Chapter 18
Cillian
Ishow up late to the deli and get in line behind an actual customer. The drilling just outside angers the headache forming at my temples.
I should’ve taken some ibuprofen. I slide my fingers under the arms of my sunglasses and knead the fluttering skin.
When it’s my turn, I ask, “BLT, hold the bacon.”
The short-order cook sizes me up—from synthetic hippie wig to ripped jeans—before reaching behind the counter for a prewrapped lunch sandwich. “Bathroom’s in the back.” He nods to a short hallway.
I’m guessing I have to look at my sandwich behind a closed door. Once inside the single-stall bathroom, I unwrap the sandwich. I’m expecting a scrawled message on the wrapper, or a halved bun with a strip of paper inside, but there’s nothing. Did they forget to add a message?
The doorknob rattles.
“One sec,” I call out, reducing the bread to crumbs to locate a message.
I startle when the locked bathroom door swings open. “What the hell, man. I said I needed a sec—”
A masked Hunter in full black gear enters. “Come with me.”
Of course my stepbrothers wouldn’t give me the directions to their new HQ. If only I’d gotten the address from Quinn before—
The man tosses a black balaclava at me—one with no eye-holes. “Leave the wig and sunglasses and put this on,” he murmurs.
Even though every cell in my body rears up, I oblige.
Once blind to the world, he grabs my arm and drags me.
I try to memorize the way—one left turn, straight, a heavy door creaks, then we’re going down a set of stairs.
Twenty steps later, there’s a beep, then I’m hit with the stale air of a garage.
“Up,” my escort says.
Next thing I know, I’m sitting in a car, and we’re driving.
After about five minutes, the car stops, and I’m hauled out.
Warm air hits my exposed skin. Warm air, and the sound of a drill.
Could it be the same one that’s blasting through the pavement in front of the deli?
Could I have just been driven around in circles?
A short beep precedes the metallic grind of a door—I’m guessing an armored one. My escort shoves me inside. “Pull the mask off before the door shuts, and I’m allowed to blind you.”
I snort, but do as he says. The instant the balaclava’s off, I get a faceful of nicotine smoke and syrupy perfume.
“Lordy, are my eyes deceiving me? Is that you, Cook?” Lucinda Cochran—codename Custodian—blinks away from her daytime talk show, waving a hand through the cigarette haze as though to get a crisper picture of me. “Thought you’d been dispatched years ago, son.”
I tunnel my fingers through my damp locks. “No such luck.”
“Oh, honey, I was real sad when I was told you were gone. Especially after what happened to your mommy.” Smoking has roughened both her pitch and face. “I loved Charlotte.”
“Yeah.” My lungs ache at the sound of my mother’s name. “Me too.”
“Ain’t the same without her.” Lucinda gazes at me for a full minute longer. “Ain’t the same without Fox either.”
Fox, aka Quinn Hayes.
“Is her father-daughter trip going well? You got any news?”
I ball my fingers. Not only is Quinn not off on some trip with her asshole father, but if Lucinda is asking about her, that means she isn’t here either. I hadn’t put much stock in seeing my best friend today, but the note had said “family reunion.”
“Hoping for some today.” I glance around at the low-ceilinged room with its wood paneling, timber floors, and leather furniture, which looks both lived-in and new. “So this is the new HQ?”
“Five years old. But I guess to you, it’s new.” She nods to the sofa she’s sitting on. “Fox reupholstered this one. She also put up the wall panels. Not much that girl can’t do.”
Even if Quinn did this renovation years ago, it’s a relief to see she didn’t let her shit-for-brains ex kill her creative streak.
“I really hope she’s getting to visit museums,” Luce says. That’s what she was most looking forward to.”
One day, she will.
“Where to, Custodian?” I ask.
Lucinda nods to the wall panel bearing a framed pencil drawing of herself puffing on a cigarette. I don’t have to check the signature on the edge of the paper to know it’s also Quinn’s work.
I move toward it.
“Knock four times,” she says.
A second later, the concealed door pops open, revealing a concrete vestibule guarded by another lieutenant dressed in head-to-toe tactical black. God, I don’t miss the uniform.
After the usual pat-down, the guy keys a code into a panel that unlatches another door.
“You’re late,” Trenton says.
“Quinn,” I snap. “Is she all right?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Hudson asks between noisy chews of his favorite cherry-flavored gum. The smell is as nauseating as his presence.
“Because you almost blew my cover,” I growl.
Hudson toes the empty chair beside his, angling it toward me. “Sit.”
I don’t. Not yet. “I want proof of life. Not just of life, of health.”
