by C. L. Stone
“Stop, Kayli,” Marc said, tugging again, gentler this time. “He’s just egging you on.”
“What check?” I asked Jack again.
“You think I need you?” Jack shoved a finger back at my face. “It doesn’t matter if Wil is here as long as he’s going to school and the cops don’t catch him living somewhere. And if you’re both off on your own, then the state may reduce it, but I can still live on...”
It was like ice water striking at my very heart. “You...” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You get checks from the state?”
“You think I do nothing around here?” he bellowed. “You think I can’t support myself? You think your little contribution makes you tough shit?”
I smashed my fists against my thighs to stop myself from hurling them at his face. My mouth clamped shut and I was biting my tongue so hard, I tasted the blood boiling inside me. “How long?” I managed to utter.
“None of your business what I do with my money,” he said. “You dropped out of school and have been running around. When I stopped providing for you and your brother, you straightened up and worked and finally started contributing.”
Raven held up a hand between us. “This isn’t the time for this. Wil is still gone.”
But the revelation struck me hard. My father had lied to me. Lied about having money. He lost his job, and didn’t even try to look for another one. It’s why I’d dropped out of school. I’d started working part time jobs where I could get them. And when it wasn’t enough, I started stealing what I needed by picking pockets at the mall. Even then, we got kicked out of our old apartment and Jack convinced us we should stay at the hotel until we found another. But this whole time, I had been the only one paying the bills and contributing. Jack left nearly every afternoon when the bars opened to drink and pay for hookers out of the money I’d brought home for rent.
And now he tells me he’s been getting government assistance all along. Possibly using me and Wil the entire time as the state helped pay for what we needed. Only the money went to Jack. He must have drank it all. Gave it away to those hookers.
My rage bubbled over. I lunged at him. I wailed. I screamed. Marc tried to pull me back, but I wrenched myself free. Raven dropped my bags and wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me back, but not before I clawed at Jack’s face with a good swipe. Even then, it wasn’t enough.
“How could you?” I screamed at him as Raven started carrying me to the door. “We needed you and you kept it all to yourself? We were starving!”
“Get out!” Jack bellowed after me. “Ungrateful little shithead!”
A slew of curses fell from my lips as Raven towed me out. I fought him, but not as hard as I could have because he wasn’t the one I wanted to kill.
I was a mess, upside down, seeing red and choking on sobs as Raven brought me to the parking lot. Marc followed, carrying the book bags that Raven had dropped. His head was down and he stared at his feet as we left. He opened the truck and threw my bags into the back seat. Raven put me down in the passenger side and then shoved me over until I was in the middle.
Raven got inside, slamming the door. “Skatert'yu doroga.”
“Good riddance is right,” Marc said. He jammed the key into the slot and started the truck.
I sat back against the seat. My eyes were open and I was staring at the windshield, but I wasn’t really looking at anything. I was trying to contain the anger that now threatened to consume everything inside of me.
I’d been gripping Raven’s thigh after he got in. As he settled, he snatched up my hand and squeezed. Then he opened up his arm and pulled me into him until I was leaning against his chest. He gripped at my shoulder, clutching me.
I let him. And in a way, his strength allowed some of my anger to flow away. Marc drove and then glanced at us. His hand drifted out, and he gripped my knee.
None of us said anything. We didn’t need to. We all knew.
I’d never see Jack again.
But what about Wil?
CALCULATED MOVES
The bubbling anger in my throat wouldn’t settle. Staring through the windshield didn’t help. My fists kept balling up against my thighs.
I handled things pretty well for someone whose life was in upheaval. As of this moment, I had no home, no brother, and no family. I didn’t have a dollar to my name, no job, and probably had a billionaire playboy mad at me for wrecking his yacht. And shooting him in the leg.
Marc was focused on the road.
I’d known him for only a few days. During that time, I managed to put a nail through his thigh, run out on him twice, kiss him a handful of times, wanted to do it again, and if that wasn’t enough of a start, he knew every last bit about my life and I still knew hardly anything about him. He was an ex-thug who now belonged to a new gang...undercover division...I didn’t know what, really. Their group was called only Academy. What kind of name was that?
Raven had his elbow propped up on the door and he was staring out the window. He called himself a professional Russian. I wasn’t sure what Russians were professionals of, but so far I knew he could handle any sized weapon you gave him, and he knew how to blow things up. Sexy ran through his blood just like his heritage. He had a lip ring, and occasionally he fiddled with it with his tongue, causing it to protrude out. The tattoos on his body, his broad stature, and the harsh stare he gave made him one of the few people I actually thought could take down a person with a single punch. So far I was on his good side. I never wanted to know the bad one.
They were both a mega problem because I hadn’t wanted to return, and they were the only ones I thought I could call, outside of the police--and I didn’t want to go there. Most of me wanted to search for Wil on my own. I’d swallowed back a lot of pride to call them for help, thinking their Academy skill set could help me find him faster than I could on my own. Making sure Wil was safe was the only thing that drove me to call them in the first place.
Maybe.
