Storm

by Jo Raven

  “Yeah, that you’re going to shut up and catch some winks during the flight, junior, or I’m having the chopper turn back to deposit your fucking ass next to Rook’s.”

  Damn.

  ***

  We’re finally back in the plane, and despite my protests when Hawk drags a blanket over me, I fall into deep sleep as we take off, Raylin’s hand in mine.

  Maybe that’s why I managed to relax enough to let go of consciousness. Her touch.

  Or maybe it was blood loss. Guess my body’s running on fumes and has sort of given up on trying to keep up with everything I want it to do.

  When Hawk shakes me awake, we’re flying over turquoise sea and flat green land, and Raylin is asleep by my side, her head rolling on my shoulder.

  Hawk is sitting across from us, a strange expression on his face. Almost like… longing, but that can’t be right. I blink, and he grins lazily, straightening from his slouch.

  “Almost there.” He nods his head at Raylin. “This girl. You just found her on the beach?”

  “She found me.” And keeps finding me.

  “Normal people collect shells. Not girls.”

  “Shut up, Hawk.” Shit, I’m tired. I lick my dry lips. My mouth tastes like something died in it. “I don’t care if you don’t approve, got it? You’re an old man, but not my old man. And even if he were alive…” I scowl at the view below. “I wouldn’t give a fuck.”

  And Hawk just grins like he’s the fucking Cheshire Cat. “Didn’t I tell you she’s perfect for you?”

  “No, you damn well didn’t.”

  “A girl who can shoot to kill is a girl after my own heart.”

  “Make all the fun you want.”

  “I’m serious.” He leans forward, hands clasped between his knees. His dark suit is dusty and streaked with white, his hair sticking up in weird angles as if he fell asleep on it. “Sorry I made fun, man. I like her. She has spunk. And she cares for you. Hell, instead of running, she had your back and shot that motherfucker. Respect.”

  I’m openly staring at him, but I can’t find the words right now. He does sound serious, not an everyday occurrence. He really means it.

  Then the moment is gone, and he grins again. “We’re almost there. Let’s solve this mystery once and for all.”

  ***

  We land at the private airstrip and climb into a rental car, so as not to attract attention. We stop in front of the mansion and find out we failed.

  Detachedly I watch as two guys start running toward us, cameras in hand. Paparazzi camped on the front lawn, waiting for any other juice bit they can use for their articles? Check. Their tenacity can’t shock me anymore. It’s all about money.

  Yeah, I got that memo. My whole life is based on that principle, and in all probability, my planned death, too.

  At least we’re all wearing dark hoods, hiding as much of our faces as possible. Hawk’s idea.

  Hawk’s bodyguard jumps out first to fend the reporters off. I cover my face in the crook of my arm, keeping Raylin behind me, and wonder how much time we have before a horde descends on us to take photos and shoot questions.

  I can almost hear them in my head.

  Mr. Jordan, did you set up the shooting to get insurance money? Did you have your uncle killed? Are you gay and involved with your friends Jamie ‘Hawk’ Fleming and Roderick ‘Rook’ Carter?

  Yeah, they did ask that one a year ago. At my uncle’s funeral, no less. But I’ve heard it all before. Like I said, nothing shocks me anymore.

  Except maybe Hawk believing me.

  The bodyguard is pushing the men back, and then Hawk climbs out of the car and jumps right into the fray, because that’s what Hawk does. Hands-on management.

  “Go in,” he yells over his shoulder, and I don’t need to be told twice.

  The sooner we find what we’re looking for, the sooner we can leave, and fuck, maybe my arm is broken after all. Moving it hurts so bad it makes my eyes water. I let it hang by my side, keeping the other around Raylin, and limp toward the house.

  There’s bright yellow police tape on the windows and the door, which is half-smashed from gun rounds. Christ. Was it only—what? Two days ago, that we were almost shot to death here? She shivers, pressing her face to my shoulder, and I drop a kiss on her head, glad to pretend she’s the only one having trouble dealing with all this.

