by Layla Reyne
“She did this,” Holt seethed. “She took my wife, tried to take my daughter’s future, our future, and now she’s trying to take Brax. I’m done. This is over. The end.”
“The loose end,” Helena mumbled. “That’s what she’s after. Eliminate him or use him to tie all the loose ends back under her control.”
Holt, practically snarling, whipped around, the thought of Brax—of any of them—being a loose end maddening.
Helena laid him out on the floor faster than he could blink, a hand around his neck and a knee to his sternum. Marsh whistled his appreciation, but Helena’s icy blues remained locked on Holt. “Stop it, Little H.”
Hawes knelt beside them, a gentler hand on his shoulder. “It didn’t go her way, which means we have an opening. We can use that.”
Holt yanked back the heaving Hulk, relaxing a measure, and Helena responded in kind, backing off her hold. “How?” he rasped out. “For what?”
“If she wants to tie up the loose ends, then that’s what we’ll do,” Helena said. “Our way.”
“Checkmate.” Hawes’s deadly grin befitted the Prince of Killers. “Once and for all.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Avery and Maya were waiting for Holt in the lobby of SFPD headquarters. “He still here?” Holt asked as soon as he cleared the metal detectors.
Avery nodded. “Hasn’t left all night.”
“Where’s his office?” he demanded, no time to waste. Hawes and Helena had gone ahead to MCS with Jax and Marsh, the latter two knowing the work needed to get a positive ID on the bank accounts and on Brax’s kidnappers. A location too, and once obtained, an extraction plan. Holt had a different loose end to tie up.
“Other end of the hall from the chief’s office,” Maya answered. “I don’t think—”
Holt didn’t hear what else she said over the pounding of his boots as he climbed the steps two at a time. By the time he crested the stairs, however, Avery had caught up to him, and she blocked his path at the entrance to the short hall where Fletcher’s office was located. He tried to juke left around her, but he was no match for the top operative’s agility.
She glared him back a step, her dark eyes understanding but firm. “Take two breaths, boss,” she said. “You cannot go in there and assault a detective.”
Not what he’d intended to do, but his clenched fists and clenched jaw indicated otherwise, his instincts not fully aligned with his brain. He took the two breaths she suggested and used them to wrangle his wayward instincts under control, Amelia’s words from earlier in the week also flitting through his mind.
“Bottle that anger,” she’d said. “Hold it for when you really need it.”
For Rose.
Fletcher was a means to that end, not the end itself.
“Good,” Avery said, recognizing his readjustment. “Now, listen. According to Maya, Fletcher is a good cop and genuinely likes Brax. He wanted to come work for him, and he did not want to pursue the investigation against him, but that’s his job. He had to.” Consistent with what Brax had said about the detective. “Do not jump to every worst conclusion.”
Holt nodded, then strode beside her down the hallway, making a quick pit stop in Brax’s office to grab a caramel candy out of the crystal dish, needing that connection, needing the sense of calm Brax always provided. The smell and taste of the candy weren’t as good as having Brax there in person, but the sense memories helped center him a little.
Avery rapped twice on Fletcher’s door.
“Come in,” the detective called, then, at seeing who his visitors were, nearly fell out of his chair as he hurried to stand. “Is there word on the chief?”
“Nothing yet,” Avery said as she shut the door behind them.
Fletcher’s eyes cut to the door, to Avery, then to Holt. In the relative silence of this part of the station at this time of night, Holt swore he could hear the increased speed of the detective’s breaths, the increased tick of his pulse. Fletcher wasn’t a fool. He knew who they were, and he knew he was the prey in this situation. Nevertheless, he squared his shoulders and crossed his arms. He wasn’t a big guy, several inches shy of six feet and closer to Hawes’s build than Holt’s, but the broad shoulders and toned forearms exposed by rolled up shirtsleeves spoke of time at the gym or more likely, in a pool. Would explain the faint whiff of chlorine in the air.
