Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  “Gone,” Thorne said simply as they got in.

  “Because…us?” Marta motioned between her and Yana.

  “No. Other stuff.” Thorne jammed the minivan into gear. “And we’re getting them back.”

  Nadia clutched Mr. Duck, feeling like she might throw up. Benny was everything beautiful in the world. He was everything good. And God, Kara. What would Hangman do to Kara? They were moving. Thorne was taking them somewhere. So many cars, so many rides.

  Benny out there.

  All her fault.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder. Her mother.

  This would be how her mother had felt.

  She turned to the backseat. “What do you do?” she asked, tears in her eyes. “What do I do?”

  “Veeritz,” she said. “Trust, believe.”

  “What if I can’t?” Nadia clutched the duck harder. “You have to believe for me,” she said, squeezing it, picturing Benny’s chubby little fingers around it.

  “I’ll find him,” Thorne said. “In a few hours, that boy will be safe. Nadia—”

  When she didn’t answer, he reached over and grabbed her arm. “Look at me.” Gently he shook her. “Look at me.”

  She stared into his eyes.

  “You’ve never had much of a reason to trust me, but you can trust me now. Trust me, baby.”

  “I trust you.” She trusted him on a level that went beyond guns and fighting and him being in a criminal gang. “Take Richard. I don’t need him babysitting me.”

  “This has to be me alone, Nadia. This is no-fucking-around time.”

  “Thorne.”

  “Don’t argue,” he said. “I haven’t been good for a lot of things. But I’m going to save Benny the best way I know how. Take me seriously. I need to be alone to win this one.”

  “They know you. You can’t surprise them.”

  “Oh, I can still surprise them,” he grated.

  “We can be nearby.”

  “Respect what I need, Nadia. Do you want Benny back?”

  “Thorne—”

  “If you want him back, you will stay safe and hang back with Richard until they’re released.”

  She felt sick.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I need to go into this alone.”

  Alone. He said it like it was a new class of word, like there was alone, and then there was alone. As in, alone in the world.

  “You’re not alone,” she said.

  The pain in his eyes said otherwise.

  He drove around in a loopy pattern, maybe shaking off any tail, or maybe he was as crazed as she felt.

  She needed to tell him about Benny. And that she loved him, but his alone thing had her freaked. She thought back to his words: my power is in being alone. Unattached. I’m free to win because I’m free to die. Would she wreck all that by telling him he had a family? Would dropping this bombshell cramp his style?

  He stopped at a hotel in the next city. A nice downtown one.

  “You got cash?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Benny and Kara will be stashed somewhere. When I go wherever they send me—because it won’t be the bridge; they’re just saying that for now—I’ll make sure you get to Kara and Benny before I deal with what I have to deal with.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you keep your phones charged. Take a cab to wherever I tell you. You and Richard. You’ll grab your sister and your boy.”

  “Thorne,” she said, wanting to tell him everything in her heart.

  “Go.” He seemed so far away, ramrod straight in his seat.

  She unbuckled and turned to him. “Thorne.” She clutched his arm, vaguely aware of her mother and Marta quietly exiting the car.

  Thorne was stiff. Unresponsive. His whisper was harsh. “Let me do this thing.”

  This warrior thing, he meant. He was so voodoo about it. She grabbed him and kissed him. He barely kissed her back, and when she pulled away, he looked a little bit broken.

  He pushed her away. “I’ll get your boy for you.”

  She exited the car in a daze, feeling unfinished. Her mother came to her, linked her arm in hers. “He will get Benny,” Nadia said in Russian.

  Like a ghost, she went through the motions of booking them into the boutique hotel. It was only by pulling out her gangster-daughter haughtiness that she avoided too much scrutiny of her fake ID. Her mother and aunt were just visiting, not staying there. It worked—they didn’t have luggage and they looked like a family, too. They all had the same chunky nose and lips.

  Yana and Marta staked out seats in the lobby; in one sense, they fit right in, wearing those outfits they’d made themselves, but they were stiff and skittish in the unfamiliar space. They looked around a lot and practically jumped out of their skin when a security guard wandered through.

  They headed through the atrium, which she supposed was technically beautiful, but nothing mattered without her boy. She hit the elevator button, picturing Benny hitting the elevator buttons with his chubby fingers, and she bit back a sob.

  God, she’d been away from Benny for so long. He probably thought she’d abandoned him. If only she could get him back, she’d never let him go.

  Her mother took her hand. There were no words, just a strong squeeze. Her mother was by her side.

  The room was lavish and clean, but she only wanted to be at home, surrounded by Benny’s things, like that might bring him nearer.

  But Hangman might have people there.

  Had she been too greedy? Had she tried to take too much?

  Thorne would get Benny and Kara back, she bravely assured Yana and Marta, masquerading as a woman who wasn’t dying inside.

  She insisted on ordering room service, forcing them to pick foods. They complied—on the condition that she would choose something to eat. A burger, then.

  After they put the order in, she insisted that they call Lorna at the church to check on their friends.

