23. Chapter Twenty-Three Cam
Chapter Twenty-Three: Cam
I paced the apartment, back and forth, back and forth.
The urge to keep Lakey safe warred with letting her blow off steam.
She'd been fucking nuts since we'd dealt with that prick, Steve, if that's even his real name, liable to snap at any moment.
She wanted to go dancing at the club, but we were both strung up, riding the wave between adrenaline and the inevitable crash.
"Fuck," I said, running a hand through my hair. The idea of her out there, volatile and unfocused, made my skin crawl. Then again… caging her in might just make her more dangerous.
Lakey sauntered in, all dolled up and ready to paint the town red.
"Looking good, sweetheart," I said, forcing a grin. "But I think we should stay in tonight."
She whirled on me. "Excuse me? Since when do you decide my plans?"
I held up my hands. "Woah, easy there. I'm just worried about you after... you know."
"I'm fine," she snapped, but I caught the slight tremor in her voice.
"Lakey," I said softly, closing the distance between us. "Let me take care of you tonight. Please."
She glared at me, but the fight drained out of her. "Fine," she muttered. "But you owe me a night of dancing, Axley."
"Deal," I said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "How about a bath? I'll even break out the fancy lavender shit you like."
Her mouth twitched. "Throw in a back rub and you've got yourself a deal."
I headed for the bathroom. "Your wish is my command, princess."
As I ran the bath and poured in the lavender oil, I allowed myself to relax. I dodged a bullet. Lakey was a ticking time bomb, and I was the only one who could diffuse her. Most times she didn't listen to me, so the fact I was able to have her relent was a goddamn miracle just on its own.
"Bath's ready!" I called out. "Get in there and relax, babe. Doctor's orders."
Lakey appeared in the doorway. "Only if the doctor joins me."
I grinned, almost unable to resist her pull. "Well, I never could say no to you. Buuuuut, I gotta do some work, okay? You just relax, read that weird monster book you like, or listen to music. I dunno, just do you for a while. When you're out, come find me, this is just part one."
As she soaked in the tub, I settled at our cluttered dining table, surrounded by shit I'd printed off Skeeter's laptop.
I got into my tech headspace as I dove into the chaotic web of information.
This was my element. Piecing together the puzzle, unraveling the secrets that would bring Chimera to its knees. Hopefully.
People often thought I was stupid, but I wasn't. In juvie, they tested me, and I tested well above 150.
Not that it mattered. Courses in the clink were all kid-level shit.
Learning how to use a wood saw, learning to weld.
Nah, I spent my time reading. And not those fun, fluffy books either.
Learning human psychology. The good shit.
Even went down the rabbit hole of learning about the justice system and all the loopholes.
Read a few conspiracy novels while I was at it.
Never know, might come in handy one day.
But one thing that always gave me pleasure, aside from Lakes of course, were puzzles.
When we were kids, we had this shitty ass box TV and we spent hours watching grainy murder documentaries, interviews, news stories.
Whatever thrilled us enough. I'd been drawn to the cold cases, trying to figure them out.
This was a lot like that, only it was our fucking lives.
I'll be damned if I let our own history go cold. So, with a cold beer and a keen eye, I'm gonna work this puzzle through, one piece at a time.
"Alright, you bastards," I said, spreading out the documents. "Let's see what you're hiding."
I scanned the pages, connecting dots. Years of living on the edge had honed my instincts, and I could smell the bullshit a mile away. Chimera thought they were clever, but they'd never faced someone like me.
As I sifted through the papers, a pattern began to emerge. "Janine, you sneaky bitch."
I grabbed a red marker, circling names that popped up repeatedly.
Sarah Johnson. Emily Parker. Maria Rodriguez.
All different, yet all eerily basic. The kind of names you pick when you don't want to be remembered.
All from different small towns, with different addresses.
Beside each one was a similar description, only changing the hair color.
Each woman was the exact same height, weight and age.
I sat back and stared at the pattern. Five women. Same body. Same face. Different wigs, different towns, different agencies. It was a rotation. She'd work one identity until it got too hot or too recognizable, then she'd shed it and become someone else in a new jurisdiction. A snake shedding skin.
And each identity had a different function.