I was a thief...an ex-thief, new to standing on the better side of the law. I knew how to pick pockets, and occasionally I could lie my ass off to get out of a sticky situation. I had brown hair, light green eyes and decent cleavage. With enough mascara and gloss, and a low-cut top, I could turn a head or two, or wear boy clothes and go unnoticed.
We’d only been driving for a few minutes, but every mile was agony. I was ripping myself out from a world I’d always been in, and now completely lost and dependent on the guys and I hated it. The worst was, I didn’t have a choice. I could walk out into the street and leave, but I was going to start with absolutely nothing, not even a place to stay. My original plan to get on my feet before I saw any of the guys again had failed before it even started.
Wil was still missing.
“Corey said Wil was going to school,” I said, breaking the silence. This bit of information felt oddly important, but in my stressed out state, I wanted a clearer head to spell it out for me.
“He is?” Marc asked. He turned his head, his mismatched eyes taking on an eerie glow from the lights in the dashboard since it was already dark outside. When I nodded, he shifted and pulled his phone out and started typing into it.
“What are you doing?” I asked, glancing nervously at the road and his texting and driving.
“Checking in with Axel.”
“Here,” I said, snatching the phone from his hand. There wasn’t much traffic along the interstate, but he was laying on the accelerator and I didn’t trust other drivers.
“Hey,” Marc said, though he reclaimed the wheel with both hands. “It’s not nice to snatch stuff.”
“It’s illegal to text and drive. And I don’t particularly want to die today because you’re not paying attention.”
“You’re going to talk to me about illegal—”
Raven reached over, thunking Marc on the head. “She’s right.”
Marc made a noise but didn’t argue.
I focused on the phone, where Marc had started to s
end a text to Axel. I tapped at the screen to finish up. Raven hovered over my shoulder, watching what I was doing.
Marc: Wil’s been going to school? Any update from classmates?
Raven continued to hover over me as we waited for a response. He pointed to the screen on the phone. “What’s that one?” he asked.
“What?”
“That word,” he said, and he pointed to the phone’s screen.
I wondered if he was playing some joke on me and I wasn’t getting it. “Update?”
“Oh,” he said. “Update. Never mind. I know that one.”
“He’s still learning to read,” Marc said. “English isn’t exactly the easiest language to learn.”
“It’s fucking hard,” Raven said.
It was odd to think of Raven not being able to read so well. He wasn’t stupid. He was learning a new language. I didn’t know any bit of another language, so I couldn’t imagine what he had to go through to learn English.
I wanted to comment on this but the phone shook in my hands.
Axel: Confirmed. Administrative records say he’s been to class. No word on where he’s staying.
I read the text to the boys. I sat back, staring ahead. “He’s going to class,” I said.
“Of course he is,” Marc said. “He’s smarter than I was.”
I turned my head, looking at Marc’s profile and expecting him to say more. When he didn’t do it fast enough, I nudged him. “What?”
“When I left home,” he said, “I didn’t go to school. Hell, school was half of the reason why I left. The thing is, if you leave school, it’s the school that starts calling around, talking to the police. They have to, you know? If he’s going to school, he’s staying off police and official radars.”
Marc told me before he was part of a gang when he was younger. I wanted to ask if that was why he left school but skipped it for now. More important things to do. “So...” I said, trying to put our next step together. Anger welled inside me, clouding my thoughts as heavily as the dark surrounding us. Stressing over where I would stay until I found Wil, wondering whether he was starving or dead in a gutter, despite knowing he’d been going to school, the ideas wouldn’t go away. There was also the possibility of my past catching up with me that hampered my ability to consider my options. The more I became confused, the more I wanted to pummel both Marc and Raven as a way to release the pent-up anger and allow me to think.
Raven’s arm slid around my shoulders, drawing me in tight. He grabbed my hands with one of his and held them together at the wrist, as if reading my mind that was trying to connect the dots and needed a punching bag. “It means we wait until Monday. We show up at the school and ask him where he’s been.”
I wanted to say okay, that it sounded like a reasonable answer, but it was Saturday night which left a whole day for my brother to be out there alone. It felt wrong to simply give up on looking for him, but I didn’t have an alternate answer except for knocking on every door in the city until I found him. I didn’t want my panic to cause more problems, and was trying my best to be reasonable, to swallow the pit of fear and think of this rationally.
“There’s a team out at that school, isn’t there?” Marc asked, glancing over at Raven. His lips twisted, and a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows, contorting his face into a confused expression as he looked at Raven holding me like he was. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s angry,” Raven said as plain as telling him the time.
Marc drove in silence for a few moments like he didn’t understand this and then looked back at him. “So?”
“You’re driving,” he said. “I don’t want a wreck.”
Marc grunted. “Okay, well, text Axel and have him contact the other team. Have them keep an eye out for him. We can put a flag out at the police station and the hospitals—”
“No,” I said, twisting my wrists, trying to get Raven to let go, but he was too strong. “You can’t tell the police.”
