“Really?” Zander raised an eyebrow. That was something. The IMPO didn’t generally contract people on a whim. No, this was Thompson pulling some strings, since Charlie was who he was and filled the place he did in Sawyer’s life. This wasn’t Director Thompson. This was him trying to be their handler like James once was.
“It would open me up to hire people, create better business, and not worry over my books when I’m teaching two dozen kids for free.” Charlie looked back to Sawyer, who ducked her head and went further into the house. Zander heard the laughter down the hall.
“She’s happy to see you’re okay,” Zander said politely, pointing at where she went.
“Oh, I know. I’m glad to be okay.” Charlie looked him over now, head to toe. “You got shot. Looking good for a shooting victim.” Before Zander could pull away, Charlie grabbed him. He was able to get Zander’s forearm, skin to skin contact. The heat from the hand told him exactly what Charlie was doing. Using his healing ability to check to make sure everything was okay. “They did a good job on you. I take it you stabilized yourself?”
“As best I could.” Zander tried to pull away but Charlie was watching him carefully, refusing to let go.
“I’ll give you the job,” Charlie finally said. “When this is over, you will always have a place at the gym, just like her.”
“Why?” Zander frowned.
“Because I see young men getting shot all the time where I am. It’s not pleasant. If getting you out of the IMPO is what needs to happen, then I’ll have a job for you. You’ll be the first person I hire to help train these new agents.”
Zander nodded slowly. He didn’t know how to feel about this sudden wealth of care he got from Charlie. “Why?” he asked again.
“Like all her strays, if you mean something to Sawyer, you mean something to me.” Charlie let him go, those words hanging in the air. “You understand?”
Zander just kept nodding. Thompson and Charlie were both trying to be what James had once been. Before James had gone, they had talked as a team. What would any of them do when they wanted to get out of the IMPO, and things like that. James had always promised he would set up anything they needed to succeed. He knew Charlie probably didn’t know any of that, but as an adult man with a big heart, he was doing it for Zander anyway.
“Thank you,” he murmured, looking down. “I want to finish this and maybe then, she won’t have nightmares. Maybe then, Vincent will get a full night’s sleep. Maybe none of us will go into a hospital again and we’ll all live past forty. But I can’t do more after this.”
“Takes a man to admit when it’s time to step away.” Charlie patted his shoulder. “Let’s go find her. Then I’m going to make sure you two eat. Where’s the third one? I was told the wolf boy was coming. Quinn.”
“He needs a moment to himself, I think. He’s already out in the woods.”
“Not injured?” Charlie narrowed his eyes.
“No, no. He’s fine physically. I promise.”
“Good. Now let’s go get something to eat.”
22
Vincent
Vincent tapped a finger on the desk, looking over the pictures of the aftermath. The prison went through hell. Two guards were caught on camera killing Missy. Upon capture, they admitted to being paid, as well as blackmailed.
His brother had set this up well. Neither were a part of Axel’s business, not really. Just two guys in debt. Two guys with family that they needed to keep safe. Two guys who were vulnerable and hadn’t gone to get help from the right people.
“Vin?” Elijah sat down next to him. “This is all a dead end.”
Vin closed his eyes. He had promised to keep her safe. Missy had given them everything they had been working with for the last few days, and she didn’t even survive a week.
“I can’t let this go unpunished,” he whispered, looking at a photo of her body. They had strangled her, then stabbed her for good measure, just to make sure she stayed dead. “I promised her, Elijah.”
He was so mad, which is why he had Elijah with him. Elijah would keep him in check so he didn’t do anything without thinking it through. That’s what this had come to. Vincent was thinking about how to keep everyone on the team thinking clearly and on task without going mad.
He had to separate Quinn and Elijah for their own good. Quinn needed to go home and get some peace in the woods, reconnect to what made him so special and not a monster. Sawyer and Vincent just couldn’t be in the same room anymore. He didn’t think so, anyway. He wanted to pick her brain and keep her busy. He wanted them to go hunting together and find his brother and end this.
So he split them up. Elijah could keep him in check and Zander could keep her at home. For just a moment. Just long enough for them to get over being shaken by what happened while they were in the Congo.
“I know you did.” Elijah stayed seated next to him, watching him with clear hazel eyes. “Vincent, it was a long shot.”
“He even killed Talyn, who had stepped out and stayed neutral,” Vincent muttered bitterly. “Talyn wasn’t an innocent man, but damned Axel, he can’t let anything go!” He slammed a hand on the desk. Talyn had been poisoned by one of the researchers he’d been working with. That researcher was now in custody. Similar story. Blackmailed. Axel didn’t use a single person close to him to pull this off. “And where the fuck was he hiding this entire time? Right under our damned noses!” Vincent swiped a hand over the desk and sent papers everywhere. People were staring at him, other agents wandering around to do their own business. He glared at a couple, who backed away. No one attempted to clean up the papers.
“He stole that trick from Sawyer. There’s no way we could have known, Vincent.”
Well, that was a comfort. Vincent snorted.
