by Layla Reyne
“He intercepted the van.”
Not just ice anymore. A whole mountain of snow buried him in an avalanche as actions and words from the past week played through his mind.
Hawes’s revulsion at the gun Chris had shoved in his hand. “They kill too fast,” Hawes had said. “Without thought. It’s too easy to make the wrong call.” In every fight, the assassin had used a different weapon—his body, a garrote, his words. Until Friday morning, when he’d picked up Chris’s gun, and Helena had been shocked and terrified.
Why?
Chris guessed the terrible truth. “Because he hadn’t touched one in three years.”
Then he hunted for the evidence to disprove what he didn’t want to believe. Rifling back through Izzy’s files, he searched for pictures of Hawes from before Izzy’s death.
A photo of him at MCS, dressed in one of his fitted suits, a visible bulge under his left arm.
On the yacht, a bump on his right hip under the hem of his sweater.
He used to carry.
Until he’d made the wrong call.
He flipped to the next picture in the file.
Hawes, in a fog-filled alley, a gun pointed at a man on his knees.
A Colt 1911.
The same type of gun on the ground next to Zander Rowe’s body. The gun that had fired the bullet that killed Izzy. A gun that wasn’t registered to Zander Rowe. That they’d never been able to trace. They’d thought it had been Rowe’s, obtained illegally.
Whose was it, Dante?
Bile surged up Chris’s throat, and he braced his hands on the wall, on either side of the ad hoc story he’d constructed. Of the assembled puzzle in front of him, the nightmare crystal fucking clear.
No indiscriminate killing. The last of Hawes’s rules. Something a gun tended to do. The weapon Hawes wouldn’t use. The rule and aversion the very opposite of the title that had been bestowed on him.
The Prince of Killers.
Why does he hate it so much?
“Because he thinks he killed his parents.” Hawes had told him that story. How he’d been the one to give the order to pull the plug and take his parents off life support. But that wasn’t the only reason. Those weren’t the only deaths Hawes regretted. There was another one staring Chris right in the face. A truth that kept Hawes up at night, that he and his siblings had tiptoed around in conversation, that Hawes had apologized for the other night, only Chris hadn’t understood then.
He understood now. His gut burned, and his chest ached, ripped apart by another loss—his hope for a future, a home, bleeding out on the hardwood floor. Like Izzy had bled out that night in the street, murdered by the same man Chris had fallen for.
Who else did he kill, Dante?
Pushing past the pain, he spoke the truth that had eluded him for three long years. “You.”
Chapter Fifteen
Chris ignored the vibrating phone in his pocket, same as he’d ignored the other umpteen calls today while he’d been adjusting his frame of reference. Rearranging the evidence into a picture that was indisputable. Replaying every interaction he’d had with Hawes Madigan.
Betrayal stung hot and deep. Fucking karma.
Until this morning, Chris had been sincere in his aim to help Hawes hold on to power. The direction Hawes and his siblings were taking the organization, the rules they followed, did result in less death. Only the worst criminals, those who’d escaped the justice Chris and the law doled out, met their end. As much as Chris wanted to believe the rule of law was enough, he wasn’t a total fool.
But knowing the why now, knowing that Hawes had been undercutting Chris’s primary mission at every turn, knowing that Isabella’s killer had been staring him right in the face, kissing him, writhing under him, had sent Chris gagging over the toilet more than once today.
Disgust and damnable desire still churned in his gut, but anger fueled his footsteps up the stairs, two at a time, to Kane’s office. He banged open the stairwell door, glimpsed the directional signage, and diverted. He wanted to check something else first. Another thing that didn’t line up about that night.
He found the IT department, and Jax’s platinum Mohawk was like a beacon, drawing him to their workstation. They spotted him several desks away and reared back in their chair. Chris slowed his gait and reined in his glare. He needed their help, but he was taking a gamble. Jax had only started at SFPD last year. He didn’t think they would have been involved three years ago, but they were one of Holt’s kids. There was no way to know for sure what they might have done off-book before joining the force. If nothing else, Chris was sure they would report this encounter.
