Chapter Twenty-Three
Rune
It was just supposed to be a sexy, fun, easy night after a long and, ultimately difficult, day. Lounging in bed talking, looking at pictures of Sofia and Hamster in various locations through different states.
And the process of tracking down the guys trying to kill us was meant to take days or weeks of work on the parts of Junior and the club. With a little help from us, maybe, if they made some progress.
Then, once we found the bastards, I figured it would be a quick and relatively easy process to track them down and take them out… without Carmen having to be involved in any sort of way.
One picture changed that.
Because right there, with his arm thrown around the shoulders of a smiling Carmen, both of them squinting at the sun, with a familiar little cafe in Puerto Rico…
was Jon. A face I’d never forget. Even if this version of him was smiling and the one I knew had nothing but cold indifference in his eyes as he lifted a gun to a beautiful young woman’s head…
then snuffed out her life. Like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.
My heart fell to the pit of my stomach just looking at the bastard’s face.
“What?” Carmen asked, brows pinching. “That’s Jack,” she said, looking over at me like I’d lost my mind. Then she said words that had my stomach twisting. “My cousin.”
Fuck.
Some part of me, to save her the heartache, wanted to look closer at the image, decide I was mistaken, and declare I was wrong.
But I wasn’t wrong.
I wasn’t wrong.
This was the man who’d mercilessly murdered a woman in front of my eyes.
You didn’t forget the face of the man who changed the course of your life.
“Baby, this is Jon. And he killed Vicky.”
I expected her to roll her eyes, to wave her hand, to tell me I was crazy.
But her lips fell open. Her eyes sank.
And I knew.
I knew she was somehow putting the pieces together as well.
“His name is Jon. We call him Jack because his father has the same name.”
I swallowed the battery acid my saliva had turned into, feeling it burn all the way down.
“Carm, is this who told you I killed Vicky?”
Her eyes were saucers.
I had my answer before she even opened her mouth.
“Yes.”
The club was right. There were questions I should have asked earlier. Things I could have known days ago.
“I… I had no reason not to trust him. I mean, he’s family.
I didn’t actually know him before I went to Puerto Rico, but still…
he was someone I thought I could trust.” She paused, gaze suddenly far away.
“He was my tour guide. He showed me all around the island. Told me where to go, where to avoid. Took me out to dinner…”
“He knew you were there looking for answers about Vicky?”
“Yes. Almost right away. I made it clear that was why I was visiting—to figure out what happened to my best friend.” She looked over at me, her face a little green. “God, he did all that… all the while knowing he was the one who killed her.”
“He was one cold, ruthless, unfeeling bastard,” I said. “Guys like that, they can usually hide their evil. Or else the townspeople would be coming with pitchforks.”
“Did he say he knew Vicky?”
“No. No, actually, he almost gave the same story you did. He said he wasn’t involved, but that he was there that night. That he saw you kill her in cold blood.”
“He mentioned me by name?”
“Yeah. Just your first name. And that you were from the States. Why would he do that?”
“Did you mention your plan?” I asked. “To kill the guy who killed Vicky?”
She sat for a second, brows furrowed. “I think I might have when we were tipsy one night.”
“He probably thought it was a great way to tie up a loose end without having to get his own hands dirty. Have you take me out. Whether you got in trouble for it or not was inconsequential to him. But he effectively would have silenced the only person who could point to him and say he was a killer.”
“But… but I wasn’t even someone who knew what they were doing.”
“Even better. Easier to manipulate. Less likely that this would come back on him in any way, shape, or form.”
She sat with that for a moment. “Okay. But then what is going on now?”
“Did Jon ever come to the States? Could he have some sort of foothold here?”
Her chin fell. Her head shook slowly side to side.
“His brother. The last time I saw him, he said his brother was coming here to go to law school.”
“His brother,” I repeated, blood going cold. “Tall, skinny, scar through his hair right here?” I ran a finger from the hairline at my temple and back.
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “He was there, too, wasn’t he?”
I raked a hand down my face.
“It was the brother’s gun Jon used to kill Vicky.” The memory flashed of the weapon exchanging hands. “I imagine he’s here to go to law school so he has the skills it takes to keep the rest of the organization out of prison.”
“So you think his brother has been keeping tabs on me?”
