Chapter Text
Rhys stood in the prison yard, unable to move. Vaguely, he was aware Jack was speaking to him. He couldn’t quite make out what the man was saying, the blood pounding in his ears too loud to hear over. Rhys stared Nisha down instead, certain she was about to pull her gun on either of them. His mind tried to cycle through what had just happened, trying to make sense of it. Jack had kissed him. He could parse that much. It seemed to have happened so fast. Not so fast that he hadn’t had time to resist, though. Yet, he hadn’t. Something had stopped him. Something inside him had even yearned for it. It was absurd, now that he thought it over, but the truth was staring him in the face.
Someone let out a sharp, long whistle. It pulled Rhys up out of his thoughts. Troy was standing a few feet away. He was leering as he watched both Jack and Rhys. Then he broke out in a curt, vicious laugh.
“I was taking bets that there was something going on between you two,” he said, his voice laden with irony. “Didn’t expect it to be true. You’re a regular pair of lovebirds, aren’t you?”
“Can you shut that mouth of yours for a second, Calypso?” Jack snapped at him. The steely tone of his words eradicated the smirk on Troy’s face. Whatever Troy was going to offer to the conversation today, Jack was having none of it. “This has nothing to do with you, so why don’t you scram?”
“Hey, I’m not going to tell nobody. Not that I gotta. Half the yard probably saw that.”
“I said get out of here. Go back to trying to shove your head up Flynt’s ass or whatever you were doing.”
Hands balling at his sides, Troy didn’t look like he’d taken well to the suggestion. For a long time, he stood there, gaze smoldering, jaw clenched. Rhys watched the movement of his tattoos as his chest heaved with his breaths. There was tension on the air, thick as the Pandora smog that hung over traffic at rush hour. Gravel crunched underfoot as Troy’s feet shifted on the pavement.
Having lunged at Jack, he came up short against another body, his arms reaching out to brace himself. Nisha was standing there in between Troy and Jack like a human barricade. She grabbed one of Troy’s arms in a death grip and shoved him backward. His lanky form stumbled and he nearly tipped over on to his ass.
“My, you must really want to visit the hole today, Calypso,” she said. One of her hands rested on her hip, close to her gun holster.
Troy spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Jack started this shit.”
“He’ll be visiting too, trust me.”
Looking stricken, Jack said, “What for? Telling this creep to get the fuck out of my face?”
“Sexual misconduct.” Nisha turned to look at Jack now with a stony expression. “That kind of fraternizing on the yard you just did is strictly prohibited. I shouldn’t have to tell your ass that.”
“Please, Neesh. It was just a little joke.”
“Didn’t look like a joke from where I was standing.”
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“Definitely not shitting you. Say goodbye to your friends. You’ll be spending the night.”
“What about Calypso.” Jack jabbed his thumb in the direction of the tattooed man. “He’s out here fighting and gambling. You just gonna let him off the hook?”
“Sure. Way I see it, Jack, is that all comes back to you, anyway. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and come along so that this doesn’t have to get messy.”
The sputter from Jack was loud. His eyes had widened, and he had all but forgotten Rhys’s presence beside him. So much that when he swung for the chain link fence, it missed Rhys by a few scant inches. The fence rattled like bones in a metal cup. Rhys felt just as rattled, having come so close to another injury from Jack. Where he expected there to be ire, his heart only pounded with excitement. There was something unhinged unfurling in his brain and he didn’t know what to think about it.
“You too,” Nisha said to Rhys, drawing his attention. “I think it’s about high time you left the premises. I’ll escort you back out.”
Not trusting his voice, Rhys could only nod.
xxx
In a daze, Rhys stepped through the glass doors of the Peace Corps building and made his way up to the front desk, where there was a line. His mind was still reeling from the events out on the prison yard. In truth, he wasn’t sure how he’d made it from the prison all the way to the Peace Corps and Code Enforcement office. The time between those two points seemed distorted, unreal. He’d been playing the kiss he shared with Jack in his head throughout the entire drive. He’d let Jack Lawrence, infamous criminal, a man who’d bitten him once, kiss him. Just stood there and didn’t do anything to stop it. And when he’d tried, his own consciousness had stopped him from resisting, had even embraced the idea like an old lover. What the fuck was wrong with him?
The same thoughts wouldn’t stop playing over in his mind on a loop. So much that when it came to his turn on the line, he stared blankly as the officer behind the front desk asked him how she could help him.
“Sir?” the voice that brought him back to himself was asking. “Sir, are you listening?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Rhys was quick to stutter out. “Miles away. A lot going on in my noggin.” He tapped the side of his head with his finger, trying to summon a placating smile. “I’m here to see Detective Fiona Stetson. I’m supposed to meet with her.”
“And your name?”
“Rhys Vasquez.”
“ID?”
Rhys showed her his license.
