Hard Truths (Kiss Her Goodbye Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  He cleared his throat. “Well, I can’t speak to that. You are surprising, that is for sure. Are you certain you’re not hungry?”

  “I’m really not.” What I needed was time to process these things. “Kade, what happened to the former residents of this mausoleum?”

  He took a step toward me. “Are you suddenly worried about poltergeists?”

  “I’m a pretty reasonable person, but you don’t grow up in Louisiana and not have some good old respect for the idea that there might be other beings around than just you. Even if it’s not religion. This city is old. You can almost feel all the energy here, the old energy, still floating around.”

  Kade put his arm around me. “Come. I’ll get you some clothes. I’ve never seen a ghost, never felt a ghost, have no feelings whatsoever about anything woo woo going on here. You’ll be fine.”

  “You tell me that when the demonic clown shows up and drags you into some other dimension.”

  He sighed. “You watched too much television as a child.” He showed me where his room was, and I waited outside while he went in for some clothes for me. Peeking in, I found it was the same size as my own. The only difference was on his wall he had a picture framed. I knew it right away. It was the The Scream by Edvard Munch.

  I pointed to it from the doorway. “What does that mean to you?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He handed me a pile of clothes. “There are toiletries in the bathroom. You’re perfectly safe here.”

  He had totally not answered my questions about the bodies, and I wasn’t going to ask again. Instead, I took his clothes that smelled newly laundered and went back to the room assigned to me. How many bedrooms were here? I’d find out in the morning.

  I used the small shower that had hot water and managed not to kill myself when the AC turned back on again sounding like a jet plane taking off. That was going to take some getting used to. I climbed into bed wearing a plain gray t-shirt and listened to the other sounds of this strange place. I was with a man who had turned a mausoleum into a surveillance bunker. How did that happen?

  I chewed on my lip. Was Warden okay? Was he going to make it to San Diego? Kade didn’t seem worried about him. And why was it bothering me so much that Trace hadn’t checked in? Where was Judson? He’d had an attack made on him. What kind was it? And Derrick… what was he doing right then? He’d come for before, and he’d promised me he always would.

  How about Kade? Who was he really? The geek or the dominating asshole? Both? What were we going to do together in this secret place below ground he’d had commissioned? How long were we staying here?

  A knock sounded, and he stood in the doorway. He carried a protein bar and set it down next to me. “In case you get hungry in the middle of the night.” He paused. “Or you need something to bribe the ghosts to leave you alone.”

  I threw a pillow at him, and he laughed. “The lights will become movement based around midnight. If you get up and move, they’ll turn on. Otherwise they don’t work until six. That’s to save electricity. I don’t want to be too obvious on the power grid. Right now, thanks to the electrical equivalent of a VPN, they don’t know we’re down here. I’m keeping it that way.”

  I shook my head. “I’d understand Latin better than what you just said.”

  “Dulce somnii, Everly.” He winked at me. That might not be the exact phrase for sweet dreams but I’d understood it perfectly, and I was impressed he knew it right off the bat.

  “Securi dormient, Kade.”

  Chapter 16

  I didn’t sleep the whole night. Every time I got over the idea that I was hearing noises of the dead all over me—and up until now I’d never have thought myself so susceptible to this sort of thing—the stupid jet engine air conditioning would turn on, scaring the bejesus out of me. I rolled over, pressing my head into the pillow. There was no natural light underground and I’d have had no idea what time it was except for the digital clock on the dresser telling me it was six in the morning.

  I yawned before I pulled myself out of bed. This was going to be a long stay underground. I shoved on the shorts that were too big on me and rolled the waist, hoping they’d stay up. Wishing I had a hair elastic to put my locks up in a ponytail, I made my way out. He hadn’t shown me where the kitchen was, but I’d find it. Coffee was too important right now not to be successful.

  It wasn’t far, but then the whole bunker wasn’t huge. I did stumble upon two more bedrooms, making the total, as far as I could tell, four for the location.

