Replica

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nate couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, couldn’t fucking breathe.

“I don’t know exactly what you heard,” Kurt said in a voice so gentle it hurt. “But whatever it was, it was so big your father was prepared to kill you to keep it secret. Keeping in mind that from his point of view, your death was only temporary.”

Kurt had probably meant that reminder to soften the blow, but it had the opposite effect. As far as his father was concerned, it didn’t matter what happened to Nate, as long as he, the Chairman, didn’t have to lose his heir.

The paralysis exploded into a kind of rage Nate had never felt before. He turned and punched the wall of the van with his already-bruised knuckles. He was dimly aware that it hurt like hell, but the rage wasn’t finished with him, so he did it again. He tried for a third time, but someone grabbed his arm. He tried to jerk free but couldn’t, which meant it was Kurt restraining him, not Nadia.

The rage inside was still rampaging, so he whirled around and threw a decidedly awkward left-handed punch somewhere in the vicinity of Kurt’s face, not really trying to hurt him, just trying to make him let go. The blow glanced off Kurt’s chin, but Kurt kept his grip, and when Nate tried again, he found himself jerked off the milk crate and wrestled to the floor of the van.

“Stop it, stop it!” Nadia was crying, but Nate didn’t know if she was talking to him or Kurt.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” Kurt growled, his lips so close to Nate’s ear he could feel Kurt’s breath on his skin.

Nate tried a feeble twist, but he was facedown on the floor, and Kurt had him thoroughly pinned. His battered knuckles throbbed, sending shooting pains up his arm, and Kurt’s weight on his back wasn’t doing his old bruises any good, either. The rage bled out of him as fast as it had swooped in, replaced by pain, and Nate went limp. A sob tried to push its way up his throat, and he swallowed hard in a desperate attempt to hold it back. Even so, there was a telltale wetness on his face.

Kurt pressed a kiss to the side of his head, then rolled off of him. Nate might not have had the will or energy to move, except neither Kurt nor Nadia was willing to let him crawl into the hole of self-pity he’d dug himself. Kurt “helped” him up, and Nadia threw her arms around him in a hug tight enough to hurt. Nate didn’t care that it hurt, pulling her even closer, grateful for her presence even as he was embarrassed by his own weakness.

“Everything all right in there?” Dante called from outside the van, and even Nate had to admit the bastard showed an admirable amount of restraint not opening the doors to see what was happening.

“We’re fine,” Kurt answered. Nate almost laughed at the absurdity of the statement.

Kurt sat cross-legged in front of him on the floor of the van, a sad smile on his face. “If that’s you trying to keep control of yourself, I’d hate to see when you really let go.”

Nadia made an indignant sound. “How dare you make jokes at a time like this?”

“It’s all right,” Nate said to Nadia. His voice was raspy and his throat hurt. He must have shouted more than he’d realized. There was no lightening this particular mood with jokes, but the normalcy of it was comforting. “Sorry I hit you,” he said to Kurt.

Kurt snorted. “Tried to hit me, you mean. You can’t punch for shit.” He grimaced. “At least, not with your left. Let’s see that right hand. You beat the van down pretty good.”

Nate felt the blood rushing to his face and hoped his makeup hid the embarrassed blush. As losses of control went, that had been pretty epic. “It’s fine,” he mumbled.

“No it’s not,” Nadia countered, extricating herself from his arms and maneuvering his right hand into the light.

The knuckles were swollen and split, and blood trickled down his fingers. Kurt gave a low whistle of appreciation.

“Yeah, you showed this van what for all right. Can you move your fingers?”

Wiggling his fingers hurt, but he could do it. “It’s not all from the van,” he admitted, wondering if Kurt would be appalled or impressed. “I, uh, kind of punched Dante earlier, too.”

Kurt gave him a look of surprise, then burst out laughing. “I’ve wanted to do that a couple of times myself.”

“I’m glad you boys are finding this so funny,” Nadia said scathingly.

Kurt sighed. “Sweetheart, sometimes it’s either laugh or cry. We aren’t supposed to cry, so we laugh instead.” He reached across and smoothed a hand over Nate’s damp cheek.

Nate’s costume was pretty much ruined. He hated to think what his face must look like with tear tracks through the powder, and his wig had come off and somehow ended up underneath him when he and Kurt had wrestled. He could put it back on, but it looked more like roadkill than hair. He supposed he was lucky his contacts hadn’t come out when the waterworks started.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me any of this before now?” he asked.

“Because Mosely doesn’t know I didn’t hear the whole conversation. I made some noise when I ran for it, so they knew belatedly that I was there, but they don’t know what I heard. If Mosely has any reason to think you and I have been in touch, then he’ll think I’ve told you whatever this big goddamn secret is. He killed you once to keep it hidden. I have no doubt he’d do it again. It would hurt the Chairman’s pocketbook to animate another Replica, but he’d rather do that than have you know the big secret.”

“So you … you did it to protect me?” Nate put a hand on his sore stomach, trying not to remember Angel’s goons hitting and kicking him there. As physically painful as it had been, the emotional pain of thinking Kurt had meant to hurt him was far, far worse.

“Well, me too. You did end up leading Mosely’s men straight to Angel’s place. Angel knew the Red Death had taken me in, and if he’d questioned her, that would have sucked.” He gave Nadia a cold, angry look. “I don’t care why you did it. I don’t forgive you.”