“Just a sec.” The officer picked up a phone sitting in front of her and spoke into it. After a moment she set it back down in its cradle. “She’ll be right with you. Have a seat.”
Waiting was the worst possible situation for Rhys to be in. With nothing to distract him, he drifted back to thoughts of Jack, the kiss they had shared. As sudden as it was, he should have had the willpower to pull away. Though Rhys was skeptical that Jack had murdered his own wife and child, especially with new light possibly being shed on his mom’s old case, it didn’t sit well with him that Jack was still someone dangerous. Someone who’d murdered people, who’d terrorized Pandora with his criminal empire. That Rhys could have feelings for such a man unsettled him. He had his whole future ahead of him, a career waiting for him after he completed this dissertation. Rhys wondered if it was worth completing anymore. If anything, his work with Jack had become less about his research and more about the murder cases. Maybe he should bow out now before he dug an even deeper hole for himself. His father would probably laugh and tell him he’d been foolish from the beginning, but his pride was braced for such devastating blows. In a way, dealing with Jack and his convoluted web of a life had readied him.
Someone was calling Rhys’s name. Startled, he looked up to see a woman standing before him. She wore an old-fashioned deep brown pantsuit, the suit coat having a sharp, high collar, the shoulders angular. On top of her head was a beige bowler hat.
“Mr. Vasquez?” she asked, her tone impatient.
“Rhys,” Rhys finally said, standing up and offering his hand. “Mr. Vasquez is my father.”
“Right.” She drew the word out, staring Rhys down as if she were scrutinizing a murder suspect. They shook hands. Her grip was tight, strong. Rhys glimpsed the holster at her hip and imagined her fingers squeezing the trigger of the gun there. She was probably a good shot. “This way, Rhys.”
They walked back to an office with STETSON stenciled on the door. The room was decorated with antique furniture, the rich oak wooden desk polished to gleaming, the chairs in front of it studded and stitched in leather. There was a computer at the desk, which Fiona slid in behind. She indicated for Rhys to have a seat.
“We both know why you’re here, so lets make this quick and painless,” Fiona said.
Rhys grimaced at those words. Somehow, he knew this wasn’t going to be as painless as the detective hoped. “Alright. Give me all the gory details, I guess.” He regretted his choice of words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
Tapping on the computer’s keyboard, Fiona nodded. “So, typical protocol is that everyone who comes through Pandora Island has their fingerprints and DNA samples taken. We’ve solved a lot of cold cases that way. The murder of your mother, Gwenyth Alys Strongfork-Vasquez, was one of those cold cases. Until now. We have reason to believe her murderer is behind those penitentiary bars as we speak.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Rhys clasped his hands together and rested them on his knees. “That’s what you told me over the phone. That the perpetrator was brought in recently.” Rhys wanted to shout at her to get to the point, this was supposed to be quick and painless. Somehow he restrained himself.
“Yeah, we had a recent prisoner match the DNA that was left at the crime scene. Are you familiar with a man named Troy Calypso, known in the wastes as The Rat King?”
The room seemed to recede from Rhys’s vision. The detective at her desk before him blurred into a vector of colors, a high-pitched ringing starting in his ears. His mouth worked, but no sound came out, his jaw gaped wide. In his mind, he saw Troy in the prison yard, taunting him. All this time his mother’s murderer had been right there, part of Jack’s gang, though Jack refused to call him such. Rhys could feel wetness pooling in his eyes and willed the tears back, digging his fingers into his palms to keep them at bay.
“Yes, I’ve met him,” he croaked out eventually.
“Scotch?”
“What?”
“You want a drink?” Fiona had gotten up out of her chair and was at a credenza that was situated against the wall. Rhys saw that it was open, a variety of bottles on display. She snatched one up, filling a shot glass with some type of amber liquid.
“Uh, no thanks.”
“It’s here if you change your mind.” Fiona knocked back the drink in one gulp and set the glass aside. “Anyway, Calypso was an exact match. It would have meant that the case went back to trial. You remember that they pinned those crimes on Jack Lawrence, right? His wife and daughter, murdered in the same exact way. Well, at least his wife was. The kid—gruesome, but not so much as the way he did his wife and your mother. We believe he might have shown his daughter some mercy. But who knows with these psychos.”
Rhys almost opened his mouth to defend Jack, to proclaim the man wasn’t a psycho. Then he wondered why he was arguing that fact at all. Instead, he said, “You keep implying that he was still behind the murder of my mother and his wife. I thought you said Troy Calypso matched the DNA?”
“He did. But we’re pretty sure he didn’t act alone. There’s still another set of DNA that was found at both scenes that remains a mystery. It’s not Calypso’s and it’s not Lawrence’s. We think Lawrence may have hired both Calypso and someone else to do the jobs. Sounds like something Lawrence would pull off.”