That was the genius of it. No single agency would ever flag her because no single agency saw more than one version.
The adoptions worker in one county had no idea she was the foster care supervisor three counties over, and neither of them knew she was the birthing advocate in the next state.
She'd built a pipeline. Intake at one end, placement at another, and at every stage, she was the one deciding which children went where.
Which children went to Chimera.
"Hey, Lakey!" I called out. "Got a hit on Janine."
She appeared a couple minutes later in the doorway, wrapped in a towel, hair dripping. "This better be good, Axley. I was just getting to the good part of my bath."
I gestured to the mess of papers. "Oh, it's good alright.
Looks like our friend Janine's been playing dress-up.
Multiple aliases, all tied to different child agencies.
Look, Sarah was an adoptions worker. Maria was a foster care supervisor.
Looks like Emily is a birthing advocate and doula, whatever the fuck that is.
And Janine is a foster mom. Sadie is blank.
No description yet. She must be in transition to her new alias. "
Lakey leaned over my shoulder. "Holy shit," she said. "How many?"
"At least five that I can see," I replied. "And each one's connected to a different branch of Chimera. It's a fucking spider web of corruption."
Lakey went still behind me. "So, what you're saying is..."
"Yeah," I nodded. "This goes way deeper than we thought. These bastards have been trafficking kids through the system for years. And Janine? She's been their funnel. She finds them, she places them, she moves them. And when the heat gets close, she becomes someone else and starts again."
Which meant every child who'd passed through her hands was potentially a Chimera asset. Including us. Including Lillianna.
"We're gonna burn it all down," Lakey said, her voice flat and certain.
I reached up, lacing my fingers through hers before pulling her down on my lap. "Damn straight we are, babe. And we're gonna enjoy every fucking second of it."
As I stared at the papers, the apartment walls seemed to fade. Suddenly, I was back in juvie, the stench of piss and blood filling my nostrils. The memory hit me without warning.
"Yo, Axley!" Some punk-ass kid was yelling at me from across the yard. "Heard your little girlfriend's gettin' passed around like a party favor in foster care. How's that make you feel, big man?"
I remembered the rage that flooded through me.
Next thing, I was on top of him, my fists connecting with his face over and over until the skin on my knuckles split open and the guards were dragging me off by my ankles.
It took three of them. I'd broken the kid's jaw in two places and fractured his orbital socket. They threw me in isolation for a week.
Spider was disappointed that I’d blown my cool, but he didn’t understand.
He kept me protected, but he didn’t have anybody back home that he talked about.
He didn’t know love like I did. Spider was huge, quiet, moved through the facility like he owned it and nobody questioned why.
He taught me to fight properly. Not the wild, rage-fueled swinging I'd been doing, but real technique.
How to use my height, my reach, how to end someone in two moves instead of twenty.
"Pain is information, not identity," he'd told me once.
"Someone hits the bruise, you smile. You smile and they don't know where the bruise is anymore. "
And then there was Cloak. Spider's shadow.
Always lurking, always watching, always one step ahead of the guards and three steps ahead of the other inmates.
He'd started the fighting ring inside the facility, betting on inmates, running money through channels I never understood.
I swear to God that neither of them were under 18, but somehow, they were in the clink with me.
Feeding me. Having my back in the showers.
Knocking down anyone who tried to step up.
Now I knew why. Spider and Cloak hadn't been there to protect me. They'd been there to watch me. To train me. To shape me into whatever Chimera needed me to become. The fighting ring wasn't recreation. It was a testing ground. And Spider's lessons weren't generosity. They were programming.
"Pain is information, not identity." The same philosophy that let me smile through anything. The same wall I'd built around month fourteen. The same mask I wore every day. Spider had given me that. Chimera had given me that. And I'd been grateful for it.
Fuck.
The only time Spider and Cloak failed me was...
"Fuck," I said, shaking my head. No. I can't go there.
The one place that was locked and buried.
The door stays shut. Lakey didn't even know, but the guy paid the price seven-fold for what he did.
Spider had made sure of that. Or had Chimera made sure of that?
Had the guard been part of the experiment too?
Had they wanted to see what would happen to me when someone broke through the wall they'd built?