20. Nick

By the time we reach the other side of the lagoon, the sun is finally up. Its gentle rays provide much-needed warmth this morning, because in our haste to get to Jonah’s hideout, I didn’t bother grabbing a jacket. When we reach the soft banks close to the tree house, I make the boys cut the engine so we can drift quietly through. Locusts scream all around us, drowning out the usual sounds of the woods.

“Over here,” Maurice barks out to Kyle, who is behind the steering wheel.

The kid is a pretty decent driver, despite his age. We only brought three of the new boys along with us: Kyle, Reese, and Dwight. Maurice’s new tech team, or so he says, and the ones who know how to set off the charges safely.

“Bring us in nice and gentle. We don’t want to get too close just in case.”

It’s taking forever for our guys to unload every box and unpack everything. My gaze remains fixed on the tree-lined path that Oona and I walked every morning after fishing. Should I go try to find her? I could create some sort of excuse for the guys and come back before they start to miss me.

Turning back toward Maurice, I say, “I’ll be right back. Need to drain the snake.”

Maurice opens his mouth to say something in response, but I’m already gone, racing down the path in the direction of our tree house. It takes me a whole ten minutes of running as fast as I can before I make it to the bottom of the rope.

“Oona? Oona!” I shout, hoping she’s awake and can hear me.

But when she doesn’t answer me, something gnaws at my gut, telling me that I should go up there and look for her myself.

“Oona?” I grab the rope, grit my teeth, and pull myself up to the top. It’s only the second time I’ve ever made the climb myself, and I’m already exhausted, panting, and dripping with sweat. I feel like my lungs are on fire, burning from the exertion of just making sure I don’t fall and break my legs.

I don’t waste any time going from room to room in search of my girlfriend, but after running around the entire house yelling my head off, it’s time to come to the bitter realization that she isn’t here. But where could she have gone? It’s still morning, which means she’d either be gathering firewood or cooking. I grimace the entire way down the rope and check the perimeter for any sign of my lizard queen.

Nope. No Oona anywhere. Not in the brush, not by the stream, not by the campfire where we liked to trade stories and brush up on our language skills. It’s like she’s just disappeared. But that doesn’t seem right. She’s an eight-foot lagoon monster.

Unless … she never made it back after she left me at the docks?

Ice floods my veins at the thought of anything happening to Oona. My sweet, beautiful mate. I shake my head and grip my scalp, pulling at my hair so hard it hurts.

“Everything okay?” a gruff voice calls out. I jerk my head up and see Maurice and the other guys lingering behind him, confusion written across their young faces. I frown.

“I—I….” How do I even explain this? Where do I even begin?

Maurice looks around, his jaw dropping slightly in awe at the tree house and its many rooms. “Did you … construct this? Is this yours, Nick?”

I let out a soft chuckle. “God, no. You think I could make something like this? I can’t even make toast. Well, used not to be able to make toast. Now I can make all kinds of things if I have a campfire and a good knife.”

Maurice stares at me like he’s looking at an entirely new animal and it has six heads all spitting fire.

“Yo, you take forever to pee, man,” Kyle says behind Maurice. “You could have pissed in front of us and no one would have cared. No need to go all the way out into Bumfuckville.”

Maurice continues to stare at me, the corners of his dark eyes crinkling. Then he runs his fingers down his bushy mustache, like he’s trying to work out a complicated puzzle in his head. “What’s going on, Nick? You’ve been acting … not like yourself since we got you back. Now we find you here at the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. Want to share with the rest of the class?”

Running a palm down my face, I let out a deep sigh. I start from the beginning. Being tossed into the water and left to drown. Being rescued by Oona. Living with Oona. Falling in love with her. Then having to say goodbye when I wasn’t expecting to. All of it. The boys listen quietly to my tale, nodding along or wincing at certain parts of the story, like with the leeches.

When I’m finished, no one says anything. They all just shift their weight from side to side and look at one another, like they aren’t sure what to make of me anymore.

But Maurice takes a few steps forward, claps a hand on my shoulder, and smiles. “All right,” he rasps. “So, we help you find her.”

My brows knit together. “Wait, what? You’d do that? But what about bombing Jonah’s crew?”

“We can’t do that until we get your lady back safe and sound, right? So, we’ll split up. Look around for her,” he says, then glances back at the others and nods. They nod back at him, ready to follow his orders.

I can’t believe it. First of all, I didn’t expect them to believe me. Especially not Maurice. I expected them to laugh, tell me I’m crazy, or even shoot me. “No, no splitting up,” I say. “She’s eight feet tall and dangerous. If she sees you in her woods, she’s more likely to kill you on sight.”

“Holy shit, eight feet tall? She sounds like my type,” Reese says, and the other guys snicker and slap him upside the head.