Curiosities Holt forgot all about with Fletcher’s next words. “I’m glad you’re here. I was still trying to figure out how to come to you without raising red flags.”
Holt nearly swallowed the candy whole. “Excuse me?”
Fletcher gestured to the two guest chairs in front of his desk, then claimed his own again once Holt and Avery were seated. “One, you need to understand I respect the chief. He recruited me for the position here, and I jumped at the chance to work for him.”
“And two?” Holt prompted.
“Two, almost immediately after I arrived here, I started getting anonymous tips about his involvement with your family.”
“You opened an investigation?” Avery said.
“I had to, per protocol.”
“Fuck protocol,” Holt growled. “He recruited you.”
Fletcher held up a hand. “I don’t disagree with you. There was no evidence Chief Kane’s personal life affected his professional one. I filed the case paperwork, poked around a little like I was supposed to, but I slow rolled it as much as I could until this Camino thing accelerated matters. At which point the chief read me in.”
Holt leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. “Read you in?”
“On you and your grandmother.”
Holt bit the candy in half, molars be damned.
“Explain,” Avery clipped, her voice relaying the same what-the-fuck tone as Holt’s words would have if he’d been able to find them.
“How about I give you what you need instead?” Rotating in his chair, Fletcher retrieved the nesting doll off the credenza behind his desk and began unpacking them, each a different sugar skull design. From the smallest, he retrieved a key that unlocked his center desk drawer. He pulled out a flash drive and slid it across the desk to Holt. “The chief told me to keep a record of all the tips, including the metadata. Said you might need it.”
Holt turned the small piece of plastic over in his hand. “He thought she was behind it.”
“He didn’t discount the possibility.” Because Brax had clearer eyes than he and his siblings had when it came to Rose. “But he didn’t want to raise it, unless he was sure, and for a while there, it was looking less and less likely.”
“He kept you updated?” Avery asked.
Fletcher nodded. “He wanted to make sure everyone at the department stayed safe too, and that we were on standby in case anything went sideways.”
That explained his reluctance to involve SFPD earlier tonight. Goddamn self-sacrificial streak strikes again.
“And the deposit?” Avery said.
Holt glanced up in time to see Fletcher longingly gaze at the tiny nesting doll in his hand. “She found my weak spot. Tried to exploit it and used the money as blackmail.” He breathed deep, then began nesting the dolls back together. “Kane warned me she might try. That’s on the flash drive too. I didn’t give her what she wanted, and I didn’t touch the money, but I take it she made her move anyway.”
“We think so.” Holt closed his hand around the flash drive and stood, Avery also rising beside him. “But this will help. Thank you, for it and for believing him.”
“He’s the most honorable man I know,” Fletcher said. “No reason not to believe him. Just bring him back safe and let us know what you need. The department is behind you.”
Avery was out the door first, Holt halfway over the threshold behind her when the last of the candy dissolved and he thought about what Brax would want for Fletcher, how he’d want to help but couldn’t. Holt could, though. He rotated back around, unsurprised to find Fletcher fiddling with the nesting dolls again. “Rose will be
taken care of,” he said, “but if there’s anything we can do to help, we owe you a favor.”
“Thank you.” Fletcher set the doll back down and wiped the misery from his eyes. “But it’s taken care of.”
MCS headquarters hadn’t been this busy on a weekend night in a good long while. The first and second floors had cleared out at midnight, Saturday’s second shift their last of the weekend, but the third floor buzzed with activity. Holt’s team of hackers was processing evidence as fast as Jax or Chris could get it to them with Marsh hammering away at restricted access barriers. Avery, Victoria, and the rest of the available operatives waited in the conference room, ready to move as soon as they had a location and orders. And while Hawes and Helena made calls and arrangements, Holt cranked through the data on Fletcher’s flash drive and all the other data at his fingertips, organizing, and if necessary, manipulating it to paint a picture that would put a stop to their grandmother—and possibly shutter their entire illegal operation. All the evidence the feds would need to tie at least a dozen operations to them—to Rose as the ultimate arbiter of their contract-targets’ fates.
