him over my pounding heart. That poor man down in the basement. His body would never be found. His family would never know what had happened to him.
There were too many questions running through my head.
Whose house was that? Whose drugs had we taken? Had we made a bad situation a million times worse?
Neither of us said a word as we drove back to Brooklyn. I didn’t even know what to say at this point. I just wanted this to all be over.
But something told me it was far from it.
*** ***
It had been four long days since Dylan and I had robbed a drug lord from Mexico who was sending his sicarios to murder us any day now. That was what I had convinced myself of.
After I’d dropped off Dylan and he’d promised he would get my money in a few days, I went straight home and made sure Dove’s and my go bags were stocked. Extra clothes, a phone charger, a flashlight, extra keys to the Buick, a knife, granola bars, and a prepaid credit card. It wasn’t much, but it would do if we had to flee in the middle of the night.
Ray was good at one thing: teaching us how not to get caught, but preparing us in case we did. Having a go bag was an old, dirty habit that I’d never gotten rid of.
And after what had just happened, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Now, I just sat and waited. Paranoia was a bitch, and I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder everywhere I went. I couldn’t get that man’s face out of my head. The way he’d pleaded and then told me to run.
There was nothing on the news about the explosion, which I found super odd. Not even one breaking news report.
Nothing.
It was like it had never happened.
Finally, I got a text from Dylan saying he would have my money tomorrow.
I wanted to believe him when he said it was all OK, but a part of me didn’t trust how that whole night had gone down. Had his president set him up? Or had Dylan used me to rob a drug dealer? I was sick of thinking about it. I just wanted to go back to my normal life, where I served drinks and took photos while fantasizing about winning the MIP grand prize.
The smell of pancakes filled the air, and I threw off my blankets. It was Friday, and the bar was closed all weekend, which wasn’t helping my lack of money situation. A tree had fallen on the roof the day before during an insane storm, and it was going to take all weekend for Drake to fix it.
I found Dove in the kitchen dancing around as she flipped a pancake. Seeing her like this warmed my heart. When I’d first brought her home from the hospital, she never wanted to leave her room, didn’t want to eat or “talk” to anyone. It had been weeks before she’d finally let me take her outside. The first time, she’d only made it to the stairwell before having a panic attack. But she was getting better each day.
“It smells so good in here.” I poured myself a cup of coffee.
She adjusted her beanie and held out her phone. “Pancakes are almost done.”
I sat down at our little table that could barely fit the two of us. “I was thinking we should do a free day since the bar is closed. What do you think?”
She stiffened for a moment before flipping another pancake over in the pan. I didn’t want to push her past her comfort level, but I also needed to get her outside more. The free therapist we’d been set up with said she needed to face her fears head on, and quickly, before she developed a more aggressive form of agoraphobia.
I understood Dove was scared that someone was going to take her again. That they would snatch her right off the street and torment her. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. Over my dead body would anyone ever hurt my sister again.
“I was thinking we catch a matinee in Midtown, then there’s a tech convention just down the street, so you know what that means?”
She grinned and bit her bottom lip. “Steaks?”
“Free steaks.” I sipped my coffee.
When the twins were younger and I was a teenager, we often had what we called “free days.” Back then, they thought it was a game, not realizing how much trouble we would be in if we got caught sneaking into places without paying.
My favorite trick was strolling into upscale hotels in our bathing suits and explaining to the clerk that our parents had lost their pool passes. It worked like a charm. We would get access to not only the pool, but the lounge areas with complimentary food.
I’d pull similar schemes at business conventions in some of the larger hotels. Sometimes I’d dress up as waitstaff, other times I would get lucky and snag a name tag from the sign-in table. People would often give me strange looks, considering how young and petite I was, but no one ever questioned me. Either way, I’d always leave with my backpack stuffed full of food. At the time, it was exciting. But after Mom died, when Ray would disappear for days at a time, leaving us with no food in the house, it became more about surviving. I didn’t mind not eating for a day or two, but I couldn’t let the twins go hungry.
“Agent Greene wants to come over today and show me some mugshots.” Dove handed me a plate of pancakes and scrambled eggs.
“Screw Agent Greene,” I scoffed and dug into my breakfast.
Dove scrunched up her nose and tilted her head to the side. “C’mon, she’s only trying to help. Not all cops are corrupt, Alora.”
