She still hadn’t found the right words to say, watching the men around her. They were here only because of LA? Only LA?
“How did you know I would be at the bar tonight?” she asked evenly, leveling her eyes on Elijah. Stupid sexy-as-fuck cowboy. She nearly hated herself for still considering that jackass attractive. She did hate herself for falling for the ruse.
“We’ve been following you around for a little while, now.” He met her eyes, unfazed by her stare. “And before you get even more upset, we didn’t want to just storm your home. We planned this, so I could get those on you. That way, you couldn’t run when we tried to have a conversation with you. I wasn’t out to take advantage of you.”
“How kind,” she snarled, and the aggression in her tone shocked the cowboy, who swallowed and shifted a little uncomfortably, “especially since you were betting on it.”
Silence met her. She turned her glare to Zander, who had the courtesy to become a wonderful, dark shade of red from embarrassment, and, she hoped, a fair amount of shame. She looked back at the Italian after that. He watched her with no interest, which told her that it was very much the opposite. She knew the technique. Feign a lack of interest so the target doesn’t know you are clearly following everything they did or said. Cute. Amateur.
“I don’t know anything about him. He tried to kill me.” She shrugged. “I’ve been wondering if maybe I did a job that interfered with something of his, but I don’t know.”
“Assuming that’s not a lie,” he whispered, “and I very much believe it is, then please explain why he brought out his entire inner circle. He never does that. Or why you thought you needed to spit at him.”
“He’s a fucking creep.” She raised an eyebrow at him. She wasn’t going to give him a real answer. He had to know that. “There’s not a female criminal on this planet that doesn’t know that Axel loves women and will do whatever he wants to them, whenever he wants. A bit weird, really, since it’s not exactly loving, but what can ya do? He said some shit, and I thought it was disgusting. So, I spit at him.”
She watched Vincent’s jaw tighten and wondered what she had said that would have pissed him off. Except lie to him, but, while he might believe she was lying, he had no evidence of it. She wasn’t completely untruthful, either. Axel loved women and had zero respect for them. If he wanted one in his bed, whomever he targeted normally found herself there. Sawyer knew that from experience.
“You always talk about him like that?” Elijah chuckled softly.
“Everyone does when he’s not looking.” She grinned at the cowboy. “We’re also not stupid enough to say it to anyone who will tell him. You know, the entire criminal world doesn’t revolve around his crazy. He’s just another fucking crime lord. He’s got enemies.”
“They die fairly quickly though.” Jasper was frowning at her. She only shrugged.
She needed to tread a fine line between knowing about Axel but not really knowing him. At this point, it was obvious to her that they had no idea just how close she and Axel had once been. They had no idea they had handcuffs on Shadow. Shadow was dead, and it was better for everyone if she stayed that way.
“Either way,” Zander interjected, “you are being taken into our custody as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into Axel and his organization, the Ghosts.” Zander stopped and looked over to Vincent. “Who came up with that name? Really?”
“It wasn’t something they chose,” Sawyer answered without thinking. “They got it because their enemies tended to end up shells of themselves, losing everything; only ghosts of what they were before they toyed with Axel. And they’re freaks who love to wear white.”
“That’s right,” Vincent confirmed. He eyed her from head to toe, and she kicked her long-ass legs out, letting him enjoy the sight. When he made it back up to her face, she gave a smirk. He didn’t react to her and just looked back the other agents. “Let’s get her on a plane and get out of here. I don’t want to stay in this city any longer than necessary.”
“Wait!” She looked between them. “You can’t just drag me off in the middle of the night! I need to make arrangements, plans.”
“Arrangements and plans for what?” Vincent stood up and turned back to her. “Who’s going to pay the hospital bills of the guy you sent to the ICU tonight?”
“No, dickhead,” she snapped. “Who’s going to teach my classes here at the gym? Charlie will need someone helping him out. I normally make a schedule for my students to work around the gym so Charlie doesn’t get too overworked when I’m gone.”