“Agent Perri,” they greeted cautiously. “What’s going on?”
He pulled a flash drive from his jacket pocket. “Cue that up.”
They gave him the same skeptical raised brow Holt had when Chris had earlier presented him with a flash drive. “It’s SFPD’s own footage, from a previous crime scene.”
“If this has a—”
“No virus. I wouldn’t know how anyway.”
They still ran a virus check after inserting the device and before clicking any of its contents. That done, Jax opened the video footage and pressed Play.
And nothing. As frustratingly boring as it had always been. Just a recording of the rain-slick street that cut off before Isabella and Rowe ever appeared.
“I don’t get it,” Jax said.
“According to the police report, the traffic cam that captured this intersection cycled off two minutes before a double homicide occurred here.” He tapped the screen. “Can you tell if that’s the case?”
“It is,” they answered immediately. “But it’s been looped before that.”
“Excuse me?”
“Right before the cutoff. It’s a loop feed. A very well-executed one, but it’s a loop. I’m red-green color blind.” They pointed to a Golden State Warriors flag hanging over a shop door in the far-right corner of the screen. “That flag is royal blue and yellow to you. To me, it’s navy and white, as in bright white, which really shows in the dark.” Their fingers raced across the keyboard, and a second later, the picture was in monochrome “Take out the color saturation, and the details pop for you too.” Indeed, Chris noticed it more clearly now. “You see it move?”
He nodded. “With the wind.”
“The exact same way?” They rewound the footage, slowed it down, and sure enough, it was an exact replica. More like a blip than a nudge from the breeze. “And look at the reflection in the puddle.” Of the neon red CLOSED sign in a storefront window, with a news ticker below, displaying the same line of text.
“Fuck.” But it was still cut off before the incident. What had they hidden in those few seconds? The van coming into the scene? Someone else—Hawes—arriving there too? “Can you recover the altered footage?”
They shook their head. “Past the three-year archive mark. But I’m the best here at finding hidden code.” Fingers flew again. “It’s got to be buried here somewhere.” Another two minutes in which Chris tried not to lose what little was left of his shit, and then they stopped typing abruptly.
Chris glanced at the screen, at the string of numbers that didn’t mean a thing to him but clearly translated for Jax. “What is it?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing here.”
Chris grabbed the arm of their chair and spun them around to face him. “You’re doing good work here. You’ve come a long way from the shelter. Don’t risk that.”
“I can’t get the footage.”
“But you know who made the change.” He glanced at the screen. “Your mentor, Holt, I’m guessing?”
“Not exactly.” They tapped a nail against the armrest, reticent to say more.
Which was more than enough for Chris. If it wasn’t Holt, there was only one other person Jax would protect with their silence. And as luck would have it, he worked in this very same building.
Kane stood behind his desk, waiting at military attention. Legs spre
ad, arms crossed over his chest, he didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, when Chris charged into his office and slammed the door behind him.
“What happened the night Isabella died?” Chris demanded.
“That was before I was chief.”
“But you were here, on the force, weren’t you?”
“I’d come on about eighteen months before.”
Wasn’t that convenient? The Madigans’ pet cop showed up shortly after Hawes’s ascension. Had they always planned it that way? Probably. Chris didn’t think it was by chance.
He tossed the flash drive onto the desk. “You altered the surveillance footage from the night Izzy died.”
Kane paled and dug his fingers into his biceps, but he didn’t say a word to confirm or deny.
Chris stepped forward, thighs butting the edge of the desk in front of him. “You helped them cover it up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chris scoffed. “Did you know they left a clue in the system?”
“There’s no evidence—”
“Jax is a better hacker than you or Holt think.”
Kane’s brows dipped into a V, but he kept his lips pressed together, silent.
