Rouse (Revenge Book 7)

by Trevion Burns

  Martin sighed and answered. “Charged and held. 48 hours.”

  Linc’s eyebrows shot up. “They’re still in custody?”

  Martin smirked at the shock on Linc’s face. “I know right? Chavez hasn’t slept since they found that can. Back and forth between the courthouse and precinct, non-stop. She fought hard, man. Said holding them was the only way to stop them from destroying evidence, making sure they’ll appear in court because they have the money to flee, and keeping the victims and witnesses safe. Everyone was sure they’d be released, but… I guess even the most crooked judge couldn’t risk fucking up that badly.”

  “They’re still dangerous. Even behind bars.” Linc thought of Gage, and his heart lurched. Usually, that lurch would confuse Linc. That swell in his heart for the single most spoiled, privileged man on the island. But at that moment, the swell didn’t confuse him. Looking across at Martin, the very man who’d dropped the bomb on Linc that that spoiled, privileged man was actually his half-brother, the swell made perfect sense.

  Lisa. Emma. Gage. It was as if three different worlds had been stolen from him. Without him even realizing it.

  “What about the guard that was found in the cargo hold?” Linc asked. “Battered and bloody?”

  “He corroborates David and Pierce’s story. Says there was no royal blue can on the boat.”

  “He’s trying to save his own ass.” If that guard talked, he was dead, and everybody knew it. Linc would’ve cut off an arm to have been in that interrogation room when the guard was being questioned. “He was beaten up. He was locked inside a container. A gun was found in that container covered in his blood. Obviously, he got into an altercation, and the informant got the upper hand.”

  Martin shrugged. “Guard says he locked himself in the crate—accidentally, and that the blood on the gun came from a cut on his hand earlier that day.”

  Linc hissed and nearly swept the beer off the countertop.

  After a beat, Martin held a hand out. “Listen, man, I gotta run. Shift starts in ten.”

  Linc clapped his hand on Martin’s, giving him the signature handshake they’d thought up together years ago. Linc still remembered the day they’d created that handshake, during an uncharacteristically quiet, non-eventual day on the island that had left them both bored to death. A simpler time. A time when Linc still had the pleasure of knowing a beautiful woman would be waiting for him when he got home.

  After the shake, Martin began out of the kitchen.

  “Yo,” Linc called.

  Martin paused in the entryway and turned back, holding the edge while meeting Linc’s eyes across the room.

  “Thank you,” Linc said, the Ziploc bag crinkling when he laid his hand atop it. “Not just for the phone. But for everything. Everything you done for me.”

  Martin’s brows pinched. “Why does that feel like goodbye?”

  Linc didn’t respond.

  And Martin didn’t push, a tight smile crossing his lips before he clapped his hand on the wall, gave another wave, and disappeared around the corner.

  14

  With a deep breath, unable to be encased in the sadness for another moment, Veda stood from where she’d been sandwiched between two elderly people she didn’t know on the couch. Her eyes darted all around the living room in that small, humble house on the hill. A house that belonged to Lisa Hill’s parents. All of the furniture was old—floral wallpaper peeling from every corner with visible water damage leaking from the ceiling, but Veda knew, at the core, this had been a warm, loving home for Lisa when she’d still been alive.

  Veda gave a soft smile to every teary gaze that met hers as she stood, craning and angling her body in various directions as she went to leave, trying to avoid stepping on anyone’s feet. Several people were scattered around the house, having come to say their final goodbyes, all gazing longingly at the casket at the front of the room.

  Once she’d cleared all the people, Veda began toward the domed entryway of the kitchen, locking eyes with a short Asian man just as he was leaving it. The moment their eyes met, they both pointed at each other, faces lighting up in a “hey” fashion that could only happen when two people recognized each other but couldn’t quite pinpoint how. Veda gave the man a soft wave, and he returned it as they passed each other.

