“Not this again,” he says under his breath. “Wren—”
“No. This is the part where I talk, and you listen.” I slap my hand over my mouth before I add insult to injury by calling him a self-righteous jerk. Blowing out a breath, I pull the USB thumb drive from my pocket, stumble forward a few steps, and press the small piece of metal and circuitry into Dax’s hand.
“What’s this?” His brows knit together as he turns the drive over in his palm.
“Evidence. Can I…?”
“Do I have a choice?” Pushing back from his desk, he waves his hand at his computer. “Go for it.”
Once I have the drive ready, I touch his arm. “Zion died for this. I need you to promise me you won’t show this to anyone without talking to me first.”
Dax groans. “Jesus, Wren. I know betrayal better than anyone in this office, including you. Get to the point and tell me what’s on the fucking drive.”
Shame heats my cheeks. Dax spent fifteen months in a Taliban prison. Beaten, tortured, and interrogated for information he refused to give up because someone didn’t do their job. “I’m sorry, boss. I…didn’t think.”
“You’re allowed a couple of those. Especially when you’re mourning. But this better be damn good.” He leans back in his chair as I double-click the video, and a blond giant with tattoos covering his forearms sits at a desk with his hands folded in front of him.
“Hello, Zion,” the man says, his Russian accent thick. “You were expecting someone else, I think. I will fix that.” On screen, the man snaps his fingers, and a second man, larger, meaner, drags a woman into the frame. She’s crying, her face bruised and bloodied, her eyes swollen so badly, she can barely see.
“Wren?” Dax asks. “What is this?”
“Just…listen. I’ll explain when it’s over.” I don’t want to watch it again, but Zion left it for me so I could help. So I could fix his mistakes, and so I clench my hands into fists and wait for the brute on screen to continue.
“Elena paid dearly for helping you,” the man says, and the woman whimpers as he grabs her chin and squeezes—hard. “Take her away, Misha.”
The other goon drags the woman from the room, and she calls out, “Kolya, please baby. I love you. Do not do this—” A door slams, and the blond behemoth on screen smiles.
“I am going to find you, Zion. I own your pitiful existence. You have one chance. Come back to me. Pledge your loyalty. If you burn your passport in front of me, pass my…initiation test, I might let Elena stay. Otherwise…” The blond Russian shrugs. “Maybe I let her make me some money.”
The video cuts out, and I yank the USB drive from Dax’s computer. There’s so much more I want to show him, but I need assurances. Or…at least…I need him to believe me. I lean forward, my hands braced on his desk. “That was Nikolay—Kolya—Yegorovich. He runs the Nevsky Bratva. One of the largest drug cartels in Western Russia. He’s the man who stopped Zion from calling me for almost two years. The woman…her name is Elena. And I think…I think Zion loved her.”
Dax rubs the back of his neck as he sighs. “Wren, I don’t know where the hell you got this, but what do you expect me to do about it? I’m not up to speed on the big cartels in Russia, but if this guy is who you say he is, only the Russian authorities are going to be able to take him down—if they even want to—and there wasn’t anything on that video they could use to do it. Hell, he probably has half of the city officials in his pocket as it is. And you have no proof he’s the one who kept Zion away from you for two years. I know Z is—was—your brother. And he was a good kid. But heroin can make devils out of angels.”
I sputter, the words tumbling over one another and catching in my throat as my anxiety edges towards panic. “He was m-more than a g-good kid. Z…he was smart. Too smart for his own good. He knew Kolya might come after him, and he made sure if he died…he wanted me to find this.”
“Explain.”
Forcing myself to calm down, I blow out a breath and start at the beginning. “Z’s favorite book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
Forty-five minutes later, I realize how ridiculous my story sounds. To his credit, Dax listened to every word. Or…pretended to. But now, as I beg him for the resources to fulfill Z’s last promise—a week off, Ford, and Trevor—hope withers away. My brother was brilliant. But even after the drugs, after escaping the Russian mafia, after getting clean…he was still so naive. And I’m afraid I am too.