Nate had always thought of Nadia as somewhat … timid. He understood that a girl of her station had to exercise a good deal of caution—especially one who was expected to marry the Chairman Heir—but he had often found that caution rather tiresome. But either recent events had changed her, or Nate hadn’t known her as well as he thought.

Nadia didn’t wilt under Kurt’s accusatory gaze. Her lip curled in something that looked almost like a sneer as she put an arm around Nate’s shoulders. “Well I don’t forgive you for hurting Nate like you did. And I really don’t give a damn what you think of me. If Nate didn’t care about you so much, I’d hand you over to Mosely in a heartbeat.”

Nate didn’t believe that, and he suspected Kurt didn’t, either. But Kurt held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“Fine. We understand each other.”

“No, we don’t,” Nadia said firmly. “After all the fuss you made to keep Nate from finding you, why all of a sudden did you arrange this meeting? And why did you insist I come?”

Kurt grimaced and looked away. “Because I really fucked up when I sent that note.” He turned back to them. “But we should get Dante back in here for the rest of this discussion.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“’Fraid so,” Kurt responded, then looked Nate up and down. “Let’s get you straightened up a bit.” He picked up the wig, gave it a close look, then dropped it back on the floor of the van. “Fuck that.” He then reached out and started pulling out the pins that held Nate’s real hair back.

Nadia rose up on her knees and helped, and Nate felt like a monkey being groomed.

“I can do it myself,” he said, trying to reach up to his head, but Kurt batted his hand aside.

“Not as fast as we can do it for you,” he said.

Moments later, Kurt was ruffling his hair. Then he sat back on his heels. “Better,” he declared, then started smoothing out the powder on Nate’s face as best he could.

Nate took a deep breath, trying to calm what remained of his inner turmoil. The touch of Kurt’s hands helped. There were still a lot of unanswered questions left between them, questions that couldn’t be settled in the presence of another person, even Nadia. But Nate was sure he wasn’t imagining the affection in Kurt’s touch or the regret in his eyes. Maybe Kurt had first infiltrated his household as part of a mission, but Nate had to believe it had become more than that to him. And if Kurt distrusted Nate for being a Replica, he certainly was showing no sign of it.

“We good for now?” Kurt asked quietly.

Nate nodded and hauled himself off the floor of the van and back onto one of the milk crates. Nadia sat next to him once more, and Kurt opened the back doors of the van to let Dante in. Nate stiffened as Dante took in the scene—Nate’s dead wig, his real hair, his messed-up makeup, his busted hand—and swore he’d throw his attempts at self-control right out the window if the bastard said one wrong word. But the guy was smarter than he looked, keeping his mouth shut as he and Kurt sat on the crates across from Nate and Nadia.

“You asked why I changed my mind since last night,” Kurt said. “Like I said, I really fucked up by sending that note.”

“No,” Dante interrupted. “I did, by getting caught.”

“Whatever.” He turned another glare at Nadia. “I let our little spy here know I hadn’t left Paxco.”

Nate opened his mouth to defend Nadia, but she beat him to the punch.

“You really want to go there with the finger pointing?” she asked. “Because you’ve been spying on him a lot longer than I have.”

“I didn’t—”

“Stop it,” Dante interrupted, making a chopping motion with his hand. “Let’s try to get through this with a minimum of bickering. We’ve all had our moments in this mess.”

“Who died and made you boss?” Kurt grumbled, but at least he didn’t light into Nadia anymore.

“The problem,” Dante said to Nadia, “is that Mosely thinks you might have been dishonest with him when he spoke to you this afternoon. He isn’t sure, because he says you were drunk when he talked to you.”

Nate turned and gave Nadia a startled look. She’d accept a drink now and then, but she never seemed to particularly enjoy them, and he’d never seen her so much as tipsy, much less drunk.

Nadia gave a half smile. “I knew I couldn’t act normal around him while I was lying, so I figured I’d give him an alternative explanation as to why.”

Both Kurt and Dante looked impressed by the tactic, and Nate felt an absurd surge of pride in her. This morning, he’d been ready to write her out of his life entirely, but somehow between then and now, he’d stopped blaming her. She’d had no choice but to do what she’d done, and if she’d tried to confide in him, he probably would have confronted Mosely. Or his father.

Nate’s mind skittered away from that thought, not willing to deal with what his own father had done to him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“It was a good idea,” Dante told her. “But he still suspects, and you can’t be drunk every time he talks to you.”

Nadia was sitting close enough that Nate could feel the shiver that ran through her. If Mosely thought she was lying to him, then he’d go to extreme measures to force her to talk. Once upon a time, Nate would have trusted Nadia’s station to protect her from the likes of Dirk Mosely, but now he knew better.

“The problem is worse than you think,” Dante continued, sharing an unhappy look with Kurt. “We, er, haven’t told the leader of our cell about our indiscretion with the note, but if he ever gets wind of it and thinks that Nadia might be taken in for more rigorous questioning…” He looked uncomfortable and let his voice trail off.

Nate was a little slow on the uptake. He blamed it on lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion, but he honestly didn’t know what Dante was getting at. Until Nadia finished Dante’s sentence for him.

“You think he’ll have me killed.”