Page 20 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

“River town in the jungle. Nice hotels, cheap tacos, good tequila. You get everywhere on a boat or a motorbike. Mayan temples. Monkeys. Toucans. Manatees. It’s where the Central American elite go on holiday.

More importantly, the officials there don’t ask questions of rich gringos with offshore bank accounts who happen to want to stay indefinitely. ”

“But they still have slavery.”

“Yeah, and so does everywhere else that’s even remotely livable. But it’s not as ubiquitous there. And anyway, it won’t matter to you because you’re not a slave. You’re the son of said rich gringo.” He looked pointedly at me.

This, of course, would be as good a time as any to accuse Langer of lying.

But those days were over. What he’d told me over the phone was as real as the two of us standing here.

It hadn’t—as I’d half-convinced myself on the drive over—been my exhausted, throbbing, contused head conjuring up surreal shit out of nothing just to taunt me.

And even though my very body vibrated with the thought of what it meant, I couldn’t let Max know that.

As if there were any way he couldn’t know.

“Sorry, Dad ,” I said once I regained my voice. “But I already have a family member waiting for me.”

“I know.”

“Then—”

“I’m getting to that, okay? So I put my lawyers on it, and as it turns out, one of those fucking goons ran the car your sister was in off the road shortly after their getaway and?—”

I turned away, reeling, already barely hearing him. Heart pounding, blood rushing through my head, I didn’t wait for the rest of the story, or ask who she’d been with or who’d been driving. Did it matter?

“Fuck, that’s what Resi was talking about. When she said she wasn’t going to let them get away that easily. What happened to her, Max?”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to freak the fuck out.”

“I don’t promise that, and you’re gonna fucking tell me anyway,” I snapped, trying to focus my eyes on something, though I could no longer see much. None of what Max had said earlier seemed to matter now.

What if—All this way, and?—

“Where is she?”

“She’s fine,” Langer assured me. “She wasn’t hurt. Okay?”

“But then?—”

“She’s been detained.”

“Detained?” The word mowed me down like a rogue wave. “You’re telling me my sister’s in jail ?”

“Fucking hell, kid, will you let me finish?” Langer cut in. “It’s the safest place for her to be right now because it’s the one place Resi can’t get to her. Yeah, it’s not exactly Tivoli Gardens in there, but she’s alive. And like I said, my lawyers are getting her released as we speak.”

“So what are you saying?” I demanded.

“What I’m saying is that they’re presenting evidence that her last owners abandoned her, and then I’m buying her. Legally. If all goes well, she’ll be there to meet us at the airport.”

What had started as a rogue wave had become a storm, waves hitting me one after another, each with a new and astonishing revelation.

After seven years, I was about to see my sister again?

Right now?

My heart kept racing.

Because as much as I’d wheeled and pushed and plotted and planned for the past seven years, her face and her fear a constant fluttering presence in the back of my mind, never, not even once, had I let myself speculate on the details of our reunion when and if it came.

Like freedom, it was something I had, in the interests of keeping my wits sharp from day to day, honed the ability to think about with only half my mind.

Fuck, would I even recognize her? What would I say ? “Then you mean?—”

“That’s right,” Langer said. “Looks like I’m getting a daughter, too.”

I just stood there, mouth open.

How could I possibly not go? Well, let’s start with the obvious. “Speaking of Resi’s goons, there’s one parked right down there.” I pointed.

Langer cleared his throat and motioned to the sky. “You. Me. Helicopter. Jet. Rio Dulce. Now. Unless he’s got anti-aircraft artillery mounted on that shitty little Datsun, I like your chances for a clean getaway.” He placed his hands on his hips.

“Well, that takes care of me, but what about Resi? And the other girls? They aren’t safe.”

“Maybe not, but there’s nothing you can do about it dead, and she’s going to go for you first.”

Langer gave me another pointed look and turned, his eyes drinking in the long line of a hundred miles of desert lights twinkling in a semicircle around us.

Lights I could choose, right this second, to never see again.

And if I did, why would I care?

I hated this place.

Mostly.

I took a deep breath. “Look, I never thought I’d be saying this any more than you thought you’d be hearing it, but what about Keith? You’re planning to just leave him here to take the fall for you?”