I roll my eyes. “Careful, Reese. You try to flirt with her, and she’ll take your head clean off your shoulders with her claws then use your skull for a sippy cup.”

Reese’s skinny, tatted throat bobs up and down. “Huh. Okay, but can she just … sit on me? Just for a minute? I promise not to touch her. I just want to?—”

I growl—actually growl—at Reese. “No, you may not. She’s mine.” My gaze darkens. “Got that? Do you all understand that? No one says anything inappropriate to my girlfriend or tries to touch her. Got it?”

Maurice chuckles and pats me on the back. “They got it. Don’t worry, bud. I’ll make sure they all behave themselves.” Maurice tosses them a threatening glare, which makes them all stand straighter. “Right?”

“Right, boss,” they mutter in unison.

Maurice turns back to me and says, “Okay. Now that’s out of the way … where do you suggest we start looking? Where would she most likely be?”

I run my fingers across the stubble on my cheeks. Haven’t shaved since yesterday. Oona would love that. She always enjoyed when I had a bit of stubble on my jawline, but she’d always make sure I was smooth-shaven before I went down on her. I smile at the memory. “I don’t know. She should have been here. Every morning, we got fish for breakfast, then came back to cook it. I’d watch the house while she looked for more firewood.”

Maurice nods slowly, listening. “Now, I know you probably won’t like hearing this….”

I swallow thickly, bracing myself for what Maurice is about to suggest. Because what he’s about to say is probably what I’m too afraid to confront for myself.

“But is it possible Jonah’s guys got to her first?”

The abandoned warehousein the heart of the lagoon is evidently no longer abandoned. True to Kyle’s intel, Jonah’s guys are crawling around it like it’s a freshly made anthill. They’re also strapped with machine guns and are twice the size of our own guys.

No offense to Kyle and the gang, but I don’t think any of them are going to be able to take these guys on.

We find a vantage point above a waterfall that allows us to look down on them, but without knowing if Oona is trapped inside the warehouse, we can’t get the drop on them. Kyle and the others are itching to rain down explosives on the place, but thankfully, they’re good at respecting orders. Maurice was clear: find Oona first, then they can do whatever the fuck they want.

I clench my jaw as I watch Jonah’s men go in and out of the solid double doors of the warehouse. Trucks go in and out every once in a while, too, but I can’t make out any details. Nothing that would indicate my girlfriend’s presence, at least not from here. Behind the warehouse, I notice some of the men are dumping barrels of white stuff into the water. That would explain why the fish have tasted like chemicals for so long.

“We need to get inside somehow,” I rasp. “She could be hurt, if she’s in there.”

“And how are we supposed to get inside without them gunning us all down?” Dwight asks, but he isn’t being snarky about it. He’s right. We need a solid plan, so we don’t wind up littered with bullet holes.

“A distraction. Something that’ll make them leave for a little while to give us enough time to slip inside,” I suggest.

Maurice nods and pats me on the shoulder again. “Good thinking. Well, we’ve got enough explosives for fifty Fourth of July fireworks shows. How about we set some off somewhere nearby?”

I hate that he’s suggesting this, because the damage to the environment would be … monumental. But it’s also the only thing we’ve got, and wasting more time going back to the city to work something else out isn’t in the cards. It’ll take too long, and who knows what they’re doing to Oona in there, if she even is in there?

We need to act, now. I turn to Kyle, and before I can even open my mouth, he’s scrambling to his feet.

“I’m on it,” he says before turning to the others. “Let’s go. Finally going to put those charges to work.”

In moments, they’re gone, disappearing into the brush the way we came. I stare Maurice down, and the corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement.

“What? I don’t need to babysit them. They’ll get the job done,” he says. “They always do.”

I’m not sure I have as much faith in them as he does, but I also wasn’t around for the three months they were on-boarded, so I keep my mouth shut and look back down to our target.

Maurice and I fall into a companionable silence while we wait for the signal. It’s been ages since he and I got to work on a job together, and it feels a little like old times, except that, in this case, the stakes are higher. Much higher.

Never cared about the jobs I was on before. Just that they got done and no one got hurt. People always got hurt, of course. That’s the nature of the mafia. People were always getting shot, getting knifed. You name it. But this time, my girlfriend is involved. This time, I really can’t fuck it up.

In the distance, a blast erupts, shaking the ground and scattering the birds in a flurry of shrieks above us. Some of the men down below lose their footing and stumble over. Others start yelling in coarse voices. The main doors of the warehouse fly open, and a man with a blond ponytail and a Hawaiian shirts steps out.

Maurice snorts. “There he is,” he rasps. “In all his tacky-assed glory. Jonah Briggs.”

I squint as I watch Jonah yell a few things I can’t make out to a couple of men with machine guns standing by. They run off in the direction of the blast, leaving Jonah unguarded. Most of his men are gone by the time Maurice starts to move.