He transferred the last stack of files to his tablet, then rotated in his chair. “It’s done,” he said to his siblings. “Are you sure about this?” He was sure, no question, but he was also the one least likely to go to jail. Hawes’s and Helena’s efforts to keep him clean all these years had been even more evident as he’d parsed through everything.
“Would you do the same for Chris?” Hawes said. “For Celia?”
“Of course.” Jail included.
“Exactly,” Helena said. “And Brax has been a part of this family longer than either of them.”
Humbled by his siblings’ devotion, Holt hung his head, only lifting it again when Helena knelt beside him.
“I went to him,” she said. “Right after he joined the department. The old chief had given him a stack of files on us. He looked wrecked that night, like everything made sense and didn’t. I asked him if he loved you, and he answered yes, just as fast as you said of course a second ago. He promised to always protect you, regardless of who we were and what we did.”
Wide-eyed, Holt glanced from his sister to his twin… who didn’t look surprised at all by Helena’s revelation. “You knew?”
Hawes nodded. “I knew he had kept you alive in the desert and that he was going to do the same here. That’s all that mattered then. That’s all that matters now.”
“We keep him alive too,” Helena said. “At any cost.”
She rose, and a throat cleared behind them. “Showtime,” Avery said from the doorway. “Mel’s yacht just docked in one of the southside slips.”
Holt considered her, their most loyal operative over the past year, the operative who’d saved his ass twice this week, the one who spoke for the operatives as a group. “Are you on board with this plan?” he asked, sure Helena had filled in her second. “Are the other operatives?”
“We’re on board, boss. Contingencies are in place.” She cracked a half smile. “Not blind either. Fletcher was right. Brax is an honorable man, and we’ve seen what he’s done, and we’ve seen the two of you together. You both deserve to be happy.”
“Thank you.”
He barely got the words out before Jax barreled into the increasingly crowded room. “We’ve got a location on the chief.” They handed him a tablet.
“Probability?” Hawes asked.
“High,” they replied. “Marsh got a voice match, and we got a match on the car. Both are tied to a suspected white supremacists’ compound in the East Bay. Paramilitary sort. One of their members pinged the dark web ad.”
“This,” Hawes sneered, “is why we broke from Rose. She’d do business with anyone.”
Helena’s fingers twitched, the motion the same as if she were flipping knives in her grip, getting ready to throw. “Trying to fund their fucking cause and probably trying to frame someone for killing a police chief in the process.”
“We’re not gonna let that happen,” Hawes said. “How do you want to play this?” he asked Holt. “This is your call.”
This time of night, their operatives could be there in thirty, move in right away, and assuming the location was correct, rescue Brax and do some damage to a bunch of assholes in the process. But his siblings were right. Rose would keep coming for them, keep coming after Brax, Chris, Celia, and all their loved ones. After anyone connected to them who she could leverage, like Isiah Fletcher. She had to be stopped, once and for all, which was what Brax would want too, why he’d told Fletcher to copy all those files, why he’d let himself be taken tonight. So that no one else would be hurt. Holt couldn’t let all this be for nothing. Brax had trusted him to find him, which he and his team had done. Now he had to trust Brax to hold on a little longer while he and his siblings finished this for good.
“Work with Jax to adjust the operation details based on this location,” he told Avery. “Let us talk with the feds. See if we can work a deal. Then let’s be prepared to move as soon as we’ve got all our ducks in a row.”
“Got it, boss.”
“And clear the conference room,” Helena added. “We’re gonna need it, and I want the operatives out of sight.”
Avery and Jax left, and Holt wheeled back around, confirming once more that he had everything they needed on his tablet.
“If they go for this,” Hawes said behind him, “then we go to Rose right away. I already called the warden at CCWF. They’ll be ready for us.”