Admittedly, Rhys had to agree with that statement. As much as he wanted to protest the accusations against Jack, he knew the man to be manipulative. Hiring someone to do his dirty work for him could’ve been something he might try, but it didn’t feel right. Especially when it came to Rhys’s mother. The two hadn’t been involved like Jack had originally implied. He had no motives to kill her. None that Rhys could see at least.
“So, what we’re doing here is reopening the case,” Fiona was saying. “I’ll be leading the investigation. If there’s any evidence you could bring to light to me, anything you can think of, I’d appreciate it.”
“I can tell you that Jack Lawrence has nothing to do with either murder case,” Rhys said before he could stop himself.
Fiona gave him a skeptical look. “And you know this how exactly?”
“I’ve been working with him. As part of my dissertation. We were getting pretty deep with things. There’s this guy he brought over with him from Tantalus, Timothy—”
“We know about Timothy. He was part of the reason Lawrence was put on trial. And found guilty, to remind you.”
“Yes, but Jack was never the one that had the affair with my mother. It was his doppelganger, Timothy. Jack only had professional involvement with Gwenyth.”
Her voice dropping to a deadpan, Fiona asked, “And where’s Timothy now?”
The leather chair squeaked beneath Rhys as he fidgeted. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“He’s involved in certain operations that would be jeopardized if anyone knew where he was.”
There a long suffering sigh from Fiona. She eyed the bottle of liquor she’d taken out earlier. “Rhys. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because you’re the warden’s son. But if you’re keeping any significant evidence from me, you’re jeopardizing your own mother’s case.”
“Timothy’s a dead end, trust me. Besides, being Jack’s doppelganger means they’d have similar DNA. They’d be almost undetectable from each other, wouldn’t they? He’s not your guy. Troy Calypso, on the other hand…I can believe he did this. Who with, I don’t know yet. Or why. But he is the one behind this somehow.”
Fiona had decided she needed another drink. She’d gotten up from her seat and stood with the glass poised at her lips. “He’s as good a lead we have as any, considering. We’re planning to have him transported for questioning. Just haven’t been given the go ahead yet even with the evidence stacked. I think the prosecutor’s pissed off that this could possibly fuck up the Lawrence case. They may even have to acquit him.”
“Not everything’s as open and shut as it often seems.”
“Pretty insightful of you, if not flawed. I’ll keep you posted on anything new that crops up. If we get something out of Calypso, whenever that might be, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks, Detective Stetson. That means a lot to me.”
“Easy there, Rhys. You can thank me when we finally solve this case.”
XXX
They stood in the basement, Nisha with her gun digging into Jack’s chest and Jack with his hands held up as if warding her off. His eyes were wide, his lips thinned with uncertainty. Nisha jabbed him with the gun and he took a step backward, stumbling into the wall. There he flattened himself to it, trying to control his rapid breathing.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Jack asked, incredulous at the situation unfolding.
“Not at all,” Nisha snapped back in a deadpan. “Have you lost yours?”
“Why you say that? What’d I do?”
For a long time, Nisha didn’t take her gaze off of him. The gun remained in place as well, unwavering. There was a click as she pulled back the hammer. Jack swallowed hard.
“Is this about kissing Rhys?” Jack looked down at the gun. “You’re not actually mad about that, are you, Neesh? I was just messing with the kid’s head. You know you’re my number one.”
“Am I really, Jack? Or are you just saying that so that I don’t shoot your ass dead down here? Nobody would find you in a dog’s age.”
“You know you are. I’m crazy about ya. Rhys, he’s just a means to an end.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.” There was a heart-pounding moment where her finger tightened on the gun’s trigger. Then she lifted it away, aiming it at the ceiling. “The two of you seem to have gotten pretty close.”
“I swear he means nothing to me, babe. He’s just my ticket out of here. I gotta butter ‘im up if it means he’s gonna get me free of these walls.”
Nisha seemed to consider Jack’s words. The gun slid back into its holster, her hand reaching up to grab Jack by the chin. She squeezed his jaw with her thumb and forefinger, making him squirm.
“I’d be careful with Rhys,” she told Jack. “Kid’s got a big secret he’s been keeping from you.”
The look on Jack’s face twisted with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You have no idea who he is, do you? He tell you who is father is by any chance?”
“No.” A furrowed line appeared on Jack’s brow. “His mother was Alys Strongfork. He told me that much. Why, is his father someone important or something? Do I know him somehow?”
There was a harsh laugh from Nisha. The grin she gave Jack afterward was vicious. She let him go, throwing his head back so that it thunked against the wall.
“Does the name Hugo Vasquez sound familiar?” she asked him.
“The Warden?” Jack blinked, his mind catching up to Nisha’s words. “Wait, are you telling me Rhys’s dad is the fucking Warden?”
