23. Jax

Jax

R afael climbs in the back with me and puts an arm around my shoulders.

"You all right?"

I nod mutely.

"Speak to me."

"I just…if we find something, maybe anything." I close my eyes and bite down on my bottom lip until it bleeds. "Cherise…"

Rafael doesn't say anything, he just pulls me tighter into him, while Dane meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.

Jacob drives a baby blue pickup, and he travels out to the graveyard on the north-east side of the city. He parks his truck in front of the wrought iron fences and puts his hands in his pockets, waiting for us.

"What is that?" Dane asks and stares off to the left.

I get out of the car, and the two guys come to stand next to me. "The city was going to be huge, lofty aspirations, and they got carried away. When they closed the mine, a lot of companies went under, and this entire end of town just got forgotten. Put simply, the city ran out of money and investors left. That is the Dead City you've been so anxious at pretending you want to see."

In among the green vegetation, faded yellow and red cranes sit abandoned. Metal is coated in rust, buildings left with thin strips of plastic flapping in lonely breezes. It's a maze. Age has allowed the Earth to collapse and honeycomb the area, making it extremely dangerous.

"This isn't on the maps," Dane growls.

"Well, it is. It's restricted. You don't go in there, it's too easy to not see something and break an ankle. You could disappear forever and a hundred strong search party would never find you. Trust me, it's been done. No one who has gone missing was found alive," Jacob says sadly. "Hurricane could have been more than this. So much potential lost to so much greed."

"Let's go see these graves." I turn, leaving Hurricane's ghost to face the more pressing one.

Jacob leads the way, it takes us about half an hour of hiking through the cemetery. It's a somber affair, and even the sun seems to agree, disappearing behind some clouds. There are a lot of dead in this city.

"So, this is my grandfather's grave." Jacob looks around and makes a sound. "Uh-huh. Found it." He walks diagonally through the graveyard until he stops beside a group of gravestones. Seven in total.

I look down at the name, and it doesn't ring a bell.

"Banewood." I try it out.

"Cecil Banewood died when Louis would have been thirteen. He was the most recent death and the oldest by far," Rafael murmurs. "Look, it reads, grandfather, father, and husband. There's more, but it's been scratched off."

"Three more men, all Banewood's, all around the same ages, and they all died within a decade of each other. It looks like Liam was married to this woman, Daisy." Jacob says, but his gaze is lost in memories, and I'm scared to ask him which ones.

"She and the children passed away on the same day," I mutter. It seems so disrespectful to be here searching for a killer when they suffered. I feel so sorry for this woman. "Dorothy and Jill, eight and five. They were just babies."

"Beloved mother of Lee," Dane says into the silence. His words ring in my head.

"What?"

Dane points at the stone. "Lee, he's not here. But Daisy was his beloved mother."

"Lee Banewood," I try the name and swallow hard. It doesn't suit him. Louis Falcon suits him much better. It seems darker and more sinister. Maybe it does suit him better. I don't know why, but I feel so lost in that moment. Like having another tangible piece of evidence of his lies sends me into a dark spiral.

Rafael gently turns me towards him. "Jax Shade, I think you are the most amazing person I ever met." He presses a soft kiss to my lips, then hugs me close. "Don't let his lies tear you down."

How does he even know? How does this man understand me as well as he does?

"How can you live with someone and not know them? They ask me, the victims, the hate mail, the death threats, they all say the same thing. How did you not know? How did I not know?"

"It happens to good people all the time, Jax. Because we give the benefit of the doubt, because we don't look for lies and deceit. It happens, and it doesn't make you bad or guilty. Good people don't look for the bad, they look for the good."

I lay my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. "The rest of the world doesn't see it that way."

"The rest of the world's opinions shouldn't matter. Your family knows you didn't do this. Jacob knew. I know."

I jerk and tilt my head up. "You know?" I don't bring up my family or the fact that they know nothing. That's a whole other issue.

"Yes, I can see who you are with people, and you aren't who they painted you to be. I believe you."

His hair blows over his forehead, but I can't look away from his eyes. Gold flecks in the light brown. They are stunning and so earnest. My heart contracts in my chest.

"I-"

"All right, Jacob and I have organised a plan," Dane says loudly and stomps over to us.

"I didn't do anything, but I'm borrowing this man on our next food drive. You are an organisational superhero." Jacob claps Dane on the shoulder.