“Charlie can take of that.” He was stern, and she shook her head.
“I’m not fucking leaving this city without a fight until I can tell my students that I’m headed out.” She lifted her chin and glared at him.
“Sawyer, why are you fighting with us?” Zander glared at her in turn. “Axel could be here any fucking day looking for you. We’ve wasted enough time. You need to come with us, now.”
“I’m not leaving without telling the kids and Charlie goodbye,” she said with steel, her back straight. She stood up and jingled the inhibiting handcuffs around. “And they can’t see me in these.”
“Why?” Vincent asked her with just as much steel.
“Why the fuck do you need to know?” she growled. Finally, Elijah walked over and put his hands up between them.
“We can take the handcuffs off, but you need to put this on first,” he told her, placing a thick bracelet on the table. She grabbed it and held it out to him.
“I can’t do it myself,” she hissed. He took it and slid it over her left hand. It resized itself to fit her snugly, and she knew she wouldn’t be pulling it off. Damn thing was probably enchanted to make sure she couldn’t remove it. She saw the way he eyed the mostly missing ring finger before he released her wrist. It had been removed at the second knuckle, leaving her a bit of a moving stub that couldn’t hold anything. “Don’t ask.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he murmured. Once the bracelet was on, he pulled keys from his pocket and started unlocking the handcuffs. “Don’t attack us or these go back on.”
“Fine,” she told him, watching the handcuffs unlock. Finally, she would get her magic back at least. She was so excited she could taste it.
But when Elijah was pocketing the handcuffs, Sawyer realized that she didn’t have her magic back. The stupid fucking bracelet. It had multiple enchantments on it. It sized to her perfectly, so she couldn’t slip it off, and it was an inhibitor. She raised her wrist to eye level and looked it over. It was just a silver bracelet, nothing special. There were no designs etched in the metal or anything. Enchanting was just another of long list of Magi abilities, and it was Common, though only the more powerful Magi with the ability could make an inhibitor. Whoever made this was very powerful, if they could layer on different enchantments. She sensed three total and wondered what the third was.
“Figure it out yet?” Elijah was watching her closely, a grin spread over his face. “You really think we’re going to let you have your magic, especially since we’ve seen your Registrar entry?”
“What?” She looked up at him and felt the air leave her lungs. They had seen her Registrar entry?
“Sublimation, blinking, cloaking, phasing, and animal bonding,” Vincent rattled off all her abilities. Her fifth ability was a secret to everyone, except her and the Reader who made her Registrar entry. Readers were Magi with the Rare ability to learn the abilities of other Magi through touch. They recorded the name of a person and all that person’s abilities in the Registrar, something the WMC had created nearly a thousand years before. They also gave the person an idea of how strong their Source was. The Registrar was only viewed under times of emergency, and the WMC had to grant someone access to view another person’s entry. “Speaking of that last one, where is your animal?”
“I don’t have one,” she snorted, gesturing to the rest of the apartment. They wouldn’t find an animal, she knew that. “You’ve been wa
tching me for weeks, that should have been fairly obvious.”
“You haven’t gotten an animal to bond with you at twenty-four years old?” Vincent frowned. “We figured you hid it, to keep it safe.”
“Nope.” She stepped away from them and moved towards her kitchen. She wasn’t telling them about her animal bond. No fucking way. She didn’t even tell Charlie that, since he didn’t even know it was her fifth ability. It was one of the few things even her old roommate didn’t know.
“Where are you going?” Zander stood up quickly to try and stop her. She turned and gave a heavy sigh.
“I’m getting a bite to eat so we can continue arguing about whether I’m allowed to say goodbye to my class.” She pointed into the kitchen. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She went and opened the fridge, listening to the guys talk while she was out of the room. She noticed they didn’t give a damn if she heard them.
“Well,” Vincent sounded a bit short of patience, “your old friend is… difficult.”
“Yeah, she’s always been that way.” Zander sounded amused. “Right, Jasper?”
