by Stone, C. L.
And even then, that didn’t include the underground war. I remembered that from some Internet articles I’d read. The claim of territories. The control of distribution. Creation. Civil services to instill trust in buyers. Factions sought to take out others and become more powerful. It was a battle that never made the news if they could help it. The war normal people never saw.
I’d ignored it, like everyone else who didn’t live among it, and then suddenly I was in the middle of everything I’d willingly blinded myself from.
It wasn’t until I was several blocks away that I slowed. My feet ached from running barefoot on the pavement, uneven bricks and the occasional gravel. The rain pelted against me, and rivulets of water ran from my hair down my forehead, dripping into my eyes. I wrapped my arms around my body, pushing the shirt against my skin, trying to keep in whatever warmth my body could produce.
I had to find a street sign to get my bearings and start heading south. If I could make it to the river...
But I was lost. The dim street lights and the houses that all seemed to look the same confused me. My panicked state wasn’t helping, but I couldn’t slow down. I needed help. It was so late and there wasn’t anyone driving by.
I was about to try heading east again but after another house, I saw a familiar-looking lake. I ran for it and by the time I got to the corner of the park, I could see the lights of a single high rise apartment building. The Sergeant Jasper.
My heart lifted. And at the same time, I walked slowly toward it. Nerves caught up with me. The boys would be angry with me. I’d have to hide forever. Marc might still be mad I shot him in the leg with the nail gun. Maybe they wouldn’t even believe me. After what I’d done, I wasn’t sure I could explain.
But I had nowhere else to go, especially if Wil was in danger already.
I continued to wipe at my face, taking the long way around the lake. The area was barren now, but a few lights reflected on the surface in shimmers and it rippled with the rain. It broke up that better world I had imagined earlier, becoming a nightmare of strange shadows and colors.
I entered the building from the back door. The shirt stuck to my skin, and dripped to the tile floor. It didn’t at all mask my nakedness underneath. The black boxers were jacked up high on my hips and stuck in places I didn’t want to think about. I must have looked like a royal mess. I wondered if security would even let me upstairs.
To my surprise and relief, the security guard wasn’t at the podium. Either temporarily in the bathroom or checking out another problem elsewhere. Either way, I dashed to the elevator, hopping inside, and pressed at the button for the seventh floor.
I stood outside of apartment 737, shaking. In my head, I was trying to come up with excuses. I ran through scenarios. I was trying to come up with lies and my frantic brain wasn’t able to piece together a good enough story. I thought if they wouldn’t let me in, if they sent me away, I’d at least beg for clothes or a ride back to the hotel. I’d ask for my things back. I’d go back to the hotel. I’d find Wil. If I had to, I’d make him go with me to another hotel or something. Whatever I had to do.
I stared down the door, willing it to tell me the mood of anyone inside. It wasn’t answering, so I knocked. My rattling bones shook, leaving me unable to knock too strongly. I wasn’t sure anyone would hear. I wrapped my arms around my body as if to hold myself together against my shivering.
I was about to knock again when the door opened. Brandon materialized. He wore a blue T-shirt and black boxer shorts. Part of the T-shirt got hung up on his side, revealing part of the golden tanned abs near the waistband. His eyes were slits, as if I’d woken him. His hair was mussed, the short, sun-kissed strands pressed against his head.
I thought Brandon would be the last one who would want to see me. I supposed that’s why I went to Marc’s apartment first, to avoid him. If I had any warmth in me, I was sure my cheeks would have heated up, embarrassed about running away and forced to return.
But Brandon took one look at me, and his eyes adjusted from sleepy to recognition. “Kayli?” he whispered, his voice choked with surprise.
My heart thundered. This was it. He’d slam the door. He’d curse me out for daring to come back.
I was about to say never mind and leave but he jumped out.
His arms threaded around me, taking me in. Without questions of where have you been, or why did you leave. Instead, his arms strengthened as he pulled me in, drawing me to his body. He locked me into him, as if not daring to let go or I’d disappear again. His head bowed until his cheek pressed against my wet hair.
If I had never known what it was like to be truly missed, this would have told me.
That did it. I broke. I buried my face into his shoulder and clung to him like I was going to die without him, not caring that I was soaking wet. My fingers gripped at the material of his T-shirt, bunching it into my fists. I tried to say something, but my voice came out in a choking sob and I cut it off quickly.
He never released me. He picked me up by the waist until he could cart me inside, and then he kicked the door shut. “Are you okay?” he asked. He buried his face into my hair. “Did you walk here? Are you hurt?”
I wanted to answer, but a shiver took over.
“Who is it?” Raven mumbled. I caught sight of him over Brandon’s shoulder. He wore only a pair of gray sweatpants. The tattoos covering his chest and stomach. It attracted my attention for a moment, distracting me from all the lies and questions in my brain. Even as I stared, I couldn’t really make out the pictures. My eyes were too blurry and burned with tears and exhaustion. But it didn’t matter; it was Raven. Raven. My heart dared to be happy that he was there. It was sinking into my brain that I was back and the guys may not kick me back out into the street after all.
