“Yeah, we haven’t filled it yet. Vincent and I are the only two with personal vehicles. Jasper and Zander share a Range Rover, which was given to us for work. Quinn doesn’t drive. We have two Range Rovers, actually, because we technically aren’t allowed to use personal vehicles for work.”
“And that thing.” She pointed at a car that was in pieces, and he nodded, shutting off the truck.
“Yeah. So… five vehicles. Oh, and our beat up little property truck and the two four wheelers.”
“Jasper said you get paid really well…” she sighed to herself.
“About five-hundred thousand a year, without bonuses.” Elijah nodded. “Teams normally have four to eight members, who normally live together in the early years, unless one gets married or something.”
“Bonuses?” Who had any idea that IMPO agents made so much fucking money? If that was public knowledge, they wouldn’t be suffering from a shortage of recruits.
“We get anywhere from a hundred grand to a million for finishing cases.” Elijah got out of the truck and she followed him. “We, on average, have two to three shorter cases a year, and this team does a couple longer term things, like trying to catch Axel. There’s only ten Special Agent teams on the planet, so the IMPO can afford to throw a lot of money at us.”
“So, this team is rich, and made to catch Axel.” She trailed behind him into the house, ending up in the dining room that she had seen from the front. “What will you do if you catch him?”
“Go after the next one.” Elijah grinned at her. “What else?”
Huh.
“The others are probably an hour behind us, which should give you time to see your room and get a little settled.” Elijah waved her on to keep following him. “You know Sawyer, I am sorry we had to rip you from your life. I promise we’ll make this as easy as possible for you.”
“Thanks,” she responded. “Truthfully, I should feel grateful. I could be in prison…”
Though, at this point she would rather be. Her fears about Axel realizing where she was hiding were amplified, now that she had been dragged out of New York, her haven. Add in a few nice guys who were just trying to make the world a better place…
“So, we only have four real bedrooms on the second floor. We had Quinn setting up an old apartment that was hiding in the attic while we were getting you. It doesn’t have its own bathroom, so you’ll have to share with us on the second floor.” He was trying to sound friendly and optimistic.
They made their way up the central staircase by the front door. The second floor was divided into halves, with three doors on one side and three doors on the other. Right in front of the staircase, though, was a narrow door.
“Quinn’s bedroom is on the first floor,” he told her as she went to jiggle the handle to the mysterious, out-of-place door. “And that’s the door to the attic, let me unlock it for you.”
Once it was open, he led her up. A second door at the top of the stairs also needed to be unlocked, and they both stepped into the attic.
“Almost there,” he sighed, leading her to a door about ten feet away. That last one wasn’t locked, and he swung it open for her.
Lush, navy-blue carpet was the first thing she noticed—that and gray walls. A queen size bed had somehow been brought up, and it had a padded dark gray headboard, dark blue blankets, and a mix of gray and blue pillows. They had set up a desk for her, black and modern. A black dresser and a black end table finished off the room.
“He did well,” Elijah nodded. “Zander and I ordered it all, but Quinn had to get it all set up. I wasn’t sure he could get it done.”
“It’s nice.” She looked around more, and then kicked off her tennis shoes. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Elijah grinned at her. “If you ever want help breaking in the new mattress-”
“Get out.” She rolled her eyes and pointed to the door as he laughed. When he reopened the bedroom door, Sawyer nearly jumped at the person standing there. This must be Quinn. He was not what she had been expecting. Like every person she met, she analyzed him before saying anything.
He stepped in, looking at Elijah for a moment, and then at her. She noticed he had walked quietly as he moved towards her. He was obviously part Native American. His dark brown hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail that he had over his shoulder, letting her really see the length of it. It was longer than her own, but straight. Like the rest of the guys, he was over six feet tall, but she could see he was shorter than Elijah. He was leaner, like Zander; and, thanks to his shirtless state, she could tell he maintained an excellent form and a full, intricate tribal sleeve that covered his right arm and pectoral muscle.
What was throwing her off when looking at the gorgeous man were the cold, ice-blue eyes that looked like they could cut into her. He had a sharp brow, sharp cheekbones, and a full bottom lip. But those eyes were captivating and terrifying.
“You must be Sawyer,” he said in a harsh, gravelly voice when he stopped a few feet from her, and she nodded slowly.
“You must be Quinn.” She tried her best to keep her voice even.
If there was ever a person she could describe as feral, it was him. He was barely restrained violence. She watched his muscles tense and relax, as if he was trying to keep himself relaxed, but failing. Something about the way he looked at her reminded her of a beast ready to pounce on unsuspecting prey.
He turned away from her, a complete dismissal of her existence. When his back faced her, she bit her lip in sympathy. Scars covered his back from the top of his shoulder blades to the arch of his lower back.
“Did I do this right?” Quinn’s tone remained harsh.
“Yeah.” Elijah grinned at him, and she watched Quinn’s shoulders relax completely. Every muscle relaxed, really. She hadn’t realized just how tense he was. “Now we just need to test the internet and electricity.”
“I let all those people in to handle it,” Quinn growled.
