“You think I want to bring anyone there?”
Pike rounds the van to the passenger side.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I call after him.
He ignores me and yanks the door open. Emma almost falls out, bracing herself on the seat, her red hair blowing in the breeze.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asks.
“Here, kid.” Pike says, passing her several hundred-dollar bills from his wallet.
She looks at the money and then to Pike, making a slow appraisal of his long, lean body. She bites her lip. “‘Cause you don’t gotta pay me, baby. I’ll do you for free.” She laughs. “Shit, if I had any money, I’d pay you.”
Pike ignores her comment and looks her in the eyes. “The place the lady here is taking you to is a racist organization hellbent on terrorizing anyone who isn’t the right shade of pale,” he says, honestly. “They are trying to recruit you into a life that’s going to lead you down a path that will probably end with you getting locked up or killed. The money is for you to get the fuck out of this van. Use it to go home, and if that ain’t an option for you, I own the Pawn Shop on main. Pike’s Pawn. I’ve got a cot and a job for you if you’re interested. Just ask for Thorne. She’ll set you up.”
Emma slowly takes the money as if Pike is about to snatch it back. She hurries out of the van and slams the door behind her. She looks between me and Pike. “Ya’ll are a weird-ass couple,” she remarks.
Before I can correct her that we aren’t a couple, she scurries off toward the bus station bench. “I’ll be taking you up on that offer!”
Pike nods and turns back to me. He takes me by the elbow and walks me behind the Stop-N-Shop “What the fuck are you doing, Mic?”
“What the fuck are you doing?” he shoots back.
“I can’t go back there without a recruit. It’s one of my tests.”
“Then, don’t go back there,” he says as if it’s just that simple.
“I can’t because…”
“Because why?” he demands.
He spins me so my back is flush against the stucco of the building. I’m breathing heavy and my face is flushed. “Because I realized recently that all of this is about more than my revenge. It’s about righting the wrongs my father put in place. I can’t just kill Darius and Percy. I have to take down the Reich. Dismantle them from the inside. But there’s so much I don’t know. So much I still have to find out before I can do anything.” I fill him in on my father’s journal and Percy’s odd behavior after he found mine. “And plus, Mindy is somewhere in the Reich, but Percy moved her, and I can’t find her.”
Pike doesn’t appear as shocked as I thought he’d be at the fact that I just told him my sister, who I thought to be dead, was somewhere alive and hidden somewhere in the compound. “Tell me your plan, and tell me now,” Pike demands, pressing his knee between my legs. The anger from his eyes fades. “I didn’t ask you last time. I need to know. Tell me how you are going to take them down once you get the information you need.”
My fingers twitch to touch him but I keep my hands pressed to the wall by my side because I know that once I do I might not be able to form a coherent thought. “One, discover the main source of The Reich’s funding and cut it off. Two, find proof of my father’s lies and any skeletons in Darius’s closet and expose them to the members of the Reich. Three—”
“Kill Darius,” Pike finishes for me.
“And possibly Percy,” I add. “That would be it,” I say, laying it all out on the line. In order to live by my set of truths, I need Pike to know where my heart is. To be the one person who knows who I really am.
Even if sometimes, I’m not sure myself.
“You sure there’s no talking you out of this?” Pike asks. “Because me and my boys can take them out. You can just come home with me. Right now.”
“I want to,” I admit. “You have no idea how much I want to do just that, but this is bigger than me now.” I shake my head. “My current problem is that I can’t go back to the Reich without a recruit, and