  Breaking her eyes away, Veda made it to the kitchen entryway and paused at the sight that met her, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Linc’s head was tilted back, eyes closed, with a beer bottle pressed to his lips. His throat bobbed as he chugged.

  Something flashed through Veda that made her want to scream, but she fought through it. This wasn’t the day to chide Linc. To be judgmental or motherly. This day, all he needed was a friend. So she crossed the kitchen without another word.

  Still chugging but sensing movement, Linc’s closed eyes popped open as she approached, watching her circle the kitchen island and hop on top of it, right next to him. Her legs hung down from the edge of the counter.

  Silence.

  Her gaze fell to the Ziploc bag sitting on the counter in front of Linc with the word ‘evidence’ written across the masking tape that had been stuck to it. She yearned to inquire about the cell phone sitting inside that bag but bit her tongue on that as well. She wanted to lighten the mood—make him feel better—and she had a feeling asking about that cell phone would only rattle him ten times more.

  Linc set down his beer, the glass clicking on the countertop, swallowing the amber liquid with his eyes lowered.

  She smiled softly at him while lifting the bronze coin she’d been clutching in her hand all day into the air between them.

  Linc eyes shot to that coin, and his chest swelled as he drank in the sight.

  It was as if Veda could see the world that coin instantly rocketed him into. The same world it took her to whenever she had it in her hand. The world where he’d breathed new life into her, in more ways than one. Her hand trembled as she shot back to that night, ten years ago, when he’d held that coin up for her in the very same way she held it up for him right then.

  Linc shook the chip. “This is my mother’s. It’s a one-year sober chip. She got it from AA.”

  “Whenever I’m scared,” Veda said, softly, her heart racing. “I just hold it in my hand…”

  “Real tight, like this…” Linc gripped the chip, hiding it in his big palm.

  Veda swallowed thickly, repeating his words as she hid the chip in her fist. “And it reminds me that…”

  “That everything’s going to be okay.”

  She paused—hearing his voice like it was yesterday. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Linc.”

  They searched each other’s eyes for a long quiet moment. A moment that only the two of them could understand with the depth they understood it right then. Without another word, Veda leaned forward and dropped the chip into the pocket of his slacks. It slid inside with ease, its weight taking it straight to the bottom.

  She exhaled once it was in. “I always did hate borrowing things from people. The anxiety of getting it back to them in one piece drives me crazy, and it’s rarely worth the hassle. This time though… it was. You’ll never understand how much it helped me over the years, Linc. Not just the coin, but the thought of you.” She drew in a breath. “Still, you have no idea what a relief it is to finally give that back to you. I think you probably need it more than I do right now anyway.”

  Linc’s eyes fell to her lips as she spoke, and then he turned away, lifting the beer and bringing it to his lips once more.

  “Should I be worried or relieved that you haven’t shed a single tear all morning?” She nodded into the living area behind her. “Of course, I never want to see you cry, but Jake did more blubbering than you did out there.” Veda thought of Jake’s breakdown in the living room earlier that morning—causing Lisa’s family to question how he knew her and the confused looks on their faces when Jake had informed them they’d never met. Thankfully, his emotional ass had made his exit hour
s earlier, forced to leave because he’d been scheduled to work. Many people had come and gone, including Coco, who, wearing a black skater dress, had appeared much less bloodthirsty and homicidal than she had a few days earlier when she’d shown up at Veda’s door covered in Todd Lockwood’s blood.

  Veda’s chest rose. “Shit. Too soon. Too soon for jokes. Let alone bad ones. I’m an asshole.” She held her hands out. “I’m sorry, Linc. My sensitivity chip has been missing since the day I was born. Everyone grieves differently—”

  “I want names,” Linc said, meeting her eyes without a smile or so much as an acknowledgment that he’d even heard her playful words. “I want all ten names.”

  Veda’s face fell. It took her a moment to even understand what he was asking. Then, she sputtered, “You’re the one who figured out my pattern. You were two steps ahead of me the whole time. Plus, you have video footage of the whole thing, right? Why do you need me to tell you ten names you already know?