Dax slides a hip on the edge of his desk and offers me his hands. When our fingers link, he holds on tight as his voice softens. “Wren, I hired you because you’re the best hacker on the east coast. And in three years, you’ve saved more people than I can count. Including almost every member of this team at least once. I know you wanted to save your brother too. And you tried. Over and over again. But he made the choice to shoot up again. You read the police report. No evidence of foul play.”
“But he promised…” I hate the whiny edge to my voice, and as I hear my words, I shake my head. “I know how stupid that sounds. But he never would have broken a promise to me. Not a promise.”
As Dax sighs, I know I’ve lost. And the glimmer of hope that maybe I could do one last thing for my baby brother dies.
“Firefly! Stop. You’re walking too fast!”
The echoes of his voice haunt me. I always stopped. Always waited. Always helped. Always smiled at his silly nickname for me.
Pushing to my feet, I trip on the chair in my haste to reach the door and slam my shoulder into the wood. “Dammit. I…I need to go. I’m sorry, Dax. I…didn’t mean to waste your morning. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to come back to work. A couple days. Maybe three. I…I’m sorry.”
And before I can lose myself to a full-blown panic attack, I run.
4
Ryker
A woman sprints around the corner and crashes into me before I can get out of the way. Snaking an arm around her as her legs buckle, I look into a pair of pale green eyes wild with panic. “Whoa. You okay?”
“L-let g-go.”
“Take a deep breath for me, sweetheart.” I don’t know where the term of endearment comes from, but she looks like she needs to hear it. “I won’t hurt you.”
She shoves against me with more strength than a little thing like her should have, and I release her, catching sight of the ropes of old burns winding around my right forearm. Yeah. No wonder she’s terrified. Sometimes I forget. Just for a minute. Most people don’t see anything but a monster when they look at me. Hell, that’s all I see half the time.
The woman flees without another word, leaving behind the subtle scent of honeysuckle. With a shake of my head, I take a seat in the little waiting area the receptionist directs me to.
Wiping my hands on my jeans, I try to talk myself into leaving. After we got out…I only saw Dax once in the hospital. I couldn’t face him. Kept tabs on him through West and a couple of the other SEALs who went back with me to obliterate Hell for good, but every time I tried to pick up the phone…I’d see him in his cell. Hear him screaming. Imagine what he went through after I escaped.
“You can go back now, Mr. McCabe,” the receptionist says with a bright smile and a gesture towards the hallway. “All the way down the hall to the last office on the right.”
My heartbeat thuds in my ears. I don’t know why the hell I’m here. Except…Dax is in every one of my nightmares, and I need to find a way to exorcise those demons for good. Or stop fighting.
Conversations float around me from some of the other offices, and three guys gather around a break area, falling silent and giving me hard stares as I pass.
At Dax’s door, I pause with my fist raised, ready to knock. He’s standing at the window, his back to me, sunlight cutting a slash across the far corner of the office and hitting his shoulder and left arm.
“You never were very good at taking hints,” he says, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Say your piece and get out.”
Stepping i
nside, I close the door behind me. “I deserve that.”
“No shit.”
I’m not having this conversation with the man’s back, so I take two steps forward and reach for his arm. But Dax whirls around, grabs my hand, and twists, sending me to a knee. “You want to get your ass kicked? Happy to oblige.”
A hint of a southern accent colors his words, and I stare up at him in shock. Sweeping my other leg around, I catch him behind the ankles and send him to the ground with a loud oof. Once my hand’s free, I grab his arm again and haul him to his feet. “I’m not doing this with you, Dax. Not now, not ever.”
The door swings open with a loud bang, and a big, burly dude with a few strands of gray at his temples bursts in. “You okay, boss?”
“Fine. Ryker was just leaving, Ford.”
With a quick glance at Ford, I weigh the odds of taking him down. Fair. Not great. But if I run now, I’m not going to resolve a damn thing with the man I know better than anyone else in this world. “No. I’m not.” In my periphery, Ford takes a step closer, but I raise my hands in surrender. “I came here to apologize. Not fight. Five minutes. Give me five minutes, and you’ll never see me again.”
