Page 27 of Wicked Nightmare

The words hit a wall I'd built a long time ago. A wall with a specific door behind it that I didn't open. Not for anyone. Not even for Lakey. Month fourteen. The room with no cameras. The guard with the smile and the encouragement and the hand on the back of my neck. "You're doing so well, Cam."

I didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Didn't give this sweating piece of shit a single millimeter of reaction. I'd learned that in juvie. How to take a hit to a wound no one could see and keep your face the same temperature. Spider had taught me that. "Pain is information, not identity. Someone hits the bruise, you smile. You smile and they don't know where the bruise is anymore."

I whistled long and low. "Damn, you finally standing up for yourself? Good for you! Too bad your ASSumption is about to take a nosedive. I was fine in the slammer, butt boy. It was the guards that had the problem. Now move your ass, we're burning daylight."

Fine in the slammer. Sure. The lie came out smooth because I'd told it a thousand times. To Lakey, to Spider, to my own reflection in mirrors that showed me a man who looked strong enough that nobody should have been able to hurt him. But somebody had. And the box stayed shut. And Skeeter's fat finger poking me in the chest was never going to open it.

He sputtered before his shoulders slumped and he kept walking. After a few minutes, we were at the top and Lakey was waiting, dressed in all black leathers. Damn, she is fine.

"Hey, doll. Have I got a treat for you." I smirked, shoving Skeeter in her direction.

"Oh my gawwwd, baby!" She squealed and ran into my arms, kissing me deeply before I put her down and we turned toward our betrayer.

Her face hardened as she looked at him. "Mind explaining to the class why your information was wrong? I should have killed you rather than let you out of my house, but I guess then I wouldn't have the chance to thrust my babies into your soft gut, huh?"

He held out his hands in a stop gesture. "Please. Just listen."

Lakey cocked her head, and he took that as a sign to continue talking. "I was approached by a man who paid me a lot of money not to disclose the location of the Almines. He didn't pay me for the Jones, didn't give a fuck about them."

"What do you remember about this man?" Lakey was intrigued.

"He was tall. Silvery hair, kinda. Creepy eyes. I dunno. A scar on his face."

She fell quiet. Not the quiet she used before a kill. The quiet she used when her brain was connecting wires that had been frayed since childhood. The quiet that meant something in her body remembered before her mind caught up.

Nudging her arm, I looked down at her. "What is it, Lakes?"

"Did this guy happen to give you a name?" She stomped up to him. "A name, Skeeter. Give me his name and I'll let you go free."

His face went white, once again. "No... no, he didn't give me his name. But I noticed the car behind him. It was a black SUV."

"Helpful." I muttered.

He pinned me with a look. "That's not all." He sighed and crossed his arms over his belly. "It had a cross on it."

A cross. On a black SUV. The cross… the same one we’d seen many times before, in flashes of memories we kept losing.

Lakey and I shared a look before she turned on her heel and marched away, grabbing her helmet and disappearing over the hill. I followed her, leaving Skeet to contemplate his life choices. He could run. Or not. Didn't give a fuck.

"Baby... what's wrong?" I asked, rubbing her shoulder.

"It's nothing." She was breathing hard, her hands shaking, and not from the cold. "Fuck." She smashed her helmet against a tree, and it splintered the bark, sending pieces flying. Then she hit it again. And again. Until the visor cracked and the outer shell split along the seam and she was holding two halves of a helmet in her fists, breathing like she'd sprinted a mile.

I let her destroy it. She needed to destroy something, and it was better than destroying Skeeter before we'd gotten everything out of him. When she was done, she dropped the pieces and stood there, her chest heaving, her knuckles white.

"Fuck it, we're going after them."

"Woah woah! Wait just a d—"

She turned around, her face twisted with a fury I hadn't seen since the night she killed Dr. Maren. "No! Cam. I think that was Father Christopher."

I fell silent for a moment, trying to process this information. Father Christopher. The man Lakey had named in her flashback at the dinner table. The man from St. Agnes whose heavy footsteps she could still hear in the hallway of her nightmares. The man who'd been dead in her memory because people from your childhood were supposed to stay in your childhood, locked behind the doors you'd shut and bolted and piled furniture against.

But dead men don't drive black SUVs. And dead men don't pay hackers to hide foster families.

"Lakes... how is that possible? Why would he give a fuck about the Almines?"

"I don't know! Just... I have a gut feeling it's him and we need Skeeter because he can lead us to him!"