“No,” Holt said. He grabbed his tablet, stood, and turned to face his siblings. “I have to do this alone. It’s long overdue, and CCWF is two and a half hours away. I need you two with the teams on Brax in case anything goes sideways.”
“Fine, but Chris will go with you,” Hawes said. Holt opened his mouth to object, but Hawes raised a hand, silencing him. “Like you said, two and a half hours away, in the middle of the night, and he’s got experience staring down the devil. We’re not sending you out there without backup either.”
“Okay.” Holt could live with that if that’s what they needed to do their jobs, which were as important as the one he had to do. “I need Brax to walk out of there alive. I just fucking need him.”
Helena clasped his one shoulder, Hawes the other. “We’ll bring him home, Little H,” she said. “Promise.”
Holt drew them both into a hug. There were no two people he trusted more to bring the man he loved back to him alive.
Holt had occupied the same room as US Attorney Dominic Price on multiple occasions. The federal prosecutor had handled Amelia’s and Rose’s cases, and he was family-friend-tight with Mel and Aidan, who were seated across the table with him. Nic also co-owned one of the best breweries in the Bay Area. Tonight, though, it hurt to be in his presence. To notice the same career military bearing and precision of the man Holt was missing. Different branches, but the Frog’s cool blue eyes and his focus as he read over the materials Holt had compiled were at-attention sharp, as sure as his stance would be if he were standing.
“If this goes as planned,” Helena said from Holt’s right, “you add more charges to Rose’s rap sheet and bust a bunch of racist, homophobic assholes for assaulting, kidnapping, and ransoming a LEO, and whatever other charges you want to pile on.”
“And if it doesn’t go as planned,” Hawes said from Holt’s other side, “you bust the same bunch of deplorables… and us.”
“Either way,” Chris added, “you make a hell of a bust.”
Nic spun a black and blue titanium band around his left ring finger. “Your grandmother is already in jail for what will likely be the rest of her life.”
“Likely,” Helena said. “But if we want to be sure she stays there for all of it, this would do the trick, correct?”
“Correct,” the prosecutor said, not giving away more than he had to.
“And if these additional charges stick, certain of her privileges would also likely be revoked, correct?”
“Li
kely.”
Holt had the distinct impression Nic and Helena had played this game before and that they both enjoyed it, more than a little.
Aidan, somehow perfectly pressed and suited at two in the morning, leaned forward in his chair. “Look, I’m not opposed to clearing”—he gestured at the tablet—“a dozen-plus cases from the FBI’s and SFPD’s boards and adding more charges against Oscar fucking Torres.”
Marsh had come through with confirmation Rose was the account holder at Royal Bank of the Caribbean and with the account holder’s name on the other deposit Rose had made. It traced back to an incarcerated hacker Aidan and Jamie had put away several years back. Marsh had further confirmed Torres had charmed one of the guards into granting him access to a computer, the IP address of which pinged the one at FCI Dublin that St. James and Sam had been routing things through. Smartly, Rose had kept several layers between her and her dirty deeds, but she still wasn’t smart enough to understand her grandkids and their allies would find her, would make the connection. Or what they would put on the line to protect their loved ones—especially Brax, who had never turned his back on them. On Holt.
“But you will be implicated if this goes the way of Scenario B,” Aidan said. “I’m not even sure we can keep you completely out of Scenario A.”
Hawes matched Aidan in style, albeit a bit more wrinkled at this point in the night, his suit jacket long since ditched and his sleeves rolled up. His Prince of Killers persona more than made up for it, his demeanor cool and calm compared to the Irishman’s flickering fire. “But Holt is clean?” he asked.
“Yes,” Nic replied. “From the look of this.”
“And if we turn state’s evidence?”
“No one will ever work with you again,” Mel said. “Except me.”
Hawes’s icy exterior cracked, just a little, one corner of his mouth ticking up, but his burgeoning smile died with Helena’s next question. “Jail time?”