Vigilante 01 - Who Knows the Storm (22 page)

When they reached the entrance of Serendipity Towers, it was late enough to avoid the doorman. Nox used one of his spare IDs at the guest entry, and when the green light flashed, Cade pushed open the door.

Nox pulled his cap low over his eyes and Cade kept his collar up. They looked away from the mounted cameras in the lobby, hurrying to the stairs.

A
T
THE
apartment, Cade quickly showered while Nox made some calls on the disposable cell. Except he couldn’t seem to reach anyone—not his forewoman, Addie, or his forger, Brownigan. He didn’t dare leave messages. Instead he paced and stalked the apartment until finally he just threw the cell into the garbage in frustration.

Hide Sam. Give up his patrols, his attempts to stem the tide of drugs in his neighborhood? He didn’t know what to do, didn’t have a plan, and that was terrifying. For so long he’d hidden away in that house, clung to shadows and lies to keep them safe. And now everything was spinning out of control.

A hand touched his shoulder. Cade, clad only in a towel, stood beside him, his eyes warm and pleading.

“Can you just tell me? I need to know what’s going on here.”

Interlude

N
O
X
BARELY
keeps himself from throwing up as he walks past Jenny into his mother’s bedroom. There are dead men on the floor, two of them, bullet holes in their foreheads.

One of them is Roy Grimes, his neighbor’s nephew.

“Oh my God, Roy was….”

“Watching you and showed up to kill you,” Jenny supplies. She pushes him out of the room, past the bodies, and into the hallway. “Go pack your bag. Get what you need for the baby. We’re getting out of here.”

He does what he’s told, laying the finally calmed Sam in the center of his bed. He rushes around, packing and freaking out and trying to find a way out of this. How can he trust anyone, let alone Jenny and her supposed change of heart?

He hears thumps and crashes.

Jenny is pulling the bodies out of the house.

T
HE
Y
LEAVE
the house in the dead of night. Jenny carries Nox’s bag. The papers are tucked in her jacket, the gun in her waistband. Nox follows with Sam, a step behind.

They’re getting on the ferry; they’re being evacuated. They’re going to New Jersey, to a shelter, Jenny tells him. From there they’ll move to Philadelphia, where she has some friends.

With every step, his stomach clenches.

“Where are the people you worked for? Are they here? Are they….”

Jenny shakes her head. “The people pulling the strings are in Colombia, Nox. They’re as far away from this shithole as they can be. I’m the last employee here on the island.”

“How can you know that? Those men….”

Jenny turns to face him, so utterly calm he imagines she’s an android with no discernible feelings. “Because I called my employers and told them what they wanted to hear. You’re dead, Nox Boyet, dropped in the East River and everything. Got your identification to prove it and some lovely shots of you on the floor of your mother’s bedroom with your face blown off.

He stumbles over his own feet.

Nox digests this information.

“So they think I’m dead. And they don’t know about Sam.”

Jenny’s lips go into a tight line; she shakes her head, looking heavenward in apparent exasperation. “No, they don’t. Just you and me know about that.”

He slows his walk until he’s two paces behind. Three.

They approach the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin, where a huge crowd of people waits. It’s mostly orderly; people clutch their loved ones and bags. Some are crying.

Nox follows Jenny.

She goes up to a National Guardsman wrapped in a yellow slicker and holding a clipboard. She talks to him, and Nox thinks.

Calculates.

The people who tried to kill him are out there, far away, not here. They think he’s dead. They don’t know about Sam. Jenny is one of them. He can’t be sure she won’t change her mind.

He can’t be sure she isn’t taking him to these people.

If he leaves the island, he’s entirely at her mercy.

He’s not leaving with her—he knows that.

Sam twitches against his chest, inside Nox’s jacket. His little brother is the only person he has left in the world, and he’s going to do everything he can to save him.

They start loading people onto the ferry as the rain begins to fall in earnest.

