Collateral

by Callie Hart

  “She’s not expecting you,” Cade tells me, ruefully rubbing at the back of his neck. “She’s gonna freak out. After you didn’t see her in Seattle, well…” He trails off, letting me imagine how she took my refusal to meet with her. Maybe she was angry. Maybe she was upset. At the end of the day, I hadn’t been able to face it, though. I wasn’t ready back then. If I’d have seen her at that point, when I was raw and overcome with everything that had happened, I might have been able to listen to her. I might have been able to forgive her. But I don’t know whether I would have been able to accept her as my sister again. She would always have been my blood, but the bond we’d always shared—we were so close before she disappeared—that might not have been something I would have been able to open up to again. And that was the whole point.

  I wanted my sister back. I want Alexis back. Nerves thrill through me as I admit that to myself. “You don’t think she’s going to be pissed I’m here, do you?” I ask Cade.

  He shoots me an amused glance out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, Doc, you have no idea how stupid that question is.”

  I don’t know if I should be offended, worried or reassured by that response. Cade doesn’t seem to feel inclined to expand any further on his comment, so we walk very slowly together back toward the compound. I can see as we get closer there are countless motorcycles propped one after the other in a long row around the inside perimeter of the fence. So many people. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a horde of bikers wasn’t it.

  “You call this inconspicuous?” I say as I exhale.

  “No. I don’t call it that.” Cade smiles at me—a warm, friendly smile. “I call it home. I call it safe. I call it necessary.”

  Safe. Necessary. Those concepts aren’t unfamiliar to me. Up until very recently, I was being shunted from pillar to post because it was necessary. Because I wasn’t safe. When things grew markedly safer and it wasn’t so important that we hid in the shadows all the time, we never really made it back to Zeth’s warehouse, though. We tried sleeping there one night and it just felt too weird. Too alone, even with Zeth, myself and Michael to fill the place with sound. We’d moved straight back to The Regency Rooms, and now that place feels like some strange semblance of home, in its own odd way.

  I catch sight of Rebel as we arrive in front of a huge, ten-foot-high chain link gate—the only way in or out of the compound as far as I can see. My brother-in-law is leaning against a metal post, apparently waiting on us, chewing a toothpick over and over in his front teeth. “Well, hello,” he says, giving me a tight smile. There’s no quick, sharp wit to him today. Only a tense, almost anxious look I find strangely worrying. This isn’t a side of him I’ve seen before. I’m used to the annoying, over-confident version of him that drives me crazy. This quiet, reserved Rebel is new and unexpected.

  He pushes off from the metal post and opens the gate in front of us. “I can’t say I’m not a little shocked, Dr. Romera. I thought I was gonna have to kidnap you to get you here.”

  “You think Zeth would have let you?” I quirk an eyebrow at him, noting the flash of something that passes over his face when I mention Zee. Not irritation. Not anger. A hard emotion to place. I don’t know him well enough to decipher what it means.

  “Probably not, I’m sure. I wouldn’t really be stupid enough to try and take something from your man, Sloane. I like my body the way it is. Intact.”

  He slaps Cade on the back, and then the other man hobbles off, giving me a brief wave as he heads into the closest building, where loud rock music is blaring out into the courtyard.

  “I’ll come see that leg before I go,” I call after him.

  “He’s got eighteen pins in there. He can barely ride anymore,” Rebel informs me.

  “What? He should be in physical therapy, surely?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head, Doc. Cade’s receiving PT alright.” There’s a smirk to Rebel’s voice that I might not be able to see with his back to me, but I can hear it all too well. There’s obviously a story behind that comment, but I’m sure as hell not going to ask what it is. “Soph’s in the bar. I’ll show you where that is and then I’ll leave you two to it.”

  I don’t question why the hell my sister’s in a bar already and it’s only eleven a.m. I’m learning not to question a lot of things. Rebel leads me across a broad patio toward a low-lying building with cracked plaster, painted a very pale sunshine yellow unlike the industrial grays and blacks of the other buildings.