“Don’t have your orders yet, do you?”
The chief of police, the man charged with upholding the law in San Francisco, took his cue not from the law, but from an organization of assassins. Twelve hours ago, Chris thought maybe that worked. That the delicate balance was needed. Not anymore. And judging by his locked-down, cold demeanor, Kane wasn’t looking at Chris as an ally anymore either. In front of him stood Agent Perri, the man who could blow apart his entire house of cards. Given what was at stake, and Kane’s military training, this exercise was futile. He wasn’t going to crack.
“I need to talk to Amelia,” Chris said.
“She’s already been transferred out.”
Of course she had. Growling, Chris flung out an arm and whacked the candy bowl off the desk. The carpet prevented it from shattering, but caramel candies went flying, pinging off the walls and floor. “Then you’re going to give me some fucking answers, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
Chris whipped around to the woman who had the most impeccable timing in the world, and a knife in her hand, the razor-sharp tip now pressing into the tender spot beneath his last rib. “Haven’t we been here before, Mr. Hair? Did you not learn your lesson about making threats?”
“Of course you’re here.”
Helena shrugged and pressed a measure harder with the knife, only a flick of her wrist away from drawing blood, or worse. “What was that threat you were about to make?”
Well, he’d needed to talk to her anyway. The day had gone sideways, and he’d lost sight of another of his priorities. Here was a chance to fix that at least. “Two things,” he said to her. “One, I need a good family lawyer.”
Helena tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “You?”
“My sister. Husband beat her up. Needs a TRO and a divorce.”
No hesitation, no flinch. “Done.”
“Two, did Hawes kill Isabella?”
That made her flinch, and it was as good a confirmation as any.
Fuck.
This whole time, his partner’s killer had been right there in front of him, under him, in his arms, in his fucking bed. He stumbled back against the desk’s edge and hung his head. “And I thought I was fooling you all.”
They’d fooled Kane too, judging by the man’s muttered curse.
“You didn’t know?” Chris asked over his shoulder.
Kane collapsed into his chair and covered his face with his hands. More than enough betrayal to go around it seemed.
“Hawes was fooled too,” Helena said, drawing Chris’s attention back to her. She’d stepped back and stashed the knife God only knew where. “He thought she was an accomplice, and then he thought she was an innocent. It’s torn him up every day for the past three years, and then you show up and hammer that nail even harder. But she was neither of those things, was she? She was an agent, she knew what she was getting into, she knew the risks. Same as you. He was set up, just like the rest of us.”
“He fucking shot her, and all week, he—all of you—let me think it was someone else.”
“It was someone else,” Kane said, and Chris whipped back around, glaring. “Do you remember what Amelia said? Whoever she’s working for knew who you were before you got here. I’m guessing they knew who your partner was too. Helena’s right. Hawes may have pulled the trigger, but someone put him and your partner there.”
“Right now, that someone else isn’t my fucking problem.” He pushed off the desk and used his full height to loom over Helena. “Where is he?”
“Not a chance, Mr. Hair.”
He shoved past her toward the door. “You better hope you find him before I do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Helena had found Hawes first, or at a minimum, delivered a warning to him, because wherever Chris looked, Hawes wasn’t there. The cold storage facility on the docks, the warehouse in South City, the company yacht. The South Beach condo, the family fort in Pac Heights, the ballpark. Chris had flashed his badge to get in and scouted the entire club-level concourse. Like a ghost, Hawes had vanished. Chris didn’t think he’d left town, not with so much uncertainty hanging over his family and his organization. And he wouldn’t leave Helena unguarded tomorrow, but he was apparently playing Casper until he had to show himself.
Probably better that way. Chris had a fucking op to prepare for, one that depended on the Madigans’ cooperation, one that could save countless lives, but all Chris could focus on was the life that had been lost. And the man who’d stolen it. The man who’d stolen something else from Chris that left his chest aching, his gut twisted, and his entire being hollowed out and drifting, no longer at home in the fog. Suffocating under the weight of it.
