by S. Massery
Part of me hates the fact that Jackson is going to abandon me. I reach over and grab the notebook and my wallet. “A while ago, my dad told me that if I was ever in trouble, James would be able to help.” I hand Jackson the business card. “To verify that it’s me, he tells me a new code to repeat to him the next time we speak.”
“And you wrote them down for anyone to find?” He raises his eyebrows.
I blush. “I scramble them first,” I say. Just another thing that seemed normal in my childhood—writing coded messages to my dolls, to my dad, to the guards who always kept their eyes three inches above my forehead. It’s like a second language by now. Well, third if you count the broken Italian my stepmother tried to teach me.
Jackson looks impressed. “Okay. So you call the family lawyer. What have you been telling him?”
“He defends my family,” I mutter. He’s the consigliere—the trusted advisor to my father. Why wouldn’t I have reached out to him? “He was the first person that I called after—” I shake my head, my voice cutting out. “After.”
“You told him where you went?”
I replay the conversations with James in my mind. I called him after my father was killed, after I escaped. He was the one who told me to get off the grid and go somewhere familiar. There was no electricity at the house in Wyoming, no running water… I wasn’t able to contact James until we got to the first motel. And then again when we got here.
“You can’t be suggesting that,” I whisper, covering my mouth with my hand. He’s the only one who knew where we were both times. Doubt and anger intertwine. There’s no tracker on me, and as far as I know, Jackson is safe. He’s been honest. James has been with our family since I was a teenager. He’s one of us.
I have to bite down on the pad of my finger to keep from shrieking.
The fury curling in my belly demands justice. Demands retribution.
I follow the wormhole: James could be working with the Castillos. He might have had a hand in my father’s death. My uncles’ deaths.
He could be innocent. Maybe his phone was tapped. Maybe he’s being blackmailed. If you’re involved, I’m going to kill you, I promise him. Yet, there’s still doubt. I can’t fully put the blame on James without evidence.
Jackson pulls me into him, his arms banding around me. I blink over his shoulder, confused, until he starts making shushing noises. He thinks I’m upset. But I’m not upset—I’m shaking with anger and confusion.
“I’m okay,” I say, but I don’t move. I slowly sag against him. It’s been awhile since anyone tried to comfort me. It’s been even longer than that since anyone hugged me.
I used to hug everyone. Somewhere around the time of puberty, when I slipped into my teenage years, the men in my life stopped hugging me. It only took a short while after that for my stepmother’s gentleness to vanish, too.
In Jackson’s arms, I realize just how cold my life has been.
I twist in his arms and climb into his lap, wrapping my legs and arms around him. There are no tears in my eyes. No shock. No numbness. Just…
My stomach growls.
We look at each other and he smiles. “Hungry?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Does a bullet wound take away your appetite?”
He laughs. “I think there’s a diner around here. We’re probably safe to go.” He gets up with me still wrapped around him. I latch on tighter, letting out a short laugh. He only goes so far to grab his bag, and he fishes around until he pulls out a black hat. It has the U.S. Forest Service logo on it, with a flame behind it. He puts it on my head and grins. “There, good to go.”
My feet hit the ground, and I look up at him. “I’m pulling a Clark Kent right now, huh?”
He winks. “The red hair helps, too. Superman never went to such measures.”
My guard clicks back into place. It’s heavy netting that settles over me. I take a few steps back and tilt my head to the side. “How did you know?”
He shrugs and starts closing his bag. “Guy was asking for a blonde. Didn’t really make sense until just then. When you showered at the other hotel, there were red streaks left in the tub. Guess you didn’t have access to good water pressure until then?”
I turn away from him. “Something like that,” I mutter. My stuff is still spread out on the bed, but it’s more mortifying now that the sun is rising. Dark things are only acceptable at night, and that bag is full of my sins.
I shove my only possessions back into it and close it roughly, finally gritting my teeth and spinning back to face Jackson. He’s waiting by the door, sympathy on his face. Sympathy and suspicion.
“What are you looking at?” I ask him.
“A puzzle,” he mutters.
He opens the door and exits first, motioning for me to stay back. “Clear,” he says. I stay on his heels as he pushes open the door to the stairwell and trots down. We repeat this pattern—him making sure the halls are empty—until we get outside.
“No truck,” I remind him, and he just looks at me as he heads down the sidewalk. “We’re walking? With our bags? Don’t you think anyone who drives by us will see us and think, ‘Gee, there’s the girl we’re looking for?’”
He chuckles, but he doesn’t acknowledge me.
We end up walking to the diner, which is about a half-mile down the road. It’s surprisingly busy for just a little before seven am. A harried waiter points us to a booth in the corner, and we slide into our seats.
I notice that Jackson situates himself with his back to the wall, and he periodically scans the place. “Do you see something?” I ask him. This silence started off uncomfortable, but it’s been getting better the longer we stay quiet. I shatter it with four words.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
A waitress appears at my shoulder. “Good morning, folks. What can I get you?”
“Coffee,” Jackson and I both say at the same time. His smile is faint, but mine is large. A big part of not being found is to be someone you’re not. I reach across the table and snag his hand.
