PANIC

Chapter Thirty-One - ROOK

A set of headlights flash, then a horn honks but I can’t drag my eyes away from the man standing before me. Where the hell did he come from?

Then Wade has me by the waist and he throws me down on the wet ground near the back tire of my truck. My breath comes out with a loud oomph with the impact and then my head slams back onto the concrete, temporarily stunning me. “Jesus fucking Christ, Rook! You almost got flattened by a goddamn van!”

He lies there on top of me, breathing heavy, staring into my eyes, and I’m paralyzed. He comes back to his senses before I do and stands up, extending his hand.

I process what he’s doing but nothing moves. I’m just frozen. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He reaches down, grabs my arm, and hoists me to my feet. I lean back against the truck and realize he never answered me. “I said—”

“I heard you, Rook,” he says so softly I can barely make out his words over the constant stream of traffic flowing through the little downtown. “Let’s sit in your truck. Can we sit and talk in your truck?”

I’m too stunned to even answer. I haven’t talked to this guy in five years. The last time we had a conversation I was a kid, about to be thrown back into the foster care system because his mom wanted to keep us apart. Wade takes the keys from my hand, unlocks the door, and pushes me to get in the driver’s seat. I watch him walk around the front of the truck, then get in next to me, setting a backpack down on the floor in front of him.

“Rook—” he starts. But I put up a hand.

“Don’t. I don’t even know why I let you in this truck. Give me the keys.” I hold my hand out and he drops them into my palm. I shove the key in the ignition and start the truck. “Leave. I have nothing to say to you, Wade. If I wanted to talk to you I would’ve done it up in Sturgis.”

He shakes his head at me and I take him in. Like, really take him in for the first time since that horrible day that changed my life forever. His blond hair is wet and plastered against his face and even though I know he’s got gorgeous green eyes, I can’t really make out the color in the dark. He’s a lot bigger than I remember him, maybe because we were just kids back then. Five years can mean a lot of changes to a teen boy’s body.

“Rook, listen to me, OK? I just want to talk to you, that’s it. I just want a chance to talk to you.”

“Why? What could you possibly have to say to me that hasn’t already been said?”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes search my face, almost as if they’re pleading.

“Sorry?” I shake my head. Un-fucking-believable. “You’re sorry? You’re sorry for what, Wade?”

“For what happened.” I just stare at him. “What happened after… you know, after my mom kicked you out and you ended up with that Jon guy.”

“What?” I ask, stunned.

“I know what happened, Rook.”

“You don’t know shit. Get the fuck out of my truck.”

“I know everything, Rook.” And then he reaches down into the backpack and removes a folder and thrusts it at me.

I just stare at it. And I’m not sure how I know, but I know—“I do not want that.”

“I don’t care,” he says in a low voice. “You’re taking it. They’ve been trying to reach you through your math tutor but you just won’t listen.”

I look around wildly. They are following me! “Who sent you with this?”

“The FBI, Rook. You’re in so damn deep, baby, they just—”

“Do not fucking call me baby, OK? I’m not your fucking baby.”

“Sorry,” he says, raising his hands in an I surrender motion. “Sorry, I just need to talk to you and then I’ll leave if you want.”

“I’m not talking about Ronin, Wade. I’m not sure what’s going on, but that paper Gage showed me was utter bullshit. He’s not any of those things they say he is and I don’t care what kind of so-called proof those guys have, I’m not buying it.”

“This isn’t about Ronin, Rook. It’s about Jon, and those things he was doing back in Illinois. The things he made you participate in, the things—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” My heart is racing so fast I might pass out, that’s how rattled I am right now. “Who sent you?”

“I told you—”

“No, who specifically. I want a name, right fucking now, or I’m calling the police and reporting you for stalking.”

He hesitates for a second and then gives it up. “Agent Abelli, he’s out of the Chicago FBI field office. He’s been hunting Jon down for years and they were very close to busting him when you took off to Vegas last spring. Jon disappeared after that and then, of course, he resurfaced here.”

I’ve never heard that name. Who the fuck? “So? Why do they want to talk to me?”

“They think you have something of Jon’s. Something you got in Vegas. Did you get something of Jon’s in Vegas, Rook?”

My entire body is buzzing with anxiety right now. What the hell is all this about? I want to say I never went to Vegas and I have nothing of Jon’s, not a damn thing. But I’m just not sure I should play that card so soon. “What if I did?”

Wade breathes out a sigh of relief. “Oh, fuck, thank God. You need to hand that over, Rook. These people are not fucking around, OK? They want that information and if you saw any of it, you better pretend you didn’t.” He stops and grabs my shoulders with both hands. “Did you read any of it?”

I shake my head, far too frightened to actually form words right now.

“Where is it?” His eyes race around my face like he’s too amped up to concentrate on one point for more than a millisecond.

“I never saw it,” I say, backpedaling. I know Jon went to Vegas on business sometimes, but I have no idea what he did there. “I lied, I never saw it. I never went to Vegas, Wade, I came straight here, to Denver. You can check, I was in a homeless shelter, then I had a house-cleaning job—”

“So you never went to Vegas? Do you know if he had a security box there?”