  “I guessed your pattern, and I can’t see all ten of their faces in the video. Just like I couldn’t see yours.”

  Something shot through Veda, the same kind of feeling she assumed a crackhead must feel when they’d just laid eyes on a fresh pipe. The feeling that, just a day earlier, she’d promised Jake she was willing to fight to the death. At that moment, however, Veda lost the fight. She needed a hit. And she needed it bad.

  “I need to see that footage,” she said.

  “And I need to hear the names,” Linc countered, pressing his pointer finger into the countertop. “There was Todd, Eugene, Jax, Brock, Liam. You don’t know who the tenth one was. Who are the other four?”

  Veda paused, squinting at him from the corner of her eye. “Why?”

  His jaw clenched. “Tell me… the names.”

  A chill shot down Veda’s spine at what she saw in his eyes. What she heard in his voice. Her gaze fell to the near-empty beer bottle still clutched in his hand, and then, reluctantly, she whispered four names.

  “Clint Payton, Matthew Russo, Ezra Underwood, Jesus Vega.” After listing the four names, the words continued spilling from her lips, and she gave Linc their jersey numbers as well. The jersey numbers tattooed on the insides of all their wrists—leaving no question to any of their identities. As she whispered their names and jersey numbers to Linc, she knew she’d never have to repeat them. Just like the day she’d once recited her phone number to him at the gym, so many months ago, she knew he would remember. Even if weeks went by without a reminder, the names of her attackers would be burned into his brain forever, just like they were burned into hers. “Almost all of them work for Blackwater Cruises, too. Have you noticed that? Most of them in high-level positions. They really do all stick together don’t they?”

  Linc didn’t answer.

  She watched as he finished off the last of his beer, and reminded herself that today wasn’t the day for judgment, even as he retrieved a fresh one from the case sitting on the edge of the counter, cracked it open with his calloused hands, and took a healthy chug from that one as well.

  Veda found herself transfixed at the sight. “You’ve been on your own nearly all morning. So detached from her family.”

  Linc slammed the bottle back down on the counter, eyes lowered once more. He cleared his throat.

  Veda wondered if he was going to ignore her. She wouldn’t even be angry if he did, knowing she was being invasive.

  “They blame me,” he said, lifting his eyes to hers. “They blame me for her disappearance. For her death. And they’re not wrong. On either count.”

  Veda’s lip curled. “Of course they are.” She struggled for words. “And how fucking dare they? Fuck them!”

  Linc smirked and looked away, gazing out into the living room before lifting the beer back to his lips. For several minutes, they remained entrenched in silence, Linc’s eyes moving deeper into some distant place Veda couldn’t see until she worried he might never find his way back down to Earth.

  Then, he cut his eyes at her again, his voice coming so softly she barely heard it. “I won’t stop you.”

  Veda, also having disappeared into her own world, staring vacantly ahead at the small window that had been built above the kitchen sink, snapped her head toward him.

  “What?” she asked.

  “In Shadow Rock, the statute of limitations for rape is three years. So you can’t go after any of them legally. And going after them legally would also mean exposing yourself as The Chopper—as their attacker. But… If this is what you need to do… If you wanna keep doing it…” He licked his lips. “I won’t stop you.”

  For a moment, Veda was speechless. Then, she managed, “I don’t want it anymore.”

  He grimaced at her, beer forgotten as the confusion clearly raging inside of him manifested itself all over his face.

  “I thought getting revenge would fix me,” she explained. “Heal whatever’s so broken. For ten years, I’ve let it eat me alive, but all it’s done is destroy everything around me. I won’t let it destroy my second baby. My second chance. This baby won’t suffer the same fate as the first.” She paused, seeing that her explanation had only partially eased the perplexed look in his eyes. “You know how people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result? Well, I kept doing the same thing. Over and over. Attacking those guys, over and over. And every time, I’d think, ‘this is the one.’ This is the one that’ll finally fix it. This is the one that’ll make everything okay. Even when my world was on fire all around me, I kept going, expecting it to eventually be doused using the same can of kerosene that had gotten it so out of control in the first place. That’s insanity. I need to let go. Before my entire world really does burn to the ground at my feet. More than it already has anyway.”