  Kade sat on the counter drinking coffee. His eyes widened as I came in, either because I looked like hell or because he was surprised to see me up and about. Maybe he’d forgotten I was there. Until I had caffeine, I didn’t really care. I could play denial all I wanted, but I really missed having Trace or Warden with me. Even the way Warden snored. There really was nothing like having a person hold me in the dead of the night.

  Internally, I sighed. Pathetic, call thyself Everly. And now I was speaking oddly in my own head. Yes, coffee. Soon. Now.

  Without a word, Kade prepared the hot brew for me and placed the cup, handle toward me, into my exhausted hand.

  I took a sip. Then a second. Finally, he spoke after he’d seen me do that. He was a smart man. “Did you sleep okay?”

  “No.” I drank down more of what was going to get me through the day. “New place. New noises.” I didn’t say I’d been fearful. Kade had been sweet since I got here, but he’d been just the opposite back at Judson’s. I didn’t necessarily want to give him any fodder for being an asshole if that side of him reared its ugly head. “And your AC is loud.”

  He nodded. “That’s true. I’ve learned to tune it out. The one downside. But it’s hard to maintain temperature down here, and it’s kind of extreme.”

  “I guess I’ll get used to it.” I rubbed my eyes. “How did you sleep?”

  “Oh, I almost never sleep more than two hours at a time. Not since I was a kid. I got my two hours. I’ve been up ever since. Watching the screens. Tweaking the code.”

  Maybe that was Kade’s problem. Maybe he was grumpy because he was so tired. I finished my coffee and the smart man poured more in the glass. I could have kissed him, if that wouldn’t have been so weird and awkward. “Will it ding you if it finds one of them?”

  “It’ll do more than ding. Huge alarm, yes.” He rubbed his chin. “I was going to go work out. Want to come?”

  That sounded great. “Yes, I’d love that.”

  “Come on.”

  I walked with him to a room that was the same size as the kitchen. It almost seemed like he’d built the thing in a series of squares and rectangles. Square here. Rectangle here. Attach. Like he’d fit together a Tetris board.

  There was a treadmill, a bike, some weights and several yoga mats. I got down on the one the farthest to the left and stretched. It had been a long time since I’d done this. Not since I’d had my head knocked around. I didn’t want to overdo it. But I did need some exercise in the worst possible way. I could practically feel my thighs spreading.

  I stretched for ten minutes while Kade got on the treadmill. I shouldn’t have been checking out his ass while he ran. I really should have kept my gaze to the floor. But there it was. He had a tight, tight ass, and it was a lot more entertaining than counting the wood planks on the floor while I did my half-cocked version of yoga.

  I’d always liked cardio a lot better than stretching and weight training. But in the meantime, I had to be gentle on myself. Of course, I’d had crazy sex and not thought about it. I could probably do a mild jog. When this was over, I was going to run a marathon. I was determined to do so.

  I got on the bike. I was going to do a mile, maybe two, at the most. Ten minutes later I panted and wondered if I was going to get through this at all. Amazing how much cardio endurance I could lose in such a short period of time. I gritted my teeth. I always got through these things. I pushed to two miles and got off the bike as fast as was possible for
me.

  Kade still ran like it was nothing in the world to do so.

  “I’m a runner.” I shouted at him. “Pay no attention to how pathetic I look right now.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “What?” He stopped the treadmill. “I can never hear anything when I’m on this thing. It’s loud. You okay?”

  I nodded, putting my hand on my hips. “Sure.”

  Kade got off the treadmill and pulled his shirt over his head, wiping his face with the shirt. He had well defined muscles, and when he turned around to use the same shirt to wipe off the machine, I got a good look at the scars on his back. Whoever had hit the Letters had done so with a heavy-duty stick of some kind that had left matching permanent scarring on all of them. Did that just happen or did they have to do it consistently?

  But Kade had done something to his back that the others didn’t have. At least the two I had seen. He was tattooed on his shoulder blade. I stepped toward him to get a better look. My first impression was correct. It was an elaborate representation of the Joker from the Batman comics. With green hair and yellow-rimmed eyes, he had a blue body and a red background behind him. Truly, he was manic looking. I rubbed the back of my neck. Why would he have chosen that particular image and put it right there on his back?