“This is how you know our cross-country road trip is going well. We started talking in sync back in Denver.” I give Jackson’s hand a squeeze, and he smiles back at me.
“Oh, aren’t you two cute. Coffee it is. Do you know what you’d like to eat?”
We order half the menu. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, hash browns. My mouth waters as the waitress writes it all down. “You folks are hungry. Eating for two?” She wiggles her eyebrows at me, and my mouth drops open.
Jackson snickers.
“Do I look pregnant?” I whisper after she’s gone.
“No,” he says. The bastard keeps chuckling under his breath.
“Oh my god.”
He laughs until I kick him under the table. That shuts him up. He straightens and his eyes sweep around the room again. “The rental car place opens at seven thirty. We’re renting a car and driving to Salt Lake City.”
I jerk back. “Why?”
“Where do you want to go, Delia? You’re on the run—don’t you want to escape?”
My stomach bottoms out at the thought of him leaving me alone in a city I don’t know.
“Salt Lake City has an airport that can take you anywhere in the world. You can get away from this mess. Besides, I have plans to be in Salt Lake City.”
“What plans?”
His grin is wolfish. I suppress a shiver. “I have a fight.”
My eyes widen. “You fight?” That explains some of it. It doesn’t explain the gun knowledge, but it touches on his ruthlessness. But maybe the fighting is a product of the ruthlessness, not the other way around. I try not to shiver again.
“I worked for a private contractor. We did the sort of off-books missions that the government legally wasn’t allowed to green-light—it usually involved extracting American citizens out of war zones or foreign detainment. The fighting started on the military bases to relieve the tension between those missions. Blow off steam. When
I got home, I pushed all of that stuff out of my life in order to readjust to civilization.” He rubs at his eyes. “I discovered that I still needed an outlet. One thing led to another…”
One thing led to another. I wonder if James will use that excuse, too.
Jackson seems to be waiting for an answer from me. I shrug.
“You’re good with that?”
“Tell me this,” I say, resting my elbows on the table. “What happens if they get a good hit to your bad arm?”
He glares at me. “Nothing will happen.”
Fast as I dare, I reach over and open-hand smack his arm where I know his stitches are.
The bastard doesn’t even flinch. His lips tick down for a second, but then his face becomes impassive. His self-control is impressive. I lean back and mirror his earlier smirk. “Okay, I believe you.”
He rolls his eyes. “Your vote of confidence means so much.”
The waitress reappears with a huge tray of food. As soon as she’s gone, we dive into it. As we eat, I watch him. He and I are opposites: I start with the good stuff, the bacon, the hash browns, the chocolate-chip-and-banana pancakes. He starts more slowly, building a sandwich of eggs and sausage on one of the pieces of toast. While I’m stuffing my face, he’s more deliberate.
The waitress returns, tops off our coffee, and whistles. Most of the plates are clean. Jackson is working on the last pancake. My stomach is so full and happy, I don’t know if I’ll be able to move.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the check, please,” Jackson says. His phone starts ringing, and he slides out of the booth as he answers it. “I’ll be right back.”
The waitress sighs. “He sure is a handsome one,” she murmurs. “How’d you get so lucky?”
I laugh. “Right place, right time,” I answer. “For once.”
“It only takes once to change your life.”
I frown as I watch him pace the parking lot, his phone to his ear. “I think I’m going to need a little more luck than that.” I have however long it takes to get a fake ID to convince Jackson to stay with me.
8
JACKSON
“Mason,” I say as I push out the door of the diner. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sending Griff to meet you,” he says. “All the vibes I’m getting are that you’re in this massive shit storm and you don’t even know it. Did you know Nicolai Moretti was murdered two weeks ago? I saw the fucking police report, thanks to Spike. He was ripped apart. The whole place was a mess.”
I grimace. “That’s Delia’s dad.”
He groans. “Yep. You’re so fucked. Spike has been at the office almost around the clock, only stopping home to get three hours of sleep and a shower. The papers are saying this is the end of the Moretti Family. They think everyone is dead, that the Castillos staged a successful coup, and—”
“Jesus, her whole family is gone?”
“Margaret Moretti was found dead with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Angelo and Ricco, Nicolai’s two brothers, were also found dead inside Nicolai’s house. The whole first floor was—well, it was a literal murder scene.”
“Fuck. How’d they die?”
He grunts. He’s never had the stomach for that sort of thing. “Slit throats, same as Delia’s dad, in the end.”
I hum. “I don’t know much about mafias, Mason. Fill me in on what happens next.”
“Maybe you should talk to Spike,” he says.
“No, I don’t—”
“Hang on, he’s actually here for once.” Mason’s voice gets faint. “Hey, Spike, your big bro wants to talk to you.”
I swear.
“Nice to hear from you, too,” my brother says on the other end of the line.
Spike and I had a weird childhood. He was meticulous to the point of obsession. We shared a room up until I was ten and he was nine. My room was always organized chaos, while his was just plain organized. If our parents hadn’t separated us, I would’ve given nine-year-old Jeremy “Spike” Skye an aneurism.