  Taking a bracing breath, I release Raylin long enough to fish the keys out of my pant pocket, and she takes it and unlocks.

  This is it. This is where we see if my theory, conceived in a moment of shock, might be valid. See whether my uncle left me something here, a clue, or not. Whether there’s a fucking end to the madness, or if I’ll have to keep on running and dodging until the next bullet ends me.

  Raylin has her arm around my hips, and I lean on her rather heavily, so I try to pull back. She won’t let me and I give me. Damn leg hurts, and it’s only a graze. My arm is the one killing me, but I keep that little fact to myself.

  She leads the way, and I force down the memories of me and her in these rooms—not the shooting, this time, but the good ones where I kissed her, where I moved inside of her, where we existed inside a bubble and things were simple.

  But simple doesn’t last, and I should know. Maybe nothing does.

  The office is dusty and littered with old papers, yellowed and half-eaten by termites. I should bring a specialist to make sure the wood isn’t eaten away, and a cleaning crew, and…

  And then we could stay here. At the beach. Just me and her. Except now the paparazzi know where to find me, where to find us. Shit…

  We walk around the huge mahogany desk with its carved legs and details, and I pull the small key from my pocket. I spent a month here, and I never imagined an answer might be waiting for me in my uncle’s office. I’d been inside, of course. I’d browsed the papers and folders left. There was nothing of interest. Everything important was at the company, or in the hands of his lawyers.

  Or so I thought.

  “It’s this one.” Raylin jiggles one of the drawers. Locked. “Wanna do it?”

  I drop with relief into the chair, stretching my aching leg, and try the key. It fits into the lock perfectly. It turns. The drawer slides open.

  Nothing. The drawer is empty.

  “Fuck.” I slam my fist on the desk and my hurt arm gives a sympathetic twinge. “Nothing here.”

  And here I was thinking I’d finally know. Understand. Put a stop to it. That it would all finally make sense.

  I curl my fist on the warm wood. It’s so stuffy in here. Not enough air. I lean back, fighting with despair.

  “Let me see,” Raylin says, bending over me, reaching into the drawer. “Maybe he hid it. Like in the movies, you know?”

  “Seriously? I doubt uncle Tony ever watched movies. He was far too busy and uptight for that.”

  She draws her hand out. “Can’t reach far inside.”

  Her pretty mouth turns down in disappointment, so against all logic, I put my hand back inside the drawer, searching for God knows what…

  … and it brushes against something stuck to the top. Paper. I turn my hand, tug at it, and pull it out.

  Another envelope.

  There’s a rushing in my ears. The envelope is sealed—in wax, like we’re in the Middle Ages or something—and the seal is what stops my breath.

  It’s a phoenix, rising from the flames.

  RAYLIN

  I lean against the massive desk, my lungs locking. No frigging way. I know I insisted he’d find something, but I didn’t really believe it, and his reaction…

  His forefinger strokes over the red seal. It looks like… a bird.

  A phoenix. Damn. I guess we really did find something that could be important. This isn’t some scrap paper left there by mistake.

  Storm’s hands shake as he searches through the other drawers for something and comes up with a letter opener, an ornate, gilt affair. Before I warn him not to break the seal, he cuts the envelope o
pen from the side. The opener lands on the desk with a clank, and he pulls out a bunch of folder sheets of paper. He almost drops them, his face twisting. The bandage around his arm is spotted with blood.

  I grab the papers before they fall.

  “What does it say?” he asks, voice hoarse. His face is pale, beaded with sweat. “Read it for me.”

  “We should go,” I say, worried. “You don’t look so hot.”

  “I fucked up my arm. What does the letter say?”

  I unfold the papers, my heart booming. “My dear Storm,” I begin. “There are a few things you need to know, and I can’t keep them from you any longer. Soon you will come into your inheritance, and you must be made aware of things past which bear on the present. I thought—” I stop and frown. “Was he so formal in real life, too?”

