My heart hammers as I wait, as Maverick’s words have a chance to sink in.
He knows something.
I don’t think I really believed it until this moment. Not that he killed her, or even that he had something to do with her disappearance. But at long last, the moment is here. We’re going to find out what happened to her. The answer I’ve been waiting for all these years was here, under my nose, the whole time, watching me fight at the Slaughterpen, drawing beautiful designs onto bodies in his tattoo parlor while Eternity suffers whatever fate she met after she climbed into that car.
“What do you know?” I ask, unable to hold myself back any longer.
Angel frowns, but Maverick doesn’t react. “You’re not supposed to know this,” he says. “No one is. I never said anything because it was too dangerous. But if you’re going to go looking, you might end up dead anyway, so you might as well go in knowing what I know.”
Saint’s arms flex, and I know he’s holding himself back too, but Angel just waits, patient and watchful, for his cousin to work himself up to it.
“It wasn’t the Disciples who picked her up,” Maverick says, never pausing as he moves the machine over Heath’s side,coloring in the outline he did. “She wouldn’t have gotten in the car with them.”
“Who was it?” I ask.
Angel rests a warning hand on my arm. “It was us,” he says quietly.
I wheel on him, but Saint sees the look on my face and shakes his head. “Notus,” he says. “He means the Crossbones.”
“Three of Frederick’s guys,” Maverick says.
“That’s the head of the Skull and Crossbones,” Angel tells me.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I cry, forgetting everything else.
Maverick lifts his head from his work at last, fixing me with those dead eyes that Angel and Annabel Lee both do—the North face. He stares at me for what feels like minutes, then hours. Only when I drop my gaze and squirm visibly does he go back to Heath, moving the gun over his skin.
I open my mouth to ask more questions, but Angel shakes his head, and I bite my tongue, seething. I have a thousand questions, and he’s not letting me ask them. But I also know that if he’s keeping me from it, it’s to protect me. Maverick’s done talking, so all I would do now is anger him. After a few minutes, he sits back and sets his machine down on a tray with the other one.
“We’re done for today,” he says.
Heath stands from the table and reaches for his wallet.
Maverick’s jaw clenches, and his nostrils flare. After a brief, dead-eye stare at Heath, he bites out, “Don’t insult me.”
Heath shrugs and slips his wallet back into his pocket.
“Are you okay?” I ask him as we walk out.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks. “I just found out that the car that picked up my sister was from our own organization.”
“She obviously got in thinking she was going to be initiated,” Saint says. “She trusted them.”
Heath and Angel glance at each other. “That’s not usually how the initiations work,” Angel says. “They don’t send a car for you. They jump you at random. And Frederick doesn’t bother with the day-to-day stuff like that.”
“But Frederick’s guys picked her up,” Heath says flatly. “And they never brought her back.”
“What would he want with her?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Angel says. “Crew girls are members just like us. They’re sisters. To him, most of us are just bodies.”
“Eternity was myrealsister,” Heath growls. “And they disappeared her.”
“We’ll find her,” I promise him, my heart aching for him as much as Eternity now.
“When I tried to ask about it, Frederick refused to see me.”
“He saw Angel’s dad, though,” I point out.
