2
SAWYER
Sawyer staggered out of the portal, shivering from the cold that had seeped into her bones during the trip. Portals were efficient, but they weren’t instant. Rather, you had a seemingly endless fall in the dark, and it was cold. Magi scientists hadn’t yet figured out how they worked, but they did work, even if they bent the laws of physics. Sawyer didn’t really know why it was a big deal. She could turn to smoke and retain thought without a brain, and that didn’t make much sense either.
“Call a cab, Travis,” she gasped. He didn’t seem bothered at all. Sawyer huffed. The ass.
“Alright,” he chuckled.
Yeah, get a laugh, Sawyer growled internally.
They waited in silence for the cab. Sawyer looked up into the sun, letting the heat soak back in. Travis was twitching, something Sawyer had stopped letting get on her nerves years ago.
The only thing either of them said when the cab arrived was the address for Charlie’s gym. Sawyer lived there, in an apartment with Charlie on the third floor. She needed a couple of days to get Travis resettled, but she always had an apartment in New York for him. While he hated using it, he wasn’t going to get the choice this time.
She used her remaining cash to pay the driver without saying anything. She didn’t give Travis a chance to ask for a ride somewhere else, either. She just grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the car with her.
“Sawyer, I really don’t find this necessary,” he groaned at her as she took him in through the back.
“He’s going to knock you out until you sober up, then you can go to the apartment,” Sawyer told him sharply. “This is serious, Travis. You need to listen to me for a few weeks until I know we’re completely safe here.”
“No one is going to try and kill us here in New York,” Travis complained in a whiny tone. “That’s why people hide here. No one causes shit with them nearby.”
“I know that,” Sawyer growled, yanking him to look her in the eyes. “But I know how bad this really is, and you are going to fucking deal with my rabidly over-protective nature for a couple of weeks. Is that clear?”
“Yeah,” he whispered, going a little pale. She felt a pang of guilt at her harsh tone, but she didn’t want to wake up one morning and find out that he accidentally got high and left the city for a weekend romp, only to wind up in a ditch.
“Go upstairs and lay on the couch. Charlie is probably in his office; I’ll get him. We’ve got a guest room if you want to use it instead.”
“I’ll see you up there,” Travis nodded, and she was glad to see some color returning to his face.
She looked around the garage and sighed at the familiarity of it. It was good to be home, but it was soured by the night she’d had. It wasn’t over, either. She touched the handle of her motorcycle and wondered when she would feel comfortable with going on a long ride again. It would be months before she felt comfortable leaving the city. She ran a hand over the hood of her other baby, a blue 2016 Audi R8 V10, as she walked by it. It was a gorgeous car, and Charlie hated it, but she wouldn’t give it up for the world.
She was nearly to the back stairs leading up to the residential floor when she heard the yelling. She sighed and looked over to main gym, narrowing her eyes on Charlie.
At six feet two inches and three hundred pounds, Charlie was a born-and-bred Bronx resident. He was an imposing African-American who didn’t take shit from anyone, for any reason. She watched him grab a water bottle and throw it as he told someone to get the fuck out of his gym.
“Charlie?” She called out, raising an eyebrow at him. She began walking over as he turned to her, giving her a deep frown.
“Sawyer?” He picked up the water bottle he had thrown and put it on a fold-out table nearby. “You’re home early. Why?”
“Later,” she whispered, looking to see who he was yelling at. It wasn’t someone she recognized, and who would be in the gym at this hour, anyway? It was nearly five in the morning, and Charlie looked like he hadn’t slept all night.
“You might be able to help me.” The guy looked her over. She stiffened her spine in response, waiting for whatever this guy had to say.
“She won’t help you either,” Charlie snapped. “Get the fuck out of my gym.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Sawyer looked between them. Charlie looked furious, and the other guy glared at him. She saw the resemblance this guy had with someone else she knew.
“Nothing,” Charlie growled at her. She raised an eyebrow at him. They stared at each other for a long time before Charlie began cursing under his breath. “He wants me to train him.”
