Carnival Hill (The Harlequin Crew Book 3)

by Caroline Peckham

  “Yeah, I’m a bastard, old boy,” I agreed. “My daddy never made an honest woman outa my momma, but it never did me any harm. Now shut your stepdaughter up or she’s gonna eat the next round.”

  “Mi-Mi,” Kaiser sobbed. “Stop, honey, you need to stop.”

  Mia managed to stifle the noise coming outa her pie hole and I could think a little clearer again at last. I wound my finger through the air as I gave Kaiser a hard look.

  “I’m gettin’ bored, so tell me about the meaning of that journal or we’re gonna have a lot more mess for your boys to clean up in here. Speaking of which…” I heard the shouts going up in the house and the boots coming this way in response to the gunshot.

  “I’ll be needing you to tell your men to hold fire.” I directed Kaiser to the door and he stumbled that way, calling out to them as he made it there.

  I stole a moment to kick the safe door wider and found myself a bunch of cash from his latest poker night. I gathered up as much as I could in my arms then an animal attacked me from behind. It was a feral girl with sharp teeth that dug into my shoulder. Mia punched me right in the wound in my side and I bellowed in pain as she tore at my flesh. I twisted around and hit her hard enough to drive the breath from her lungs, making her crumple to the floor in a heap.

  I drew in a breath through my teeth as I clutched my side and growled through the pain.

  “Jesus Christ, are all the women in this town raised by wolves?” I released a heady laugh as I scooped up the cash once more then followed Kaiser to the door where he was telling his men to back down. I pressed the shotgun to the side of his head as I kept my other arm locked around the money and smiled at the men there.

  “Hey boys, this house is under new management. How much has Kaiser here been paying ya?”

  One of the bolder ones stepped forward with a frown. “He’s meant to pay us every Friday, but he owes us two weeks.”

  “I told you I just needed a little longer,” Kaiser said in a panic.

  I shook my head. “Oh dear, Kaiser. You’ve been holding out on your boys, sitting on all this cash while the wind whistles through their pockets. And if there’s one thing I learned a long time ago, it’s that if you’re buying loyalty, you’d better be a generous boss who pays on time, and gives nice, juicy Christmas bonuses or you might just find yourself with a knife in your back while you’re sleeping.”

  I tossed the cash at his men’s feet, doing a sweeping count of all eight of them. “You can call that an advance on your pay or a ticket to fuck off outa here and never come back. You’re either a Dead Dog or you’re dead to me, so what do ya say?”

  They glanced between one another and just like babies bribed with candy, they all swooped down to grab the cash.

  “Wait, please,” Kaiser gasped as I barked a laugh.

  “Okay boys, fuck off.” I jerked my gun and they headed away, all loyalty to Kaiser gone just like that. I felt Kaiser trembling and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “What are you looking for? Last chance to tell me, old boy.” I pressed the journal to his chest and his hand slithered over it. “Then we can go looking for it together. You and me. I like ya, Kaiser. You and me could be real good friends, what do ya say?”

  “You killed my wife,” he choked out, though I didn’t see any tears.

  “I know, I know,” I said, patting his back. “But listen, I’ve done you a favour, see? Cut you off from the old ball and chain. Now you’re free to get a new wife, a younger one with perkier tits, or one of those twenty-year-olds you like so much. We could be kings in this house, parties every night, snorting cocaine off the asses of premium hookers who’ll let you fuck ‘em any way you like. That’s what you really want, ain’t it?”

  He looked to me with a hopeful expression, showing just what a dirtbag he was as he saw a glimmer of a new, free life in my eyes where he could really be a king.

  He swallowed hard then drew me out into the hall away from the sobbing Mia and licked the sweat gathering on his lips.

  “There’s a lost family fortune,” he said in a rush of words, his eyes darting all about the place.

  “What kinda fortune?” I asked, leaning in closer as he piqued my curiosity.

  “Diamonds,” he hissed, his eyes sparkling as if those diamonds lived right inside his eyes.

  “Keep talkin’,” I urged, my heart rate picking up a little, because fuck me, I liked the sound of this.