C
ADE
HELD
his hands as he talked—the whole story, every piece of it. Something he’d never done before, he realized as his voice got hoarse from the spew of memories.

“Holy shit,” Cade whispered, eyes wide and skin pale. “Holy….” He tightened his grip on Nox’s fingers. “You’re pretty fucking badass, can I just say that?”

Nox choked out a laugh because he didn’t want to cry. He let Cade pull him into a tight embrace.

“So we’ve established you’re, like, a freaking superhero or something, but listen—I’m going to help you any way I can,” Cade said softly, laying his head on Nox’s shoulder. “We’re gonna go back and get Sam, and we’ll just—we’ll figure it out, okay? I’m going to help you.”

Nox let himself breathe and sink into Cade’s arms. Maybe he didn’t have to do this alone anymore.

They sat there quietly for a moment, enjoying a false peace. Out there, things were fucking insane, but here?

Here was just a big bed and moonlight through the window and a few minutes of pretending everything was okay. Nox knew it couldn’t last. He could feel it like a premonition, the clock running out on this quiet moment. He felt the warmth of Cade’s body aligned with him, he felt their breathing sync, and he knew it was coming.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket a second later. Nox had a moment of refusing to acknowledge it.
Just five more minutes
, he thought.
Five more minutes.

“You should get that,” Cade murmured against his shoulder.

Nox slipped his hand in his pocket. It vibrated again. A text.

Your brother isn’t safe.

I can help.

But you must come here, alone.

A second text from the unknown number popped up a moment later. It was the address of a place that still haunted his nightmares: Morningside Sanitarium.

Nox went cold, bones and blood and vital organs freezing in one instant.

He didn’t say anything. He felt Cade tense, one hand gripping Nox’s hip as if to anchor him to the bed. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I have to go.” Nox finally found his voice. He didn’t look at Cade, just put the phone back in his pocket and stood up.

“Where? We have to get back to Sam.”

Oh God. “Stay with him until I get back.” He reached for the gun, ever present, tucked into the back of his pants, then extended his hand to Cade. “You know how to use this?”

Cade’s eyes widened. He nodded, taking it from Nox without question. “Where are you going?”

Nox shook his head, finally facing his lover. “Stay with Sam and wait for me. Please.”

Cade opened his mouth to argue.

“Please. I know I’m asking a lot….”

“I told you I would help.” Cade stood, a strange picture in his towel and holding Nox’s gun—the ballsy kid who had no reason to be doing this. Nox felt something twist in his heart.

Now? This was the moment when he felt something for someone? How fucking ironic.

“Thank you,” Nox said softly. He took a step, leaned in, and then laid a gentle kiss on Cade’s mouth. “Thank you.”

Chapter Forty-one

H
E
MOVED
up his familiar trails to the sanitarium, hooded and cloaked as the Vigilante, following in the footsteps of a teenager in frantic search of his mother.

That boy didn’t know what his life would become.

He braved all that rain and destruction, battled his fear, and walked into a truth he hadn’t imagined in his wildest dreams.

And now Nox stood at the steps of the Morningside Sanitarium, prepared to face down the unknown once again.

This time, though? He was armed.

L
IKE
THE
factory, the sanitarium had fallen victim to age and neglect. Its tableau of abandoned wheelchairs and gurneys spoke of the tumultuous night when people were running for their lives and the addlebrained weren’t a priority.

Every man for himself.

Nox walked up the stairs to the double doors, neatly repaired but not painted, as if to give the illusion that nothing had changed in seventeen years. But a closer look revealed reinforced windows on the top floors, security cameras hidden behind ivy on the curved façade.

The fresh tire tracks to the underground garage.

When the door opened without an alarm or more than a push, Nox knew they were expecting him.

Nox followed his instincts, winding around the debris to the second floor—his mother’s floor—and made his way to the door of her suite.

Pale pink walls filthy with dirt and mold, the bed removed by looters, perhaps. Nothing remained of that night but the echoes of his mother’s cries.