  She sat on the other bed half listening to them spin on in Russian, picking up more and more. There would be so much to do with them. She grabbed a hotel pad and pen and made a list. Attorney. And then, Trip to Target. Doctor’s checkup. But she was making the list with a fraction of her attention. All she saw, all she could think about, was Benny. Benny frightened. Benny hurt. She couldn’t let herself picture the worst—she’d enter a black hole she might never come out of.

  She looked at the clock radio. A bit after six p.m. Just over four hours until Thorne was to show up under the Geo Taylor Bridge.

  That was the other stone in her stomach. Thorne. Let me do this thing, he’d said.

  What if she lost him, too?

  She lowered herself to the bed, list in hand. It was as if the world was tuned in to a terrifying new frequency that wouldn’t click off.

  “You guys should take some nice, luxurious showers. Or baths. Luxurious baths.” She searched the translation program on her phone for those words when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “He’s a good man. Sposogny.”

  “Capable,” Marta translated.

  Nadia burst into tears at this, hiding her face in her hands.

  The women sat on either side of her. Her aunt. Her mother.

  The truth came out in a torrent of Russian and English. “He’s Benny’s father, but he doesn’t know,” she said. “I feel like I should’ve told him. He’s in this dangerous gang…” she poured out the whole story, weepily consulting the phone when they couldn’t get a word. She told them how she loved him, even though he was in this gang, and that there was something good inside him, even though he was in this life. She told them how she felt like he’d said good-bye out there. She explained about her decision never to tell him about Benny because of how dangerous it would be for the boy. But here, Thorne was ready to give his life! How could she ever have thought he wouldn’t do what’s best for Benny? He was a member of a vicious gang, but his actions communica
ted the opposite. She was more than the Party Princess, just as Thorne was more than a thug. He was a man who could be trusted, a man who cared.

  A man who loved.

  But if she told him, it could mess up his fighting style. She explained about his non-attachment thing. How having nothing to lose gave him power.

  The women didn’t understand this last part.

  “He says he fights best when he can be unattached…” she looked at Marta, who furrowed her brow. They looked up the word for non-attachment on the phone. She tried to explain a bit more of the concept. They seemed to think it was crazy.

  Maybe it was. But shouldn’t she respect his wishes?

  “He’s a better fighter when he has nothing to lose. I don’t want to mess him up…what if it’s harmful for him to learn he has a son? For me to tell him I love him? He’s walking into all this danger—what if he fights less well?” It seemed a little crazy to her now, too. But shouldn’t she respect his wishes?

  She looked into her mother’s eyes.

  “Tell me what to do,” she pleaded.

  “You know what to do,” Yana replied.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Thorne sat at his desk doing calligraphy. It was the technique of the old masters: you fight the way you train. You fight the way you draw. How you do anything is how you do everything.

  He tried to form his letters with a sense of abandon, wild and free, but he didn’t feel wild and free at all. His letters were careful. Tentative. He had too much to lose.

  The letters understood that.

  He was scared. Not of his death, though he would certainly die today. He was frightened for Benny. His son.

  Show up under the Geo Taylor Bridge at 10 pm. Alone. Or your son dies. The girl dies.

  The message had confirmed what he’d suspected at the park: Benny was his son. Worse, Jerrod had figured it out. Maybe he’d run the DNA—Jerrod did shit like that. Thorne had stood there in the hotel room next to Nadia, staring down at the phone with a freight train roaring through his heart.

  Benny. His son.

  Your son dies.

  He’d cleared the phone’s screen before she could see it. He’d get Benny back to her; she didn’t need to know that he knew.

  He’d meant what he’d said about intergang kidnappings. There was a code. Jerrod would be good for his word on Benny’s and Kara’s lives. That’s how it worked.

  Things would work out.

  For Benny and Kara, anyway.

  Three hours he had to wait.

  He knew this type of exchange inside and out. They’d call him and change the meeting place soon. He’d deliver himself into Jerrod’s hands, and they’d make him helpless somehow. His sister’s death would go unavenged.

  There was no other way.

  They would tie him up, or more likely, give him something to deaden his limbs. Once he knew that Benny and Kara were safe, he’d see about fighting his way free.

  He drew another letter. These last ones should be the wildest and most reckless of all, in the tradition of the Samurais going into battle. Instead they were weak. Small.

  He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the image of his sister’s face, and the fear in her blue eyes. He played it back in his head like he always did, the men holding him, making him watch. She might not have died if he hadn’t burst in and tried to save her.

  After the night of the scorpions, he’d had nothing left to lose; that’s when he exploded with power. He’d gone down to where the men hung out, and he’d taken out the whole place. Nothing mattered. He’d walked in that door and didn’t stop killing. He’s walked out bathed in men’s blood. Unfit for anything.

  He couldn’t fight like that now—like a maniac with nothing to lose.

  He went to the kitchen and sucked down a glass of water. He poured another one and splashed it right into his face. Three hours.

  He looked out at the funeral home. His death was the only gift he had for his family now.

  A knock at the door. He knew that it was Nadia—the last person he should be seeing. He flung it open.