“She punched one of the people who ran the orphanage for telling her she couldn’t hang out with us after dark,” Jasper responded blandly.
“Probably because they thought you were fucking,” Elijah laughed. “Were you?’
“No,” Zander mumbled.
Ha! They didn’t know she and Zander had done that. Looked like she wasn’t the only one with secrets in the room. It gave her some leverage over Zander, at least. Of course, it had only happened about a week before Zander and Jasper had left. It wasn’t like they had been in a relationship or anything. They had been best friends and very drunk that night, celebrating his and Jasper’s future in the IMAS and the exciting adventures they would have once she aged out of the orphanage. Life had stepped in and changed those plans.
She paused for a moment as she pulled out a salad she had prepared earlier in the week. Did Jasper know? Surely, Zander would have told him after all these years. Those two had never let secrets sit between them.
“Look, we need to get out of New York as fast as possible,” Vincent was saying as she slowly grabbed her dressing and a drink. “We can’t sit around waiting for her to talk to some kids.”
“If we took a vote, Vincent,” Elijah chuckled, “you would lose. I also don’t want her to try and kick my testicles across the room for the entire duration of this.”
“Yeah.” Sawyer felt a flare of Zander’s passionate temper in the word. “I mean, if she’s going to come willingly afterward and be a bit easier on us, why not?”
“I concur,” Jasper sighed. “She will make your life hell, if you force her to leave before she’s ready, Vincent.”
“You know what,” Vincent snapped, “why didn’t you give me a run down on her before we had handcuffs on her?”
“We didn’t know how similar she was to who we used to know.” Jasper was trying to be diplomatic, and Sawyer hopped up on the counter. She opened her drink, drizzled dressing on to her salad, and began eating. She could sit here all night and listen to this. It was telling her more than anything else they had said.
“Fuck,” one of them mumbled. It was low enough that Sawyer couldn’t identify which. “Quinn is going to hate her.”
She took another of her salad and tried to hold back a smile. This Quinn person could hate her as much as they fucking wanted.
“Too late to worry about that. We gave him a heads up before we left.” Vincent was nearly groaning. She raised an eyebrow. Who was Quinn to elicit a warning that she was being caught? “I need to call James and let him know we have her in custody. Keep an eye on her, she’s too quiet in there.”
“Hey, tell James we’re going to do that thing she wants. Saying goodbye to her students, or class, or whatever.” Elijah sounded easy going, and Vincent only gave him a growling okay. Jasper walked into the kitchen and met her eyes.
“You trying to hide from us?” He was quiet, but she saw that he was a little hurt. Jasper always was the sweet one out of their little gang of delinquents.
“No.” She shook her head. She really hadn’t been. “Just decided to eat in here while you all had a very important conversation.”
“Of course,” he whispered. When he walked closer, she frowned. He was limping.
“I knew your knee was fucked up, but what gave you the limp?” She pointed with her fork. She had never been very tactful, and Jasper winced in embarrassment, which hadn’t been her intention.
“The knee injury caused a problem with the hip while we were in the IMAS. Nothing can really be done, unless someone figures out how to fix the knee.” He leaned onto the counter next to her, and she watched him carefully, finally giving him her full attention.
He hadn’t changed much. He was more filled-out than he had been at eighteen, but that was something she had expected. He was still a golden blonde with blue eyes that reminded her of a storm on the coast, churning with emotions he didn’t talk about and refused to confront. He sported a decent tan, making him look like a cover model. He’d always been pretty, beautiful. There wasn’t much about Jasper that was rugged or rough. He was definitely more man then he’d been the last time she saw him, though.
Sawyer swallowed. Wow, what the fuck is wrong with me? Of all the places her mind could go, that one needed a big red stop sign. Thinking like that got her in with Axel. Now it had gotten her caught. She didn’t want to know where else it was going to send her. And of all the times she could be thinking about it. She had too much to drink, that was surely the reason.