“Seems like it.”
“And, what, realized I was no longer trying to kill you, because we were hanging out?”
“Best guess.”
“Why the kidnapping attempt then? Why veer from the trying to kill us thing?”
“I imagine they wanted information. That’s why they said they weren’t supposed to hurt you yet.
They wanted to save the pain to use it as motivation.
They likely were fishing to see if you and I had traced this thing back to Vicky yet or not.
Make no mistake, though, they would have killed you after.
There is no surviving being tortured. You are too much of a liability. ”
“I guess I knew that. That’s why I fought so hard. Do you think Sofia is in danger?”
“I think if she was still here, yeah, she would be. But nothing about her path right now is predictable. It would be hard, if not impossible, for them to track her and hurt her. Besides, now that we have an answer, I’m gonna make sure no one can touch her.”
“You have to kill them, don’t you?”
“Listen,” I said, my tone serious, but a little soft.
Because I knew this part might be hard to swallow.
“I can’t talk to you about club business.
It’s better for the both of us if that stays the case.
You can’t be used against me then. And you don’t have to carry the weight of things that have to happen around here.
But hypothetically, you don’t want the man who murdered your best friend in cold blood to live, do you? You were ready to end me for it.”
“No, I don’t think people that evil should be allowed to be walking among us.”
“I know he’s your cousin.”
“But does that actually mean anything if he lied to my face? If he was going to pin the murder on someone else, all the while comforting me about the woman he killed?”
“This kind of shit can get tricky. I’ve seen it a lot that family members are still able to love someone who did atrocious things. That ain’t me. But it might be you. And I’m not gonna judge that. Shit with family is complicated.”
“Maybe it would be complicated if this was Sofia. But it isn’t. I didn’t even know Jack until last year. I mean, I knew of him, but I didn’t know him. He might as well be a neighbor. Or some kid I went to school with. And if he was as evil as you claim he was that night, I don’t want to know him.”
“Okay,” I agreed, exhaling hard. “Can you do me a favor?” I asked, grabbing my phone to take a picture of her phone.
“Stay here while I go and find someone to talk to about this.”
“Yeah. It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”
“And can you do it naked?” I asked, getting a snorting laugh out of her.
“Seeing as I have no energy to get dressed, I think I can manage that.”
“Good. I’ll be back.”
I leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to her lips before climbing out of bed, pulling on my pants, and grabbing a shirt before heading out into the common area.
Where I nearly knocked over my brother.
“Where’s the fire?” Croft asked. “Got another super-secret adventure you’ve been keeping from me?”
“Still being a pain in the ass about that?”
“We’re supposed to be closer than that, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I got fifty bucks on you finding a woman someday who brings chaos into your life… and you deliberately keeping that shit from me too.”
His smirk went just wide enough to expose his dimple. “I find a woman every day of my life.”
“It’s different.”
“Yeah,” he said, watching me for a second. “I can see that. Fine. I’ll stop bitching. What’s going on?”
“I found out who did it. Who killed Vicky. Who has been targeting us. And how.”
“Who?”
“Carmen’s cousin,” I told him, showing him the picture from Carmen’s phone. “She went to Puerto Rico to find out what happened to her friend. Jon—or as she calls him, Jack—told her it was me. Gave her the whole story I did about that night, but he put the gun in my hand.”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah. And as it turns out, his brother—the one with the scar—is going to law school here. So…”
“So, it’s not a far jump to assume he was tasked with keeping an eye on Carmen to make sure she was taking you out. And then when she teamed up with you, to take her out with you.”
“That’s where my head is at, yeah.”
“Alright. It’s a good lead. I think Fallon is gone, though, so we will have to call him back.”
That was exactly what we did. Along with a few other club members who had been tasked with gathering intel. They still were. Just with a known target this time.
After that, I made a call to Junior to get him focused on the names of these guys.
And, finally, I tossed some money at Spike to order dinner before making my way back to the room.
I expected Carmen to be sitting up, contemplating all this new information, trying to wrap her head around the new morality she would need to claim as her own to allow her boyfriend to murder her cousins. Because she knew, even without my being able to explicitly confirm it, that this was the case.
They had to die if we ever wanted to stop looking over our shoulders.
But she wasn’t awake and waiting for me.