Dane's cheeks pinken, and he scowls harder at his phone. "Anyway. Cecil has a couple of friends still alive. I have their addresses. And I've found the home address that Liam and Daisy lived in. Plus, all three other addresses."

"Where's his wife?" I ask.

"What?" Dane looks up slowly.

"Cecil was married. His gravestone says so. Where is she buried?"

We all turn back.

"Cremated?" Jacob ponders.

"And not all the other bodies? Unlikely," Dane mutters. "It's irrelevant right now. Let's get back to the car and see if we can track down some of these people."

Dane walks past, and I turn, and then, on a whim, shrug out of Rafael's hold and jog to catch up to him.

"Thanks."

"Well, it's for Terrance."

I slow my steps. "Of course, I didn't think-"

His long strides create distance between us, and it feels too big to bridge. I keep to myself for the rest of the walk, and when we get to the cars; I hug Jacob tight and promise him I will come visit. It feels like an ending. The green of the cemetery is peaceful, beautiful, but right next door, the city's scars slumber. What is real?

"How about dinner? You can meet my wife."

I shake my head slowly, cold blooming in my soul. "No, Jacob. You read enough to know he targets anyone associated with me."

Jacob hesitates, but nods his head with a look of resignation. "I'll help anyway I can."

"You've helped enough. Lie low, and don't even think the name Jackie Blackwell. I'm better left in the past, for everyone's sake. If anyone asks, I'm Jax Shade, giving tours of Hurricane."

Jacob looks slightly ill, but he hugs me again. I remember hugging him when I left Hurricane. It feels the same as it did back then. Helpless, like we were on different paths that were never going to converge.

"Good luck, Jax."

"Goodbye, Jacob."

Even our words imitate the past.

I watch as he drives away, and then I climb into the passenger seat of the car, surprising Dane. He glances at me.

"Let's go visit the house first."

The drive takes us to the poorest end of Hurricane. Street after street filled with poor, barely livable homes. The rickety old houses, if they can be called that, are full of holes and haven't seen paint in more decades than I've been alive. The roads haven't even got the snake-like seals of tar to cover the cracks. Even the air smells worse here. No grass grows, flowers don't exist. The word is sepia and decorated with trash.

We drive slowly until Dane finds the place and parks out front. A blackened wreck, overgrown in insidious weeds and creepers, sits like a monument to the past. The mystery writes itself in my mind in heartbreaking resolution.

I climb out of the car and take two steps towards the mess. Whatever evidence, whatever story could possibly have been gleaned, has been gone a long time. The fire and time has erased everything.

"What do we do now?" I glance up at Dane.

He turns his head, and I follow his gaze to see Rafael on the neighbour's doorstep.

"We let Rafael do his thing."

"His thing?"

"You may have noticed I'm not great at speaking to people. Not in any meaningful way. I can pick a girl up easily, but the moment it comes to an actual conversation, I manage to fumble it. Rafael is gold at these situations. If there's anything to be found out, he will find it. We should get in the car and wait. We look weird, and the woman in that house to the left has checked out her curtain five times."

I mouth the word five, turn, and climb back into the car. Rafael comes back ten minutes later and climbs in the back seat.

"Drive, Dane." He looks around and leans forward when Dane doesn't respond fast enough. "Get us out of here."

Dane shifts the car into drive and floors it. A bottle crashes against the side of the car, and several people shout and scream, appearing from behind trees and buildings.

"What the fuck?" Dane spits and steers around smashed glass.

I turn in my seat to watch several people group together to stand in the middle of the road.

"What was that?" I ask.

"That was people who don't like questions defending their homes," Rafael says quietly.

"How'd you know?"

"Terrance took me home a couple of times. He showed me what to look for."

That revelation crashes down on me with the force of a wave. "Terrance grew up somewhere like this?" Terrance grew up like Louis? My mind reels from that revelation.

"Worse. His home was worse. His dad was amazing, but his mum took him away, and she was a hot mess. He never saw his father again. He tried to find him, but he couldn't. Whoops, sorry. My mind took a detour." Rafael clears his throat. "That was the Banewood house, and after Liam, the father, died from a workplace injury, Daisy struggled with three children. Extreme poverty became the way of life for them. She liked to cook over a camper fire in the lounge room because she couldn't pay the electric bills. One night, it went up. The only survivor was Lee, and his grandfather came and took him. No one's seen him since."

We sit quietly and digest it.

"Are we sure Lee Banewood is Louis Falcon?" I ask. "We need to be sure."

