Chapter 21 Lincoln #2
Fire burns viciously in my veins, but instead of verbalizing my promises to gut the prick, I cross the living room and head straight toward Nova’s bedroom.
The one I haven’t searched yet. The one she said would house a stash of immediate needs—cash, a weapon, her ID, and whatever personal items she prefers to keep close.
“I wanna be there for the interrogation.” My words are like venom on my tongue. Like toxins crawling along my throat. “I started this, Aster. I’d like to be there for the end.”
“You’re no longer needed—”
“I’d like to finish it,” I grit out. “She was my mark. You know I see jobs to the end.”
Nova’s room is trashed. Her bed, stripped. Her mattress, flipped and destroyed. Her wardrobe doors hang limp, hinges broken, and drawers pulled to the floor. Clothes have been torn from the hangers, and her pretty dresses, nothing more than carnage in a war she never started.
“Aster? I’d like to be there for it.”
“Fine.” He exhales cigar smoke and settles back into his leather chair. “But I won’t wait long. She has what I need, Castro, and I’ve been patient. For decades,” he sneers, “I’ve been patient.”
Tank gutted this room and destroyed everything at eye level and below, so I look up to the unmarked ceiling.
Because she’s smart. Nova Nichols is so fucking smart it makes my stomach ache and my heart stutter.
The ceilings in old houses sit higher than modern buildings, so I step onto the frame of her bed, gritting my teeth as the abused wood creaks under my weight.
A faint, barely there outline of a square has been cut into the plaster—noticeable to anyone aware of its existence, but easily missed if you’re busy looking everywhere else.
I place my palm in the middle and gently push up.
“What do the codes unlock?” I ask. “You still haven’t told me. ”
“Because they’re none of your business. You have twenty-four hours before Tank’s interrogation begins. You know where to find me.” He kills the call.
My heart thunders as I slip the phone into my pocket and, using both hands, nudge the tightly fitted access hole upwards.
Dust falls onto my face with every tweak of the sheetrock.
The screech and slide of materials is like cannon fire on a silent battlefield.
This manhole wasn’t created to be a secret, just neat. Discreet, but not invisible.
Impatient with my slow progress, I punch the plaster straight up and grab onto the beam on each side of the square-foot space.
Pulling myself up, I glance into the darkness and find…
nothing. Just dirt. Mouse shit. A box of rat bait turned on its side, and a carcass not so far from where it feasted.
I turn, holding myself off the bed frame until my shoulders burn and my arms ache, but then the corner of something else catches my attention. A sharp angle, recognizable in the dark.
With a lightning-fast strike, I reach out and snatch the box, crushing it under my palm, then I drop back to the floor as half of the torn box’s contents flitter down around me. Lowering into a crouch, I collect things as they roll away.
A watch, not all that dissimilar to the one I mailed to Aster a few days ago. A rock, with smooth edges and glossy speckles all over. A passport which, when I open it, reveals Nova’s name. Her face. The date of birth she shares with her brother… mere weeks from now.
Setting it down, I turn over a phone and tap the screen that remains dark. Seemingly dead. Ryan’s, maybe. I poke through a wad of cash, probably a few hundred dollars at best, and a folded letter, three or four sheets thick.
Frowning, I grip the watch and study it in my hand—it’s a damn near exact replica of the one I already found.
Maybe one belonged to her father, and the other to her brother.
I push credit cards aside, along with a small photograph.
Not framed, but long ago laminated. RyRy and NooNoo, ‘05 is scrawled on the back. Flipping it over, I’m treated to two beaming faces.
Ryan’s comes with a slight wrinkle in his lips, while Nova plasters a massive, probably noisy, kiss on her brother’s cheek.
She happily shows affection, and he, the brother, pretends he hates it.
A role I know well.
I swallow the ache in my throat and slip the photograph into my back pocket.
Snatching up the folded letter, I sit back against the bed frame and open the pages—the scrawling, messy script obviously penned by a man.
I catch a ‘Dear Nova’ before anything else and contemplate putting it away. I consider getting in my car and racing across state lines. If I’m lucky, I’ll come up with a fucking plan for how to get her out before Aster kills her.
