sixteen #2
“So, you wanted to talk to me?” he asks, not looking up as he works, his strokes smooth and confident, his lines fine and straight.
“Yeah,” Angel says, taking the stool from the other table. “About Eternity.”
Maverick doesn’t answer. The buzz of the machine is the only sound in the room.
“We left you with her,” Angel says. “You’re the last person who saw her.”
I check on Heath, but he’s just staring up at the ceiling, arm tucked under his head for a pillow, jaw tight, though I can’t tell if it’s from the pain of the needle or the reminder of his sister.
For a long minute, I don’t think Maverick is going to answer at all. I’m tempted to jump in and beg, but at last, I trust Angel enough to obey his earlier order and let him deal with it his way. He knows Maverick better than anyone, and the other guys aren’t saying a word, so I don’t either.
“I already told you,” Maverick says at last. “She got in a car with three dudes. A black Bentley with tinted windows, no plates.”
“Yeah, I know,” Angel says. “But we’re looking for her now. The Disciples know, so it’s no secret. I figured we’d come by and see if you remembered any other details.”
Maverick is quiet another long minute, the buzz of the machine filling the silence that feels too heavy now, too big for the quiet sound to conquer.
“You think she’s still alive?” he asks at last, deftly maneuvering his wrist around the cord and leaning over Heath’s ribs.
“I think we’re going to find out,” Angel says. “Whatever happened to her.”
This time, I’m prepared for the silence, but it still feels endless as it stretches between us. Saint crosses his arms and frowns, but he doesn’t rush Maverick. No one does.
“You sure you want her here for this?” Maverick asks at last, sparing me the briefest glance before going back to Heath’s skin.
“I wouldn’t have brought her if we couldn’t trust her,” Angel says, and I hear the same confidence in his voice that I feel for him.
Something has settled between us today, a commitment to something deeper than our relationship.
It’s the relationship of all of us, the group, our friendship. We’re finally on the same side.
“You keep your mouth shut, hyna? ” Maverick asks me.
“Yes,” I say. “I kept my identity secret for years.”
He just nods and dabs some beads of excess ink off Heath’s skin before changing out his guns. “I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you,” Maverick says. “I don’t know any of you, so I’d rather not talk to you, but he says you’re okay, and I trust him. With my life, I trust him.”
He doesn’t even have to look at Angel for me to know who he means.
Angel answers in Spanish, and though I don’t speak the language, I gather that it means something along the lines of, “Me too, brother.”
“If this leaves this room, I’m a dead man,” Maverick says, his voice grave but no different from before. “And you will answer for that.”
No one speaks. The lower register of the shading gun scrapes through the room.
“You good?” Maverick asks under his breath, so low I barely catch it, but it’s not meant for my ears anyway. It’s for Heath, who nods, though again I’m not sure if he’s responding to a question about the pain of his tattoo or whatever Maverick is about to tell us.
My heart hammers as I wait, as Maverick’s words have a chance to sink in.
He knows something.
I don’t think I really believed it until this moment.
Not that he killed her, or even that he had something to do with her disappearance.
But at long last, the moment is here. We’re going to find out what happened to her.
The answer I’ve been waiting for all these years was here, under my nose, the whole time, watching me fight at the Slaughterpen, drawing beautiful designs onto bodies in his tattoo parlor while Eternity suffers whatever fate she met after she climbed into that car.
“What do you know?” I ask, unable to hold myself back any longer.
Angel frowns, but Maverick doesn’t react. “You’re not supposed to know this,” he says. “No one is. I never said anything because it was too dangerous. But if you’re going to go looking, you might end up dead anyway, so you might as well go in knowing what I know.”
Saint’s arms flex, and I know he’s holding himself back too, but Angel just waits, patient and watchful, for his cousin to work himself up to it.
“It wasn’t the Disciples who picked her up,” Maverick says, never pausing as he moves the machine over Heath’s side, coloring in the outline he did. “She wouldn’t have gotten in the car with them.”
“Who was it?” I ask.
Angel rests a warning hand on my arm. “It was us,” he says quietly.