  “Thorne,” she said.

  “You can’t be here.”

  She came in anyway, leaning on her cane.

  “Did they contact you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “They will. They’ll give you instructions and you’ll follow them. You need to go. You need to let me prepare.”

  Her lips parted, as though she had something more to say. “Thorne…” She looked so alone.

  He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. “It’ll work out,” he whispered. “I know the waiting’s hard.” He would do anything for this woman and his little boy; his universe had shrunk to that one point of truth.

  Still she said nothing.

  “What, Nadia?”

  “He’s yours,” she blurted. “He’s your boy.”

  He looked down at the top of her head, heart pounding. She was telling him.

  “I wanted to tell you, but you’re in Hangman, and everybody on the planet wants to kill you, and I had to think about Benny. And the way you left…”

  She wanted him to know?

  “He’s your boy,” she said. “Your biological son. I know we used condoms, but…they don’t always work.”

  He swallowed past the fist in his throat.

  “I love him so much—I wanted to protect him. But you deserve to know, Thorne.” She pulled back and looked at him, awash in pain. “Benny is amazing. He has so much of you in him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. So sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said.

  Her dark brows drew together as she watched his eyes, searching for surprise, shock. “He’s your son.”

  “I know,” Thorne said.

  “You knew?”

  “I suspected, and then I knew.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “Upset? How could I be upset about you protecting our kid like that? I’m the last person anybody would choose for a dad.” He looked down at his mangled hand, resting on her shoulder. “Christ, that kid deserves more than some lowlife thug—”

  “Stop it.” She pressed her thumb clumsily over his mouth.

  “Anybody else—”

  “Fuck you, Thorne. You know who you are? You’re the man who risked his life to save Richard and me. You helped to rescue my mother. You’re the only person who ever cared to see through the Party Princess shit. You were…everything. You’re the man I love.”

  Love. The word hit him like a shockwave, but he knew it wasn’t true. He’d heard her try to pawn him off to Kara. “Don’t.”

  “I love you—I do—”

  “You don’t. Just…don’t. “

  “I love you. I always did. Why is that so hard to believe? I’m not lying—”

  “I heard you,” he interrupted. “I heard you.”

  “Heard me what?”

  “I heard you talking to Kara. Back before everything blew apart.”

  She stiffened. “What?”

  “I had the mansion wired, and I heard you talking to Kara in the sunroom one day. A couple of weeks before Victor went down. I heard everything.”

  She looked stunned.

  “Bugs. Listening devices. And I heard you offering to share me with her. You practically begged her to take me off of your hands.”

  “You were listening…”

  “Believe me, I went out of my way not to listen to you—I was going for the gang chat, but I picked you guys up instead. I heard enough before I turned it off. Enough to get the picture.”

  He saw when she put it together. “You heard…”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, my God. That’s when you changed. It’s when…”

  She didn’t have to say it. It was the day he started lovehating her.

  “God, Thorne! You couldn’t have given me a chance to explain?”

  “You made it pretty clear. Come on, I’ll set it up. He’ll go for you. He’d kill to fuck you. He’s not th
at bad.”

  Her mouth hung open.

  “Some doors are best to stay closed,“ he added. He could recite the whole thing, of course.

  “Thorne. It was bullshit.”

  “I know what I heard.”

  She grabbed his shoulders. He let her—he’d never stop enjoying her touch, her proximity, even when it wasn’t about kindness. “What you heard, that was lies, Thorne. I was lying to Kara. I was so afraid she’d take you away from me.”

  “Kara?”

  “God, you must’ve hated me,” she said.

  “You thought Kara could take me away?”

  “She always took away everything that I cared about. Everything I loved.”

  His heart beat like crazy. Was it possible? “You’re telling me that was you fucking with Kara?”

  “I didn’t want to lose you.”

  His felt his world turn inside out. “You thought I would go for Kara? Over you?”

  “I didn’t want to lose you,” she repeated in a small voice. She straightened, then. “And it changed after that. We changed. I felt it.”

  Heat came over his face. God, the way he’d treated her after that.

  “Everything was…darker. You thought the game was actually real. And I played along. Saying all that shit.”

  “I liked you saying that shit,” he said.

  “You must’ve hated me.”

  “No, I loved you,” he said.

  She searched his eyes, looking for the truth, maybe. He let it be there, let her see it. “I loved you, and it fucked me up to hear that, but I couldn’t stay away.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I couldn’t stay away from you, even then.”

  “But you did. You left to join Hangman. You compared me to hotel soap…”

  “I know,” he said. “It was so dangerous, you sniffing around Hangman. You know how psycho Hangman is.”

  “Why the hell even join them?”

  He paused. She’d trusted him enough to tell him about Benny. He would give her this. He took a breath. “The people who killed my sister,” he began. “Jerrod was one of them. The last living one of them.”

  “What?” She searched his eyes. “Jerrod? I don’t understand.”

  “Jerrod had plastic surgery. I’d hunted him for years and couldn’t find him. He’s a cousin of the Slaters you know today.”