Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
VALEN
The military-grade lockdown vehicle Roman delivered turns out to be a glorified RV that someone painted black, then bolted enough steel plates to it that it now looks like Batman’s summer home. It’s not what I asked him to bring.
“This is ridiculous.” The monstrosity takes up Clover’s entire driveway. I can already envision the complaints from the fucking text tree. “This thing makes me look like the guy from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
My cousin’s laughter barks against the excessive amount of exposed steel.
“This is tactical,” Roman corrects, grinning as though he won the lottery. “Bulletproof windows. Reinforced door. Satellite communication. Solar panels. Water filtration system. You could survive the apocalypse in this thing.” He’s so excited, I’m almost worried for him.
“Or,” I say dryly, “you could’ve just told Grant to send the fucking Stinger like I asked.”
The fucking Stinger.
“Where’s the fun in that?” He slaps the side of the vehicle with pride, but his smile slides off his lips when he looks at me.
“No shit.” Roman bites his bottom lip. “The Stinger.” Even though he’s an identical triplet, his lip biting is what has always given him away. He’s more like Aunt Vivi than the others.
“I named a million-dollar military vehicle after her, and I had no idea,” I realize.
“Well,” he says. “If she ends up unlocking your memories, maybe you can forgive me for springing her on you. But in fairness, it took us a long fucking time to find her. Even though she kept her first name, someone buried her deep.”
“Maybe,” I mutter, then turn back to the fucking headache he managed to acquire. “How long did it take you to find this thing?”
“I didn’t find it,” he scoffs. “Me and Sterling built it.” Roman pulls open the door with a pneumatic hiss that sounds like a TV spaceship. “We’ve been working on it for two years at the warehouse—you’d know that if you ever bothered to come home. We thought it would be good for stakeouts.”
“You built an armored RV for stakeouts? You realize you’re supposed to stay hidden on stakeouts, right?” My cousins are out of their damn minds. They have more money than they could ever spend, and some of their ideas are…something a teenage boy would dream up.
I ignore the little voice in my head telling me I have just as many zeros hiding away in a bank account somewhere. I didn’t earn it, so I don’t touch it. It feels…wrong.
“I prefer mobile command center, and again, you’d know that if you came home once in a while.” He climbs inside, gesturing for me to follow. Excitable childlike energy does not match his typical grumpy ass exterior.
Roman is not the demonstrative brother—that would be Chase—so the fact that he’s practically frothing at the mouth tells me just how excited he is about this. So I force down my irritation and follow him inside what can only be described as a tiny militant bachelor pad.
“What the fuck is this, Ro?”
He pauses with his hands on a gaming console and turns his head so slowly I’d fear he were having a stroke if I didn’t also catch what I said.
“You haven’t called me Ro— Not since—”
Swallowing nails, I nod. “Not since…before?”
My cousin smiles with a mix of sadness and hope that rips at my chest. The last thing I want is for anyone to get their hopes up.
My memories have been gone for fourteen long years.
It would be irresponsible to think that a single ghost from my past would be the one to unlock all those frustrating years.
No matter how special I fear she might have been to me.
“Yeah,” he croaks, then fidgets with the game controller.
I take in the interior so I don’t have to look him in the eye either. I’m not ready for the inquisition I know is coming.
There’s a small kitchenette on one side, a Murphy bed that folds down on the back wall, a compact bathroom that could belong on a yacht, and—I point at the monitors mounted above the gaming console that are straight out of a spy movie.
“Security feeds,” Roman says quickly. Too quickly. “For monitoring the perimeter.”
“One of them is definitely showing an active game of Call of Duty.”
“That’s—” He clears his throat. “That’s for blending in. You know, establishing a cover.”
“For what? A children’s birthday party venue? How are you going to blend in by playing Call of Duty in a tank?”
Roman’s typically stoic, almost stuck-up, so this ridiculous side of him is nice to see, even if it is slightly unnerving.
He’s also been my best friend since we were teenagers…and I suppose—to him—even before that. While I’ve fought to figure out who I am and what I’ve done, he’s been by my side every step of the way.
“Thank you,” I say, the sentiment soothing my soul. “For this. For everything.”
The sharp angles of his face shift, making him appear softer and looking more like Aunt Vivi than ever before. “You’d do the same for me. You have done the same for me.” He punches my shoulder. “Don’t start crying on me now though—we have work to do.”
He gestures to the security monitors. “I’ve got feeds from Rip’s car, the corners of the house, and the three I installed while you were inside playing hero.”
“I wasn’t playing—”
“Chief said you caught her right before she hit the floor. That’s textbook romance hero behavior, my man.” He’s grinning again. “I’m just saying, if you wanted to make an impression, mission accomplished.”
“When the hell did you talk to Chief? How do you even know him?”
Roman laughs so hard his head tips back, and I’m blinded by a snapshot in time.
Roman. His brothers. Me. We’re teenagers, young, hanging out in the warehouse, fucking around with something that shocked the hell out of Sterling’s finger, and we all doubled over laughing.
Emotions threaten to knock me on my ass, so I focus on what Roman’s saying while also storing that memory away in my mind for safekeeping.
“I’ve been here a couple of weeks,” he says. “And that man has stuck his nose into every official and nonofficial police matter he could find. Seriously, the actual chief of police must be a goddamn saint to put up with his nonsense.”
I chuckle. “He can’t be that bad.”
“Oh yeah? Ask Rip how many times Chief has tried to clear a room for him before he and Clover entered. The man is the law enforcement equivalent of Dwight Schrute from The Office, and he said you were like Tony Stark, swooping in to save Clover before she smashed her face against the floor.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “It wasn’t like that, and stop referencing fictional characters. It almost makes you seem…human.”