“I see his fashion sense hasn’t gotten any better over the years,” he grumbles as he carefully slides down part of the cliff. I follow him, and I’m impressed with myself that I don’t slip or stumble like I would have months ago. But living with Oona and being forced to keep up with her made me more adept at handling the forest’s terrain; even Maurice lifts an eyebrow when he watches me climb to the bottom without a sound. We slink around the side of the warehouse, crouching beneath the windows just in case there’s still someone inside.

Once we reach the corner of the building, Maurice cranes his neck around the side and I hear Jonah bark, “Do a perimeter check. I’m going to head inside and check on our guest.”

Great. Either we need to move, now, or we need to figure out a way to disarm two men with machine guns before we’re riddled with bullets. Maurice jerks his head back at me, telling me to move. But instead of going back the way we came, he grabs me by my wrist and practically tosses me up the side of the building.

“Wh-What the fuck—” I start, and latch onto a thin metal pipe leading up to the rooftop. What the fuck, indeed. Gulping, I stare at that metal pipe and close my eyes. I could barely get up the rope to the tree house. How am I supposed to scale a metal pipe twenty feet?

Sensing my apprehension, Maurice slaps his meaty mitt across my shoulder. “You got this. Because if you don’t, we’re going to look like bloodied Swiss cheese. So, I suggest you got this.”

I look over my shoulder just in time to see Maurice lifting me up onto the pipe, giving me a head start. Then I clear my mind of any doubts and just … climb. Slowly, despite the danger, because a metal pipe is a lot different from a rope, but I hear Maurice grunting behind me, and before I know it, we’re at the top of the warehouse. My muscles are screaming. When I lean over my feet, panting, I wince as a lightning bolt of pain lances through one of my oblique muscles.

“Fuuuuck me. I just pulled something,” I mutter.

Maurice hobbles next to me and shakes out his hands, which are redder than steamed lobsters at this point. “Better a strained muscle than dead,” he murmurs.

Yeah. True. But now that we’re up here, what are we going to do? We can’t exactly just drop back down and hope it all works out. We need a plan. Although we kind of ended up this far in the game without a plan so far. I’m not sure what Maurice’s deal is, jumping headlong into danger without so much as an idea of how to handle things. But he’s survived this long at the helm, so … maybe he’s got something Luther didn’t.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s dead, and Maurice is not. I have to trust him. I don’t have a choice right now. Not if I want to get my girl back.

“There,” Maurice says as he crouches down as low as he can go, which isn’t saying much. The man is a behemoth.

We hear disgruntled voices down below, including Jonah’s. Maurice points at the rooftop’s ceiling windows, which look like they open outward. Good. It’s better than nothing, although getting down is going to be another feat entirely.

Another explosion goes off in the distance, shaking the ground once more. Maurice and I jerk our heads up to watch as more birds scatter to the wind. Damn. Just how many charges are they going to set off? All of them, at this rate.

“They really like it when shit hits the fan,” Maurice grumbles. “I’ll need to have a talk with them about that later.”

Sure. If there is a later. But I don’t say that out loud. No need to say it; we’re probably both thinking it. Maurice, with his enormous bear paws and tree-trunk arms, practically rips the window right out of its frame. It squeaks open with a groan, and we both stare at one another in abject horror. Okay, that was loud. Really fucking loud. But thankfully, another charge goes off in the distance, and Jonah curses down below.

“What the hell is going on out there?!” he screams, and I can practically hear the blood vessels in his neck getting ready to burst. Hopefully they will. Save us a bit of trouble. One of the guys with the machine guns gets into a golf cart—seriously?—and zooms away. One down, two to go. That leaves Jonah almost entirely unguarded.

Maurice lifts a finger to his lips as he jumps down through the window. My eyes widen as I race to the edge, expecting to see a stain on the concrete from where he fell. Instead, he stands on top of a … tube? Some sort of dark, cylindrical machine that hums with electricity. I follow after him, landing gently next to him.

We’re inside.

Thanks to all the morning light pouring in from the windows, it’s easy to see where we are. The room is full of these tube-machines that pump water. They’re not hooked up to anything in the warehouse, so this must be a relatively new operation—and when I scan the rows of glass tubes, I realize there are things inside of them. Not things but animals. Gators. Rows and rows of gators.

The hell is Jonah capturing gators for? I thought he was making Stim.

Maurice jumps down onto the ground from ten feet up, that crazy bastard, and lands with a thud. When he turns around, his jaw falls open.

“Hey. Um … Nick? You better get down here, buddy,” he says. The edge in his voice makes me shimmy down the giant, warm tube in a hurry.

A webbed hand strikes the glass next to my head, and I fall back onto the concrete.