Page 12 of Judas (The Lito Duet #2)

Glaring at the phone, my annoyance flares for this guy.

I wait for what feels like eons before the fancy screen on the dash lights up and does this strange flash, then completely glitches out.

Well, fuck me, so much for a new car and gadgets-a-plenty.

Shit, maybe I did something wrong to the phone and it was connected and I fucked it all up.

“DAMNIT!” I snap. Realization kicking in. What if I lose all contact and he’s not able to send me the GPS to Lucien and Sadie? “No… no no no no no.”

Cue panic.

With a jolt, I suddenly sit up and reach over, tapping frantically on the screen.

I’m trying to get it to light up, make noise, something as long as it works again but nothing happens.

It’s just a fingerprint smudged black box with a terrible reflection of me in it.

What the hell am I going to do… I can’t lose this trail.

I need Sir-Grumps-A-Lot to fucking message me back or tell me what the hell is going on with this overpriced, not working, stupid fucking car!

“Stop touching the damn screen, Nadia, it’s just me.”

Jumping, the boom of Ra’s voice startles me, causing me to rear back from the screen and scowl.

The brashness in his tone feels like sandpaper on my skin, rubbing me in all the wrong ways, yet the heaviness of it is comforting—a weighted blanket that soothes yet simultaneously fuels the anxiety thrumming through me.

“The fuck did you do to the car?” I snap, shoving past the smidgen of comfort I feel with him. Trusting someone to the degree I become comfortable is dangerous.

“Hacked it, silly girl. If you stopped touching the screen, I… there we go,” he answers then appears like some sort of Star Trek apparition.

Son of a bitch.

Starting at the monitor in front of me, I’m taken back by the almost angry looking being on the other side.

He practically fills the whole damn screen, like he’s sitting close to the camera to intentionally blot out the background—hiding what’s behind him.

He looks familiar, just like… fuck, just like Ez but more heavily tattooed and a little thicker.

Something one of the girls in Bluitt said to me one time comes racing back.

‘Your eyebrows are sisters not twins.’ Meaning they look so damn close but there’s just enough difference to tell them apart. No copy and pasting here.

Black tendrils of ink cradle both sides of his face, peeking out from a hairline that’s dark and buzzed short at the temples, fading to longer strands at the top with a goofy-ass vanity line.

Angry brows pinch together in what looks like a semi-permanent scowl over dark eyes, and ‘Devour’ tattooed over the left one.

Everything about Ra screams ‘I’ll put you in the ground without even digging the hole.’ Biceps stretch the dark fabric of his shirt until it strains, with more ink reaching down to his fingertips. If it wasn’t dark on his side, I’d be able to tell what some of them are by how crisp the image is.

Fucking hell, he must have spent a fortune on all the tattoos.

My eyes skim every bit of him I can manage, finding myself wanting to pay attention to the dickhead.

Especially the death glare he’s aiming at me through the safety of the screen.

That stupid ass voice in the back of my head is ready to fight him, and though I tell her to sit the hell down, my mouth opens anyway.

I’ve never been able to tell that bitch no—with the devil sitting on the other side of the screen, she is ready to screech.

Dammit.

“You couldn’t just answer my question? You had to invade the only safe space I have with that mug of yours?”

“You know, Ez might like that fucking mouth, but I’m about two seconds away from hunting you down and making you beg to lick the dirt from my boots.” His voice is dry and clipped.

“Ra, why the hell am I looking at you on this monitor? I don’t need nightmare inducing imagery when I’m already fucked in the head.”

That’s right, bitch, deflect.

I can almost hear his teeth grind together while watching his jaw flex from the pressure of trying to keep his frustration under wraps.

It’s a bit amusing seeing how easy it is to get him all riled up and what not, but I’d be one hell of a liar if I said he didn’t piss me off, too.

We will call this shit payback and call it even, yeah? Foolproof plan.

Ra sits back lazily in his computer chair, where his bulky arms start moving just out of view. I assume he’s manning the mouse and moving the cursor across the screen, directing it over to whatever he’s taken time out of his day to bother me with.

“Your man.”

Fuck.

“Didn't take a whole lot of digging. Once I caught a lead everything fell into place after a few clicks. I’m going to patch the info through to your phone when I’m done uploading everything to the Cloud.” Ra continues.

“What does the weather have to do with this?” I ask.

He smirks.

Embarrassment overtakes me, I don’t know Ra very well but I have a sneaking suspicion the asshole wouldn’t smirk if something didn’t actually amuse him.

Which means what I said was dumb as hell.

Just as I am about to lean forward and start tapping on the monitor to interrupt his feed, his tongue passes over his bottom lip and he schools his features.

“Cloud computing; it’s how we now operate computers and store large amounts of data. Which then can be accessed across the globe as long as a computer is able to connect to it. For example...”

Maybe I was wrong and I did just crawl out from under a rock after all.

I’m so out of touch. I could have kept up with the change in technology but I chose not to, albeit the changes were much slower while in prison.

The fact of the matter is, I didn’t have anyone to contact, so there was no need nor was there a desire to learn.

I was happy with writing letters to Sadie.

They were keepsakes I hope she held on to as she was growing up.

To have words to look back on and know that I didn’t give her up because I didn’t want her, but because I couldn’t have her.

You can’t keep conversations you have over the phone and I wanted her to have my love written on paper so she knew that I’d do anything for her.

“As you drive, your phone will have continuous access to the Cloud via the Internet instead of switching servers assigned to cell towers. It allows a seamless transfer of data. Its most popular use is storage, but companies utilize it to move data faster rather than copying and pasting it into files then emailing them over. It saves time, money, and keeps the information from falling into the wrong hands,” Ra continues.