I’m brutally aware that for every minute I spend here, the further Nova and Tank get. For every mile placed between us, the less likely I am to get to her before she’s harmed. But I look down at the letter again, unable to walk away. Completely incapable of leaving his words unknown.
Dear Nova, I’m so sorry, kiddo. As I sit here and attempt to write this letter, I’m forced to consider a future where I’m no longer around.
The thought of leaving you behind is enough to make me sick. But if you’re reading this, then that means I’ve done the right thing by penning it.
“Fuck me.” I drag my hand over my face and draw a long, lung-stretching breath until my chest expands and my throat aches. Then I exhale again and look down.
I need to tell you a story, and then I need you to follow my instructions carefully.
I know you’ll wanna argue, and fuck knows, you’re naturally inclined to be a pain in my ass, forging your own way forward despite my warnings.
But there’s something so much bigger than us, Nov, something extremely dangerous swirling in the air, and it’s important I pass that information on to you, the way it was to me, before I no longer have the chance.
First of all, I need to confess that I’m a liar.
I’ve lied to you a lot over the last ten years, and I’m here to beg for your forgiveness.
The things I’ve told you, like working in the motor pool and never seeing the front lines of battle, were mere comforts.
My gifts to you, I liked to hope, so you could rest easy and not worry while I was gone.
My intentions, of course, were the same as Dad’s when he told Mom how easy his job was.
How safe he was, and how she should never worry.
We know, Nova—those of us who leave, know—that the family left behind suffers.
It’s better to let you think we’re safe than to leave you in a constant state of fear.
So, for those lies, I’m both sorry and not.
Because I’m a man of honor, and lying to you, my twin, who so desperately wanted to master telepathy, was like looking in the mirror and lying to myself.
I was ashamed every time you stared into my eyes and asked a question, and with all your heart and trust and unwavering love, you believed every word I spoke.
You set me on a pedestal a million years ago, and I tried so fucking hard not to fall. But now, as I purge my soul and tell my truths, you need to know how thankful I am that you could exist while I was gone, comforted by the lies I told and able to rest, assuming I was safe.
I’ve been dishonest, I know. But I considered it for the greater good.
Because you, sweet Nova, are the greatest good.
You should know I feel dumb writing this, by the way.
You’re in the next room, singing along to some weird pop song, and, just fifteen minutes ago, we were bickering because I flicked your ear.
It feels unnecessary for me to take this time to write when you’re right there, and I’m right here, and in this moment, everything is fine.
But that’s how these things go, don’t you think? Everything was fine… until it wasn’t.
Now, it’s time I tell you the rest. And then I need you to do as you’re told.
I’m begging you, this one last time, trust my words and follow them closely. Because leaving you is already a pain I’ll never get over. But leaving you in danger… No. I won’t have that.
So, since we’ve acknowledged that I did not, in fact, tinker with engines for Uncle Sam, it’s probably time I explain who I really am. What I am. It’s time to tell you about the special unit I’m a part of. Which, whether you can believe it or not, is the same unit Dad helped create.
A really long time ago, there was a man, an extremely powerful man, who ran billions of dollars of illegal trade up and down the eastern seaboard. He moved things across the border and, ultimately, was responsible for countless deaths.
I mean that literally, Nov.
Countless.
Because apart from the people he killed with his own hands, he was also instrumental in bringing black market weapons into gangland wars, placing mass-killers into the hands of kids who didn’t know better, and laced drugs onto the streets overflowing with junkies given no chance to make a different, better choice.
This man’s outfit handled what my superiors suspect were more than ten thousand missing children’s cases over a span of just ten years.
Girls, Nova. They were all girls, and I don’t think I need to explain to you what he did with them.
He was a bad, bad guy, and he was extremely powerful for a long time.
The police wouldn’t touch him because he had too many in his pockets, and the military wasn’t really in charge of that stuff.
Back then, when Dad was around the age we are now, he was swept into a mission with the goal of ending this dude’s reign.
Some of our guys posed as buyers. Others ran a long game and became a part of his inner team.
Some, I’m sad to say, switched loyalties after they’d gotten a taste of that world, while others failed to maintain their cover, which ultimately led to their deaths.