  As though he read my mind, he spoke with his back still facing me. “I like the Joker better than Batman in some ways.”

  “Why is that?” I walked toward him to get an even closer look. The colors were really amazing. “Because he’s the bad guy? You’re like Bruce Wayne down here in this cave.”

  He shook his head, turning around. “The Joker is out there with his crazy. If they’re two sides of the same coin, then the Joker isn’t hiding it. He’s just… who he is.”

  I put my hands across my chest. “Is that who you think you are? An evil dude who plots and kills people?”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder. “That’s who we all are, Everly. Even Trace and Warden. You sleeping with them didn’t change that. And if we ever give in to the chemistry between us, your magic won’t suddenly make me any better either. I’m going to be this way every day of my life. We’re bad men, even if we’re the lesser of two evils in your life. This happened to you because of us. Don’t forget that.”

  I didn’t know what made me do what I did next. It was just that right then he reminded me of the little boy that I’d lived next door to for years. I’d babysat him three days a week for almost a year. When he’d been scared, he’d struck out at me verbally until I’d figured out that in his ten-year-old way he was asking me to help him.

  I put my fingers over his, and I squeezed them tightly. “You don’t scare me. Not with your crazy tattoo. Not with your mean words. Not when you dragged me out of the bedroom the first day at Judson’s. I’m not sure who you are, exactly. And now I’m not sure you know either. But you’re going to be okay.”

  A muscle ticced in his jaw. “I’ve got to go check the screen.”

  I stepped back. “Have at it.”

  He pointed at me. “Go take a shower and then come see me. I’ll show you the emergency exits. I meant to do that yesterday.”

  That was right. In case someone invaded our graveyard space and we had to run for our lives. It was hard to imagine, except that I’d been shot at on a beach and had to run from a convenience store after Warden paid twenty thousand dollars for a car. I shook my head. I might have to run for my life from here, too. I was getting good at it.

  Of course, maybe someday I’d stop running and figure out how to fire back. I turned and walked toward my room. Then maybe I’d get a Joker tattoo on my back and wish I could wear my crazy on the outside, too.

  “Anything?” I walked into the surveillance room to find Kade tapping on a tablet.

  He looked up before he set it down. “No, but Warden says to say hello to you. I messaged him for info on being chased and his work on bankrupting The Alliance. Instead, he wants to know about you.”

  I cleared my throat, heat hitting my cheeks. “Tell him hello back.”

  “Maybe I could pass him a note in gym class.” He slammed down the tablet. “Tell him yourself.” He pointed at the tablet. “It’s safe. And if he’s communicating, he’s either so hard up for you that he’s lost his fucking mind or he’s using his safe one, too.”

  He’d never used one the whole time we were together. Could he have? Did he not bring it? Or was he just living in the moment with me? I didn’t know. Maybe I’d ask him sometime. But not now with Kade being prickly.

  He rose, and I followed him down the hall. Kade pushed aside a bookshelf. “I did this myself. If the people who built this place with me switch sides, they don’t know about this.” The bookshelf slid over. It was on some kind of slide. I stared at him for a second, but I didn’t have time to consider it long, because he was going so fast I had to hurry to catch up. I ran after him. The hallway was dark, low, and long. If I had to bend, he had to stoop, but I supposed it didn’t matter. If we had to get away, this would do it.

  We came to a fork in the way. He stopped. “Remember left. Right takes you back to where you were. It’s meant to throw them off if they were following. Assuming they could get this far to begin with.”

  “And suddenly I’m not in Batman, I’m in Goonies.”

  He snickered. “You’re funny. Did you know that?”

  “Everyone thinks they’re funny. Most of us are not.” I really didn’t think I was funny. I’d never been. My father was stiff as a board. It wasn’t like we cracked a lot of jokes at home. Maybe it was hard to be funny with your daughter after you murdered her mother.

