Rogue’s Mark (Rothwell Masked Hunt #3)

Chapter 1

VI

Is.

Has such a short word ever sent someone into such a tizzy?

Is.

As in my father is alive.

Only… that's impossible. My father's been dead for years, and I lived the devastation that came after his death. There was silence. Then erasure. His name got scrubbed from every public record like someone went through with a Sharpie marker and made thick, black lines wherever his name once was.

Scrubbed clean like the man never existed.

While those bastards didn’t give a shit, I was paralyzed by the loss. I struggled to eat and sleep and to be honest, even breathe. When I finally came out of my fog, I sort of got back to the business of life, but this go-round was like living with one arm missing.

It’s how I ended up in the Rot.

So when this man Tommy, or Fischer, or whatever his name is, says, your father is a smart man, present tense, I understandably get all kinds of fucked up.

Maybe it was a slip. A figure of speech. People do that, use the wrong tense when they're tired or rattled. They say is when they mean was. Anyone could make a little mistake.

But the man sitting across from me does not do that sort of thing.

He’s careful and precise. He spent years in city government including several working under my dad, the mayor of Rothwell, and another several hiding inside the Rot undercover, with a fake identity.

He is the least careless person walking around this god-forsaken abandoned shopping mall, this place I now call home.

No, this man does not mess up. He doesn't do anything by accident.

So what the hell does it mean?

I look at him and he’s basically gone, checked out, way past sharing the information I so badly want.

He’s sealed up, locked down, and closed for business, with both hands flat on the table and his eyes fixed on a point just past my shoulder.

His chatty demeanor of a few minutes ago has vanished.

What's back is a mask. Not the Tommy mask, not the friendly supply-room guy who always has a minute for everyone. That guy’s gone.

What’s replaced it is the Fischer mask, cold and hard, the face of a man not about to do a goddamn thing to help me or anybody else.

He's lucky I don’t have a weapon in my hand. In fact, I’m looking around the room for one when I catch Sting’s gaze. His eyes narrow at me like he’s reading my mind.

Can’t get away with a goddamn private thought, can I?

I straighten up in my chair as if I’m completely under control. Which, I am not. "What did you mean," I say, clearing my throat, "when you said is?"

Silence.

Nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgement. My stomach roils and I wonder if I might vomit.

Your father is a smart man.

The words replay, finding fresh angles, painfully pressing on new bruises every time.

I shove the words down, they bubble to the top, and I shove them down again.

I can't stop. It's like trying not to run your tongue over a broken tooth.

The more you tell yourself not to, the more you do, and every time you do it sucks more.

He's dead. I know my father’s dead. I know this like I know my own name, like I know the Rot's corridors in the dark, like I know the weight of Armen's hand on my shoulder versus Sting's versus Rogue's.

Some things you just know. Some things get pressed into you so deep, they stop being a wound and turn into scar.

Except.

Fischer is too smart to slip.

That’s when Armen stands.

No announcement, no scrape of the chair, no warning. He's on his feet and everyone in the room follows his movement to see what the hell he’s up to. He looks at Fischer the way he looks at any problem that crosses his path. Whatever he concludes, he keeps to himself.

"We're done for tonight," Armen says.

Um, excuse me?

Rogue is already at the door. I never saw him move, he's just there, hand on the frame, shoulders loose, figuring shit out while keeping any expression out of the equation. Sting follows, his jacket on, in an unhurried and controlled motion that means he’s been ready to go while waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

He looks at Fischer once. Not in anger. Sting doesn't do anger like regular people.

He does something colder and more deliberate that hits harder than anger ever could.

"Up," he says to Fischer.

The man rises. No argument, no protest, no attempt to resurrect the friendly-Tommy routine that everybody in this room now knows was a pile of fake-ass bullshit.

He stands, straightens his shirt collar with both hands, and waits.

He figures a decision has been made about him and he’s got the smarts not to bother fighting it.

They walk him out.

No hands on him, no restraints, nothing dramatic like I might have chosen had I been in charge.

I mean, Christ, can’t they at least rough him up a little?

That would be so satisfying. Instead, there’s just Armen in front and Sting behind and Rogue holding the door, unhurried, unremarkable.

This place has always been good at making things look like nothing big is happening.

It keeps people on their toes. I know I’m always trying to figure out what the hell is going on, where I stand, and what it all means.

The door closes, leaving Mara and me. Still on the table are the city property transfer documents with the matched handwriting that blew Fischer's cover and started this whole avalanche.

Also left behind, dangling in the air, is the question I can't stop asking myself, the answer to it having left the room with Fischer.

Is my father still alive?

I stand up and, thank God, my legs don’t collapse from under me.

I need air. I need a few minutes where nobody is watching my face while I figure out how to digest this.

I pick up the documents, folding them once along a clean crease and sliding them into my jacket pocket. My hands are steady but I don't feel steady.

"Vi," Mara says from the couch.

"I can’t talk."

"I just—"

"Mara," I snap.

She knows that tone. She's known that tone since we were kids, like old muscle memory. Some things survive everything.

"I need ten minutes,” I tell her.

She nods. Her eyes are red again and she's doing her own version of holding it together, her arms crossed tight over her chest, jaw set. She heard the word too. She's chewing on the same word I am and landing on the same crazy answer.

I pull the door open.

The corridor’s dim and familiar, smelling like it always does of concrete and stale air.

I’ve gotten used to the particular scent of a building that was never designed for living in, that has been lived in hard for years anyway.

I’m getting to know the cracks in the walls and which lights flicker and which ones don’t.

Weeks ago, I was terrified of this place.

Now, it's home, which is the weirdest fucking thing of all.

I start walking. Not too fast but not too slow. Just walking because walking means I’m not lying down, comatose, trying to figure out what just happened. It’s all I can handle right now, like if I slow down, God forbid, the crap swirling around in my brain might eat me alive.

Is.

My father built a case against the crooks running the city and then made a decision nobody expected.

Is.

I need to find Alice.

She knew my father. She knew what he was doing, what he was up against, what he was capable of.

If there's anyone inside the Rot who has a piece of this answer, it's her. She’s the woman who found me and handed me documents and said your father left these for someone to find, like she'd been waiting for me to be ready to hear it.

Maybe she's been waiting for me to be ready to hear the rest of it too.