“We’ll get it figured out.” Elijah reached out and patted Quinn’s shoulder. After a moment, Quinn closed the distance between them, and Sawyer only watched the two of them quietly. “I think we should get a TV in here, a couple of couches. What do you think?”
“You say that like I am going to be up here,” Quinn huffed out. “You are here now, you do it.”
“Yeah, I’ll stop bothering you with this.” Elijah was still grinning, but Sawyer felt like she was missing whatever he found so humorous. He looked over to her. “But seriously, Sawyer, you want a TV in here?”
“I don’t really care… I can just buy one of my own, if I want one.”
“Well…” Elijah nodded slowly and looked back to Quinn, who held his hands up and left the room before anything more could be said. Elijah pulled his cowboy hat off, frowning at her. “We locked you out of your accounts.”
She finally blew a gasket. The lid on her temper popped off as if it had been pressurizing since the moment Elijah put the handcuffs on her.
“I’m going to fucking kill all of you,” she growled.
“Now, wait a minute,” Elijah pleaded. “Our handler, James, made the decision. Even Vincent had thought to leave you with your money, but our handler made the final call.”
“I have accepted being dragged out of my house, away from my life, and being sold out by my only friend,” Sawyer growled. “And you tell me now that I’m also poor?!” She ended in roar. “Who the fuck is James?!”
“Yeah.” Elijah gave a small but sympathetic shrug. “Sawyer, look, we’ll take care of everything-”
“Just. Get. Out.” She snarled, pointing back to the door. Holy shit, I’m poor. She pulled out her wallet as Elijah closed the door behind him. She opened it and counted her cash. A thousand in Benjamins. She always kept a steady amount on her in case of emergencies. She also had thrown a few grand into the bag she had packed, but now she was increasingly paranoid that money would be gone when she got the bag back.
“Fuck me,” she growled to herself.
“I can’t believe this.” She sank on the edge of the bed, opening and closing her hands. She needed to resist the urge to break the cute furniture around the room. She reminded herself that they didn’t need to do this for her. They didn’t need to make a cute little room in their home. They didn’t need to keep her out of prison.
It was a sticky situation. Prison wasn’t safe from Axel. He was well known for staging breakouts or murders within prison walls. Being here might be safer, but it also put another IMPO team in danger, and she had too many dead bodies littering her past. She didn’t want to add Jasper and Zander to that trail of corpses. She didn’t want to add any of them to it.
But damn, here they were, dedicated to taking down one of the craziest men on the planet. Sawyer looked down at her left hand and felt a kernel of hope. A crazy feeling that maybe the IMPO could actually do it this time.
She was going to get her fucking money back, though. That shit was just unacceptable.
“Sawyer?”
She looked up to her door at the sound of Zander’s voice.
“Come in,” she called out, trying to leave her thoughts. He stepped in with two bags, neither being the one she packed.
“I figured you would want to help bring up all your stuff.” He grinned at her. “We have all your clothing from Charlie’s before we left, so there’s a lot of bags waiting to get brought up.”
“Yeah, I’ll go down.” She stood up and frowned at her stiffness. How long had she been sitting there? She waited for him to put the two he had down on her new bed and left with him. They waited for Elijah and Vincent to come up the narrow stairs, each holding two more. “Damn, I do have a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah, and you lied to me,” Elijah laughed. “You didn’t pack all of your panties.”
She groaned and punched his shoulder, making him grunt in pain.
“Alright,” Vincent hissed. “Both of you quit this.”
“Yes sir, Boss man,” Elijah laughed. “Tell her to stop hitting me.”
“Stop being a pervert and I might,” she growled.
“Seriously, Elijah,” Zander snarled. “Keep your fucking thoughts to yourself.” She turned to Zander and shoved him, making his green eyes widen with shock.
“I don’t need you backing me up,” Sawyer snapped. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Are you serious?” Zander glared at her. “After everything, you are going to tell me to mind my business? Sawyer-”
She turned and jogged down the stairs, ignoring whatever he had to say. She didn’t need him playing protector with Elijah. She didn’t need him to do it when they were teens, she damn sure didn’t need it at twenty-four. She could handle Elijah.
She made it to the garage before Zander was able to catch up.
“Fine,” he grumbled angrily at her. “It’s not my place. I won’t get involved like that, happy?”
“Yes,” she said curtly. She grabbed two bags from the open trunk of the Range Rover. Only three left, so she grabbed an extra, thinking Zander could get the last two. One of the bags she carried was her personal bag, and she didn’t want their hands on it anymore.
“Can I at least carry the extra bag?” he asked her, his face tight. There was the Zander she remembered. Trying to be helpful and angry all at the same time.
“No,” she grinned, walking away from him. Jasper was sitting in the dining room as she passed by. She had missed him the first time. “How was the drive?”
“Good. You like the room?” He looked up from the book he was nose-deep in.
“Yeah. I met Quinn too.”
“Good.” He nodded as she looked back to Zander, who was stuck in the door to the garage, waiting for her to move. She did, ignoring him and making the long climb back up to her new room. Vincent and Elijah were still there, opening bags and putting stuff away for her.