“You know, you’re handling this better than I expected,” Jasper whispered, grabbing her drink. “Anything in this I should know about?” He held up the water bottle, and she shook her head. He took a couple swallows and put it back where she had set it.
“Grab a few more from the fridge,” she sighed, “and, Jasper, I’m a criminal. I knew someone would track my ass down one day. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon. I’m a bit peeved, but things could be worse.”
“You make it sound like you are resigned to that fate.” He was keeping it light, friendly with her. “You’re just some over-paid thief. It’s not like you’ve killed anyone.”
Well. That was the confirmation she needed. They had no idea who she was. It helped that her identity as Shadow had a very public death, and no one dared to question it since Axel had already killed several IMPO agents in the event.
“If the IMPO didn’t arrest me, someone I stole from would have killed me, eventually.” She shrugged.
“What about the people here in New York? The ones you…” Jasper put several waters on the counter next to her. “You aren’t worried about them?”
“Fuck, no,” she snorted. “Should I be?”
“No,” Jasper sighed softly. “Probably not. You know… we saw one of those… meet ups a little while ago.”
“Which one? I’ve had a few since coming back from LA.” She took a couple swallows of a fresh water, instead of using the one Jasper put his mouth on.
“Make that two, then,” he told her. “We saw the one where you jumped the guy in a back alley. We also had eyes at the fight tonight and saw the aftermath of the guy you must have caught in the locker room.”
“Ah,” she nodded. “Yeah. I do that…”
“You’ve always hated injustice in the world,” he reminded her. “You fought with bullies growing up, you stood up for littler kids in the orphanage. It’s just who you are.”
“Except now I put them in the hospital.” She took another sip of her water. “You all aren’t going to lock me away for that, are you? Because I’m willing to go down for the thefts, but not for that. Someone has to take care of these people, show them that their shit isn’t tolerated in the twenty-first century.”
“We’re not sending you to prison, Sawyer.” Jasper shook his head. “Not for any of it. Catching Axel and keeping you alive is more important. You’re the first person
we’ve seen escape him like that. Normally, we only find the body.”
“No one ever gets away,” she whispered, looking away from him.
“Exactly.” He pointed at her. “But you are sitting here, living and breathing, after a run-in with him. We’re going to keep it that way. You are the one-in-a-million.”
“Fine, and I’m not fighting going into protective custody.” She put her salad down as she spoke. “But I’m not just going to disappear into the night when people here count on me.”
“That’s fine, and we’ll even set something up, so you can stay in contact with them if you want to.” Jasper nodded. “You know, I’m disappointed in you becoming a criminal, but, Sawyer?”
“What?” She already knew he was disappointed. That much had been obvious. There was no way her golden boy wouldn’t be. Not hers, she realized. She couldn’t call him that, not after so long.
“I’m proud of what you do for this area.” He swatted her arm and turned to leave. He stopped at the door and snapped his fingers before turning back to her. “Eventually, you’ll need to tell us how you ended up here.”
She snorted. Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. Considering that story was saturated in Axel, and she needed to pretend that she wasn’t Shadow, she wasn’t going to tell them fucking anything.
“Sure, whatever.” She nearly laughed. “Look, I’m going to get a nap in before people start showing up to the gym. Can I trust you all not to whisk me away to a plane in my sleep?”
“Yeah, you can trust us on that. Vincent’s been overruled on this.” Jasper gave her a gentle smile. “He might be our team leader and boss, but he’s expected to listen to the majority on some things.”
Well, that was an important piece of information. The cold and calculating Italian, Vincent, was the leader, but he wasn’t allowed to be a dictator. Good, she could play that to get this over with more quickly. She would play along for a month or so, maybe even a couple, and then she would find a way to sneak out the back door, claiming she had nothing to tell them.
“Alright then. Goodnight, Jasper.” She slid off the counter top and walked past him into the dining room. Elijah and Zander were playing a silent game of cards while Vincent must have stepped out to make a phone call. “Can I get my car and motorcycle sent to wherever we’re going?”
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 10