  Kade pointed upward. “There’s a ladder here. It’ll come out on the other side of the highway. You have to climb up through the sewers. It’s not pretty, but you’ll get out.”

  I stared at him. “In this scenario, you’re not with me?”

  “Well, hopefully I am, but maybe I’m dead. Or killing people behind us. Just know how to do it, okay?”

  I nodded. “Yes. What are we doing now?”

  He took my hand and pulled me along so that I followed him back. His hands were callused. They weren’t smooth like he spent all day working on computers, but then again, he’d constructed this place, which meant that he was capable of doing a lot of different kinds of work.

  “So your job for The Alliance was to build tech to track people?”

  He nodded. “Among other things. It’s not really my job, it’s more like my role. My job is that I run a tech company I created. I’ve actually sold it. I’m supposed to be transitioning it but it doesn’t need transition so they don’t ask anything of me. I have a lot of free time. Do you see the difference? Job versus role?”

  “As I am almost about to receive my bachelors of arts from an institution of higher learning, I am fairly certain I can tell the difference intellectually between job and role.”

  He turned for the sole purpose of winking at me. It was sort of a dick move and what did it say about me that I found it so fucking attractive? Well, that I was sick in the head, but I’d already established that so that wasn’t exactly new information.

  “Gets your back up if I question your intellect? Storing that away for future information.”

  I shook my head. “And to think that some guys woo a girl with roses. You do it with insults.”

  “Sure.” He grinned broadly now. “If you were the kind of woman who wanted flowers I’d be so bored with you right now. I like that you get that look when I jab at you that says you both want to hit me across the head and fuck me. But all you do is jab back. So many small intricacies of fucked up right there, I can’t even begin to pick them all out.”

  Okay. This was enough. “I’ll tell you what? You are obviously obsessed with this topic. Yes, I slept with Trace and Warden. I’d probably sleep with Derrick, too, since he seems inclined and so do I. I think you’re really hot. But you have to get your panties out of their bunch about the fact that I slept with your friends.” I shrugged. “
They both understood it was temporary. The only one who didn’t seem to get that memo was me. Both of them did a number on me. And I’ll be honest, even if you were into the idea, I’m not sure my heart could take another run at that.”

  He stared at me in the terrible fluorescent light. “I don’t do this. I mean, ever. I don’t mean ever. I mean obviously not never. I’m bumbling through this. Let me put it this way to you. If we had been in college at the same time, you wouldn’t have spoken to me. You are only even throwing it out there that you might be interested because I’m Alliance.”

  I stepped forward, fingering his shirt. It was soft, cotton. “You don’t know who I’d talk to. I like smart men. But I don’t do relationships. We might have met at a bar. Gone home together. It wouldn’t have been this complicated.”

  Kade flared his nostrils. “I never went to a bar. I was too busy on my computer trying to figure out how I could move my way up in The Alliance. There’s never a moment off.”

  “Then maybe we wouldn’t have met. But we did meet now. And I’m not attracted to you because you’re Alliance. I’m attracted to you because I’m fucked in the head.” I imitated his wink. “I want to get out of this hallway.”

  He nodded once. “Come on.”

  We walked back in silence. The closer we got to his lair the more I heard a noise I didn’t recognize. Kade dropped my hand and rushed forward. “Fuck. That’s the signal. The satellite has one of them.”

  I ran after him. I’d just landed in this war, but really, fuck them. I wanted to see the face of one of them—one of the guys who had decided that a stranger with nothing to do with any of this had been expendable and could be shot on a beach. Or used as a means to get Trace to talk.

  Two men stood talking. One of them had a gun strapped to his back. He shook his head at what the taller, bald man said.

  “Who is who?” I stared from the doorway.

  Kade sat in his chair, and I came up behind him, leaning forward so I could get a better look. He pointed at the screen. “The tall one. That is Henry Laparra. If you met him, he’d tell you to call him Hank. Ten years ago you would have thought he was hot. He’s Australian, although he hasn’t lived there in thirty years. You’d like his accent.”