“Thank you for coming,” a voice murmured behind him. Nox turned slowly. A man in an impeccable gray suit stood in the hall, smiling. No shadows here.

“Mr. White,” the man supplied helpfully.

Nox nodded. “You could have called the police, told them where we are. But you didn’t.”

“Hmm, yes. A well-placed call to the chief of police and they were throwing all their manpower to tracing you at the construction site you were working at in Harlem.” He dusted off his sleeve. “I believe you and your coconspirators are bunked down on the uppermost floor after having disabled the elevators.”

“That was very clever of us,” Nox said, turning fully. He felt the blackjack against the small of his back and met the man’s smile.

“Indeed. You’re quite the master criminal.” Mr. White tipped his head to one side. “Tea?”

Nox followed Mr. White down the hallway. They turned left and entered a side office. And stepped into another world. The walls were clean and painted a dove gray, the furniture—office and living space both—all classic and expensive-looking. In the corner, a young woman in a maid’s uniform was preparing tea.

The bad guy’s lair
, Nox thought, and he almost laughed.

“Have a seat.” Mr. White gestured to a small green settee, taking his own seat in a leather club chair to its left. “Millicent will bring you a cup.”

Nox settled on the edge, planting his feet, casually glancing around, assessing the space. No other doors in sight, no place for any guards to hide.

“Why did you send those letters to my son?”

Mr. White smiled. Smirked, actually, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in his pants’ legs. “I wanted to get to know him a bit better. He must be curious about his origins.”

Nox bit the inside of his mouth. “I’m his father. That’s all he needs to know.”

“No, you’re his brother,” Mr. White said.

A high-pitched whistling noise from inside his head almost knocked Nox to the floor. “I’m his father.”

“Poor Natalie,” the old man murmured. “So much suffering. And her boys—so much hiding and lying. She’d be sad to see what’s become of you.”

Nox stiffened in his seat. The girl came over with a tray set for tea, a wildly misplaced moment of civility.

“My mother didn’t know where she was half the time,” Nox said harshly. “Someone should have been taking better care of her.”

“I tried,” Mr. White said with a sigh. “Oh how I tried. But your father dropped her here without a word, left her here to rot.”

Ill, Nox rubbed his hand over his face. He didn’t want to hear this or know about the neglect his mother suffered at his father’s hand. He didn’t want to talk about people long dead—he just wanted to know why this man had a fascination with his brother.

His son.

“You need to leave Sam alone,” he broke in as Mr. White murmured to himself. “I don’t want him to know how our parents died, okay? You have no right to upset him.”

Mr. White shook his head. “I have every right.”

Sweat trickled down Nox’s back.
Crazy motherfucker
. “Stay away from Sam. All I want to know right now is how you knew about Roy Grimes.”

Clearly perplexed by this, Mr. White took a sip of his tea. “Roy Grimes?”

“In the letter,” Nox snapped, “you said his parents were Jennifer and Roy Grimes. That’s a lie. How did you know those names?”

Mr. White nodded. “Oh yes. She told me to use those names.”

Oh God, he was right. It was Jenny—Rachel. She was behind this.

“She?” Nox choked out.

“Natalie. She sends me messages,” the old man whispered, leaning forward as if to not let anyone hear. “She told me what to write on the notes. She saw it was time for Sam to know.”

Nox got up then. He walked around the couch until he came to the door, fists knotted at his sides. He wanted to scream and trash this room, this entire horrible building, and for one second, he was glad he gave the gun to Cade, because had
he
had it, Mr. White would be dead already.

So Rachel—Jenny—was sending the information to Mr. White, a crazy old man.

Of means?

“Does my mother send you money too?” Nox asked, turning around slowly.

Mr. White squinted. “Yes. How did you know that? Does she send you messages as well?”

Nox ignored him. “That’s how you knew where we lived, those names. The way you pay for your time at the casino.”