Until she was declared dead four years ago. Four years and three months. The events that led to her ‘death’ were both a nightmare and a blessing, but nothing she did, from helping abused kids and Charlie to retiring from that work, could clean the black stain on her soul. Nothing would bring back the people she had killed or the ones she got killed with her failures.
She leaned back in the hot water, angling her back into a jet and sighing as it worked the tight muscle.
“I need a fight,” she mumbled. “A clean fight. A couple weeks to heal up? I’m going to go mad with cabin fever.”
She closed her eyes. She didn’t know how long she was soaking in the tub when Charlie knocked on her bathroom door.
“Sawyer?”
“Yes, Charlie?” She called back, refusing to open her eyes.
“The boys and I are going out for breakfast,” he told her sheepishly.
“And I’m your mother, old man?” She chuckled. They always told each other when they were leaving. It was a safety thing, but they also gave each other hard times over it. His laugh told her that everything was fine between them, for now. “Have a good breakfast.”
“Well, you know the rules. Keep the door locked and don’t accept any injured, fevered, dying people in to use the bathroom. You know how that ended last time. Just send them to the hospital.”
She heard him walk off and chuckled to herself for a long time. She did know how it ended last time. She was still living in his apartment. She owed him everything, and he never expected more from her then she was willing to give. It took nearly a year for them to even talk regularly, but she never regretted meeting him. He had saved her life, in every way.
She rose out of the tub since the water had cooled down. She blew out her candle and left it at the side of the tub as she dried off. Blow dry the hair; towel off the rest. She strolled into her room and grabbed her favorite pair of oversized gray sweats and a black tank top. By the time she was settled onto the couch in the living room, she was half asleep and didn’t even make it through a single episode of Grace and Frankie.
Blood seeped onto the tile. Her eyes locked on the cracked and dented plaster where his body had hit the wall. Her vision doubled, and she swayed. She couldn’t look down at the figure that was laying there. She couldn’t. This was her fault. He was dead, and it was her fault.
A whimper filled the room.
It was hers.
Sawyer gasped and jumped off the couch, wincing as her knee buckled from the sudden weight. Fucking nightmare. She hadn’t had it in months. Fuck.
She staggered into her room, wiping her face. Tears drenched her cheeks and slid onto her lips, salty and bitter. She collapsed onto the bed and pulled a pillow over her face. Of course, seeing Axel would bring back the nightmares. She sobbed into the pillow, letting it muffle the noise.
“I fucking hate you,” she cried, not sure if she was talking about Axel or herself.
3
VINCENT
Vincent and Elijah landed in LA only hours after the Axel incident. They got on the first plane out of Atlanta to get to the scene as quickly as possible. They had tried getting a Magi to make them a portal, but no one had been available, so Delta had been their only option.
“I hate Delta,” Elijah groaned, kicking a cowboy boot out onto the rental’s dashboard. Vincent resisted the urge to knock the foot down. Seven years as friends and they still had problems. “I mean, it was a six-hour flight, and I only got two drinks? What the fuck?”
“Calm down, Cowboy,” Vincent sighed. “We’ve got a lot to do, and we’ll be flying Delta back, so just get over it.”
“You wound me, Vincent,” Elijah placed a hand over his heart, feigning a chest pain. “But you’re right. What did our contact say?”
“Axel set up a high-end, reclusive thief,” Vincent mumbled. “But no one really knows why. She’s not a high priority for us, since she’s not really a danger to the public. Axel has never hired her before or shown any interest in her. I was told that the security footage is fairly interesting.”
“Maybe he’s just losing it?” Elijah tried to shrug. In the compact rental car, Vincent equated it to a giant squeezed into a tuna can. How he got his foot on the dashboard was a mystery to Vincent. At six feet five and a wall of muscle, Elijah wasn’t exactly a contortionist. “I mean, Axel’s been slowly slipping for years now, ever since he lost that little pet of his.”
“Yeah,” Vincent mumbled. “I remember that. He’s always been a little mad.” Vincent shook his head. “I think that incident just brought it to the surface.”
“Yeah, well, now he’s going after fairly innocent thieves and blowing holes into office buildings. Messy for him. I think it’s a pattern.” Elijah pointed to a building, and Vincent turned into the building’s parking lot.
There were only 3 black Range Rovers there, all IMPO. They had realized it was a Magi incident and had taken over, kicking the LAPD off the scene entirely. Vincent would feel guilty over it, but the non-Magi law enforcement services really didn’t have the talent or the resources to handle Magi criminals known for torture, mass murder, and a variety of other things.
“You know,” Elijah continued as Vincent parked them. “Maybe there is a pattern.”
“Excuse me?” Vincent frowned and narrowed his eyes on his second in command.
“Think about it,” Elijah chuckled. “These things only really happen when it’s Axel and a woman.”
Good lord. Elijah would assume they were fucking. There was no evidence of Axel ever taking a long-term lover before in his life, and Vincent was the world’s leading expert on Axel. Vincent rolled his eyes as he shook his head.
“Come on.” Elijah laughed when Vincent didn’t even bother giving a response. “You can’t tell me that it doesn’t work! Hot woman turns him down or breaks off the relationship. He’s a control freak with a complex. It would make him furious in a way that nothing else could.”