"Only one way to be certain. We have to find anyone who knew this Cecil." Rafael presses a button, and a section in the back of the car opens. He pulls out three bottles of water and offers me one. Dane snags his, holds it to the steering wheel, and twists it open.

"Luckily, I know where we need to go."

Dane turns the car into a nursing home and parks. I take a long drink and put the bottle down on the floor of the car.

"Right, follow me." Dane leads the way and speaks to the receptionist for a few minutes. She smiles and blushes a lot but eventually stands up and leads us through a maze of connecting doors and open spaces that seem to look absolutely the same to my untrained eye.

I stare at Dane's back and the way the woman keeps giggling. It's bizarre.

She points out a lady in the corner and reaches up to kiss his cheek. I think I see her slip a piece of paper into his hand.

Dane smiles and talks to her while Rafael takes my hand and leads me over to the small woman. I glance back twice, strangely unsettled and angry.

Even with her skin hanging over bones, you can tell this woman was attractive in her youth and still holds that shine of beauty now. She turns towards us, and I'm surprised to find a lively spark.

"Morning, dearies."

"Hello." I pull up a chair and smile at her.

"Aren't you lovely? Is this your beau?" Her eyes grow sad. "I can't recall your names, I'm sure you told me, but my memory is like a sieve, and names just drain straight through. Perks of getting old, that and the service, it's fantastic."

She winks at a young orderly who wanders past. I chuckle and pat her hand.

"We haven't met before."

She blinks. "Oh. Well, who the bloody hell are you?"

Rafael explodes into helpless laughter. I roll my eyes at him and grin at the woman who watches him with a small smile.

"My name is Jax, and this is Rafael. We are just after some information."

"What kind of information? I have a lot. The food here is shit. They turn everything to mush, supposedly so we can't choke, but if I wanted to gum my food, I'd take my dentures out."

"Uh, not that." I shake my head with a small chuckle.

"Well, if not that, what then?"

"Did you know Cecil-"

"Banewood!" The old woman scrunches down in her chair, folds her arms over her thin chest, and glowers into thin air. "Oh, aye, I remember that troglodyte. You ever met a man who needed a swift kneecapping? It was that man. He hated women, kids, cats, dogs, the mail, Sundays, rain, and sun. Fresh air was offensive to poor auld Mr Banewood. Oh, yes, I remember him well."

My heart thuds. Excitement makes me lean forward, but I lean back and try to calm myself.

"Did he have a child living with him in the few years before he died?"

"Oh, that poor little kid. He didn't have a chance. Poor wee little Louis."

I inhale so hard I choke and start coughing. "You said Louis? Not Lee?"

"No, it was definitely Louis. Though I recall Cecil, that giant turd, calling him Lee a time or two when he was drinking that liquid paint stripper."

I glance at Rafe. We found him, proof. His eyes shine with excitement.

"Can you tell us anything about Louis?"

"Louis was quiet. He learned how to disappear when he was standing right in front of you. A way of making himself smaller and unnoticeable. Cecil was a beast, a madman to live with. No child should have had to live with that. Especially not in those later years. Cecil got worse with age, you see." She unfolds her arms and straightens her dress. "I found him one day, late at night, wandering the streets. He was so out of it, I think he may have had a concussion. Blood covered his entire face. Bruises were appearing before my eyes. His wrist was wrong, like it was broken."

I assume she's talking about Cecil.

"Poor Louis, it's not right to see a child so badly beaten."

My stomach lurches.

I listen and try to keep my face impassive, but it's hard.

"I tried to get him help. It lasted three weeks before Cecil dragged him home again."

"Cecil died, but what happened to Louis?" Rafe interrupts.

She shakes her head. "No one knows. I hope that poor child ran far, far away."

"What happened to Cecil's wife?" Rafael asks.

She blinks. "We all assumed she ran off and left the wife-beating monster. We cheered her on, anyway."

"When was the last time anyone saw her?"

"Oh, it was the day before the night I found Louis in the streets. I remember her giving me my cookbook back. She was worried Cecil would destroy it. She was the kindest woman, a real gentle soul."

I sigh with regret. "One more question. How did Cecil die?"

"He slipped in the tub. It was a horrible mess. Managed to break his mirror and cut his throat. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person." She snorts a laugh. "The police had that case closed faster than you could say good riddance."I swallow thickly. I barely remember saying goodbye or walking out, but then we are in the car, and I ask Dane on autopilot to pull over so I can throw up all I just found out.