“And you won’t?” Sawyer laughed as she looked to the other guy. He was young, probably around her age—early to mid-twenties—and healthy. He had the body of a fighter, and she wondered if he’d tried it before or if he just took care of himself. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” He glared at her. “I was at Fight Night earlier and asked him to help me get in, but he’s been turning me down.”
“That sucks, but at the end of the day, this gym is choosy with its clientele.” Sawyer shrugged. “You should go. There are other gyms. Though, if you keep up with the attitude, you’ll find that none of them will train you, either.”
“Fine,” the guy huffed. She didn’t bother to ask for his name as he turned and stormed out. She looked back at Charlie and frowned.
“Why did that piss you off so badly?” Sawyer narrowed her eyes on him.
“That’s Liam’s older brother,” Charlie mumbled. Sawyer clenched her jaw and looked back to the door. She hadn’t recognized him, but she also had never met him in person. She had seen some resemblance but unrelated people looked like each other all the time. He’d walked out on Liam two years before Sawyer had met Liam. “He came back into town while you were off in LA. He’s trying to get back into Liam’s life, but then he started showing up at Fight Night saying our gym trained his brother to fight and he wanted to learn.”
“Liam doesn’t fight,” Sawyer whispered coldly. “He only defends himself.”
“Exactly.” Charlie nodded. “So, how does Carson know Liam can fight?”
“Fuck,” Sawyer whispered. “I’ll deal with it.”
“I was waiting on you to get home. Liam is still making it to class and work, and he’s keeping his grades up, so he’s not really giving me a reason to talk to him. I figured you would know what to say where I am failing.”
“Yeah.” Sawyer nodded. She could handle it. She would handle it, but five am and injured wasn’t the time. “Now, for why I’m home early…”
“You’re burnt out, you have several minor injuries, and I need a closer look at that shoulder…and that knee, holy shit.” Charlie walked toward the front of the gym and locked the door. “Let’s go upstairs.”
She followed him up slowly and put Liam out of her mind for the moment. She was good at compartmentalization, and it came in handy. She couldn’t get riled up over the kid right now. When she had moved in four years earlier, she had agreed to help Charlie out once she was back on her feet. She dealt with kids, that was what she ended up with, and it worked really well for her.
She was also the enforcer for Fight Night, a semi-illegal fighting ring they had started to give people a chance to use their skills and have a good time. The cops ignored them because they were small time and B.Y.O.B. No illegal alcohol sales, and the gambling wasn’t organized. There was also an entry fee for anyone who wanted to hang out and party. That wasn’t illegal, and it was how Charlie made his money from the event. That and fighter buy-ins.
She sat down in their fairly classy apartment at the dining room table, gingerly pulling her black shirt off. She winced at the sight of the bruises on her shoulder. They looked fucking awful, and she wondered if even Charlie could do anything about them at this point. He was an exceptional healer and was once a successful doctor because of it, but this was bad. Also, he was getting up there in age.
“Go deal with Travis first,” she told him softly as he eyed her shoulder. The guest room was open, and Travis wasn’t on the couch. She would have bet money that the addict was already asleep, but she still wanted Charlie to keep him out for a long time before she started talking. Hearing what she was about to say would freak Travis out, and she didn’t need that.
She unbuttoned her pants and slid them off next. She looked at her fucked right knee and tenderly tried to bend it. Adrenaline was a glorious thing, but it was leaving her system. The pain was really starting to set in.
“Charlie!” She called, realizing the apartment was too cold to sit in just her underwear. “Bring me some sweats!”
“Alright,” he called back.
She waited silently for him, leaning back in the chair, continuing to try and use her right knee. It was the size of a softball, and she wondered if she had fractured anything.
“Well, you really fucked yourself up,” he sighed, throwing his medical kit on the table and tossing her the sweatpants. He studiously ignored her in the thong as she stood up and slid them on. She rolled up the right leg, so he could see the knee, and slowly sat back down. “Sawyer, I think you need to retire.”