  “Worse.” Storm looks terrible, and I hope Hawk comes in soon. I’m not sure Storm can walk out of here without help. “Please read.”

  “I thought I’d spare you this knowledge, and the Organization doesn’t want me to tell you. Which is understandable, but I trust you not to take action against them. It would not be in your interest. I will explain in the course of this letter why not and how this organization has affected your life, starting with the death of your parents.”

  Well, damn. Storm makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, like a moan.

  “You see,” I read on, “the leaders of the Organization take hard decisions to protect its interests. I’m one of them, Storm. And I want to say I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  STORM

  The words still echo, tumbling and crashing inside my skull, when Hawk hauls me up and secures my good arm around his shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” he says. He pulls me out of the office, Raylin hurrying along. “More reporters are arriving. I hope you got what you wanted.”

  “We did,” Raylin says. She says something more, and he replies as we stumble out of the house, but their voices barely reach my ears.

  I’m sorry. I’m one of them.

  What the hell. What… I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this. He wasn’t just a bystander. He didn’t only watch my parents get killed. He directed their murder, orchestrated it. He killed my parents, but spared me. Saved me.

  Fuck, why? Why? It’s as if the more I know, the less I understand. The pain isn’t helping, and by the time we drive back to the airstrip and board the plane, barely avoiding a mauling from a crowd of reporters, I’m looking forward to a bed in the fucking hospital next to Rook.

  We take off the moment everyone’s on board, the letter clutched in Raylin’s hands. She passes it to me once we’re flying high enough nobody is trying to climb up the landing skids anymore, and I skim through it, my eyes blurry.

  This is a record of how my parents took the small company inherited by my mother from her own father and turned it into a behemoth worth hundreds of millions with the help of the Organization. The Organization funded new projects, pulled strings and arranged for the untimely demise of dissenters and opponents. Licenses changed hands in favor of Jordan Enterprises. Companies were taken over and land obtained regardless of the cost to people by cultivating long-term relationships with certain organized crime groups.

  And Antony ‘Tony’ Jordan supervised it all from within the Organization as one of its top leaders.

  “This is so fucked…” I close my eyes. My head is killing me. “My uncle was a goddamn gangster and murderer.”

  “What does it say?” Raylin asks, trying to read without climbing into my lap. Which I appreciate, because what on any other day would have been awesome is today a bad, bad idea.

  “This Organization rules the local underworld, moving independently from gangs and the mafia. It’s apparently a local thing. My parents screwed up. Got the money, never complied with the Organization’s demands. They thought having someone on the inside, a leader no less, meant they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. And that got them killed. Fucking idiots.”

  Damn them. It happened all those years ago, and their death still hurts. Knowing they brought it on themselves doesn’t make it any easier.

  “Anything we can use?” Hawk asks, who can be practical when not clowning around.

  “He had a tattoo.” I frown. “A circle. Ray, I told you about it. He says that’s the ink marking an Organization leader. It’s an ouroboros. A snake biting its tail, a sign of rebirth, just like—”

  “—the phoenix.” She nods.

  But Hawk is staring at me, eyes too wide. “Circle. Where?”

  “On his shoulder. So it’s actually a snake, only you don’t see—”

  “No.” He leans back, rubs both hands over his face.

  “No, what?”

  “No, this is a coincidence. Fucking coincidence, is what it is.”

  “Dammit, Hawk, my head is killing me, my arm is fucking misery, and you wanna talk in riddles?” I wave the letter in the air, and Raylin snatches it and smooths it down on her lap. “Fuck.”

  He stays silent for a bit, and then exhales and shoves both hands into his hair, raking his fingers through it. “My dad,” he says.

  “Your dad what?” Raylin is clutching the letter as if she doesn’t know if she wants to rip it apart or kiss it.

  I feel the same way.

  “My dad has a tattoo like that. On his shoulder. A fucking circle.”

  The engines whir. Between the three of us, the silence is deafening.