  “Five of them, worth millions each,” he said, his hungry eyes widening.

  “You don’t say…” A smile pulled at my lips. “But you don’t know where they are?”

  He shook his head. “All I know is they’re hidden somewhere in Sunset Cove. This journal documents the places I’ve searched. I hunted hard back in my youth, but Luther Harlequin kicked me outa town after I, well…” He cleared his throat.

  “You what?”

  “I asked for his help to kill a bunch of men I owed money to,” he said tightly, as sweaty as an old lettuce leaf.

  “You were in debt? Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  He shrugged. “Anyway, I couldn’t pay him either, could I? And he was gonna kill me real good so I told him about my diamonds. Said he could have them if he let me go, but I just needed some time to find them. He agreed, and I planned on skipping town as soon as I dug them up, but I couldn’t fucking find them. So Luther ran me outa town.”

  “So how comes you’re back then?” I frowned curiously, slotting all this information away for later.

  “I won a bit of money in a poker game and I offered it to Luther if he let me move back here to keep looking for them. I said I wanted to be home to look after my old aunt.”

  “Who you keep in your basement?” I sniggered.

  “She’s a pain in my ass,” he muttered. “She was meant to up and die but she just keeps on living, doesn’t she? I haven’t got the heart to kill her, but I needed my inheritance, so I put her down there and faked her death. I figured she had a few years left in her at best, but hell sometimes I think she’s gonna live forever.”

  “Mmhmm.” I clapped his face as I thought on that. “Well alrighty then. Looks like I’ve got a lot of work to do, doesn’t it?”

  “I can show you the places I’ve checked, and I’ve made a list in the back of the journal of where I’m going to look next. The Rosewoods used to own some land on the edge of town where an apartment block is now, I’ve been trying to work out a way to get access to the basement but-”

  I pulled the trigger of my gun and blasted a huge hole in his chest, showering me in blood as he crashed to the ground before I stooped down and plucked the journal from his twitching fingers.

  “Thank you kindly, Kaiser. I’ll be sure to take it from here. But I’m afraid there’s only room for one king on the throne of Sunset Cove.”

  Mia was screaming again and I kicked the office door shut to drown out her wailing, turning the key in the lock and pocketing it. I’d have one of the men put her somewhere I couldn’t hear her crying because Lord have mercy, that noise was giving me a headache.

  I caught sight of myself in a mirror across the hall, covered in blood with the cut across my cheek still shining as it healed up from Rogue’s knife slash.

  I ran my finger along it with a sneer, picturing exactly what I was gonna do to her in penance for that when she came to me. And while I was waiting, I’d move my army into my new castle and start looking for my diamonds.

  I guessed things were looking up.

  D arkness encircled me and a weight seemed to press down on my chest, keeping me in place. The soft brush of fingers ran over my temple and I thought of my mother, wondering if she was here somewhere, drawing me to her.

  My mind was a groggy haze and the closer I came to surfacing from the thick, unshakeable sleep, the colder I got. I started to shiver and suddenly a voice reached me along with the scent of coconut and a thousand regrets. She’s here.

  “Nurse!” Rogue shouted and the heaviness of my left eyelid eased enou
gh for me to open it, but I couldn’t quite remember why the other one didn’t work right then. “He’s shivering. What’s happening?”

  “It’s alright, dear, it’s quite normal.”

  The light was too bright for a moment as the nurse moved into view and I blinked, trying to hunt for the girl I’d just heard, fearing I’d only imagined her.

  “Can you see me alright, Mr Cohen?” the nurse asked and I nodded vaguely, trying to crane my neck to see past her, but she wouldn’t budge.

  My teeth were chattering and the woman started laying blankets over me before doing some checks. Pain swam through my left leg and a curse escaped my lips. The nurse fiddled with an I.V. beside me and the morphine slid into my veins, starting to take the pain away, but it made my mind fuzzier too.

  “Where is she?” I demanded. “I heard her.”

  I’ve lost my mind. She’s not here. Why would she be here? She despises me.