“I can’t bring myself to,” she mumbled. “We’ve had this talk. The money goes to mostly helping these kids, and, let’s be real, this gym doesn’t make a profit, Charlie.”
“Yes, but you’ve never come back looking like this, and you can’t say it wouldn’t be safer just to stay here in New York. What you do here isn’t nearly as bad as what you do outside of the city.”
“Charlie…” she groaned and shook her head. “It’s worse than you think.”
“You aren’t killing anyone, are you?” Charlie glared at her, and she shook her head again. That was their deal. He was one of two people on the planet who knew everything about her: who she was and what she used to be. The only other person was Axel, who had kept her far away from the rest of his organization, the Ghosts, so his underlings wouldn’t learn too much about her. Didn’t stop most of them from hating her though.
“No. Axel showed up during my job tonight.” She winced when Charlie put his hands on both her shoulders. She felt the heat from his palms, but it was unnaturally hot, meaning he was healing her as best he could. She knew he probably couldn’t remove all the bruising and soreness, but she had hope that he could bring it down to something manageable.
“Explain everything,” Charlie whispered.
She did, walking him through the mission and what Axel had said. She told him about her escape to help explain the injuries. The entire time, Charlie got more and more tense.
“You need to find help,” he told her when she was done. “But, yeah, you should lay low while you heal. Stay here in New York, live your life. We’ll get through this. We both knew it was coming.”
“I can leave, Charlie,” she told him, but he shook his head.
“I’ve sheltered you for four years since you ‘died’. Even if you left now, they would still come after me if they figure it out.” Charlie smiled at her. “I accepted that when I took you in, Sawyer. The only deal we have is that you never go back to being…”
“Yeah,” she sighed. He was all she had, the old fart. He had opened up her world of death and pain into something half decent. “So, retirement.” The word sounded a little distasteful, but what did she have to lose? If Axel did this again, remaining active was going to get her killed. She’d gotten lucky twice now, when it came to him, and she damn well knew that luck would run out eventually.
“Yeah. You’ve got something like forty million dollars in off-shore accounts; live off it and walk away. If things get hot, turn yourself into the IMPO or something to get protection. You made a deal with them once, you can do it again. But the Ghosts haven’t found you here, yet, so if you don’t go off causing trouble…”
“The Ghosts never will be able to trace me back here,” Sawyer grinned at him. “He won’t come here, even if he did. The IMAS and IMPO are both run from this city by the World Magi Council. It’s just too hot for him, especially after he went to number one on the Most-Wanted list. No Magi criminal plays around in this city except me, and I get away with it because I don’t work in the city.”
“You were number seven on that list, at one point, if I remember correctly. I still think you could get away with joining the IMAS,” Charlie chuckled. “They would give anything to have someone with talents like yours.”
“I’m not joining the International Magi Armed Services,” Sawyer groaned, shaking her head. “I’m not going within a hundred yards of the Police Organization, either, so don’t ask.”
Charlie laughed, pulling his hands away.
“This could get ugly, Sawyer.” He touched her chin, and she nodded.
“Yeah, like your face, old man.” She laughed, and he whacked her on the side of her head. “Charlie, I love you! I’m sorry!” She kept laughing as he threw a few more playful swings at her.
“People are trying to kill you, and here you are making fun of my damn face,” Charlie huffed, but she could hear the laughter in his voice, too. Charlie threw a hand towel at her. “Look, you’ll have a week or so with a sore shoulder and some minor bruising. Two weeks off the knee. I repaired the ACL tear you had. Everything else is taken care of, so if you give it a few weeks, let your Source recharge, then you’ll be fine.”
“A couple of weeks?” Sawyer sighed happily. “I thought it would be worse.”
“I might be slipping in my old age, but I’m still a strong Magi,” Charlie reminded her.
She snorted. Slipping? He was an accomplished doctor and fighter with years of experience. He was in the IMAS for a decade and only left to settle down with his wife, who had passed away a year before Sawyer met him. He’d sold off everything when she left this life and had opened the gym, a lifetime dream of his. And he could still kick the ass of any punk who walked in the doors.
