Ridden by R. B. Fields

Author:R. B. Fields [Fields, R. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947748736
Publisher: Pygmalion Publishing

Chapter 15

Back in the van, the silence stretches. If the others were here, they might be making comments about my father’s level of paranoia. Rooster would be cracking jokes. Mack might still be oscillating between acceptance and disbelief that where we’re headed is even the right place to go to solve this mystery—from the outside, the connections seem dubious at best.

But the others aren’t here. Blade drives in silence. I’m glad for that, I think. The thoughts that have been ricochetting around in my head for days are plenty loud. The fire, being on the run—yet again—is a lot to take in. And now that my father is involved, now that we found an empty grave and realized that our current boss is the one who killed my dad…

Well. Let’s just say it’s rough to have unresolved gruff leeching into your blood when you’re supposed to be solving a mystery and saving yourself from some unknowable threat.

“They’re terrible to me.” The words come at a distance, and so low that for a moment I think imagined them. But when I look over, Blade’s turned my way, blue eyes leveled at me as if waiting for a response.

There’s only one response I can think of: “They don’t trust you.”

“Do you?”

“More than Mack does.” But I will admit that something about him feels… off. I’m able to push it out of my head most of the time—I’ve been remarkably distracted. But there’s a strange cloud that has been hanging over his head since the day we found out that Dominick killed my father. No… before that. Since the cemetery?

“Are you hiding something, Blade?”

He sniffs. “No.”

The hairs prickle along my spine—I can’t tell if he’s lying. If he is, it’s because of what they’re doing to him; because they’re withholding… well, me. “Maybe you should leave,” I say. “Constant torture, as you put it, all this life and death battling with no reward—”

“You know exactly why I’m here,” he snaps, turning back to the windshield, his knuckles white around the wheel. “I know I can’t have you all to myself; I tried that, and I couldn’t keep you. You never even told me what I did wrong, not exactly. Just accused me of a bunch of stuff.” His blue eyes are icy. I know why—I accused him of killing my father. That one probably cut him deep.

“I’m sorry for that—I am. It was a weird time in my life, and I didn’t know what to think. The timing was pretty coincidental.”

“That’s not the only reason you left me. You were bored.”

“Maybe I was just tired of the blood.” But the line makes my heart hurt. Since I’ve been with the Renegades, there has been far more blood, yet I haven’t seriously considered leaving them.

I swallow hard. “It turned my stomach to imagine you taking orders. You didn’t know if there was any real reason to stab someone in the head; you just listened to the boss. And lying to me about where you were going—”

“I didn’t—”

“You went somewhere the week my father died.

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