“Sounds simple enough,” I lie. I’m sure if he broke it down with crayons and coloring pages I’d understand but it’s beyond me at this point. Just load the fucking information to my phone, Einstein.

Hearing the soft clicks of a mouse, mixed with a passing semi rolling through the parking lot of the truck stop, I sit back in the too-comfortable seat of this fancy car and wait. It’s almost white noise now, which brings my anxiety level down thankfully.

“Ra?”

“Yes?” He’s quick to reply.

“This warranted a video consultation?” Honestly, I just want to be left alone right now. So much has changed in the world and it’s leaving me in a funk.

“I wanted to see what my brother saw when he looked at you.”

Well, that confirms everything up to this point. Remember what I said? Sisters and not twins?

“Blunt. I dig it.”

“We don’t say shit like that anymore, Nadia. You ought to pick up Urban Dictionary and learn new slang. It will help you not look so out of place.”

“Dickhead. I dig it.”

It’s my turn to smirk now, the impassive glare he gave coming through in a loud sort of silence. That’s when I realize he can see me too. Fucking hell, good thing I’m not doing something even more embarrassing than being out of touch with the world.

“What did he see?” Trying to further the conversation along rather than sitting here like a deer in headlights.

“Fight.”

Jeez, Shakespeare, don’t go into detail or anything.

“Elaborate,” I say with a snap.

“He thinks you have some sort of gusto under that fucking attitude. Only needed to confirm.”

“And?”

I’ve had police questioning that has gone a lot smoother than this.

“All I see is a confused and misplaced woman who wouldn’t know how to survive without someone holding her hand and telling her what to do. Is that what you want to hear, Nadia? That I think you’re lost, useless, and need to be ushered around like you can’t think for yourself?”

What the fuck do I say to that? I mean, in a way he’s right—I am lost and confused, unable to place myself anywhere where I could belong but I’m not THAT pathetic, am I?

Welp, it’s time to do what I do best. Be a smart ass.

“This mean you want to hold my hand, Ra?”

“Not at all. I do, however, want to beat you with it.”

“Kinky.”

“Watch it.”

This time, I laugh, unable to hold it back and it feels good. He’s crass and irritating, but I like that and it feels safe. Unsure what that says about me, but who gives a fuck? It shouldn’t take someone like Ra to make me feel any semblance of ease but here we are.

Turning, I look out the window and let silence take the both of us again. The random click and snap of a keyboard echoing through the video call. Like two old friends, sitting here with nothing to say, nothing to share, but still there for support, maybe even accountability?

Letting my thoughts wander, I start piecing together what I may need to do to get Sadie back.

Lucien isn’t going to let her go willfully and that’s an issue all on its own.

I also need to consider her mental state.

I saw the bottles in her room; a few of them I have become accustomed to over the years—Risperdal being the one that stuck out to me the most.

I’ve watched Nurse Cindy give that one out more times than I can count, and the fact that it’s being prescribed to my daughter is concerning. I don’t know what they have done to her, or why she needs it, but it answers why she would allow some fuck like Lucien to get ahold of her.

“You’re thinking too hard, Nadia.” Ra interrupts my thoughts, his voice low and gravely. He probably got punched in the throat one too many times growing up.

“Would you rather I let you do all the thinking? You did just say that I’m pathetic so, sit over there in your fancy room with all your gadgets and tell me where in the hell I need to go. I’m depending on you to get me close enough to my kid where I can save her life.”

“You want my honesty or would you like me to pacify you? Since my earlier words seem to have struck a nerve.”

“Honesty would be nice. A bit important for this business relationship, don’t you think?”

Without missing a beat, he replies. It’s almost robotic in a sense, how easy it is for him to have an answer and for the words to be spoken. It’s like he has thought long and hard about them.

“I think you’re too late. If this guy, Lucien, is as manic as you say he is, and he has Sadie cooped up somewhere with plans to flee the country, she’s as good as gone. You’re already so far north, you need to seriously consider the possibility that she’s gone.”

“No.”

“Nadia…”

“I said no, Ra!” My voice grows louder and full of a mixture of emotions.

He doesn’t interject nor get angry at my outburst. How could he understand what I’m going through, fuck, he’s not even old enough.

Should have asked him to pacify me instead despite favoring the cold hard truth.

Not a damn thing on this planet is going to make me give up on finding Sadie; even if jumping the border ends up on the to-do list, it will be done.

I am finding my kid, one way or another.

“And the pacifier?” I finally ask.

“I have more than enough information to get you all the way to the front door, where you can get your revenge.”

“Yeah, we should have gone with that one first.”

“Nadia, listen to me. I’m not an optimistic man; if you want that, then you need to call Ez. I’m here to give you the facts straight and cold, because filling your head with hope and butterflies isn’t going to prepare you for what you may find.”

“I appreciate that, Ra. I’ve never been a sugar-coated kinda bitch anyway.”

“Good, then you’re with the right brother. Now, I’m updating your GPS and sending over this file with all of Kace’s background information. Don’t dwell on it, Nadia. I know a broken heart when I see one; if you stew on what might have been, your delay could cost you more than you have to give.”

“Al—alright.”

“I’ll be in touch soon. Grab an energy drink and get back on the road.”

I knew he drank those nasty fucking things.

He’s right, and I know it. Sadie needs someone to come in swinging, who will fight anyone to bring her back to a place where she will be loved and kept safe. A place where she still has family, even if it’s a little on the small side and unconventional.

Sadie needs me angry, willing to put Lucien Bardot in the ground, and that’s what she’s going to get.

I’ll take an hour to look over what Ra is sending me, allow myself to feel one last time, then I’m going to delete everything and let Kace rest, once and for all.