  My mind hooked on Maverick, the fragments of my memories drawing together to paint a picture of him saving me. That didn’t sound right, but somehow I knew it was. And it was the only thing I could grasp right then that was definitely real.

  The nurse finally stepped back and my gaze fell on Rogue, standing there in one of my grey tank tops, her eyes puffy, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail. My heart thrashed with the need to get closer, but I was still fairly sure my mind was playing tricks on me. This was a pretty illusion, one of the thousands I’d had down in the basement at the Rosewood Manor.

  “I’ll let you two have some privacy.” The woman patted Rogue’s arm as she headed away and I took in every detail of my little one’s face just in case she disappeared.

  “Chase,” she broke the silence, her voice half a sob, half a laugh. She climbed onto the hospital bed, wrapping her arms around me and a manic sort of noise left my throat.

  Very funny. This isn’t real.

  My head was a swirling mist, trying to pull me back down into the dark away from her. But I was going to cling to this perfect daydream for as long as I could.

  I pushed my hand into her hair and felt her teardrops on my shoulder like hot wax, trickling over my flesh in a burning trail.

  “Don’t cry, little one,” I murmured, drawing her closer as I stole a moment in this fantasy.

  I drew her chin up, finding her mouth and stealing a kiss that tasted all too like reality. Her fingers knotted in my hair and I kissed her harder, biting her lip and enjoying the sweet illusion my mind had conjured. The dark was pulling me down again so I was gonna forge a memory I couldn’t forget even when I was lost to the nothingness.

  “You said you love me, little one,” I spoke against her full lips, sea salt and sugar rolling over my tongue. “Can you imagine what a mess we’d have been together if that was true?” I laughed, delirium crawling through my mind.

  “Ace,” she breathed against my mouth. “I’m so sorry I didn’t look for you. We thought you were dead.”

  “But I am dead,” I said, a dark smile twisting up my lips before it flittered away again. “Shawn said I didn’t get a grave, is that true? I always thought gravestones were pointless anyway. Countless memories, loves and hates then you’re just reduced to a few words on a rock. What would my words be, little one? Here lies a failure?”

  She released a cracked sob, her fingers trailing along my cheek. All too real, all too perfect. I hope she stays forever.

  “You’ve got a lot of drugs in your system,” she choked out. “You’re not thinking clearly. The doctors had to operate. But you’re okay, Ace. You’re right here in Sunset Cove with me. You’re home.”

  Home…

  Home was where three boys and one girl sat in the sand with me. This wasn’t home, it was a place I couldn’t stay.

  I stared into her blue eyes which were always so much brighter than mine. The sky didn’t compare to these eyes.

  “And where are we going next? On a boat to dive at the Mariner’s shipwreck?” I mused, memories sliding through my mind of doing just that. I’d spent too much of my adulthood being a dull fuck. I missed going on adventures with my family, I missed swimming as deep into the ocean as I could before I was forced to come up for air.

  “Is that where you want to go?” she asked, curling up against me.

  “As long as you’re there,” I muttered, carving my fingers down each rivet of her spine.

  My mind started to catch up a little more to everything and a deep chill set into my bones as I remembered Shawn. I tried to shut him out but he drove in deeper, the ghosts of every piece of me he’d killed now living beneath my flesh to haunt me.

  “Shawn Mackenzie’s a demon,” I whispered and Rogue clutched me tighter. “I never believed in monsters until I faced him in the dark. And now’s he’s here...” I walked my fingers up to my chest, tapping them hard against the bone. “Here to stay.”

  “Don’t say that,” she gasped, staring up at me from where she lay against my chest.

  I stroked my thumb along her cheek and up to her temple. “But you know anyway, don’t you? Because now he’s left his mark on me, I can see him in you too.”

  She swallowed hard, then nodded in admission, turning her head into my palm to lay a kiss there. Where her lips touched, the cold was burned away and for a moment I didn’t feel Shawn’s hold on me at all. But the second her mouth parted from my flesh, the cold dug in deeper and I could hear his laughter echoing in the back of my mind.

