Page 94 of The Secrets We Bury

“What the fuck!” I swing one leg up and over the seat. “Are you trying to fucking kill me?”

One booted foot appears out of the driver’s side door and then the second one follows. The man that unfolds himself from the vehicle is tall and broad and… familiar? I narrow my eyes, my helmet dropping to the ground.

“Just needed to get your attention,” Viks says, folding his tattooed arms.

“Well, you got it,” I snap.

“Do I?” Viks arches a brow as he comes to a stand in the center of his taillights. “Because I don’t think I do. You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“Yeah, well, I have fucking shit to do,” I say. Not for the first time do I wish I’d started carrying outside of work for Darrio. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, not when so much has been happening around us for the last several months.

Viks might be Lex’s uncle, but he’s by no means one of us—and this, tracking me down in the middle of nowhere?—it makes me nervous, even if I’d rather die than admit as much to him.

“Does any of it have anything to do with your girl?” he asks.

Though he doesn’t show it in his facial expression, his tone is full of something I can’t name. I take a step forward. “What do you know?”

Even as I ask the question, I’m already sizing him up as a potential fighter. He’s broad and tall—only slightly more so than me. His experience is a point in his favor, but my age is one in mine. I don’t care what it takes to crack him open and know all of his secrets, especially if those secrets concernher.

Viks looks back at me as if he can read every thought I’m having—even the ones that have me barreling straight into him and taking him to the ground. He doesn’t flinch against my glare. Merely turns his back on me and pops the tailgate of his extended cab down.

With a scowl, I watch him move as if he’s not concerned about an attack from me at all. He shoves a few small boxes that rattle as if they’re holding tools in them into the corners until there’s a large, gaping space in the center of the bed. Only then does he turn back to face me and jerk his thumb to the truck.

“Let’s get your bike in here and head out,” he says. “I’ve got something you’re going to want to see.”

For a moment, I stand there, unsure of whether or not I should trust this man. The eventuality of his information,though, is too much. Whatever he’s tracked me down for, I want it. Information is power, after all, and if anything, I need as much as I can fucking get.

With some help from him, I manage to load my Indian into the back of his truck, laying it on its side and closing the hatch. When I round the vehicle and slip into the passenger side, I toss my helmet onto the floorboards and turn to face the man who gets in alongside me.

“Talk,” I say.

He doesn’t. Instead, Viks buckles up and shuts his door before placing the vehicle back in drive. With each passing second, the repressed anger that’s been seething in the pit of my stomach boils hotter and hotter. I’m on the cusp of attacking him, not giving a shit if it gets both of us killed while he drives, when he finally speaks.

“I got word from the hacker yesterday,” Viks announces. “There’s been some movement on Denise Donovan’s accounts.”

I blink. “Denise Donovan?” I repeat the name. “Not Morpheus Calloway?”

“Not Morpheus Calloway,” Viks agrees.

Fuck.I scrub a hand down my face. “So, she’s alive.” Could she be behind any of the problems Juliet has been facing over the last several months?

Why would a mother do that to a daughter? Almost as soon as that question enters my mind, I almost laugh out loud. Why do parents do any of the shit they do? Why do fathers beat their sons? Why do they break their arms? Some people should never be allowed to procreate, not if they’re just going to cause more fucked-up adults.

“That hasn’t been determined yet,” Viks says, answering my statement about Denise Donovan. “All we have is that her accounts are in motion. It appears there was a massivewithdrawal right before they went inactive and now there’s been another.”

“How massive?”

“Just under ten thousand.”

One doesn’t have to be a finance wizard to understand what that means. “Enough for something big, but not so much that they’d tip off the Bank Secrecy Act.”

Viks tips his head in my direction. “Smart,” he states. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

I don’t relax back into the front seat of his vehicle so much as I press the flat of my back so hard into it that I can feel my spine going straighter and my legs lock into place beneath the dash. I grit my teeth and hiss out a long breath.

“Juliet’s with Calloway,” I say. “She went back to him—said some shit about not wanting to suffer anymore in the gutter with the rest of us.”

The hum from the driver’s side makes my head ache. “Is that so?” Viks’ voice is quiet, thoughtful. “She never struck me as the type to go for the easy road. It’s a bit odd that she’d go for it now, don’t you think? Right after your mom had that accident.”