“You make a lot of assumptions about him by entertaining that,” Vincent sighed. “He’s never had a girlfriend. He doesn’t care enough. And if he did take a lover and they left he would…”
“Kill them.” Elijah pointed at Vincent and walked past him.
Damn it all to hell, the cowboy was probably right. Vincent shoved the theory out of his mind and followed Elijah onto the elevator. It was a stupid theory. Axel was well known for keeping clean prostitutes and slaves for those types of relationships. He didn’t do lovers.
When they stepped off the elevator on the third floor, they moved quietly and as a unit to the room that security and the IMPO had taken over for their investigation.
“Special Agent Castello, Special Agent Grant.” An agent held out his hand for Vincent. “Detective Robins.”
“Nice to meet you, Detective.” Vincent shook his hand and then did the same introduction with other agents around the room. When it was all over, he looked back to Detective Robins and pointed at the computers they had set up. “What do you have?”
“Well, we called you in since your team is point on the Ghosts.” Robins grabbed a remote and started up a projector, so they wouldn’t be huddled around a laptop. “He was here, Castello. Right in this building, raging at her when she got away. Tore up several floors.”
Good Lord, Axel was slipping. This was personal, but how? He had no evidence that these two had been in contact before. He was missing something important, and it sat on the edges of his mind where he was unable to reach it.
“Play the tapes,” he mumbled. Robins nodded and got the security tape started. The fact that there was no sound bothered Vincent, but he’d have to deal. This was the first time they had gotten Axel on camera in a year, and that was a blessing on its own.
They watched the tall thief run out of the server room. They saw her mask get knocked off, and Vincent heard Elijah mumble, “What the fuck?” as the scene continued to play out. Vincent quickly realized that this thief knew exactly how to get away from Axel. Axel was l
osing his temper the entire recording, and she had to know what he could do. She had to know what any of the Ghosts could do, since she outplayed all of them at every turn.
When the tape ended, Vincent held up a hand at Robins to stop him from playing the next video.
“Elijah, you got something?” He turned to his second. Elijah was frowning.
“Call Jasper or Zander. Have them send a picture of that girl they grew up with,” Elijah mumbled.
“They’re on vacation,” Vincent reminded him. “I can’t bring them in. They are required by law to take the next month to themselves.”
“A phone call won’t get anyone in trouble, Vin.” Elijah crossed his arms and waited. Vincent sighed, pulled out his phone, and made the call.
Zander answered on the second ring, sounding pissed.
“What the fuck, Vincent?” He was cranky, but Vincent would be too if his vacation was interrupted for even a second by a call from the boss. Zander had two moods. Reckless or cranky. There was no in-between for him.
“Elijah would like one of you two to send a picture to him of that missing person case you’ve been secretly, not-so-secretly, working on for the past six years.” Vincent looked over to the projection and frowned. The woman was beautiful, but since he never got involved in the weird manhunt the guys had been up to, he didn’t recognize her. He had never seen a picture of her, and his team knew they had other shit going on, so their personal missions needed to stay personal and off the company dime.
“Why?”
“Just send it,” Vincent groaned, rubbing a temple. Vincent waited for Elijah’s phone to go off, ignoring Zander’s grumbling. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you in a month, Vincent. Not a day sooner,” Zander growled, hanging up on him.
“He was cranky,” Vincent commented mildly, putting his phone away as Elijah compared whatever photo he had to the woman Axel had tried to grab.
“You probably ruined some pick-up line he was trying out,” Elijah chuckled, but the chuckle was dark, and Vincent frowned. “Call him back.”
“Why?” Vincent crossed his arms. “Do any of you remember that I’m in charge of this team and I outrank you, therefore I don’t take orders?”
Elijah held up his phone, and Vincent noticed his hand was shaking. Vincent looked at the picture. Younger versions of his team members, Jasper and Zander with a younger woman between them. They must have all been teens.
“How old is this picture?” Vincent whispered.
“Nine years. The guys are seventeen and eighteen, and she was fifteen. They grew up together,” Elijah informed him. Vincent remembered, wondering how he had forgotten the story. Zander and Jasper were both orphans for different reasons. Magi had a small population and had very few kids who didn’t have anyone looking out for them. They didn’t allow Magi children in foster care, instead, putting them all into one of two orphanages in North America. A friend who was there since her birth, Sawyer Matthews, was adopted and then went missing about eight months after the guys joined the IMAS. When Vincent recruited them into the IMPO, they started looking for her.
He looked from the photo to the woman on the screen. They had found her. Staring at Axel in what Vincent could only describe as unadulterated disgust, was Sawyer Cambrie Matthews. He hit play, watched her spit at Axel’s feet and then drop through the floor. Ballsy and reckless. He was astounded that her body wasn’t in the building somewhere.
His team members’ long-lost friend was being hunted by Axel of all fucking people. It was already a small world for Magi, and Vincent felt it become a lot smaller.
“I’ll call him back,” Vincent whispered. “Shut this down. I want all the tapes in our possession. No copies. We’re taking over. We aren’t going to be able to catch Axel from here, but,” he pointed at Sawyer on the screen, “I have a feeling we can catch him with her.”