He shrugged.

“He was your partner!” I exclaimed. “You were a guest in his fucking house. You played golf together.”

“I played golf with him because I needed him to help me free slaves.”

“It sounds like you played golf with him because you wanted to fuck him over.”

“Fucking him over was Resi’s idea, not mine. But despite everything, I’m not going to stand here and say it wasn’t a good one. And what’s more, I dare you to stand here and say that, and that he doesn’t deserve every goddamn thing that’s coming to him and more.”

No, I wasn’t going to say that because it wouldn’t be true. Not really.

I didn’t hate Keith Wainwright-Phillips, but my master certainly deserved to be hated, and normally, that would be enough for me to happily throw anybody under the bus.

Except.

“What about Louisa? Does she deserve whatever she gets?” My eyes flicked down below. Maybe it was my imagination, but the Datsun appeared to have moved from its earlier spot.

“Well,” Langer said matter-of-factly, “she could have been here now, and she’s not.”

“That’s just because I told her I hated her and plotted to destroy her and her entire family.”

“Well, fuck, kid.” He chuckled. “What the hell did you expect?”

“But I didn’t mean it,” I insisted, like a goddamn child. “And she doesn’t believe it,” I added, with even less assurance.

“Look, only you know whether you think she believes it or not,” Langer said.

“What I know is that either that goon or the police or both are going to be breaking down my fucking door very shortly, and I, for one, don’t plan to be here when they do.

Neither will my staff. And needless to say, if you are, you’re on your own. ”

“But I need more time, Max.”

Time.

Why was I always asking people for time they didn’t have and that I didn’t deserve?

Still, I wrapped my hand once more around the formula in my pocket. I hadn’t intended to show it to Max. Then again, I hadn’t intended not to show him.

“There’s something down there, on the computer. Something I missed.” I glanced warily down at the parking lot again, thinking of Noam and his muscles and his weapons. His muscles that were weapons. And then back up at Langer.

“Shit, kid, we don’t have any more time. I’ve already spent way too fucking long waiting for you and your sister, and?—”

He was cut off by a sound like a buzzing wasp, tiny enough for me to want to bat it away. But it wasn’t a wasp. Wasps didn’t make entire rooftops vibrate, or quickly grow from tiny black dots on the horizon to something the size of a horse, then an elephant.

Before our eyes emerged the massive helicopter, the city lights reflecting off its whirring, hypnotic metal exoskeleton, its own lights a circus kaleidoscope of swirling pastels that illuminated its sides, bringing it alive as it soared closer and closer until it stopped and simply hovered, hundreds of feet above us, its blades echoing through the night air like a giant mechanical insect with a menacing roar that overpowered the sound of the traffic below.

Langer ran to the edge of the roof, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting something inaudible above the gigantic rotor blades, so strong they were kicking up miniature tornadoes of dust and sand.

I could barely see or hear, the wind whipping almost painfully at my face and clothes.

The copter was close enough now that I could make out the pilot behind its window—a black-clad man in sunglasses, pointing and shouting.

Langer gestured, and the copter rose by a few dozen feet, enough to give us some breathing space.

Langer turned back, and my eyes darted frantically from the helicopter to the roof to Langer.

“Listen,” I said, fingers curling weakly around the sticky note in my pocket. “Maybe we can?—”

“There’s no ‘maybe’ here anymore, kid. It was my money, my lab, my resources.

” Langer raised his voice over the chilly wind whipping at us from every direction.

In a second, he was going to have to start shouting.

“There’s no weaseling out of this for me, kid.

Even if somehow I can beat trafficking charges for the free girl, I’m still on the hook for theft and damage of the other slaves and defrauding my other investors of millions.

They’ll make sure we go down hard. Believe me, these rich fuckers do not like being taken for a ride.

And I don’t blame them. What would you even do , anyway? ”

“Well, Keith is innocent, you know.” I raised my voice to be heard. “At best, he’ll be ruined. At worst…”

“ He gets thrown in a mine? Oh, the irony.” Langer rolled his eyes. “What? Don’t look at me like that.”

But I kept looking, and I knew roughly what the look had to be because my boss groaned and ran his hands through his windswept hair.