“I would thank you for that, but I would also like you to stop touching my stuff,” she told them with a polite sweetness. She could have sworn Elijah paled a little.
“Forgive me.” Vincent raised his hands. “My mother just raised me to be helpful to guests, and I figured since we packed it, we could help unpack it.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” She smiled. That was actually nice. Strangely, it made her a little uncomfortable. “I appreciate that though.”
“Alright, we’ll be out of your way.” Vincent grabbed Elijah and led him out, taking Zander with them, as well. She dropped the bags she was holding and closed the door. She noticed there was no lock. That was going to have to change, and fast.
She opened her personal bag and took inventory. Only half of it was underwear, she knew that. Her two vibrators were wrapped exactly as she had placed them, so that was good. A small set of black throwing knives were untouched, and now she wondered why she had even brought them.
Because if I had left them out, she thought, they would have found them. And then I would have probably gone to prison.
She ran a hand over them and left them in the bag, so she could find a hiding place for them last. The next item she looked for was also there, her small box of photos. She took that out and put it on the desk. That box also had tons of secrets, but they were more personal in nature. She would rather they learn those secrets than find the knives. She really preferred that none of her secrets came out, but she needed something easy for them to find if they snooped. If she was too secretive, they would look for other hiding places.
Her laptop was next. She didn’t know if she was allowed to have it, but she hadn’t been willing to leave it behind. She placed it on the desk next to the box of photos.
Last but not least, her money. It was all there, and she knew she would hide it with the daggers, wherever that would be. She looked around the bedroom a little more and then rolled her eyes upwards.
Beams. She was in the attic. Oh, this was perfect.
She grabbed the case holding the throwing knives and climbed onto her bed. She took a deep breath and remembered she was going to have to get up there without her powers. It wasn’t the highest vertical jump she had ever done, but the bed made it harder, not easier; and she didn’t want to make too much noise by jumping on it.
She got it on the second try, her hands latching onto the lowest beam. It left her feet nearly three feet from the bed, and she pulled herself up. She was thankful for all the upper body training Charlie had recommended for her.
Once she was up, she straddled the beam and opened the folding case again. Five throwing knives were all she kept of her old weapon set. The rest was hiding… in Atlanta. Holy shit. She closed the case and put her face in her hands. She had chosen this city because she refused to work here. Because she was never active in the city, they had never thought to look there for her or for her things.
She had buried all of her past in Atlanta. The last place she’d seen Jasper and Zander, the last place people would look for her stuff as Shadow.
She laid the daggers carefully on another beam and then crept on the balls of her feet to another section of the tall ceiling and stashed her cash.
She swung down carefully over her new dresser and tried her best to keep her controlled fall silent. This would have been such a simple task with her magic.
She groaned when she got off the dresser and looked to her other bags. She turned to the second door in her attic bedroom and opened it. A closet. Perfect. She at least had a place to throw most of this without worrying who saw it.
14
SAWYER
Sawyer lay in bed long after dinner, frowning to herself. She couldn’t sleep at all. She hated trying to sleep in new places. She also needed a shower and forgot to ask where the bathroom was on the second floor. The only bathroom she had found in the house had been on the first floor, near the living room, and it didn’t have a bath or shower in it.
She pulled on her gray sweats and a tank top. She usually slept in the nude, so getting a lock on her door was becoming a major priority.
She quietly crept out
of her room and down to the second floor. She heard voices from a couple of the rooms, but further listening told her it was televisions, not talking. She didn’t know where to go, and that made this awkward. She would need to knock on a door and ask.
She picked the one closest to her staircase that had noises coming from it. She rapped on it three times, crossed her arms, and waited.
The door opened to reveal a shirtless Zander. He wore low-slung black sweats, and she looked him over in shock and appreciation. He’d been fit when he left, but now? He was ripped. She had a decent six pack, but she wanted to know how he had fucking eight. He had two revolvers tattooed pointing down that V men got from working out. Sure, he was covered in ink, but those guns were pointing to a place Sawyer suddenly wanted to visit.
When she finally looked up at his face, away from the V that led beneath the sweats, Zander was smirking at her, leaning in the door frame. That V had been doing awful things to her—things Zander was not allowed to do to her anymore.
“Sawyer,” he stated simply. She could hear the small hint of amusement and arrogance. Zander had always been a bit of a ladies’ man.
“Where’s the bathroom I can use?” She tapped her foot as he looked her over slowly. “I want to get a bath or shower in before bed.”
She looked down at herself and groaned. She’d pushed her breasts up, making her lack of a bra obvious. She placed her arms over her tits and waited for an answer.
“Zander. Bathroom.”
He looked lazily back to her face and nodded.
“Follow me,” he stepped past her and went across the hall. He pushed the door directly across from his open and revealed a fairly decent bathroom with a shower and a tub. “There you go. “
“Thanks.” She waved him away, so she could get everything she needed. She needed towels and a change of clothes. She wasn’t going to walk around in a towel in this house.
He stayed in the bathroom’s door, not letting her pass. They were nearly chest to chest. She took a moment to really let it sink in that he wasn’t a teenager anymore. Neither of them were dumb teenagers anymore.
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 14