Charlie wasn’t ‘slipping’, he was getting lazy. There was a difference.
“Thanks for talking to that guy,” Charlie finally told her. “I know you don’t like dealing with them when they come in on occasion, but I appreciate it. You prefer the kids who genuinely need help, not the punks.”
“That one really pissed me off,” Sawyer chuckled. “But it’s not a problem, really. I’ll figure out what’s going on with him and Liam.”
“Get some rest.” Charlie smiled at her. “I’ve got to get a nap in before the gym opens. And Fight Night is on Friday. You won’t be one-hundred percent, but I’d like to have you around again, so hurry up and get healthy. I can’t have an enforcer that limps around.”
“Alright, I’m going,” Sawyer stood up slowly, testing her shoulder and knee. A little physical therapy and rest and she would be as good as new. She had gotten lucky when she met Charlie, that was for damn sure.
She walked out as Charlie went to his own room. She moved quietly to her room and sighed happily at the vanilla scent that filled it. She lit her favorite candles and moved into her bathroom.
The apartment used to be shabby and cheap, but when Sawyer moved in, she convinced Charlie to let her bring it up-to-date. She paid for millions in renovations, doing a lot of the work by herself. She liked living in nice places, and she didn’t see any reason that Charlie shouldn’t enjoy a nice place when he was helping her out by letting her stay.
She put her candle down on the edge of the large jacuzzi tub that she called her own. Once she got the water running, she stripped down and looked at herself in the mirror.
She was sure every person had a moment when they didn’t recognize the person in the mirror, but with Sawyer, it was becoming a daily occurrence. Her eyes were a dark brown that looked like obsidian in the dim light. Her face wasn’t soft, but it was feminine. Defined cheekbones and thinner lips that would be beautiful if she could ignore the scar on her bottom one. Her hair was coffee-colored. It was thick and textured, and a mess when she didn’t use the right products. It cu
rled wildly, and she stupidly kept it longer then she should. It fell to the middle of her back. She liked straightening it on occasion, especially for Fight Night, when she couldn’t be bothered to deal with the curls.
When her eyes left her face, they moved over her body. That was more recognizable than the face. An even, golden, dark tan skin tone that reminded her of a light caramel or topaz. She was proud of the body she had: defined arms, a solid six pack, and toned legs. She had broad shoulders for a woman, though that was due to the strength she built into them. Squats had given her a great ass. There was only one thing she had a problem with: the few scars she had were hard to miss. One down her breastbone, courtesy of Axel. Another along the right side of her rib cage, courtesy of Axel. A third on her left hip bone, thin and long, and guess what? Courtesy of Axel. The two bullet holes weren’t from Axel, though. Missy had given her those, the bitch.
She had smaller scars on her knuckles from fighting and work. Those didn’t piss her off as much. They were hers, and she owned them. The missing finger did bother her to the point of irrational anger though. She knew why Axel chopped it off, and that reason was still enough to piss her off.
She sighed and shook her head, trying to dispel the face that popped up in her mind. Suave, Italian, with olive-green eyes and a beautiful face. Not handsome. He looked too refined for handsome.
“Fuck me,” she hissed as she sank into the tub. She didn’t need to be thinking about him. She needed him to stay the fuck out of her life. Four years, and she’d never made a mistake. How did he learn she was even alive? And if he knew… who else did?
That guilt welled up in her chest from earlier, finally breaking past all the barriers she had built around it.
Sawyer was once the rising star in a world of darkness and death. She would have done anything for him. She did do anything for him, for a variety of reasons, from fucked up hero worship to just plain fear. By twenty, she had a reputation for silent and bloody death. Five kills in two years was all it took for her to gain such a dangerous reputation that she had found herself on the IMPO’s Top Ten Most-Wanted list. She’d started out as just his thief; by the end, she was so much more. So much worse.
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 3