Dax rubs the back of his neck, eyes closed, and sighs.
“Please.” I’m close to begging, and the memories roughen my voice.
“Please. I’ve told you everything I know. I’m just a grunt. A mechanic. I follow orders. I was only on the chopper as a precaution,” Dax says as two men kick him and spit on him.
“Five minutes. Ford, shut the door.”
Once we’re alone again, I stare down at my best friend’s shoes. “I broke the only promise that mattered.”
“Yeah. You did. You deserted me.”
Despite knowing he’s right, I flinch at the words. “If I’d stuck to the plan, maybe…”
“If you’d stuck to the plan, maybe I’d know what my own fucking office looks like.” He takes off his tinted glasses and throws them down on the desk. “Maybe those bastards wouldn’t have held me down and blinded me with acid. Maybe you wouldn’t be so much of a coward that you can’t even look me in the eyes.”
I draw in a sharp breath, because…how the hell does he know?
“I can hear the echo of your voice off the floor, dumbass.”
Raising my head, I blow out a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, the movement highlighting the muscle he’s put on in the past six years. His hair’s longer. The black strands are tousled, partially covering the long, narrow scar across his forehead. “Why did you come? Why now?”
“Something happened.”
“A lot of things happened. Lucy couldn’t handle being married to a blind, scarred, ex-soldier suffering from PTSD and bolted. I lost my house, my in-laws, half my civvie friends… And the one person on earth who knew the shit I was going through wouldn’t return my calls.”
I wince and rub my hand over my scalp. My hair never grew back right after we got out of Hell, and I feel the half-dozen divots where our captors slammed my head into the edge of a table over and over again. “I had my own demons.”
“Like I didn’t know that. We were twenty feet from one another for fifteen fucking months, Ry. I heard every punch. Every scream. Every time they dragged you back to your cell barely alive. And we vowed to get out. Planned every single day we had the strength to speak. Every day we could move well enough to tap out cryptic messages during shift change. We were brothers. In all the ways that counted. And then—”
“You couldn’t walk,” I snap. “The infection in your calf? You were half-out of your mind with the fever, and we had—I had—one shot. One night without a moon. And how many times did they let us suffer when our wounds got infected? How was I supposed to know they were going to force a couple amoxicillin down your throat? I went through with the plan because I was fucking terrified I was going to lose you too!”
Dax’s silence threatens to choke me. Without the glasses, the shiny, mottled skin around his eyes is obvious. The deep azure irises have faded to a pale, arctic blue. I know he can’t see me, but his stare bores into me, as if he’s trying to figure out if I’m full of shit or regrets.
When he pinches the bridge of his nose, pain deepening the lines around his mouth, I take step closer. “For a year, I picked up the phone every damn day. Trying to find a way to tell you how sorry I was. And every day, I failed. I failed you in Hell. I failed all of them.”
“You didn’t fail me in Hell, Ry. You failed me after we got out. That’s when I needed you. Your five minutes are up. Go back to wherever the fuck you came from.”
If he’d shot me in the heart, I’d be in less pain than I am at this moment. But he’s right. And nothing will give us those six years back.
“If you ever need—”
He growls an oath and lunges for me, grabbing my arms hard enough to leave bruises. “Get gone. Now. Or I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”
When he releases me, I do the only thing I can. Double-time it out of the office and into the elevator.
5
Ryker
The elevator doors snick open, and I pull out my phone as I shoulder my way through a small crowd milling around the building’s information desk. The device clatters to the ground as something slams into me, and I see only red curls and a heart-shaped face with big, pale green eyes.
“This is becoming a habit.” I’m done with Boston—and with this day—and a rough edge creeps into my tone. But I steady her with my hands wrapped gently around her upper arms. “Are you all right?”
“Wh-what…are y-you…doing?” Honeysuckle twists out of my grasp, her hands balled into fists at her sides.