I laughed, unable to keep the bitterness out of my tone. The cops had murdered my brother. Plus, cops had let Ray beat the shit out of my mom, and sometimes me, and never did a thing about it. When my friend Mel’s boyfriend couldn’t handle her breaking up with him and began threatening her, the cops had done nothing. Now she was dead, too. The list went on and on.
The last thing I needed was an FBI agent up in my business after what Dylan and I had just done.
I didn’t trust Agent Greene, nor did I like her. She believed the people responsible for taking Dove were part of a human trafficking ring. A Good Samaritan had found Dove and another woman down by the docks and had taken them to the hospital. Agent Greene had been around ever since.
She kept tabs on Dove, checking for signs of her memory returning, even showing her mugshots to see if they would stir something in her mind. Then there were the times she would stop by unannounced and bring Dove food, or a self-help book, or take her out for coffee.
It rubbed me the wrong way, the way she acted as if she wanted to take care of Dove. We didn’t need her around. I took care of Dove, always. I was the one who made sure the twins had food, who helped with their homework, and who showed up for games and recitals so that they knew that someone gave a shit about them .
Me. Not fortysomething and divorced Agent Greene, who treated Dove like she was her daughter. I didn’t trust her. Even if not all cops were bad, like Dove insisted, there was still something about Agent Greene that rubbed me the wrong way.
“Tell her to come next week. Free steaks are calling our name.”
She nodded, and I did a happy dance in my chair. I would make sure we had the best free day.
We finished breakfast, and I blasted the radio as we got ready. Dove seemed giddy while putting on her makeup, and by the time we left, I knew it had been the right choice to go out today.
“Remember the code?” I asked as we stood in the packed subway on the way to Midtown.
She held up her hand and pointed at her ring finger. I nodded as our stop came up and we stepped off the train.
We had a secret code in case we thought someone was on to us and we needed to bail quickly. We would ask the other person, “Have you seen my ring?” and point at our ring finger. That meant stopping whatever you were doing, getting up and leaving. We’d only had to use it a handful of times.
Luckily for us, we didn’t have to use it all day. We waited at the back of the theater until a big group of people left, then slipped inside. I pulled a bucket of old popcorn and a cup filled with ice out of the trash and headed to the concession stand. After I complained that my toddler had spilled my drink all over my popcorn, the teenage employee rolled their eyes and handed me a bucket of fresh popcorn and a new cup. We watched a rom-com that Dove wanted to see, and afterwards we headed to the hotel for the convention.
The plan had been to steal name tags, but when we got to the banquet hall, there was no one with a sign-in sheet making sure you were an employee, so we just strolled in and grabbed lunch. I guessed the staff didn’t think two young women were going to roll up and steal a free meal.
We walked around Midtown for a while, having a blast. I’d gotten a gift card last year for an adult store, the Shiver Box, so we shopped and I picked up a toy for Mira’s birthday. It was an ongoing joke between all of us that someone got her a vibrator every year, and every year, they got bigger and more intense-looking.
The only money we’d spent all day was on new ink and pig skins from the butcher shop. Both were for Dove so she could practice tattooing some new designs.
We visited the cemetery as the sun went down, paying our respects to Mom and Jameson, and I took some photos. Most of them were of Dove, but I let her take a few of me. I really needed to focus on the competition and the theme, but my head wasn’t in it today.
It was late by the time we got back to Brooklyn. The free day was exactly what I’d needed to take my mind off Dylan and that crazy night.
When we got home, I set my backpack down by the front door and kicked off my boots. Dove opened and closed cupboards in the kitchen, then turned to me with her nose scrunched up. “We’re out of booze.” She held up her phone.
I stared longingly at the couch. She clasped her hands together and pouted her lips.
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “You owe me, though.”
She grinned and squeezed me. The last thing I wanted to do was go back out, but it was Friday, and I didn’t have to work all weekend, and I’d just had a pretty traumatic week. I’d say that some alcohol was in order.
I made sure my knife was tucked into my boot and headed back out. There was a black sedan parked at an odd angle in front of my building that made me pause when I saw it. A police officer stepped out of the car and walked toward me.
“Miss Wolfe?”