  “That’s what he does,” I said. “He’s a master at burrowing beneath skin and bone, finding unhealed wounds and peeling them further apart to make room for him. But you survived him, little one.”

  “You did too,” she said fiercely, her eyes watering again and I cocked my head as I gazed at her, not wanting to talk about Shawn anymore.

  “You’re my biggest regret,” I said in a low voice, darkness curling through the corners of my mind. “You’re a goddess forsaken by a fool. And he bled, and bled, and bled for you in penance, but it was still just the blood of a fool.”

  “Chase, don’t. You need to rest, you need to get better. You’re not thinking straight,” she urged.

  “What would I get better for?” I murmured as sleep tried harder to claim me, but I didn’t want to go back to the dark. That was where all my fears lay. I wanted to stay here in my daydream and hold onto a forged reality where Rogue rested her head on my chest and things didn’t seem so bleak.

  “For me,” she said. “I’ll break if you leave again. Please don’t go.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” I said sleepily, my eye sliding closed as sleep fought to kidnap me. “But I’m good at breaking things. Don’t always mean to, but they tend to end up broken anyway.”

  “Just rest,” she urged.

  “Only if you promise you’ll be here when I wake up.” I didn’t hold much hope of that, but even just a sliver of it was enough to help me let go of the fantasy I was trying so desperately to keep alive.

  “I’ll be here.” She hooked her little finger around mine and kept it there as the drugs washed deeper into my veins, and soon there was only black.

  I paced the hall leading to the front door, Mutt looking from me to the door with a low whine in his throat. He was missing Rogue and fuck, I was too, even if she did hate me. And I’d been anxious as hell since Chase had shown up and been admitted to hospital. I didn’t sleep, I just festered, waiting and waiting for them to come home. And today, after five days in hospital with Rogue never leaving his side, he finally would.

  How could this have happened?

  We’d stopped looking for him. We should have been looking all this time. All this time.

  Fox had agreed he could stay here at Harlequin House for his recovery period but that was it. I couldn’t even think about him leaving again though, I just needed him here in this house. I needed to see him and convince myself he was actually still in this world. Because frankly I was having a hard goddamn time believing it.

  Fucking Shawn had had him and we h
adn’t known. Rogue had kept Fox informed on anything Chase said, and Fox always filled me in. And we’d all been stunned silent when we’d found out Miss Mabel was still alive, locked down in a basement by her asshole nephew. It was sickening, and we were definitely going to do something about it just as soon as we could figure out how.

  My mind turned to my brother again. I felt like I’d failed Chase. I’d never felt the finality of his death even after all these weeks. Maybe I should have realised he was out there. Maybe-

  “They’re almost here,” Fox’s deep voice came from behind me and I twisted around, finding him standing in the shadows with his shoulder propped against the wall and his eyes on his phone.

  I had no idea how long he’d been there, but I guessed it was long enough for him to see what a wreck I was. Rogue was bringing Chase back in a wheelchair accessible cab that Fox had booked for them and my heart was lurching in every direction as I waited for them to arrive.

  “He’s not back in the Crew, JJ,” Fox said in a low voice as he tucked his phone away.

  “I know,” I said quickly.

  “Just don’t get attached to him being here. I know what you’re like.”

  “The guy’s been captive to fucking Shawn, Fox,” I took a step toward him as I bristled at those words. “I thought he was dead. What do you expect me to be like?” I’d barely slept since we’d left him at the hospital, working extra hours just so I could try and keep myself busy and not think about all the shit that must have been happening to him at Shawn’s hands.

  Rogue answered my texts about him with one word responses, clearly still pissed as hell at me and I couldn’t even blame her. I’d been a fucking asshole, and I’d felt like a dick about it ever since, but I didn’t even know what to do to fix it at this point. She’d moved closer to Fox every day since we’d called it quits just like I’d known she would, and the worst part about that was that I’d driven her there. Maybe it was better this way, ripping the Band-Aid off myself rather than letting her do it for me down the road. I just wished it didn’t feel like fucking dying.