“I’m not telling them,” Marc said. “It’s just a flag. If anyone shows up with the same description as your brother, we’ll be notified. We don’t have to call them. The flag will call us.”
“You can do that without getting him into trouble?”
“We can do a lot of things,” Marc said.
I sensed that by we he meant the Academy could do things. If they could help, I wanted it. I’d worry about repaying them later.
Raven took the phone from me, and slowly released me when I didn’t protest or hit him. He sent text messages to Axel and Corey with instructions.
What else could I do? If I went crazy looking for Wil, someone would call the police. They’d drag him back to Jack. They might look closer at us, at me. Would it do either of us any good?
Wil had been going to school. He’d been doing what he was supposed to. He just wasn’t at the hotel. He wasn’t going to tell me he was leaving? Did he think I wasn’t going to look for him?
If I hadn’t for three days, did he assume now I didn't care at all?
The anger inside of me reduced, and at the same time, my stomach started to growl. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
Raven passed the phone back over to Marc and then focused on me. His scowl deepened. “Hungry?”
Guess he heard my stomach. “Yeah.”
Raven nudged Marc in the shoulder and then pointed out the window. “There’s a McDonald’s.”
“We’ve got food at home,” Marc said. “We’re almost there.”
“Let’s go. I feel like chicken.”
Marc grunted but took the off ramp.
Twenty minutes later, we had three bags of McNuggets and fries. I had a milkshake but Marc told Raven to just have soda at home.
Marc passed the bags over to Raven. Raven pulled out one of the boxes of nuggets and held it out to me.
“Not in the car,” Marc said.
“She’s hungry now,” Raven said.
“She’s not two. She can wait.”
I stuffed two nuggets into my mouth and chewed, staring right at Marc.
Marc slapped me on the thigh. “Spoiled brat, stop it. You’ll get the car dirty.”
I slapped him back, chewing still and my mouth was too full to say anything. I should have been nicer since he bought me food, but I was really hungry. He glared at me, putting up a hand like he’d pop me on the leg again if I went for another nugget.
“If you let her eat,” Raven said, “she gets nice.”
“What?” Marc asked, relaxing his hand. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if you feed her, she stops hitting you. She won’t even be angry anymore.”
Marc squinted at him and then at me. “Is he serious?”
I shrugged, stuffing another nugget into my mouth. “Doesn’t hurt,” I said. I sucked down the milkshake. I wasn’t going to argue if I got food out of the deal.
Marc studied me as he continued to drive into downtown Charleston. I wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. I was too engrossed in eating to put much thought into it.
“How’d you know?” Marc asked Raven after a few minutes. “She’s all quiet now and her face isn’t all twisted like it gets when she’s angry.”
“I’m the same way,” he said. He reached out for a nugget from my open box but I pulled it back and then slapped his hand away. He still managed to snag one and popped it into his mouth. He licked his thumb and finger, causing the ring in his lip to stick out again. “I’ve still got the fries,” he said.
I didn’t care if he was Russian and huge. I’d kill him for a fry. I punched him in the arm but he punched me back. I rubbed the spot where he hit me and made a grab for the bag. “Give me,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, grinning. “Maybe she does calm down, but better not get between her and food or she’ll attack you again.” He opened the bag. “I’m getting the hang of her.”
“Leave some for the others,” Marc said.
By the time we got to the Sergeant Jasper, Raven and I had split o
ur first box of nuggets and a large container of fries. I didn’t bug him to open another box, even if I wanted some. It would do until we were sitting inside one of the apartments.
In the parking lot, I stared at the brown brick building. The drab severity contrasted with the nearby bay, palm trees and general picturesque views surrounding it. I hadn’t thought I’d see it again so soon, and it was surreal to be back. Since I was homeless, I wasn’t going to complain, but again there was an awkwardness. I didn’t want to obligate the boys to take me in because they were the only ones I knew who would. How long would they let me stay this time? Until we found Wil? I didn’t know what to do after.
Why did it feel like I wanted to be here? The sight of the Sergeant Jasper made the anger in my heart ease. I didn’t feel this way going back to the hotel. Raven opened the truck door the moment we were parked and jumped out. He held the door open for me. The moment I hobbled out next to him, he slammed the door and started in. Marc grabbed my book bags and headed in, too, and they quietly walked beside me, like there was no question that I should be going with them. There were more than a few reasons I shouldn’t stay with them like this, even if they invited me in. But it was an odd feeling — it felt right. I squashed the feelings down, not wanting to get too carried away.
For now, though, with Wil being gone, I gave in instead of arguing about it. This was just for now.
In the downstairs lobby, the uniformed night guard was at her post reading a thick romance novel. She glanced up from her book, took a small look at us, smiled and then went back to her reading. Did she really know who we were or did she not care? Was she any sort of deterrent from thugs coming in and just going upstairs?
We were the only ones in the elevator on the way up. On the seventh floor, Marc bypassed his own door and went for Corey’s and Brandon’s apartment a few doors down. He knocked twice and then three times and then once and waited.
“Is that some sort of code?” I asked.