I narrowed my eyes and took a step back. Zeke was watching us from across the street and gave me a little wave. I nodded at him and then focused on the cop. “Um, yeah. Can I help you?”
“I’m Officer Smith. I need you to come down to the precinct to answer a few questions.” He held out his hand toward me, as if I should take it.
“About what?” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked over his shoulder. There was another man in the car, but he was wearing a suit. This would be the moment where I would freak the hell out, but I held my composure like I’d been taught all those years ago by Ray.
They weren’t here about the dead body, or the house, or the missing drugs. Just keep calm.
The police officer sighed and dropped his hand. There was something off about the way he looked, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. “Very important police business, and I would appreciate your cooperation.”
OK, that sounded fake as fuck. My gaze traveled up and down his body. His uniform looked almost too big on him. “Am I under arrest for something? ”
He scratched the side of his forehead and looked at the guy in the passenger seat, then back at me. “No, but I need you to come with me.”
I scoffed and walked around to the opposite side of the car. “I know my rights. Arrest me or I’m leaving.”
He held up his hands. “Just come with us, and we’ll have you back home to your sister in no time.”
My heart stopped beating in my chest. Not only at the mention of Dove, but at the tattoo I could see clearly on his forearm.
A wolf with a letter “Z” going through it.
Bratva.
What had Mira said? “You see someone with that tattoo, and you run in the opposite direction.”
He wasn’t a cop. This wasn’t a cop’s car, and I was about to be royally screwed if I got in the backseat. I had to warn Dove. If they knew she was upstairs, they could try to grab her, too. I had to get to her first.
“Yeah, OK, fine.” I took a step back and his eyes narrowed. “Let me just grab my purse from upstairs.” I walked backwards, goosebumps breaking out all over my skin.
“I’ll come with you.” He took a step toward me, and I held up my hand.
“No need, just give me a minute and I’ll be right back.” I turned and walked as normally as I could toward the lobby door. He didn’t believe me. I could tell by the look on his face. As I unlocked the door to my building, I heard another door open and slam shut. I glanced over my shoulder to see the cop and the guy in the suit having a heated discussion.
I took the steps two at a time, the muscles in my legs tight as I got to my floor. There was a tingling in my chest as fear wrapped around me.
Dove was in the same spot in the kitchen I’d left her moments ago. She looked confused for a moment, but something about the look on my face had her moving toward me. I slammed the door shut and slid the bookshelf in front of it. That wasn’t going to stop them, but it would give us an extra minute or two.
Dove’s eyes were wide, her fingers trembling as she pulled out her phone.
“We’ve got a situation.” I grabbed her phone and shoved it back into her pocket. “There’s no time.” They could be in the building already. We had to move now. I gripped her shoulders. “Listen to me. I need you to remain calm. You need to go to the bar and text Dylan. Tell him I went with our friends from the other night.”
I dragged her down the hall, then grabbed her go bag from the closet and my baseball bat. “Wait for me at the bar, Dove. Don’t go anywhere, just wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll take, but I’ll come for you, I promise.” I ushered her into the bathroom and shut the door.
Since the bar was closed, she wouldn’t have to explain anything to Solene. She could just grab the spare key and hide inside.
The fire escape was just out the bathroom window. If she left now, those men wouldn’t get her. She would be able to get to safety and let Dylan know there was a problem. Not that I accepted needing him to save me, but if anyone was going to, it might as well be him.
Dove’s eyes were watery as she put on her backpack, her entire body shaking like a leaf. I hated that this was happening. This could mess up all the progress she’d been making. She squeezed my hands, mouthing “let me help,” over and over, but I shook my head.
“Run, and don’t come back. I’m going to be OK; I promise.” I squeezed her as tight as I could and pushed her away from me. “Go, quickly.”
She slid out the window and down the first set of steps. I slammed the window shut, just as the sound of books falling to the floor came from the living room.
Boots pounded across the floor as I raised my bat. As soon as the bathroom door opened, I swung with as much force as I could. The cop moved at the last minute, so I barely grazed the side of his head before the bat hit the wall.
“Bitch,” he snarled.
A metallic taste burst in my mouth as his fist slammed into my face, and I fell to the ground.
I wouldn’t scream. Couldn’t. I didn’t want Dove to hear and try to help me.
“You’re going to pay for that.”
Was I going to break my promise to Dove after all?