  “Is that your clubhouse?” I ask.

  Rebel looks over his shoulder, face drawn into a look of horror. “What about this building screams Widow Makers HQ to you?”

  “The charming décor, obviously,” I grumble.

  “Our clubhouse is downtown. We run an ink shop out of there, too. Gotta keep things looking legit for the tax man, right?”

  “So what do they think this place is then?”

  “Running bets are on religious cult or free-sex community.”

  “Oh.” Not much I can say to that, really. Rebel gives me a grin that’s only half as wicked as normal. He opens the door to the bar and stands back so I can enter. “Good luck,” he whispers. And then the door is slamming behind me.

  Motherfucker. So much for letting Lexi know I’m here. Guess that’s all on me. My eyes struggle to focus in the sudden dimness of the room. It smells of sticky, syrupy liquor and fried food. The kinds of smells you’d associate with any normal bar. Except there’s a chemical bite to the air in here as well. Something unfamiliar yet recognizable at the same time. It hits me at the same time my eyes manage to adjust to the darkness. Paint. It smells like wet paint.

  “Sloane?”

  I spin around startled by the voice behind me. And there she is, my sister, dressed in what can only be an oversized man’s dress shirt, though where she got that is anybody’s guess. Seems as though it’d be hard to find a guy around these parts who frequently wears anything but a black T-shirt and a leather cut. Alexis shakes her head slowly, as though she can’t actually believe her own eyes.

  “Did he tell you I was dying again?” she whispers.

  “No. He didn’t. I just…I thought…”

  Alexis walks toward me, her eyes locked on me like she thinks I’ll vanish if she even blinks. “You came to see me,” she says simply.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She puts something down—a paint palette. The object looks odd in her hand. I’m used to seeing her with a textbook pinned under one arm and a cell phone in her other, but a paint palette? Yeah, I’m having trouble making sense of the image. The shirt she’s wearing is actually covered in paint—small splashes and long laces of color that stain the white fabric from collar to cuff. “Um,” she says, and the two of us just look at each other. “Is everything okay with Mom and Dad?”

  “Maybe you should go visit them. I’m sure Mom would love to see you. It’s been a long fucking time since she laid eyes on you, y’know?” Since running into Dad with Agent Lowell, I’ve spoken to him twice on the phone—once to let him know I was back at work, and a second time when he called me to let me know he’d told Mom. Told her the truth. Since I knew Alexis was alive and things with the DEA had come to a head, he figured it was okay for Mom to finally hear the truth—that her daughter hadn’t been in a horrific car crash and forgotten who she was. That instead she found herself involved in a dangerous court case that had swept her as far from her family and her old life as she could get.

  “I just don’t know…what to say to them.” She paces around me, a look of anxiety pulling on her features. She’s different now. The last time I was with her, I didn’t take the time to look at her properly. I was too busy exploding at the news that she was married. Now that I’m seeing her in this environment, the subtle differences and the changes in her are plain to see. Even though she’s stunned by my sudden arrival and clearly on edge, she carries herself with a confidence she never really possessed before.

  I’d always th
ought she was still a baby before she vanished into thin air. The truth is that she was an adult even then, but now she seems older. More woman than girl.

  “I can understand that. But…you should still make the trip. It won’t matter what you say to them. They’ll just be happy to see you alive.”

  Alexis walks across the bar, eyeing me carefully out of the corner of her eye. She goes to stand in front of a canvas that’s been erected in front of a window, where the tables and chairs of the bar have all been pushed back to make room. “Aren’t you going to give me hell?” she asks. She picks up a paintbrush and slowly draws it over the material in front of her, though I can tell she’s not really paying attention to what she’s doing.

  “No, I’m not.” I surprise myself when I say this. The whole journey here, I’ve gone over everything I want to say to her. How badly I want to tell her she hurt me. How badly I worried. How sick and twisted my head got when I used to lie in bed at night and imagine what was being done to her. And lastly, I thought about how I would tell her all about what I gave away in order to get her back.