I wheel on him, but Saint sees the look on my face and shakes his head. “Not us, ” he says. “He means the Crossbones.”
“Three of Frederick’s guys,” Maverick says.
“That’s the head of the Skull and Crossbones,” Angel tells me.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I cry, forgetting everything else.
Maverick lifts his head from his work at last, fixing me with those dead eyes that Angel and Annabel Lee both do—the North face. He stares at me for what feels like minutes, then hours. Only when I drop my gaze and squirm visibly does he go back to Heath, moving the gun over his skin.
I open my mouth to ask more questions, but Angel shakes his head, and I bite my tongue, seething.
I have a thousand questions, and he’s not letting me ask them.
But I also know that if he’s keeping me from it, it’s to protect me.
Maverick’s done talking, so all I would do now is anger him.
After a few minutes, he sits back and sets his machine down on a tray with the other one.
“We’re done for today,” he says.
Heath stands from the table and reaches for his wallet.
Maverick’s jaw clenches, and his nostrils flare. After a brief, dead-eye stare at Heath, he bites out, “Don’t insult me.”
Heath shrugs and slips his wallet back into his pocket.
“Are you okay?” I ask him as we walk out.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks. “I just found out that the car that picked up my sister was from our own organization.”
“She obviously got in thinking she was going to be initiated,” Saint says. “She trusted them.”
Heath and Angel glance at each other. “That’s not usually how the initiations work,” Angel says. “They don’t send a car for you. They jump you at random. And Frederick doesn’t bother with the day-to-day stuff like that.”
“But Frederick’s guys picked her up,” Heath says flatly. “And they never brought her back.”
“What would he want with her?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Angel says. “Crew girls are members just like us. They’re sisters. To him, most of us are just bodies.”
“Eternity was my real sister,” Heath growls. “And they disappeared her.”
“We’ll find her,” I promise him, my heart aching for him as much as Eternity now.
“When I tried to ask about it, Frederick refused to see me.”
“He saw Angel’s dad, though,” I point out.
“And he told him that we weren’t going to look for her,” Angel says.
“Well, he was wrong,” I say, taking Heath’s hand and squeezing. “We’re looking now.”
“You heard what Mav said,” Angel reminds us. “We can’t go around announcing we know this shit. He’ll kill us. Maverick’s not even supposed to know, and you can bet there’s a reason he never told us.”
“How do we know he doesn’t have her?” I ask. “She could have been right here all along.”
“Dead or alive,” Heath mutters under his breath. Then, “Something must have gone wrong with her initiation.”
“I don’t think they’d hide that,” Angel says. “Guys die on occasion during initiation too. That’s always a risk. You survive it, you’re in. That’s the whole point.”
“Maybe we need to pay this Frederick guy a visit,” I say. “Convince him to talk to us, and find out what really happened.”
Angel snorts. “That’s not how our world works, Mercy.”
“It could,” I say. “I’m very convincing. If nothing else, you could use me as bait. If he knows who has E, or took her himself, he might be interested in another pretty girl.”
“Absolutely the fuck not,” Angel growls, so fierce I’m startled. He almost never shows me that side, and when I’ve seen it, the anger wasn’t usually directed at me.
“But if he—”
“Eternity disappeared, in case you forgot,” he snaps. “She’s been missing for four fucking years. You think I’d take even the slightest chance of that happening to you too?”
“It wouldn’t happen to me,” I mutter. I don’t offer an explanation, but Angel shouldn’t need one. He’s seen me fight. They all know who I am now. Maybe they even guess that’s why I learned, that it was one little thing I could control, to protect myself when it was too late to protect her.
“You can’t fight a gun,” Angel says flatly. “We’ll figure something out, but it won’t be that.”
“And don’t even think about trying to defy us and going to see him on your own,” Saint growls. “We’ll know.”
“Yeah,” Angel says. “We’re not letting you out of our sight until we’ve figure out what to do. With your history, we can’t be too careful.”
“Y’all are the worst,” I groan as we climb back into Heath’s truck. But really, their concern is touching, and I can’t help but feel protected and cared for in a way I haven’t for a very long time.