“It’s Kayli,” Brandon said. He carried me over to the sofa, where there was a blanket and a pillow splayed out like he’d been sleeping there. He picked the blanket up, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Kayli,” he said to me, tucking the blanket tighter around my body as he kept me near. “Where were you?”
“I...” I said.
Raven started talking, and at first I tried to jerk my head around because I thought he was talking to me.
“We found her,” Raven said. When I turned, I realized he was talking into a cell phone. “No, she’s here. She’s like half naked and soaked. She walked here. No, I don’t think she needs a doctor.” He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head.
“She doesn’t need a doctor,” Raven said. “Just get over here.” He hung up.
Brandon captured my chin, drawing my attention back to the depths of those cerulean eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, my teeth starting to chatter. “I’m just cold.”
“No shit,” Raven said. “You were walking in the rain naked.”
“Get her some clothes,” Brandon said.
Raven left for his room and returned a moment later with a T-shirt. He went into Marc’s room and returned from there with a pair of pajama bottoms. “Marc’s on his way.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Out looking for you,” Brandon said. “We took shifts.”
My head jerked back in surprise. “Looking for me?”
“Axel figured you’d come back,” Brandon said. “But when a night passed and you never showed up, Marc had us looking for you. He had Axel watching Wil and the hotel in case you showed up there. Raven and I had been at the malls all day. Then he started checking out ... all over, I guess.”
“Let her put some clothes on,” Raven said. He marched forward and collected my elbow in a firm grasp. “Take that blanket from her.”
Brandon removed the blanket from me. He started folding it up carefully since it was wet.
Raven tucked an arm around my waist and nearly carried me to the bathroom door. He planted the new clothes on the counter and pushed me inside the bathroom. “Hurry,” he
barked at me.
I didn’t know what I was in a hurry for, but I guessed that he meant the sooner I changed, the sooner I could come back out and warm up again. I thought about a hot shower, but didn’t want to wait for warm water. I just wanted to get under a blanket and fall into bed.
My body trembled as I removed all my clothes this time. It was slow agony to even move now. My muscles were solid with chill. Even with the wet clothes removed, I was shaking too hard. I had to press a hand against the counter to steady myself. I gasped, trying to draw up the strength to shift my bones. They hurt at every small movement I made.
“Where were you?” Raven asked through the door.
There was a thump on the other side. “Leave her alone,” Brandon said. “Wait until she gets dressed.”
“She can talk and put clothes on at the same time. I’ve seen girls do it.”
My mind flew into all of the things to tell them without knowing where to start. After a moment, trying to put my legs into the pants without falling over from a shiver, I remembered something they’d said. I flung myself at the door, pressing to it to steady myself, but also because I needed him to hear me. “Raven!” I called to him. “Call ... someone. Whoever is closest. Axel was at the hotel?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Call Axel. Have him stay there. Get Marc to go there, too.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s Blake.”
“Who?”
“Coaltar.” I backed up from the door a step. “Call him. Make sure he stays with Wil. Make sure Coaltar doesn’t show up.”
The handle shook on the bathroom door. I leapt backward, shoving the pants up and then turned around to face the shower as I tried to find the opening of the shirt to put it on.
The door opened behind me before I managed to even thread the arms through the T-shirt. I leapt again, drawing the shirt toward my body to cover my bare breasts.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Raven asked. His eyes were shooting lightning at me. His shoulders seemed to swell and his massive body appeared to take up the entire opening of the door. “What’s wrong with Wil? Is someone after him?”
“Raven!” Brandon barked, though his voice wavered. He looked in from behind Raven’s shoulder. When he saw I wasn’t fully dressed, he turned on Raven. “You can’t barge in on her.”
“I couldn’t hear what she was saying,” Raven said. He turned to me, unflinching, as if the sight of a half-naked girl was as ordinary as the sight of the bar of soap on the sink. He was way too focused to think anything of it.
“Coaltar,” I said, uncaring about this right now. Raven was listening to me, and seemed to understand this was more important. I had the shirt shoved up against my chest so it didn’t really matter. “He may be looking for me. You need to call Axel and tell him to stay there. I don’t think he knows I live there, but just in case.”
Raven fished his phone out and started pushing buttons. He shoved the phone to his shoulder, holding it with his ear pressed against it, his neck scrunched up. He shuffled the bathroom door half closed so he could access the closet door that was behind it.
At the same time, Brandon angled himself inside the bathroom. He yanked my shirt from my arms, and readjusted it. “Don’t just stand there. Put your shirt on,” he said, using an older brother tone I imagined he used on Corey a hundred times a day. He swooped the shirt down over my body, covering me. I shoved my arms through the sleeves. Brandon wrapped his arms around my body rubbing along my back to warm me up.
“Axel,” Raven said into the phone. He selected a towel from inside the bathroom closet and passed it to Brandon. Brandon collected it without a word, and wrapped my hair in it, massaging my scalp to dry. I slipped my arms through the sleeves of Raven’s shirt again to cover them up and shove them against my body to warm up. Raven took the phone from his hunched shoulder and talked into it. “No, go back. Stay with Wil. Coaltar might be looking for her after all. She wants someone to keep an eye out for him.”
