Chapter 51
The Secret Bunker
Harper
I wake up alone in my own bed. Shivering, I sit up. I passed out in Luke’s arms after he made love to me. He carried me in here at some point. Even helped me slip on my pajamas.
He loves me. They love me. It spins around me and makes me want to sink into this feeling, hold on to it forever. The outside world is waiting though, and it has teeth. I need to be prepared.
Sighing, I get out of bed and head into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
When I walk downstairs, Mom clears her throat.
I pause on the bottom step.
“You ready to go?” Mom stands from the island and grabs her keys.
Go where? But then I remember the potential listening devices.
“Um, yes.” I grab Caden’s sweatshirt he left behind last night. It smells like cinnamon, and when I put it on, it engulfs me in his scent and his warmth.
She jerks her head to the door. As I follow her out to her car, I spin the ring the guys gave me on my finger. We get in, but she still doesn’t say anything.
When she pulls into a Starbucks, I’m confused, but coffee sounds awesome. I’m just doing what she does at this point. So when she gets out of the car, I do too. We walk into Starbucks and place our order.
I keep waiting for her to say something, but we just wait for our coffee. When it’s up, we walk out the door and past the car. My stomach is in knots waiting for her to be mad at me or yell at me. I don’t know, but something.
She drinks her coffee and sighs. “This town is exhausting.”
I look around. No one else is on the street, but cars go by.
“We could run, Harper.” Mom turns onto a path leading into one of the parks on the edge of town. “We could leave this town so far behind they’ll never find us.”
“They?” I swallow. Does she mean Luke, Eli, Caden, Jack, and Nico? Does she want me to leave them? My heart clenches at the thought of never seeing any of them again.
“The powerful men that run this place.” Mom glances my way. “Not your guys. That’s why I’m not suggesting it.”
She smiles and sighs.
“Pretty sure none of them would ever stop looking for you, which opens you up to their families.” Mom looks up at the trees surrounding us. She drinks her coffee and I take a few gulps of mine, needing all the alertness it can give me.
“I would never stop trying to get back to them,” I say confidently, because they’re my future. I belong with them.
She blows out her breath and takes a turn into the woods surrounding the park.
“Uh, Mom? Where are we going?” I glance around, realizing we’ve been walking for a while and I have no idea where we are. When I look back, there isn’t a trail anymore, but Mom seems to know exactly where she’s going.
“Everything’s been compromised.” She dangles her coffee cup in her hand as she looks around. “Our cars probably have trackers. The house is likely bugged. So we’re doing this the old-fashioned way. Walking.”
“Okay, but to where?” I make sure to watch where I’m stepping so I don’t trip over the fallen branches. This isn’t a trail.
“First, I want your version of the story with the boys. Why didn’t you come to me for help?” She doesn’t turn around to look at me, but hurt lingers in her voice.
“It doesn’t turn out well for anyone who stands up to the horsemen.” The words fall out before I can pull them back.
“The horsemen?” She glances back at me with an arched brow.
“We are the Mustangs.” I shrug. Fuck it.
She didn’t kick them out last night. Maybe it’s time to put as much trust in my mother as she puts in me.
So, I start at the beginning. “In about sixth grade, they were beginning to become legends. Popular, attractive, rich, talented. Every guy wanted to be them and every girl just wanted them.”
I swallow, but Mom doesn’t say anything. I explain how it wasn’t a big deal until high school and then I went into hiding to avoid them. How they decided to conquer virgins. I blushed hardcore while explaining that. When I get her caught up on their history, I blow out my breath.
“I avoided them, but then it was just me. I didn’t have a boyfriend, and it was a point of pride for them to leave no virgin untouched.
” I glance off into the distance to avoid my mom’s look.
“The first day of school they claimed me. I didn’t know what to do.
I knew you’d stand up for me, but if you went to the principal and got him involved, it could have made things worse. ”
When I look up, I realize Mom stopped a few steps behind. Her hand covers her mouth in horror. I frown and hurry to say, “They never hurt me. It’s never about force with them. It was my choice.”
Mom closes the distance between us and wraps me in her arms. “Still you shouldn’t have had to go through that on your own.”
I breathe in her coconut scent that smells like home and warmth and everything good in my life. “I didn’t. I had Kenz to talk to. And I always knew that if I had to, I could tell you and you would fix it for me. You were my fail-safe switch.”
She squeezes me tight before holding me at arm’s length and studying my face. “Sometimes going to the authorities isn’t the only way out of things.”
She brushes my hair behind my ear as I tip my head at her. What’s that supposed to mean?
“Come on, only a little farther.” She takes off in a direction, and I fall in line.
“I wasn’t afraid of sex. I just didn’t have the opportunity.” My cheeks flush with heat. I can’t believe I’m telling my mother this. “And to be honest, it’s nice to be someone’s focus after being invisible for so long.”
“You were never invisible to me.”
“I know.” I kick a stone out of the path. “They’re attractive. I’m attracted to them, and maybe that’s why I didn’t fight as hard as I should have. Then the shit started happening.”
“Tell me.” She makes a hard turn at a boulder.
“You know about the night someone pounded on the doors. And the flat tire.” I swallow and look down at the ground.
“The night Kenz and I said someone was outside the house... She woke up to a guy standing over my bed dressed in black. Luke was there, so he chased the guy out. We think it was a guy at school.”
She stops and turns to me. “And why do we think that?”
I draw in a breath. “Because at the senior night game, Sidney spilled perfume on Luke’s jersey that I was wearing, and it kept me sneezing.
I went to the girls’ locker room to wash it, but the door got stuck or someone blocked it.
