cried.
“Holy shit,” Cade murmured as Sam led him down the hallway. He trudged along, limping and leaning against the wiry teenager. A huge kitchen past the burgundy-walled dining room, two doors to his right just past the stairs—this place was a mansion.
At the second door, Sam stopped and gave him an apprehensive look over his shoulder. “He’s gonna be pissed,” the kid warned, and then he pushed open the door.
Chapter Eleven
N OX HAD spent his entire day in fearful rage.
When he returned to the brownstone in the middle of the night—cold, panicked—his brain had been crowded with memories provoked by the woman in the casino. His concern about the letter Sam received didn’t touch the terror that she was behind it.
That she was alive.
For the rest of the night, Nox pored over the Internet, looking for information. He found her name on the ferry manifest from seventeen years ago.
She was dead.
Jenny Aglaya was dead. He’d watched her get on the ferry. He’d watched the ferry sink into the river.
No. He’d run back to the house, but everyone knew the ferry sunk in bad weather twenty minutes after pushing off.
He’d built his entire plan for keeping Sam safe and out of harm’s way on that fact. The only person who knew Nox Boyet was alive—knew that Sam existed—had drowned along with thousands of others in the storm-swept Hudson River.
Sam found him in the morning, staring blankly at the screen.
Rachel Moon, the manager at the Iron Butterfly, native New Yorker, was at college in Boston when the Evacuation happened. Brighton Beach born, Russian immigrant parents, though never mentioned by name and long since deceased. Top-of-the-line manager, long coveted by other casinos. But she was completely loyal to the Butterfly.
He read the interviews.
She wasn’t Jenny.
Couldn’t be.
Nox conducted the rest of his day distracted and jumpy. He was short with Sam, late for work. He wanted to pack their bags and run away— where to was the $100,000 question—because if the two things were connected….
If she was Jenny. If she was sending the messages.
He could barely breathe.
The people who killed his father knowing about Sam, knowing about him.
His worst nightmare.
His forewoman, Addie, didn’t keep them on the job for long. The storm and subsequent winds made it dangerous on the fifty-eighth floor of the massive tower they were building. The jobsite was a hazardous mess, and Addie’s bosses weren’t too interested in dead workers making the headline of tomorrow’s news.
He got home hours before Sam—messengers were even more necessary on days like this, when no one wanted to go out—and restlessly prowled the brownstone.
He touched the hidden door of the safe room, brushing his palm over the oak trim. His mother had installed it after 9/11, convinced the end times were upon them—the terrorist attack was proof she’d been right all along. The world would descend in chaos and bloodshed and they had to be prepared.
When it was still not good but not bad enough for the hospital, Nox’s father would hand over a credit card and let her buy until she felt a modicum of peace.
Their basement rivaled even the most paranoid of the survivalists’.
Over the years, those supplies had kept Nox and Sam alive. Hard times were never potentially deadly. They made it through.
Food, water, guns. Solar-powered radios and enough first-aid supplies to open a hospital. Blankets tested for the most extreme temperatures. Duplicates and triplicates tucked and neatly ordered on row after row of shelving, waiting for darkness to fall and the people in this house to have to fight for their lives.
Sometimes he thought she had been right all along.
N OX CHANGED into his black leathers and went out to walk the streets of his territory.
It started within the walls of his home, but it bled out onto his block. His terrible fear that someone would come into the house and take Sam propelled him into
“Holy shit,” Cade murmured as Sam led him down the hallway. He trudged along, limping and leaning against the wiry teenager. A huge kitchen past the burgundy-walled dining room, two doors to his right just past the stairs—this place was a mansion.
At the second door, Sam stopped and gave him an apprehensive look over his shoulder. “He’s gonna be pissed,” the kid warned, and then he pushed open the door.
Chapter Eleven
N OX HAD spent his entire day in fearful rage.
When he returned to the brownstone in the middle of the night—cold, panicked—his brain had been crowded with memories provoked by the woman in the casino. His concern about the letter Sam received didn’t touch the terror that she was behind it.
That she was alive.
For the rest of the night, Nox pored over the Internet, looking for information. He found her name on the ferry manifest from seventeen years ago.
She was dead.
Jenny Aglaya was dead. He’d watched her get on the ferry. He’d watched the ferry sink into the river.
No. He’d run back to the house, but everyone knew the ferry sunk in bad weather twenty minutes after pushing off.
He’d built his entire plan for keeping Sam safe and out of harm’s way on that fact. The only person who knew Nox Boyet was alive—knew that Sam existed—had drowned along with thousands of others in the storm-swept Hudson River.
Sam found him in the morning, staring blankly at the screen.
Rachel Moon, the manager at the Iron Butterfly, native New Yorker, was at college in Boston when the Evacuation happened. Brighton Beach born, Russian immigrant parents, though never mentioned by name and long since deceased. Top-of-the-line manager, long coveted by other casinos. But she was completely loyal to the Butterfly.
He read the interviews.
She wasn’t Jenny.
Couldn’t be.
Nox conducted the rest of his day distracted and jumpy. He was short with Sam, late for work. He wanted to pack their bags and run away— where to was the $100,000 question—because if the two things were connected….
If she was Jenny. If she was sending the messages.
He could barely breathe.
The people who killed his father knowing about Sam, knowing about him.
His worst nightmare.
His forewoman, Addie, didn’t keep them on the job for long. The storm and subsequent winds made it dangerous on the fifty-eighth floor of the massive tower they were building. The jobsite was a hazardous mess, and Addie’s bosses weren’t too interested in dead workers making the headline of tomorrow’s news.
He got home hours before Sam—messengers were even more necessary on days like this, when no one wanted to go out—and restlessly prowled the brownstone.
He touched the hidden door of the safe room, brushing his palm over the oak trim. His mother had installed it after 9/11, convinced the end times were upon them—the terrorist attack was proof she’d been right all along. The world would descend in chaos and bloodshed and they had to be prepared.
When it was still not good but not bad enough for the hospital, Nox’s father would hand over a credit card and let her buy until she felt a modicum of peace.
Their basement rivaled even the most paranoid of the survivalists’.
Over the years, those supplies had kept Nox and Sam alive. Hard times were never potentially deadly. They made it through.
Food, water, guns. Solar-powered radios and enough first-aid supplies to open a hospital. Blankets tested for the most extreme temperatures. Duplicates and triplicates tucked and neatly ordered on row after row of shelving, waiting for darkness to fall and the people in this house to have to fight for their lives.
Sometimes he thought she had been right all along.
N OX CHANGED into his black leathers and went out to walk the streets of his territory.
It started within the walls of his home, but it bled out onto his block. His terrible fear that someone would come into the house and take Sam propelled him into
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