There You Stand

“Do you like what we did to your boy?” Elias asked running his finger over Jude’s bruised cheekbone. “He likes to put up a fight. You mess up this deal, Malachi, and I’ll do worse things to this pretty face.”

“Fuck you,” Jude rasped out and my head sprang to the screen. The hatred in Jude’s gaze made my skin tingle.

Elias’s whole countenance changed upon hearing Jude’s voice. Had this been the first time he’d spoken directly to him?

“You sound like her.” Elias firmly grasped the back of his head. “You even look like her. Mi cielo.”

My entire body stiffened at his words. The nickname that Jude told me Elias had used for his mother.

“You killed her,” Jude bit out.

“All your doing,” he said. “She’d still be alive if you hadn’t run from me. Straight into Malachi’s arms. His sins are probably bigger. Such a shame.”

I looked up at Malachi, who scowled in disgust.

“Motherfucker,” I bit out and Smoke stared at me, mercy in his eyes.

Jude violently shook his head. “My mother started dying the moment she let you into her life. You were slowly killing her every single day, you bloody bastard.”

His words had definitely gotten to Elias because he slapped Jude across the face and I leapt from my chair, as if this was happening in real time.

“I’d love to kill you, too,” Elias said, spittle flying in Jude’s face. “And maybe I’ll get the chance someday.”

“Whoa, hold the fuck on.” Malachi’s booming voice could be heard from the screen. “Nobody’s touching one of ours. That boy’s already got enough scars on him to prove what you can do. We’re not into torturing our recruits. And we don’t plan on messing this deal up.”

A shiver raced across my shoulders as Elias sneered at the camera.

“Jude, now’s the time to calm the hell down,” Malachi said in a softer voice. “Everything is cool on our end. Everyone will be safe in a little while. You feel me? It’ll all be done and over with.”

Jude looked directly at the monitor as if he were staring straight into my eyes, and it hit me then that Malachi was sending him a veiled message. About me. The last time Jude had seen me, I had fallen off the wakeboard and landed in the lake. I didn’t know if he ever saw me emerge from the water after they’d gotten him onto the boat.

Jude nodded and shut his eyes, relief evident on his face.

Smoke froze the recording on that image and I had to look away or my heart would slam straight through my chest.

Alex rounded toward me. “We suspect he’s on a large cruiser somewhere out on the lake.”

I closed my eyes, unable to shake what I had just witnessed.

“What’s to keep Elias from k . . . killing Jude?” I asked, swallowing.

“He does, he has bad blood with two clubs,” Smoke said. “He won’t want that.”

I nodded.

“Did anything register for you?” Alex asked. “Have any clues at all where he might be holding him?”

I stared up at the monitor and took in the room where Elias was keeping Jude captive. Paneled walls, rounded windows. I racked my brain for a couple minute before my shoulders slumped and I shook my head.

“Fuck,” I said, my face falling into my hands.

“It’s okay, Cory,” Alex said. “It was worth a shot.”

Smoke turned off the TV and we headed out of the room. I noticed Chopper was outside running along the back property and wondered if he was missing Jude as much as I was.

“You probably need to lay back down,” Smoke said. “The painkillers the doc prescribed are on the nightstand.”

I nodded numbly and walked down the hall, my head and spine throbbing with each step. No way I was going back to sleep, but I needed time alone to think.

After my head hit the pillow, I stared up at the ceiling, and went over the recording step by painful step. The way Jude looked, how he responded when Elias was speaking to him. I wanted to nail that motherfucker to the wall as much as Alex did. Probably even more.

And then I shot straight up in bed and scrambled to anchor my feet on the ground.

When I stumbled back into the great room, all eyes shot to me.

My gaze landed on Alex as I hobbled toward him. “What is it, Cory?”

“It’s probably nothing—”

“We’ve got nothing at this point, so—”

“That phrase he used. Elias,” I said. “Mi cielo. Jude said he called his mother that all the time. That he was obsessed with her.”

“What does it mean?” Malachi asked.

“It means my heaven,” Alex said, as he rubbed his fingers across his chin.

“I just thought . . . if he was so into her and she betrayed him by letting Jude escape . . .”

“Go on,” Alex said.

“I don’t know, maybe there’s a memoriam of her somewhere. A play on her name, initials, her nickname . . . that he uses or keeps or . . . God, I don’t know.”

Alex bolted out of his seat, grabbed his coat, and was already dialing his cell. “Like maybe on the side of a boat. I’m on it.”

Alex strode out the door and Malachi stared after him, his eyebrows scrunched together. “Huh,” he said.

Smoke clapped me on the back. “Might be worth something, Cory.”

I nodded and then turned again toward the hallway, this time the bed calling to me. I lay awake for some time, my eyes burning holes in the plaster, until exhaustion consumed me.