“Find her, find him.” Elijah nodded slowly. “Good call, boss.”
“You know her?” Robins finally spoke up. “And what about what happened here? We need resolutions.”
“No. You don’t,” Vincent told the Detective. “Like every other Magi incident, there’s a payout system. The damages will be taken care of. When you called me in, didn’t you think I was going to completely take over this case?”
“I…” Robins trailed off, and Vincent gave him a wry smile.
“Thought so,” Vincent sighed and hit call for Zander. Vincent rarely felt nervous, but this phone call made him more anxious than he had felt in years. “Elijah, handle all of this while I figure out what we’re going to do about Jasper and Zander’s vacation.”
4
SAWYER
“Liam,” Sawyer called out as her ragged band of kids wandered around the training room. She watched them as Liam walked over to her. She saw a couple joke around, the teenagers. One young woman was helping the youngest ones with their pads. Sawyer had them all here, ages nine to eighteen.
“Sawyer,” Liam greeted her tentatively.
“I’ve heard things, and I’ve only been back for two days. Care to elaborate on the rumors, or do I need to go digging myself?” She met his eyes and watched him look down at the floor after only a couple of seconds. “We’ve known each other for four years this month, Liam, and we’ve been through a lot together. Now isn’t the time to start keeping secrets from me.”
“My brother showed up.” Liam shrugged. “He’s a dick.”
“He knows you can fight,” Sawyer whispered. She looked back to the group and sighed. “You all can take some time to warm and stretch together. Jessie, you’re in charge!”
“Aye, aye, Sawyer!” The teenage girl helping the younger kids gave Sawyer a mock salute. Jessie, a seventeen-year-old from the same neighborhood that Charlie grew up in, was a sweet girl with a bite. She was easy to get along with if you didn’t step on her toes, which made her one of Sawyer’s favorite people to leave in charge of the class. No one could push her around, and that kept the peace while Sawyer was dealing with other things.
“Come with me, Liam.” Sawyer waved him to follow her. When they were alone in Charlie’s office on the second floor, she locked him in with her and glared at him. “What the fuck, Liam?”
“He’s back, and it’s okay!” Liam scrambled to tell her. “He’s a prick, and he’s got a few friends that like to mess with me, but I can handle it. I’m still going to school and getting here for work. I’m not letting him impact my life.”
“Where’s he staying?” Sawyer asked softly.
“On my couch,” Liam mumbled, playing with his hand wraps. Sawyer crossed her arms and waited. “So are a few of his friends. They’ve taken to partying at my place and smoking a fuck load of weed because I have a nice place.”
“I know you have a nice place,” Sawyer reminded him. “I fucking pay for it.”
“I know,” Liam whispered, nodding his head. “I’ve tried to kick them out, but there’s like five of them. Carson knows I can fight because one got really drunk and tried to start some shit. I ended it. I told him about the gym since I work here. He put it all together and started bothering Charlie.”
“God damn it.” Sawyer shook her head. “Pull up your shirt.”
“What?” Liam frowned at her, but she also saw the fear in his eyes. The shame.
She knew why.
“Liam. You heard me.”
He closed his eyes and pulled up his tee. He normally worked out shirtless so him even having a shirt on in the gym was a dead giveaway.
Sure enough, Sawyer wanted to rage at the amount of bruising he had.
“How many?” she asked in the flattest tone she could summon.
“All of them,” Liam whispered. “A week ago, when I tried to throw them out.”
“Including your brother?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, swallowing. His voice was tight, and she took a long breath to remain calm. “He told them not to mess with my face like…”
“Like your dad used to say,” Sawyer
finished for him. “Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“No, I guess not,” Liam whispered. “Sawyer, Charlie said you-”
“I’m injured, but I’m not an invalid,” Sawyer snarled at him. “I’m not letting you live in that place until I clear those mother fuckers out. I just got a friend out of the guest room; it’s yours again. I’ll get you back in your place by tomorrow.”
“Sawyer,” Liam tried to argue with her.
“No,” she snapped. “Damn it, Liam!” She slammed a hand on the wall in frustration. “You don’t go it alone. You don’t put on the tough face and pretend it’s okay. It’s not.”
“It’s what you do!” Liam yelled at her. “What happened in LA, Sawyer? I know you’re a thief, but Charlie said this has never happened before. In the four years I’ve known you, you’ve never gotten hurt like this. But there you are, putting on a tough face and trying to protect the rest of us.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sawyer growled. “You’re a kid, and I’m not letting you turn this back on me.”
“Two years ago, I would have bought that.” Liam glared at her. “But I’m nineteen, Sawyer. I’m not the fifteen-year-old you dragged here when I had nowhere else to go. I’ve got four years of training from you. To not only protect myself, but them.” He pointed towards the door, and she knew he meant the other teens and children in the class. “I’m going to college, so I have the education to take your place. Remember?”
She winced. Damn him.
“What do you want?” she asked him, looking away from him this time.
“I want to be there when you clear them out. I’m not a Magi like you, but I want to be there.”
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 4