“Just making sure you’re not going down.” I bend to scoop up my phone, taking a quick glance at the screen to verify it’s still intact. When I return my gaze to her, she’s backing away warily, glancing at the revolving door to the street like it’s a fucking lifeline.
“Hey. It’s okay. I’m not following you. Stalking you. Whatever. I was just leaving.”
Her brow scrunches, and as she processes my words, those eyes darken with streaks of amber. “Get over yourself.” She shakes her head, bringing another whiff of her sweet scent to my nose. “Men. Not everything’s about you.”
Shock steals my continued apology, and instead, I frown. “Then what’s got you so worked up that you run into me twice in fifteen minutes? Because where I’m from, we watch where we’re going.”
“You seriously expect me to tell you?” A little feminine snort wrinkles her nose. “It’s none of your business, jerk.” She starts to stalk towards the elevator, but then turns back to me. “Wait. You’re not…like…a new client, are you? Second Sight?”
“No,” I say bitterly. “Look at me, sweetheart. Do I look like I need help? I fix problems for other people. Even if I was searching for someone to fix my problems, Dax wouldn’t give me the time of day. Not anymore.” She flinches, and I’ve hit a nerve with something. Dax, probably. “I take it you know the guy?”
“He’s…my boss.”
“Lucky you. I used to be his boss. He was a lot nicer back then.” I run a hand over my bald head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t…I don’t know him at all these days. He’s probably the boss of the year.”
She takes a step forward, those eyes no longer wary, but curious, and I can’t look away. “You…fix problems?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.” Studying her, I notice the dark circles and swollen lids. The tiny lines of strain and exhaustion around her mouth. She wears no make-up, and she toys with a green pendant hanging low between her breasts. Short, unpainted nails. No rings. Just a single purple and green beaded bracelet around a slender wrist. “You have a problem?”
A single nod, and she takes another step closer. “I…I’m Wren. Wren Kane.”
“Ryker McCabe.” I offer a hand, and her cool fingers curl around mine. “You want to get a cup of coffee and tell me about you
r problem, Wren?”
At her nod, I gesture towards the lobby door. “Pretty sure I saw a shop on the corner. They any good?”
“Passable. And quiet.” Wren pulls her jacket tighter around her shoulders and meets my gaze. Uncertainty swims in her eyes, and her chest stutters as her respiration rate hitches up.
“I won’t force you, sweetheart. You can change your mind.”
There’s that term again. Sweetheart. Why can’t I stop with it?
With a shake of her head, she looks at the revolving door. “I promised him. And I can’t…it’s the last thing he ever asked. Dax won’t help me. You shouldn’t either. But—”
“Dax won’t help?” I snort. “Then I’m in. Come on, Wren Kane. Coffee’s on me.”
Wren
The giant across from me cups his black coffee like it’s liquid gold, while I take one sip of my cappuccino before my stomach protests.
“So…want to tell me why you ran into me? Twice?” He arches his brows, which highlights the differences in his eyes. A vertical scar bisects his left lid, and the eye doesn’t fully open. Ropes of damaged skin—burns, I think—cover his left cheek and down his neck. When I saw him the first time, I only focused on his strong arm holding me up and his gravelly voice. Now, I take in the rest of him.
Large hands. Ink peeking out from the cuff of his sweatshirt. He’s almost as big as Ford, but younger. Mid-thirties, if I had to guess. Curiosity lends a gleam to his eyes, and their multitude of colors—part green, part blue, part hazel—mesmerizes me.
“Um, my phone…died. And my car won’t start. I was coming back into the office to call for a tow.” My chest tightens, and I skim my fingers over my necklace, needing the familiar comfort of the smooth edges. I’m running on caffeine and adrenaline, and that’s a sure-fire recipe for a panic attack—which I’ve only barely avoided twice this morning. “The first time…” Can I really share this with a stranger? I release the pendant and reach for my cappuccino. But my hands aren’t steady, and I almost drop the cup, a bit of foam landing on the table between us.
On His Six Page 4