  But now we’re here and Alexis is standing in front of me, I don’t want to make her feel bad. I just want to understand, and I want to move on. Desperately. I want to shelve the toxic anger eating away at me, and I want to stop feeling so betrayed.

  Alexis places the tip of her paintbrush handle into her mouth and turns to face me, drawing in a deep breath. “I can understand how you feel. And I’m really sorry for keeping things from you. You deserved better than that. You know...” She sighs, apparently struggling with her words. “I always loved you, Sloane. I do love you. I didn’t want what happened to me, and once I found myself in a situation I couldn’t get out of, I didn’t want you to be dragged in or harmed in any way, either. I did what I thought necessary to keep you safe. And I know it backfired. I know you ended up in danger anyway, and I know you nearly lost everything because of me. You’ll never know how sorry I am for that.”

  “You should have trusted me,” I whisper.

  “I did trust you. I did. I just didn’t trust other people to keep their word. That’s what it all came down to in the end. It was very, very complicated. I couldn’t explain that to you or Mom and Dad back then.”

  “Well, how about now? Why not explain it to me now? I just drove all the way here, little sister. I have nothing better to do, and I’d love to hear this story, I really would.” I try to keep the bite out of my voice, but it’s hard to do. Alexis slowly nods her head. She places her brush down on the lip of the easel, and comes toward me.

  “Alright,” she says. “I’ll start at the beginning, then.”

  ******

  Alexis tells me the story of a young woman going to her parents’ house, only to find herself kidnapped and sold twice over. She tells me a story of a girl who falls in love with a boy, even though she knows she shouldn’t. She tells me a story of insane DEA agents and Mexican cartel members, intent on finding and destroying her. And I begin to understand.

  I don’t like it, but it starts to make sense.

  By the time Alexis is done with her story, I don’t hate my sister anymore. I’m not mad at her. I’m still angry, though. After holding onto that emotion for such a long time, letting it consume me from the inside out, there’s no such thing as just letting go. It’s still with me, though I have no real focus for it anymore. I’m just angry. At the situation Alexis found herself in. At the situation I found myself in. At all of it.

  Alexis tells me she loves me, and I find it easier than I thought I would to tell her the same. We’re hugging when Rebel comes to find his wife.

  “God, I thought you’d be killing each other by now,” he says, leaning in the doorway. He is arrogant and cocky, and does multiple things in a day to make me want to smack him, but I understand him a little better now. And I’m glad my sister has him. “The boys will be here soon, Soph,” he tells my sister. “Better get your canvas packed up before it get trashed and someone shoves their boot through it.” I watch as he helps her pack up her paintbrushes and pots and between the two of them they carry her art equipment out of the bar. I’m handed a small wooden box filled with tiny paint-encrusted tins, cloths and jars of different fluids. I catch sight of Alexis’ canvas, carried carefully by the frame in Rebel’s hand, as we leave the bar, and the painting it bears makes the breath in my throat catch. It’s me. A young, smiling, happy version of me, from before all of this madness.

  Alexis gives me a shy smile when she sees my expression. “Sorry, it’s not very good,” she whispers, biting on her lower lip.

  I just shake my head. “It is, Lexi. It really is.”

  Rebel’s shoulders hitch up and down as he laughs quietly. “I can’t get used to hearing that,” he says. Turning to my sister, he plants a firm kiss on the top of her head. “Lexi. It’ll never be your name.”

  A part of me wants to kick him in the back of the leg for that. The possessive part that still thinks Alexis belongs to me and my parents, and not him. But I don’t because I can see the truth. She really isn’t Alexis anymore.

  She is Sophia, and she does belong to Rebel. All I need to do to confirm that is to look at her and see the love pouring out of her. Alexis was the sister I lost. The woman in front of me is a different person. She is Sophia. And she is still my sister—a new sister who I will love just as much as I loved the old one.