I nod my head, because he is freaking me the fuck out and I need to give up something. “But I don’t know anything else about it. Not where it is or how to get into it, nothing.”

“Well, they checked the box, Rook. And it’s empty.” He sorta laughs here, but it’s one of those I’m-about-to-go-insane laughs and my heart rate jacks up about a thousand notches. “So that means someone has the stuff.” He shakes his head. It’s a jerky motion that definitely tells me he’s about to lose it and then he turns, his head down a little so his eyes are peeking up at me though a curtain of wet hair and dark lashes. He whispers, “Do you have the stuff?”

I swallow down the fear and say calmly, “I have no stuff, Wade. I don’t have anything of Jon’s.”

“Rook, listen to me, OK? You and those guys you’re with are the only ones who’ve had access to Jon, OK? So one of you has the shit they’re looking for. And let me just tell you, these people are not fucking around, OK?”

Each time he says ‘OK,’ the pitch of his voice raises, making him sound even more crazy, and my whole body begins to tremble, because I might not get out of this. Wade is not acting right.

“If you have it, Rook, you gotta tell me. Because they’ve got my mom, Rook. They’ve got my mom locked up on some fake-ass charges and they’ll send her to prison if I don’t figure out where this shit is. Do you understand?”

This snaps me back from the edge of fear and puts me on the offense immediately. “Am I supposed to give a shit about your mother?” I laugh. “Really? Let them lock her up! After what she did to me!”

“I’m sorry about that. I tried to stop her, you know that. I tried to stop her from sending you back to the State. She just wouldn’t listen and she threatened to cut me off. I needed her help to race.”

“You were a grown-ass man, Wade. You were eighteen years old. You could’ve helped me if you cared one shit about what was happening.”

“Yeah, and you were underage, Rook. It’s called statutory rape, sexual predator-type stuff—it was a huge risk.”

He’s serious. This asshole thinks that saving me from living on the streets, from those crack-houses the fucking foster care people sent me to… saving me was a risk? “You’re pathetic. You have no idea what it means to take a risk for someone you love. To put it all on the line for them. None. You’re nothing but one pathetic, selfish, fucking asshole.”

“What was I supposed to do, go to jail for you? That would’ve helped how? How would throwing my life away help you?”

“Oh, you poor, poor baby. And for your information, Jon was twenty-one when he found me. And he sure the fuck found a way to keep me.”

“Yeah, and look what that sick fuck was doing!”

“And you know who I blame for all those years, Wade? Just take one educated guess.” I stop to glare at him, the full depth of my hatred for everyone who ever met me as a child coming out, seeping through my pores like some hot sticky mess left over from all that sex I had with Jon as a teenager. All that filthy fucking sex that was not anything close to love. That entire relationship made me feel dirty, and unwanted, and useless, and… and… and insignificant.

“You, that’s who,” I say in a whisper. “I blame you for all the terrible, horrific things that happened to me back in that house. All of it. It’s one hundred percent your fault. Because I was just a girl, you were a man. I asked you for help. You said you loved me, for fuck’s sake. And then you just walked out. You are nothing but a selfish fucking piece-of-shit coward! You left me to live on the streets, to be picked up by that predator, to be held under his thumb for years.”

“That wasn’t me, Rook. I had nothing to do with that. That wasn’t—”

“You are the darkness, Wade. You are nothing but my dark, disgusting past trying to suck me back in to a life of shame.”

“I just want to say I’m sorry, Rook. And please, just listen to me about this FBI stuff, OK? I need you to—”

“Get out!”

My scream is echoing though my head when someone knocks on my window and scares the fuck out of me. I take a deep breath and realize it’s Vic Vaughn. I roll it down and look up at him.

“Everything OK in here, Blackbird?”

I shake my head. “No, he’s bothering me. I want him to leave.”

Vic reaches into the truck and presses the unlock button. The other three Vaughn brothers appear, open the passenger side door and pull Wade out.

“Rook, listen to what I said, OK? Read those papers. They took my mom and they’ll take someone from you too. They will, Rook, you’ll see!”

Vic and I watch as the Vaughn brothers drag Wade across the street and throw him on the ground in front of a candle shop that’s closed for the night. “You want some help, Rook? Want me to drive you home? My brothers can follow us, make sure everything’s cool.”

My first instinct is to say, ‘no, thank you.’ But I stop the words and nod up at Vic. “I would really appreciate that, thank you.”

“Scoot over, Gidget,” he says with a smile as he pushes me into the passenger seat. “And I swear, you’d think one odd name was enough, but woman, you seem to have a collection of them. Hey, Vinn!” he calls out the window. “I’m driving Rook over to Spencer’s, you guys follow to keep an eye out for any more psychos.” And then he gets in the truck and I breathe out a huge sigh of relief.

Until I pick up the papers and see exactly what they say. I scan the stack quickly. All bad stuff. All the same stuff Gage was trying to tell me.

All stuff that can’t be true.

But maybe it is?

And then the fear comes back and it takes all my willpower not to collapse right there in the front seat.