“Sure, it wasn’t like that.” He snorts while pulling up one of the camera feeds, showing Clover’s backyard. “Now, about the package. I’m running the paper through analysis. The handwriting appears to be feminine, but that could be a misdirection tactic. The bee—”
“Wasn’t a coincidence,” I say. “It’s too…intentional. Too specific. It’s a threat.”
We both fall silent. Saying the truth out loud makes our options that much bleaker.
“It’s also not a coincidence that the moment you land in town, the threat goes from her fictional life—her novels—to something personal and incredibly specific to you both.”
“You think the threats are coming from one of Terra’s followers?” I ask. “I thought Vivi…handled anyone who was considered a threat.”
“It’s either a follower or—”
“Miriam,” I say, though for some reason, it doesn’t sit right with me. The few mentions of this woman in my journal carry a warmth, a fondness in them. I hope to God I didn’t put my trust in the wrong hands—that would mean that everything that happened to Clover would, in fact, be my fault.
“Yeah,” Roman says. “I’ve got a call into the foster agency Clover was placed with after the cult, and Sterling’s working on tracking down Miriam, but we don’t even know if she’s alive. And if she is, if she’s—”
“Capable of terrorizing a woman she supposedly saved.” I scrub a hand over my face. “It doesn’t make sense. Why help her escape only to torment her fourteen years later?”
“Maybe it’s not Miriam.” Roman leans against the console. “In your journal, you mentioned others at Roots of Salvation. Leaders. Elders.”
“Terra’s followers,” I mutter, remembering the words I’d written as a teenager.
Her name still tastes wrong in my mouth.
My mother. A woman I don’t remember but apparently feared.
“I just don’t know, Roman. All I have to go by are the ramblings of a kid in a journal that don’t even have dates on them.
Everything’s out of order, and nothing makes sense. And the note said we. Plural.”
I lean forward to scan the screen and sigh when I see Chief ambling up the sidewalk with Wrecks at his side.
Roman says, “It’s possible they were just trying to throw us off track with the fucking rhyming. Or—”
“Or there really is more than one person involved.” I stare at the monitor that’s focused on Clover’s front door. “Either way, she’s not safe here. Not until we figure this out.”
“Hence,” he says with a pompous-ass grin. “The tank.”
“Mobile command center,” I correct, and his smile grows.
“You’re learning.”
A hard knock on the side of the vehicle makes us both turn as Chief’s face appears in the doorway, Wrecks panting at his side.
“You boys done playing with your fancy toys?” he asks, climbing in without an invitation. “Got somethin’ to discuss.”
Wrecks follows, immediately taking up approximately seventy percent of the available floor space. The dog sniffs everything, drools on the console, tries to eat the leg of a chair, and finally settles himself directly on top of my feet.
“Chief,” I say while shifting my feet free. “What are you—”
“Dog’s stayin’ with Clover ’cause Elle’s husband lost his dadgum mind when Wrecks chewed through his table saw.”
“I’m sorry. He what?”
Chief rocks back on his heels and nods. “He’s a good boy for Clover though, and she needs the protection.”
Wrecks settles between my legs, but not before gnawing on a steel door behind me.
“I’m here for protection.” And I’m better than a fucking dog. Most of the time. At least I don’t eat power tools.
“You’re a human.” Chief scratches behind the dog’s ears. “Wrecks is a hundred pounds of chaos that’ll bark at anything that moves. Plus, he gives you an excuse to spend time with her.”
“I don’t need an excuse.”
“Sure ya don’t.” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“But Wrecks here will also get her out of the house. Clover won’t leave her fortress right now without a reason, and Savvy’s not here to drag her out.
It’s how she was when she first moved here.
Took the girls months to get her to leave their dorm room.
Years to get her comfortable enough to go out on her own. ”
He nods down at the dog.
“Wrecks gives her a reason. She’ll have to take him for walks multiple times a day, and you’re gonna go with her so he doesn’t drag her all over Happiness. You can get to know her. See what she’s about, and learn that big heart of hers is just waitin’ on the right fool to snatch it up.”
Is this guy for real? “You’re using the dog as a matchmaking tool?”
“I’m using the dog as a security measure that happens to require regular outdoor activities which will also require a bodyguard.
Can’t help it if dog walking is also conducive to relationship building.
” He shrugs as if he isn’t giving it a second thought, but that spark flares to life again in his eyes.
This man is trouble protected by a fake badge of innocence.
I can hear Roman’s barely contained amusement from the corner.
“Fine,” I say. “The dog can stay.”
“Wasn’t askin’ permission, son. Just letting ya know to get your runners ready.” Chief heads for the door but pauses at the threshold. “Oh, and you might want to shower before you go over there. You smell like fear, sweat, and loneliness.”
“Oh, shit,” Roman gasps through a fit of laughter that doesn’t suit him.
“I don’t smell like—”
“You’ve been in the same clothes for thirty-six hours. Trust me. You smell.” He winks. “Good thing this fancy tank of yours has a shower.”
He’s gone before I can respond, leaving me with Roman’s laughter and Wrecks’ continued invasion of my personal space as he noses my crotch with more enthusiasm than a virgin on prom night.
“I hate him,” I mutter.
“No, you don’t.” Roman’s still grinning. It’s irritating as fuck. “And he’s right. You should shower. Maybe change. Try to look like you haven’t been on a three-day stakeout.”
“It’s been two days.”
“Exactly my point.”