I figured someone would eventually let me out, but when the door opened, a guy in black came in.
I ducked into a closet and held it shut with my body weight. ”
“Please tell me he didn’t...” She takes in all of me like she could tell.
“He talked, but before he could get to me, Caden came to my rescue.” I release my breath. “We know who it is. The guy hasn’t outright said it, but we know it’s him. He’ll get his.”
My brain keeps spinning through everything. “You know Luke’s dad wants him to find the evidence, but we have files from William’s computer we still have to go through.”
Mom’s lips pinch together.
“We have it handled. I do love them, Mom. All of them. It’s been five weeks since the beginning of school, and I’m already making plans to go to college with them.”
“First love can sometimes overwhelm us, and we feel things more strongly when we’re teenagers.”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “But this feels like more. Maybe it’s all the craziness we’re dealing with.”
“Maybe.” She blows out a breath and looks around her.
All around us are trees. It feels like we’re lost. “Why are we out here?”
She smirks. “There are only a few places in this town that are truly safe from the watchful eyes.”
When she heads off in a direction, I follow.
“I’m glad they’re protective of you. I’ve seen it myself.” Mom turns slightly. “But you also need to know who they’re connected with and why that’s dangerous.”
“You said you think my dad knew something and it could be one of two things. That’s what the evidence is?”
“Yes.” She pauses and meets my eyes. “Your father grew up here. He wasn’t part of the popular guys at school, but he was scary smart. That made him useful to them.”
“Okay?” I’m not sure where this is going, but we’re in the middle of the woods, far from where we started. I still don’t know where Mom is taking me.
“Their fathers were the popular guys. The ones who ruled the school. But where your guys have each other’s backs, these guys were each other’s competition. They were all privileged assholes. Whatever they wanted they took.”
I swallow at the distant look in my mom’s eyes.
“There were more like them. Girls that hung out with them like Eli’s mom and her friends.
The guys became business men, and they’ve had their shares of ups and downs in the markets as well with their businesses.
But they always had side businesses.” She stops, and her eyes search mine like she’s trying to find out if I’m strong enough to handle whatever she’s about to say.
I don’t know that I am. Being ignorant of everything has kept me safe for the most part. It kept me off the radar of the horsemen. But with their attention, I’m here, and if I want to stay by their side, I can’t hide anymore.
“Side businesses?” I show her I’m not afraid. I don’t know if I’m succeeding.
She smiles. “Come on.”
I follow her as she walks through some thicker woods into a clearing with a small house in the middle of it. It’s little more than a few rooms at best and looks completely abandoned.
But as we draw closer, the exterior is a front. The door is solid wood and behind the broken panes are solid surfaces.
“Sean knew this whole wilderness. He grew up hunting with his father.” She smiles as she opens the door to reveal another behind it with a keypad.
“This was their hunting shed. At least until Sean fortified it. The secrets in this town could rip everyone to shreds. He knew that and wanted a place to collect his evidence.”
My eyes must be wide as I look around us. I have no idea how to get back to the car. This place is in the middle of nowhere.
“He wanted to make sure if we ever got out that we got out cleanly.” Mom opens the locked door and steps inside. “He wanted to make sure you were safe.”
Fuck. I follow her into the small house. It looks like a small cabin. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe something amazing that would give me insight into my father’s brain. Maybe something that would tell me why he left us if he cared enough to build this.
Mom kneels on the floor and draws back the ratty rug, uncovering another locked metal door. She stops and looks up at me.
“The only way Sean would have left us was if he was dead.” Tears gather in her eyes, but they don’t fall.
“I told him to let things go when he found some errors in the accounting records while programming their new system, but he kept digging. Your dad couldn’t sit back and let what was happening go. ”
“What was happening?” My knees feel weak, so I lean against the wall.
“He thought someone was embezzling, but it really was them paying for goods.” Mom straightens and tugs open the door. She shakes her head. “I told him to leave it alone, but he said he had proof.”
“Proof of what?”
She leans down to the shallow hole and pulls out a backpack. Her eyes lock on mine. “You’re a good kid, and I see a lot of Sean in you. What we do with what we find has to be discussed before you storm off to fight for justice.”
I don’t know what to say. “What does that mean?”
“William Foster, Mark Lee, Bruce Ross, Cameron Jacobs, and Robert Hill were the horsemen of our time. But they didn’t want out. They wanted to dominate everything. They had money, but it wasn’t enough to build their empires.”
My mind is spinning. All of their fathers? We only knew Luke’s, Nico’s, and Caden’s were involved. “All of them?”
“Robert Hill was probably the first to defect.” She smiles. “Jack reminds me a lot of him. Money wasn’t the most important thing in his life. Cameron was next. Cameron was always more interested in working hard to achieve his goals. Though he wasn’t above cheating to get there.”
I’ve never met Eli’s dad or Jack’s parents. Or even Caden’s parents.
“William has always been a cruel man. He founded a few illegal businesses and moved the money through his legitimate businesses.”
“How do you know this?” My mind spins with all the possibilities.
“Sean.” Her smile is sad and wistful and proud at the same time. “He figured all that out. But he didn’t figure out the businesses.” Her smile falls. “But I did.”
“Why didn’t we leave this town when dad left—” I swallow the bitter pill at the realization. “Or if you knew he was dead, why did we stay?”
She sighs and her hand strokes the backpack. “My reasons are many, but I’ll tell them to you, if you really want to know.”
I don’t know if I want to know.
“You sure you want me to pull back the veil, Dorothy?” She gives me a world-weary smirk.
I spin my ring. Ignorance didn’t help me before. Maybe knowledge will help us now. “Yes.”