Frustrated and empty-handed, Chris was in a mood that matched the night sky by the time he returned to his condo. Home. Didn’t much feel like it anymore, just when it had recently begun to for the first time in a decade. Trudging up the steps, Chris curled and flexed his fingers, itching to tear the place apart. To tear anything apart.
He opened the front door and got his wish in the form of a six-foot-two, blue-eyed, suited assassin standing calmly by his kitchen island.
With a gun in his hand.
Chris had misjudged him once again. Hawes hadn’t been playing Casper at all. He’d come directly here to face the truth. What was it he’d said? He was done with this shit. Apparently so. Hawes squared his shoulders and lifted the arm holding the gun. Chris closed his hand around the grip of the backup weapon in his holster, but then released it when Hawes placed his—no, Chris’s gun, from Friday—on the island next to a bottle of Crown Royal Rye, the same they’d shared at Hawes’s condo. “I didn’t mean to leave you defenseless.”
Defenseless. Apt description. Sure, he had a gun within reach, but the absence of truth was far more deadly. Chris slammed the door shut, tossed his jacket in a corner, and stalked across the space between them. No more lies. “Why did everything change that night?”
Defiant, resigned eyes stared back at him, a winter storm swirling in their depths. “Because I shot Isabelle Costa.”
Chris grabbed him by the jacket lapels, spun, and slammed him against the wall between the study and bedroom. “You killed her? Not Rowe?”
Despite the manhandling, Hawes didn’t fight back and gave no sign of distress. “I did,” he answered flatly.
Cold, untouchable. Now Chris got it. And it only amped up his anger, made it burn hotter. “You knew why I was here, what I was looking for, and you let the past week and a half slip by without a word.”
“You were using me. I was using you.”
Chris flattened his hands on Hawes’s chest and pushed, slamming him against the wall again. “We’re way past that, and you fucking know it.”
“I think the same person b
ehind the coup was behind that night.”
Anger erupted at the deflection, at Hawes’s ability to keep that cool, flat tone when Chris’s world was coming apart at the seams. “You pulled the fucking trigger! Maybe you are a fucking curse.”
Finally, a reaction. Hawes whipped his head to the side as if he’d been slapped. He stared out the back windows, Adam’s apple bobbing erratically.
Chris cupped the side of his face, far from gentle, a thumb wedged under his chin, his fingers splayed over his cheek, the grip secure. “And after what I told you the other morning, about Ro, about how Izzy saved me, you still didn’t tell me the truth. I trusted you. I lo—” Hawes tried to jerk free, and the pressure that exerted on Chris’s hold tripped up his words before he uttered the last thing either of them needed. “Fuck!”
Hawes’s response came out a hoarse whisper. “I still don’t know who set her up to die.”
Chris forced his face back around. “Does it matter? You pulled the trigger. You killed her.”
Hawes lowered his eyes, long lashes brushing his pale cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Dant—”
“Don’t! You don’t get to use that name anymore.” Not now that the spell was well and truly broken. He pressed his fingertips into the hollow of Hawes’s cheek, demanding his gaze again. “It meant I mattered to someone again, to her. And she mattered too.”
“She did.”
Cold, hard metal pressed against Chris’s stomach. He glanced down, then back up in surprise. In his anger, in the flurry of earlier movement, he hadn’t noticed Hawes snatch the gun off the island, hadn’t realized he’d been at Hawes’s mercy this entire time. And now Hawes was at his, Hawes shoving the gun at Chris butt-first, barrel pointing at his own gut.
“She did matter,” Hawes said, voice rough, his icy exterior shattering with each word. “And I’m willing to lose everything for her now. I pulled the trigger. I relive that night over and over. I did it, yes, but I want to know who put me and her in that position, who brought you to my doorstep three years later, who knew you’d be my weakness.”