  No reason to ask if he’s sure. He wouldn’t have said it if he wasn’t. The white lines around his mouth, the paleness of his face tells me he knows what it could mean.

  “So what happened?” Raylin asks after a while. “Did your uncle transfer the money from Jordan Enterprises to pay off their debt to the Organization? And why did he save you? Wasn’t he better off keeping everything?”

  The letter doesn’t really say, not as far as I can see. So I shake my head. “I don’t know. He only says they weren’t pleased with him.”

  “And what changed?” At my blank look, she clarifies. “Why did they come after him and after you now, after all this time? How many years since they killed your parents?”

  “Fifteen,” Hawk says.

  Why would they come after us both after fifteen years? My uncle had obviously done one thing the Organization didn’t like: he kept me alive. Not only that, but he protected me and taught me to protect myself every single day of my life, until I left home. But I was already gone more than two years when he was killed.

  What changed?

  “The letter,” I whisper. “I turned twenty-one, the time when I would know the truth, because my uncle set it up this way. The fact that this letter would be waiting for me, with this key. Somebody else must have known my uncle was planning it.”

  “The lawyers?”

  “They could have conveniently lost it. Opened the enveloped and gotten the key. I don’t think so.”

  “He told someone about it. Who did he talk to before he died?”

  “The police must know. We should talk to the detective in charge of your uncle’s case.”

  “There was no case. They thought he died of an overdose.”

  “A man like your uncle, handling your company and all that money?” Hawk wipes at his mouth, not looking at me. “I bet they looked into it more carefully than if it were any average person.”

  Right. “You think they made a timetable of who he met with the hours or days before his death?”

  Sounds like a script from a movie. Then again, the hidden, sealed envelope stuck to the top of the drawer sounded that way, too.

  “Let me make some phone calls,” Hawk says and all but turns his back to us, cell in hand, dialing. “I’ll find that out.”

  ***

  Finding out takes time. Long enough time that we land back in Baltimore, catch Hawk’s chopper and arrive at the heliport of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Only God knows what strings Hawk pulled to be allowed there, but by now I’d saw off my ow
n arm if it meant it’d stop the pain. I even tried putting back the sling, with Raylin’s help, but it’s not doing much.

  It feels like acid is running through my veins, burning and eating me up. As if my bones are melting from the inside out. Sweat is drenching my shirt, sticking it to my back as I try and fail to get comfortable.

  I manage to enter the hospital under my own power, but I’m glad when a nurse with a wheelchair appears. Shivers wrack my body. Feel like I’m about to puke my guts out.

  Raylin brushes away the sweat that’s dripping in my eyes. “He’s feverish,” she whispers.

  “Gunshots are a bitch,” Hawk says.

  Talking as if I’m not there. Not sure I am.

  Infection. That might explain the chills, the pain and the sensation of being far away from my own body, watching it all unfold.

  An x-ray, painful prodding and arm-wrapping later, plus a brand new, blue plastic cast on my arm and an antibiotic and painkiller twin injection, I have a pissed-off doctor in my face, asking me what the hell I was thinking, not driving directly to a hospital after the shooting.

  He’s lucky I feel like roadkill, or I’d tell him where to shove it. I’m not sorry for anything. Not knowing what the key might open and if I’d find an answer or not would have killed me. I’d have put my fist through every fucking wall in this place by now.

  “Sorry,” I tell him, cutting him off mid-rant, seeing Hawk coming back through the door. “I’m in a hurry. I’ll take the drugs to go.”

  The doc sputters, face going red, and yeah I know I’m being a difficult ass, but my life is kinda fucked, and the fever from the infection isn’t helping. It sucks.

  Except when Raylin is touching me, as she’s doing right now, leaning over, stroking my jaw. She’s the most potent drug there is.

  “All patched up, buddy?” Hawk drawls, shoving his cell into the pocket of his jacket. “Broken arm, huh? Damn.”

  “The wound’s infected,” the doctor says, straightening his coat. “Here’s a prescription for antibiotics.”