34. RAVEN

34

RAVEN

Two hours later, when my speedboat is scheduled to go to Port Mrei, I check Sonny's Ayana bracelet activity on my phone.

He's at the spa.

Odd.

I call him, but he won't pick up. I call the spa center and ask them if the kid is there. Negative.

That's even more suspicious.

So, I go to the spa. As I walk through the waterfall and garden area, yoga groups and relaxation gazebos, I watch my phone screen. Sonny should be right here, the tracker says so. But there are only staff people. And that's when I spot it—a young girl folding towels, Ayana bracelet around her wrist.

Shit.

The service people have scannable badges, not bracelets. When I approach, she starts blabbering about that kid who promised her a pass to the movie theatre and asked her to wear his bracelet until later tonight.

Sonny, that little punk, thinks he is clever. He knows that if he takes the bracelet off, the heart monitor will send the vitals alert into the system.

Argh. I know what this is about.

I grab the wristband from the girl and dial my guys. "Hold the boat. Do not leave until I get there."

In a flash, I'm stomping across the beach, my feet angrily sinking into the sand, then onto the pier, and I jump onto the boat.

The sea is nervous, the heavy bruised clouds weighing down on it. I love rain, even more so storms. Just not the unexpected ones.

That little punk, I'm sure, didn't even bother switching to a different hiding place. As the guards watch me with curiosity, I go for the galley and yank the lid open.

Sure enough.

I want to be angry, furious even, but relief washes over me when I see the sneaky dude curled up in there, his guilty eyes on me. His lips puff out a frustrated exhale.

"What did I tell you?" I snap, trying to sound vicious as I motion for him to get out of the boat. "Do you want me to put you in classes morning until night, every day?" I say as we are walking away from the pier. "You want to be grounded?"

"Wa' 's grounded?"

"You didn't listen, Sonny," I snap and stop to make him look at me.

"I jus' wanna?—"

"You can't! You don't have parents, but you do have to listen to the adults."

"They don' have parents too," he says, looking at me from under his eyebrows as he digs the tip of his shoe into the sand, his hands clasped behind his back. "My friends."

"But they are there! And you are here!"

"Exactly," he whispers and casts his gaze down.

I exhale heavily in frustration. I'm not a parent, and I can't explain to this kid what he is doing wrong.

I dial Maddy. I know her schedule by heart. She got off her shift an hour ago. I was planning on visiting her tonight, as usual, but there is something I need her to do. Sonny doesn't listen to anyone like he listens to Maddy.

"Yes?" Her voice instantly calms me down.

Calm. I'm calm. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"Maybe?" She sounds playful.

"We have a problem with the kid, and I would like you to talk to him."

Sonny sulks right away. "Tsk." When it comes to Maddy, he's ashamed when he screws up.

"Bring him over," she says. "Are you coming with him?"

I can hear caution in her voice. When I'm at her place, there's barely time for anything but sex. Everything besides sex happens on the phone—conversations about the past, Ayana, her father, the Eastside, Sonny. It's as if there has to be a physical barrier between us to be able to communicate, because when she is around me, my brain turns off, and all I want is to sink my teeth into her, among other things.

"Come," she says without waiting for my reply. "We'll both figure out whatever the problem is."

Just like that, we are both on our way. The little dude is quiet, dragging his feet, occasionally throwing guilty glances at me.

And I'm already anticipating seeing Maddy.

Sonny is becoming her adopted kid. He is spending more and more time with Maddy instead of Kai and Callie. And whenever something happens, a bruised leg or a big secret, though Sonny has a different idea of what those are, he runs to Maddy.

When we get to her bungalow, she lets us in with a smile.

A flash of those beautiful eyes at me, and my mind goes haywire. But we both know nothing is happening between us tonight, and that somehow creates a comfort zone between us.

Sonny sniffs the air at the smell of curry. "That Thai?"

He right away walks to the kitchen island and pokes his nose into the restaurant delivery bags.

Maddy follows him with her eyes.

"Sonny, take a seat," I say calmly, and he lets go of the bags, hangs his head, and walks to the couch to take a seat.

I stick my hands in my pockets and lean with my back against the kitchen island.

"Now tell Maddy what you did."

He looks at me from under my brows. "I wanted to go to town."

"No. That's not the problem. Tell her what I said to you and what you did afterward."

He exhales theatrically.