“Why is he after you?” Brandon asked.
I shivered, but his warming hands drying my hair was helping. “I know,” I said. “I know what he’s hiding. He ... the drugs. The kid...”
“Kayli!” Marc’s voice called from the living room.
“She’s in here!” Raven called back.
Marc materialized in the door. Corey was behind him. Corey took one look at me and then settled back with a relieved smile, as if he didn’t believe I’d come back until just now.
Marc, however, clenched his fists, his eyes narrowing on me. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where the hell have you been?”
I grunted. Now that I’d warmed a little, I found a little bit of strength. “Coaltar’s been buying a new synthetic drug called JH-14 from all of the local dealers.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Fitzgerald’s kid, Jason. He brought it into the city. Only the drugs are defective. They kill people. Coaltar made a deal with Fitzgerald to get the drugs back so the local Mexican hired guns wouldn’t go after his son and their family for killing off their market, and drawing unwanted attention to their operation. From what I understand, it’s another drug gang from somewhere else, who wanted in on the territory, so they were sending defective drugs to shake up the market. Only they swindled this kid to do it.”
Marc’s jaw fell open, the two-toned eyes glided back and forth as if calculating. “Coaltar’s been paid to cover up for someone else.”
“Yeah. Only he’s not planning to just get rid of the drugs. He’s looking for the source. He may have found it. He wants to dump the drugs into the local well in the village — wherever it is. He wants to poison the locals there to let them know they know. There’s a cartel that contacted him that wants him to do it.”
“How do you know all this?”
I swallowed, tugging my head away from Brandon’s soothing hands. My eyes lingered on the wall, avoiding everyone’s eyes. I felt they weren’t going to like this. “I’ve been hanging out with Coaltar for the past couple of days, since I left.”
The silence was so heavy after that, and I felt the weight of it as if it could sink me into the floor, dragging me under. I clenched my jaw, waiting. I had run to the only person they had told me to stay away from. It was probably why they never found me if they were searching. They presumed I would stay away.
“That’s impossible,” Corey said. “How?”
“What?” I asked.
“We’ve been watching him while you were gone. We’ve been monitoring phone calls and...” He checked with Marc and the others, waiting for permission to reveal whatever he wanted to say.
“You weren’t on the video feeds,” Brandon said.
“What video feeds?” I asked. Did they not believe me? “You have his house under video surveillance?”
Marc held his hands up and toward me. “How can you say you’ve been there? We checked there. I thought you might show up there, but he’s been at home for two days. He even called Mr. Fitzgerald saying he was going to lay low.”
“He left home two nights ago to go downtown, and talk to those drug dealers,” I said. “And we’ve been walking in and out of his place all day yesterday. If you were watching, you’d have seen me.”
Raven’s fists clenched hard. In a flash, he swiped at the counter, knocking soap and other bathroom items to the floor. He punched at the counter top and then pointed at Marc. “I told you.”
“We were watching!” Marc barked at him. His eyes widened and they squared their shoulders off at each other. “He must have cut the feeds. I didn’t want to waste time there if she wasn’t—”
“He got tipped off because we broke into his office,” Raven said. “The motherfucker’s had her? What kind of shit...”
“We don’t need this right now,” Marc said.
Raven took a swing at Marc. Marc ducked. “Don’t tell me what I need! I told you we should have looked there first. I knew she w
as there.” Raven bellowed.
“Guys!” Brandon said, stepping between them. Corey swept around me, cutting in front of Raven, and putting a hand on his chest, pushing Raven to step back. Raven kept his eyes on Marc, his mouth tight and his jaw firm. His gaze slowly slid down to Corey.
“This isn’t the time,” Corey said. “Coaltar must have known for a while. He’s been biding his time, letting us watch him when he wants. He probably just looped old video.”
Raven grunted.
I had backed up against the wall, my hand pushed up against my heart. “He’s got a guy,” I said. Everyone turned to me. “Doyle. Some guy out in Hanahan. He’s got a farmhouse and a front lawn filled with satellite dishes and a big computer mess inside. A hacker of some kind. He’s able to listen in on phone calls and...”
Axel’s voice coming from the phone spooked me, until I realized that Raven had put the phone on speaker. “Marc,” he barked from the phone, “I need you to call Kevin. Have him replace me here. Get everyone on new lines.”
“We need to get her out of here.” Marc said.
“His first move is going to be to try to cover up what he’s doing. Does he have the last of this synthetic?”
Everyone looked at me expectantly, waiting.
“He’s supposed to get the last of it tonight,” I said. I was wondering if Doyle was listening to this now. If he was, could I stop him? How could I tell the guys without him knowing? He could have the walls bugged as they’d done to Coaltar. “He’s getting it delivered to his yacht at City Marina. I don’t know what time. He didn’t seem to need to be there for it to get delivered and when I left him, he was still at his house.”