“That’s what I like about you, Jack. You catch on quick. How you think he got an in to work with you to begin with? You think they just let university students waltz in here and sit down with one of the most notorious crime bosses Pandora has ever seen?”
“Fuck,” was all Jack could get out. It took him a minute or so before he could speak again. He wet his lips, his eyes rolling heavenward as he thought. “Waitaminute. That means Alys Strongfork was married to Hugo Vasquez.”
“Great. What’s your point?”
“My point is they were married when Alys was seeing Timothy. This whole time Timothy must have known that, and who Rhys was, and he never uttered a single word about it to me. Shit, I’m going to kill that bastard.”
The look on Nisha’s face spoke of exasperation. “You going to kill me too?”
“Why would—right. You knew Rhys was related to the Warden. Well, can’t fault you for that, kitten. Different circumstances.”
“Don’t seem that much different.”
“Maybe I just got more of a soft spot for you. Whatever the case, you’re not on my shit list. Never will be. I mean that, Neesh.”
“Funny, because you’re sure on mine,” Nisha shot back. “And I mean that.”
Trying to grin, Jack managed more of a grimace. He believed Nisha. She wasn’t one to talk shit without it being heartfelt. In this case it was probably less heartfelt and more vengeful. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he had pissed her off so much, if there was ever a time. He decided to focus on other matters at hand. Like the fact Vasquez was Rhys’s father. That got him thinking of a few things about Alys’s murder, and the murder of his own family, none of them pleasant. He broke away from the wall, rubbing his chin where Nisha had grabbed him earlier.
“Let me ask you a serious question,” he began, daring to turn his back on Nisha. “About the Warden. Did he know? About Alys sleeping with Timothy?”
Her gaze boring into Jack’s back, Nisha took a few moments to answer. “From what I’ve overheard him discussing with Rhys, I reckon he did.”
Jack turned around and cocked his head. “That the truth?”
“It’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“I just wanna be certain.” Jack stared hard at the ground, his thoughts tangling in his head. “In your honest opinion, you think the Warden could kill someone?”
“Where is this going Jack? You trying to imply that Hugo Vasquez killed his own wife?”
“I’m just trying to piece things together.” Sighing as if he’d exerted himself, Jack combed his fingers through his coif. “I know. Doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Think about it for a minute though, Neesh. If he mistook Timothy for me, wouldn’t he have reason to target my family?”
“You’ve definitely lost your mind. Whoever offed your family and Alys Strongfork was well versed in how to butcher someone. The Warden’s hardly a criminal mastermind. I’d know damn well if he was.”
“Yeah, that’s where it doesn’t make any sense. Still, these were supposed to be crimes of passion, according to the reports, right? Who else could possibly have that motivation besides Vasquez? Who else would even know the ins and outs of the justice system enough not to get caught?”
“I think I’m looking right at him.”
“After all this time knowing me, you really still believe I killed my wife and kid?”
Nisha’s arms crossed over her chest. “Nah, I don’t. I followed your criminal history. You were always neat about the details. Dare I call you meticulous, even. Whoever did the deed was an animal. Experienced in cruelty, sure, but brutal.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, you know?” Jack said, all but demanding validation. “I ain’t saying I’ve never killed anyone before. Go ahead, lock me up for that, I guess. And I’ve done my share of torture. But that crime scene was something next level.”
“Don’t matter none, anyway. They ain’t going to let you out of here even if you could get absolved for the murders. Too many people out in Pandora want to see you rot in a prison cell. And the only thing I know is that I’m supposed to be taking your ass to the hole.”
“You’re the one that dragged us down here.”
“To hear you out. Guess I got more than the earful I bargained for.”
“Take me to the hole, then.” Judging by his tone, the conversation had made Jack irate. “You say people want to see me rot in this place, then I guess I’ll sit there and fucking rot.”
“Guess you damn well will,” Nisha replied, grabbing him by the arm. She wasn’t gentle about it, her nails biting into him through his clothing.
Without a word between them, they made their way up the stairs, moving briskly through the empty corridors of the lower levels. Solitary wasn’t a quiet block. Not like this basement space devoid of any prisoners and lost to time and ruination. The howls and cries of prisoners left in isolation plagued solitary at night, and in the day it was no better, the taunts and pleas coming from the other cells drifting down the hall. There was never any peace there, even when there was ample time to think. At least this time Jack got to keep his clothing on. Usually, it was a precaution to strip the prisoners naked when they went to the hole. Nobody wanted to find a prisoner dead in their cell, strangled by their own clothing. The amount of paperwork would be enormous. That Nisha had let Jack stay clothed was a small bit of mercy.
Settling in, Jack found a corner to situate himself and be alone with his thoughts. It was going to be a long night, and he had plenty of time to try and think about things.
Starting with Rhys being the Warden’s son, and what that meant for Jack’s case.