Our parents stayed together until we were fifteen and fourteen. Dad was a drunk, and eventually Mom couldn’t handle it anymore. They split, and Spike and I visited Dad every other weekend until we each turned eighteen. I can’t say our childhood with him was anything worth mentioning. He didn’t beat us or yell at us. He just regularly passed out on the couch or on the floor and left us to fend for ourselves—he did that before our parents divorced, too.
The neglect didn’t kill us, but it gutted our mother. Spike and I each viewed Dad’s alcohol problems as a direct result of his past: the military. They left him high and dry once he got out, and the only way he was able to deal with the PTSD was to drink.
Dad’s issues didn’t stop me from trying to be a better version of him. I joined the Army for one tour. When I got back, I started working for Scorpion Industries. They invested a decent amount of money and time into training my team, and eventually sent us overseas.
Spike went through the police academy and worked his way up to vice detective. I think he secretly held a grudge against me for following in Dad’s footsteps. When I got back, our easy relationship had become strained.
I sigh into the phone. “Hey, Spike.”
“What sort of trouble have you dragged Mason into?”
I wince. They met before we were even deployed, back when we were younger and wilder and a hell of a lot closer. It was the three of us against the world for a short time.
“I just was hoping you could give me a history lesson,” I hedge. “Off the record.”
“You’re asking me to take my cop hat off?”
“For a few minutes,” I mutter. “If you can bear it.”
Silence. Then, “Consider it off for the time being. What’s up?”
“Delia Moretti.”
He sucks in a breath. “She’s been missing for two weeks. Her whole family—”
“She’s with me,” I say. “Don’t ask where, don’t ask how. I just need to know…” I laugh. “Fuck, I need to know a hell of a lot more than whatever you’re going to tell me in this conversation.”
“Basically a history lesson,” he mutters. “Okay, fine. Listen up. The Morettis are like, the top seed mafia family in Vegas. They have property all over the West Coast. Their fingers are in all of the pies: money laundering, fraud, extortion. They have political ties. Rumors of bribes. What they’re rumored to stay away from are drugs and sex trafficking, but hell, I don’t know if that’s true or not. They’re one of the biggest weapons dealers in the country.
“So that’s that family. Then we have the Castillos. If you think the Moretti Family sounds bad, the Castillos are worse. They come from the other side of Vegas. Bottom of the barrel sludge. Drugs, prostitution, human trafficking. They tried to get a foothold in weapons, but that didn’t last long. They started off small only about ten years ago, and they’ve grown in size. The head of the family is Jorge Castillo. Word on the street is that he’s eager for his son to start taking more responsibility, but he doesn’t want to give up any of his power. That could be why they’re looking to stretch their reach, to give some of it to Edgar.”
I exhale. “Shit. How are these families not in jail?”
He laughs. “Come on, big brother. All of this stuff is just rumor and guesswork. We tried to nail them down a few years back, but Nicolai and Margaret had some friends in high places. The Castillos have half of the police force under their thumb, so they get a good warning beforehand. It’s taken time to weed through the dirty cops.”
“Okay, so what’s happening now?”
“Now that the heads of the Moretti Family are dead, it’s a power struggle within that family. It’s exactly what the Castillos want, if you’re asking me. Nicolai’s cousins—first, second, third fucking cousins, most of whom don’t even have the same last name—are coming out of the woodwork.”
“But Delia is alive.”
“They don’t know that. I think they’re trying to find
out, but they’re assuming she was either killed or part of the coup.”
“She didn’t do a damn thing to help the Castillos murder her family,” I growl. It’s insane that Spike would even suggest such a thing.
“Easy,” he says in a low voice. “It’s my job to explore every option. I don’t know her. But I do know that she was raised by one of the most powerful families in the country. Just take whatever she says with a grain of salt.”
I look back toward the restaurant. A grain of salt—more like a bucket of doubt. “She’s scared for her life,” I say. “I just want to help her get out of this.”
He barks a laugh. “Get out of it? It’s in her blood. There’s no scrubbing away the sins she was born into.”
I shake my head, not ready to tackle that particular fact. “Back on track. So the Moretti Family is self-destructing, and the Castillos are just waiting for them to fall?”
“Something like that.”
I try to picture Delia in that situation, but I can’t. All I can see are her dark brown eyes looking up at me, pleading.
“I gotta go,” I say. “But I have to ask Mason one more thing.”
“Hang on,” he grumbles.
“Oh, and Spike? It’s good to talk to you.”
I can hear his sharp exhale from here. I’ve been a bad brother—I’ve never even seen his and Mason’s apartment. “Likewise, Jackson.” He chuckles. “Live long enough to tell about it, and I’ll take you to dinner.”
A minute later, Mason says, “Yo.”
“Hey, did you say others were coming in? Where’s Griff?”
“He’s in from Seattle,” Mason answers. “His flight leaves in about three hours, so you’ll beat him there.”
“Nice.”
“Dalton was feeling left out,” he says as I turn and walk back toward the diner. I can see the waitress talking to Delia through the large windows, and it calms some of the adrenaline that had started to make my heart beat faster.