  He took in her words, the corner of his lip flinching. “Two minutes ago you were demanding to see the footage from the party. Doesn’t sound like someone who’s really done.”

  “I just wanted to look at it.”

  “Like a crackhead just wants to look at the white rock? A cokehead just wants to look at the fresh line? Like a junkie who just wants to look at the needle, right?”

  “Listen. I’m aware that I have some serious work to do.” She smiled softly. “My resolve comes and goes. Sometimes seconds apart. When I say I’m done today, sometimes I don’t mean it as much as I did yesterday. I guess you and I have that in common.” She sighed, her heart broken to pieces at the sight of him drinking again. Her heart broke even more at the thought of him losing his job and quitting school. His green eyes were different as he looked away from her—off into the distance: hard, fierce. Nary a tear in sight, unlike the night he’d fallen apart in her arms. He was transforming before her eyes—spinning from all angles, morphing into something difficult for her to recognize. She saw it happening with every blink of her eye. A new change in him. Moving too rapidly—too intricately—for her to even begin figuring out how to stop it. “Just like you, I’m human. Sometimes I want to relapse. To let the madness swallow me up again because it’s easier. Because, even if only for a fleeting moment, it feels good. But then I come to my senses. I rebound before it’s too late. I wanna keep rebounding, Linc. I want Gage safe. I want my baby safe. I want Coco safe. I want you safe. I just want this all to end.”

  “Twenty-eight underage kids, locked in a royal blue container on the largest cruise ship in the world.” Linc huffed, smirking softly while meeting her eyes. “It never ends, Veda.”

  He looked away once more, and she studied his profile as he took another swig. “Penny Nailer had me kidnapped because I was pregnant. Is that what would’ve happened to my baby, once I gave birth? Forced into a shipping container? Carried off to a different country? To God knows where? To do God knows what?”

  The color drained from Linc’s face.

  Veda noticed. She also noticed the tremble growing at his chin, even though he didn’t show the emotion in his eyes. “What happens to the bab
ies?”

  He met her eyes, and she saw the exact moment the emotion clouding his green orbs moved to fury.

  Her chest swelled as she drew in a breath. “Last night, I was thinking. About the lead I gave you. About how Lisa was a patient of Penny Nailer’s right before she disappeared…?”

  Linc leaned forward, his biceps pulsing against his white dress shirt, the veins in his neck expanding so broadly they seemed seconds from tearing right through his tie. His head fell, and he exhaled deeply.

  Veda could almost hear his teeth as they ground, but she pushed on. “If Lisa was a patient of Penny’s… then that means she was newly pregnant when she disappeared. Just like I was. Except she was never found.” Veda’s eyes danced back and forth as she relayed to him the puzzle pieces she’d slowly been putting together in her own mind over the last few days. “I was so confused the other night when you broke down. And then it hit me. You said all you cared about was Lisa, your mom, me, and Emma.”

  Linc kept his head down, even as his heated eyes shot to the corners and melted through her like a hot knife through butter.

  Veda braved the burn of his eyes, letting it liquefy her as she held his fiery gaze. “Do you have a daughter?”

  The naked pause that fell was all the answer Veda needed. The hitching of his chest. The moisture in his eyes. The first glimpse of real emotion she’d seen from him all morning.

  “Like I told you before.” His voice came deeper. “The less you know, the safer you are.”

  “Oh my God,” Veda breathed, covering her mouth with her hands. Tears came to her eyes as she shook her head slowly, her stomach curled in knots. Just as the first tear was moments from falling down her face, however, she dropped her hands in her lap. “Jesus, we have to do something. We have to find her. We—we have to tell someone.”

  “No,” he spat, the blaze in his eyes moving to nuclear levels. “No.”