  ******

  I look at Cade’s leg—so much metal inside, it will take serious work to ever function properly again—and then I get on the road. Staying the night would be the smart move, but I just…I can’t. I need to go home. I need to see Zeth.

  It takes me just a day and a half to arrive back in Seattle—half the time it took me to get my ass out to see Sophia. Without the apprehension of facing something unpleasant holding me back, I break countless speed limits in my haste.

  When I burn back into the city, my man is exactly where I expect him to be. The gym is still empty and will be for some time yet. There’s so much work to do, refitting the place from top to bottom. Every time Zeth comes close to finishing the place off, he suddenly finds another reason to push back the opening date. The floors need replacing. A wall needs to be knocked down. A cage needs to be installed. The repairs and construction would go a hell of a lot quicker if he had more than himself and Michael working on the project, but I get the feeling time isn’t a factor here. The gym will be opened when Zeth’s good and ready and not a moment before.

  He’s stripped to the waist when I enter the building, even though it’s just as freezing inside as it is outside. He has sweat pouring down his back, though—the lump hammer he swings repeatedly at a dividing wall between one side of the gym and another—I swear he only just put up that wall—reminds me of doing the very same thing myself. Only that time it was in his basement, and there was money involved. An awful lot of money.

  “You’re early,” Zeth grunts out. How he’s heard my light-footed entrance over the steady swing and crash of his hammer is beyond me. He just knows…

  “I did what I set out to do, and then I came home.” I place both my hands palm-down on his back, wanting to feel the twist and stretch of all that muscle as it works. Zeth tenses at the touch, stopping what he’s doing. He’s smiling when he turns around.

  “You missed me, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  He snakes his arms around my waist, crushing me to him. Some girls might shrink away from all that sweat, but not me. I revel in it. I lean into him and I breathe him in. He returns the favor, and for a moment we just stand there, wrapped around one another.

  “You’ve ruined my plans,” Zeth whispers lightly into my ear.

  “And what plans might those be?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  “Tell me.”

  He shakes his head, pulling back to grin down at me. “Oh. There she is. My angry girl. Been a while,” he laughs. I’m getting used to this now—having a boyfriend w
ho laughs sometimes. It’s the most delicious feeling.

  “No more surprises, Zeth,” I grumble, though I can’t even pretend to be pissed for long.

  He is immoveable, as ever. “I’m not telling. How about I show you instead?”

  “Now? I thought I was early?”

  Zeth shrugs. “Fuck it.” He pulls on his T-shirt—more muscles moving and shifting, sending warm spirals of want through my body—and then he’s taking me by the hand and guiding us to the Camaro he has parked two streets away. The Camaro. I never thought he’d get it back, and yet somehow he did. He just came home with it one day and I didn’t ask questions.

  I have plenty of questions as Zeth drives us out of the city, though. Once we’ve left Seattle’s limits, he pulls over onto the side of the road and pulls a length of silk out of the glove box. It’s the same length of silk he used to blindfold me when he introduced me to the cane.

  “Oh?” I ask.

  “Uhuh.” He reaches across and ties the strip of material around my head, and I let him.

  “Am I going to need to grade my pain in a moment?” My breath catches in my throat.

  Zeth’s laugh is a deep rumble in his chest. “Wait and see.”

  We drive for no more than ten minutes, the road swinging from left to right as we head down what can only be mountainside roads, before Zeth pulls the car over again and kills the engine. I know better than to remove the blindfold without being told it’s okay, so I sit there, my blood buzzing through my veins in anticipation, while Zeth gets out of the car and comes to open my door.

  “Careful. Watch your step,” he whispers into my ear, his mouth dangerously close to my skin. With my hand in his, we walk about twenty paces before he stops us and carefully unties my blindfold. His face is the first thing I see, and he’s excited. I can see the light of it in his eyes. I don’t avert my gaze to see where he’s brought me—I’m far too fascinated by the look he’s wearing. He cups my face in his hands and he kisses me, carefully placing his lips against mine—a feather-light touch.