Trenton doesn’t look away from the pack of cards he’s shuffling. “Why would we damage the very thing keeping our brother loyal?”
“Put her on the phone, Trent,” I grit out.
“Messiah,” he corrects me.
I remember laughing during our naming ceremony. I thought Trenton had tossed the codename out as a joke.
The hush that had fallen over the room had sobered me up real fast. Especially when Dominic strode toward me, tipped my thirteen-year-old head on one finger, and slapped me—in front of everyone.
“We don’t mock each other in this organization,” Trenton’s father had said.
I never laughed again. I also never used Trenton’s codename, and I wasn’t going to start now.
“Proof of life,” I repeat without separating my teeth.
“Fine.” Trenton sighs as though this were a great concession on his part. “Call Handyman.”
Hudson speed-dials Sullivan Hayes’s new number—his old line’s been disconnected.
I’ve asked for it, but of course, they’ve kept it from me.
Not because I have a chance in hell of tracking it, but because they know I’ll call too often.
And they’re right. I hate not being able to reach Quinn whenever I want.
Sullivan’s nasal voice crackles through Hudson’s speakerphone, stroking my hate.
“Put my sister-in-law on.” Hudson smacks his gum. “Cook here wants to hear her breathe.”
She’d better do more than breathe over the receiver.
“Cook?” Quinn’s familiar voice makes everything in my chest coil tight.
Fuck… It’s really her.
“Are you all right? No one tells me anything and— Wait. Dad. Wait.” There’s the sound of a scuffle and then a door shutting.
I hear banging and Sullivan yelling for her to open the door.
“Daddy’s going to be mad…” Hudson singsongs.
Quinn’s voice cracks. “I’m so sorry, Cook.”
Her apology jams my eyebrows low. My brothers better not have told her about our deal. They swore they wouldn’t…
“I’m sorry I dragged you back to this world,” she whispers, while Sullivan goes to town on her door.
“You didn’t. I chose to come back.”
If only I hadn’t lingered in Boston after she regained consciousness. If only fury and the need to make Trenton pay for his crime hadn’t overridden my reason.
I rub a knot that’s formed in my shoulder. “Did Hud give you the art supplies I got you last month?”
“Art supplies?” Trenton mouths at the same time as Hudson hisses, “Don’t use my fucking name, Cook.”
When Quinn breathes out, “Yes,” Trenton’s mouth purses.
“Run out yet?” I catch Trenton glaring at his brother like he’s some sort of traitor for forwarding a gift to keep Quinn from going stir-crazy.
“Not yet. What’s going on?”
“I’m going to get you out,” I promise, wishing I could track the call to find her location. Or ask her where she’s being held.
Wood splinters, and then Sullivan must grab the phone from her hands because his voice comes through loud and clear. “Sorry ’bout that, Atheist. Can you pass me Messiah?”
“He can hear you.” Hudson blows a bubble.
“Kid you sent. He’s got what it takes.”
“What kid?” Hudson asks the same question I’m asking myself.
A smile jimmies one corner of Trenton’s lips. “Glad to hear it. I’ll call you later.”
I hear Quinn shriek in the background. “Trenton Caruso, let Cook—”
The thud of something falling echoes down the line. That better not be Quinn’s body.
“Handyman?” Trenton growls, purpling from hearing his full name blasted over the phone.
“Yes, boss?”
Not bosses. Not Messiah either. Although Hudson rules alongside his twin, Trenton is the one for whom the seven lieutenants in the room—and all the crazies outside of it—would lay down their lives.
Regrettably, the unhinged and the merciless always rise highest.
“Teach her a fucking lesson!” Trenton barks.
“Consider it taught.”
Trenton punches the Call End button on his brother’s phone. The line goes dead in time with my heart, because Sullivan Hayes is a psychopath—one who murdered his wife and claimed she deserved it.
“He better not fucking hurt her…” I start.
“Or what, Reevey?” Trenton spits out Quinn’s nickname for me.
“You’ll go after him? You know Handyman.
He’d love nothing more than to have a reason to eliminate you.
Do you know how many times I had to stop him from hunting you down after you left?
” My stepbrother and his constant need for recognition… “You owe me. Don’t forget that.”
The only thing I owe him is a guided tour of his future burial plot.
As I seethe, Hudson repeats his earlier question, “What kid?”
“Handyman’s bored so I’m sending him recruits to train.” Trenton’s soulless eyes stay locked and loaded on my face.
Oh, how he wishes he could end me. But he can’t, because he wants the mine destroyed more than he wants me dead.
“The art shit Cook gave you for Fox,” Trenton asks his brother. “You went through it, right?”