Maddy walks up to me, crosses her arms over her chest, and leans back on the kitchen island, just like me. Her closeness is maddening, considering what usually goes on in this place as soon as I step in.

Sonny starts telling her that I didn't let him go to town, so he snuck into the boat because he really wanted to see his friends. His speech is long and all over the place, gradually getting all dramatic and fast.

And at this point, I don't even care. Mostly, I wanted to see Maddy, be here with her and the little dude, and play house or whatever is happening.

"Watch your speech," she says, and Sonny huffs and chooses words carefully as he talks.

I turn to her and say in a low voice, "I know he is not your problem."

A few of us try our best to make him feel like he has a home. Except he's jumping from house to house, and I'm not sure if we are helping or making things worse.

"I didn't mean to bring more trouble?—"

"He is not a problem at all," she cuts me off in a whisper. "Someone has to deal with him. Sometimes, it has to be you and me, right?"

She keeps listening to Sonny's rumbling while I'm stuck on "you and me."

Maddy always seems so calm. It spills out of her and onto the others. Her calmness is contagious. I can see why Kai jokingly called her "the godmother."

Eventually, Sonny goes quiet. His eyes go back and forth between the two of us, and he says the usual, "I'm sorry," and scrunches up his nose.

Maddy tilts her head toward the food. "Go wash your hands before we eat."

He jumps off the couch like a ninja and trots to the kitchen.

"Rave, you like Thai food?" Sonny asks, making a giant splash in the sink with water and soap.

Maddy turns to look at me. "He loves it," she says.

I said that once when we had dinner. After sex. I do love Thai. I pretty much love everything I eat if it's in Maddy's bungalow. And she has a peculiar relationship with food. Especially after sex.

Sonny starts clowning around. "It's sweet. And co-co-nutty."

He is a mediator. He is our kill-switch but in a good sense. He is the breakers for this relationship, though I'm definitely using big words calling what Maddy and I have going on a relationship.

Without breaking eye contact with me, Maddy pushes off the kitchen island. "Would you join us for dinner?"

"Yes!" Sonny shouts from the kitchen. "Rave will have dinner with us!"

Maddy doesn't look away from me. "How about Rave says himself what he wants." Her lips twitch in a daring smile.

One look like that, and my thoughts are tangled, my heart twisting at the fact that she is offering more time together. It's becoming a thing lately.

"I'd love to," I say intentionally cocky, just to disguise how eager I am for another hour with these two humans.

She nods and turns away, clapping her hands at Sonny. "Help me with food, yeah?"

When we set up the table and Maddy is next to me, Sonny shouts, "Wait! Wait-wait-wait!" He grabs Maddy's phone, wiggles between us, shouts, "Cheese!" and snaps a selfie. His phone doesn't allow taking pictures for security reasons, so he often grabs Maddy's phone. He took mine once and snapped a picture of her. I look at it every day. Maybe more often than that.

My phone on the counter rings, but I don't pick up, only wink at the little dude whose ears perk up. But he relaxes when I ignore the ringing. When we've had dinner, the kid talking most of the time, and we clear the dishes and I am about to bounce, do I finally check my phone.

It's a message from Marlow.

Nick Marlow: Urgent. Call back.

"What is it?" I ask when I dial his number.

"Your two guards who were dropping off the package at the port? They were killed."

I feel the floor under me sinking as I raise my eyes to Sonny, who is helping Maddy wash dishes. My chest squeezes, making it hard to breathe.

"Their Ayana bracelets went into emergency mode," Marlow explains. "Their heart monitors went off. That's how we found out they were dead. The port guards went to check, got into a shootout."

"When?" I ask, not taking my eyes off Maddy.

"Twenty minutes ago. We just watched it on camera, though it's rainy and hard to see. It was a stakeout, deliberate and brutal. We are locking the port down from Port Mrei completely. This is not good, Raven."

"Are you at the Center?"

"Yes."

"I'll be right there."

When I hang up, I glance at Sonny. Oblivious to anything, he messes with the iPad, picking a movie to watch.

"What was that?" Maddy asks quietly, walking up to me.

"The two guards who went to drop off the package at the port"—I glance at Sonny and continue in a barely audible whisper—"were shot just now."

Her lips part in shock.

"I have to go to the Center," I say as I walk to the door, then pause and turn to look at her. "Don't tell him. And thank you for dinner."

She nods, then adds, "Be careful, okay?"

I don't know if she says it just to be polite or because she cares. I hope it's the latter.