Sorry, Viktor. I lied. Kara didn’t. She thought he was scruffy and rude, and she wasn’t exactly wrong. Just oblivious to the rough charm I missed when he wasn’t around. “When are you heading out?”
Ranger’s humour faded. “As soon as I know your head’s straight.”
“Brother, I was never straight.”
“Like everyone else around here.”
“Even you?”
Ranger rolled his eyes. “You want to bang me, big man, you’re too late.”
“Why’s that?”
“None of your fucking business.” Ranger unfolded his tall frame from the narrow bunk. “And stop looking at me like that. Maybe I’m just sick of guitars and weed.”
“Sea Rave finish you off?”
“I wasn’t there for the entertainment.”
“What the fuckwereyou there for then? Mateo’s conversation skills?”
“Are you shitting me? Nash wanted a ring of steel around you, and I was first in line, likealways, brother. You know that.”
My brain flip-flopped, trying to catch up. “Ring of fuckin’ what? What are you talking about?”
Thewhat the fucklook returned to Ranger’s face, darkening his features. “I’m talking about why I came back here in the first place. What are you not understanding about that?”
Lots, by the sound of it, and the brain fog that had weighed me down all week returned full force, not helped by the fact that I’d checked out of club business so entirely that I had no idea if I’d missed a church session.
If I’d missed ten.
“I thought you came back to help Saint with something.”
“I did.” Ranger shot a glance at the door, as if he was banking on someone coming through to save him from wherever this conversation was going. “Nash asked me to help run down Priest, and I tried, man. That shithole...fuck, we’d been there already, before you got took, and I knew they’d had someone there. If I’d timed it better, I fucking promise you they’d have been dead long before they ever got to you again.”
Ranger’s voice cracked with an emotion he rarely gave oxygen to, and I distantly registered that it wasn’t all for me. But as my pulse boomed in my ears, only one thought rang out. “Nash knew?”
Confusion coloured Ranger’s gaze again. “Course he did. Why do you think he’s been so crazy these last few months?”
For the same reasons I had. ForOrla. Was Ranger seriously telling me that Nash had known all along that this bullshit’d had nothing to do with her andeverythingto do with me?
What else does he know?
I pictured myself on my knees in the Crow chapel, hands cuffed behind me, Priest’s knife at my throat, his sick voice in my ear?—
“Locke.”
I pushed Ranger away and staggered off the bunk, dashing for the bathroom to lose what little food I hadn’t passed Nicky’s way.
Hunched over the toilet, it felt like the devil trying to claw his way out of my soul, leaving nothing but fury in his place, and the irritability I’d felt with Kara came back, morphing into the rage I’d never found a home for.
I washed my mouth and face with mechanical hands, only the drumbeat of anger for company despite Ranger calling my name from the doorway.
Nash knew.
Had Orla?
My gut told meno, but what the fuck did I know?