“But there is,” Jasper cut in. Vincent looked over to the blond, wondering what he was saying. “We could have started facial recognition programs just around the jail, to see if he’d been spotted near the prison, but the problem was always that we don’t know the exact timeline. Or exactly what he looks like. We would have gotten tons of false positives, since this is New York with millions of people in it…and who knows, he might have had enough changes to his look that we wouldn’t even get a real one of him. It was too unreliable to consider attempting.” Jasper stood up from his desk in the large room and walked over, sitting on Vincent’s desk. He grabbed an image still on the desk. Vincent watched him carefully as he folded the image and slid it into his pocket. “But I’ve had an idea.”
“Get on with it,” Vincent snapped.
“We know what Missy looked like after Axel escaped. We know what form she took. Sawyer said it herself, the woman was scarred pretty badly, but only the neck scar remained between forms. Can she alter forms or did she copy her last mental image of Axel?”
“He would have gotten any scars repaired as best he could, though!” Vincent didn’t see where this was going.
“It’s a non-Magi technique, and something we don’t use very often, but we can hire someone to make a new version of that face. Something with the scars treated with magic or plastic surgery. There’s a chance.” Jasper sighed. “I’m grasping at straws. I like the plan of taking down his men and this could take more time, but it’s an idea.”
“We already use their facial recognition software. Why not hire an artist to make a few new versions of Axel’s face?” Elijah frowned. “The only problem would be if all of those are wrong. He could have very well remade his face the moment he was free. Hardcore plastic surgery. If I were him, I’d do it.”
Vincent pointed at Elijah. Exactly. If anyone of them could think of a way to throw them off the scent, Axel would have already done it.
“It was just an idea. There’s no harm in trying,” Jasper said simply.
“Other than wasting our time,” Vincent mumbled, shaking his head.
“Then I’m doing it and all of you can be asses about it.” Those words were said with enough of a bite that Vincent snap
ped his head back up to stare at Jasper. Jasper got off the desk and stormed off without another comment.
“Vin-”
“He’s smarter than that! Axel is smarter than letting us get pictures of him like that. Not after everything that’s happened. It’s how we tied Sawyer to him and caught her. How we’ve regained small steps over the years. He’s not going to be that arrogant. I think he’s playing the smarter game right now.”
“Vincent-”
“And I don’t know how to beat him!” Vincent leaned over, resting on his shaking hands. “I don’t know, Elijah, and Charlie was nearly killed. The gym is gone. That’s her family and her home and they’re gone.”
“Charlie is still alive,” Elijah whispered. “Vincent, Charlie is okay and the gym can be repaired. It’s not the end of the world.”
“And Missy!” Vincent felt like he was falling apart. Every little thing was piling up. Angry, frustrated tears pricked at the back of his eyes uncomfortably. He’d never felt so much like a failure. “I promised her I would keep her alive! He broke her. He drove her so mad she tried to kill herself, and it was luck that she didn’t succeed. It was all we had.” He continued to lean over until he could wrap his arms over his head. “I can’t beat him. And even if I do, she has to kill him. She’s the only one who can, and I can’t…”
He was falling apart again. He wasn’t good enough, smart enough. He should have known Axel would retaliate that quickly. He should have known it would be bad.
“I’m failing. I can’t even protect-”
“We did everything we could to protect them.” Elijah growled, shaking Vincent by his shoulder. “Everything. Protection details, secure locations. We couldn’t change the outcome, Vin. It sucks, I know, but we did everything we could. At least some survived the night.”
“AND IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH!” Vincent jumped away, roaring. “It’s never good enough, damn it.”
He turned away and walked out of the meeting room, ignoring the agents staring. He didn’t care about any of them. They were running paperwork for the team’s case and everything they had done so far. They weren’t important.
No, the important people were either hiding or dead. He was hiding, sitting at the IMPO headquarters, away from Sawyer and half the team so they could all take a day to do whatever would bring them to sanity.
He hadn’t realized Elijah followed him out onto a balcony where smokers would sneak off to until the cowboy touched his back gently. He lit a cigarette and took a long, deep drag on it. He held it out to the cowboy, in case he wanted a puff. Elijah only shook his head.
“What was that about Sawyer?” he asked.
“She has to kill him,” Vincent murmured. “She knows how to fight him better than any of us and-”
“No, she doesn’t.” Elijah tugged, forcing him to turn around and face hazel eyes. “It doesn’t need to be her, Vin.”
“The WMC-”
“The WMC doesn’t have to know. At the end of the day, the WMC never has to know.” Elijah leaned forward. “You don’t want her to, do you?”
“No,” Vincent whispered. “I don’t.”
He had never said the words, not out loud. Sure, deep in his chest, he wanted his brother dead, and she was the best choice. And to everyone, even to himself sometimes, that meant the same thing.
But deep down, he’d made a promise to her. Anything. He would do anything to keep his brother or anyone else from hurting her again. Every time she killed someone, he saw the new pain she would carry. Or the new scars she would have, either physical or emotional. Most of the time, both. She could cover it up, claiming she was doing it to protect people and therefore, it was okay. She could hide behind the shield of pretending this was just what she needed to do to protect everyone.
But he knew it hurt her.
And he didn’t want his brother to hurt her anymore.
“Then we’ll do something else. We’ll figure this out. Because you’re right, Vin. She shouldn’t have to do this. This isn’t what we ever wanted for her. Not this. We thought we could make her a solid agent and we could all work together and we’d be great.” Elijah sighed.
“Nothing went as planned,” Vincent agreed softly. They didn’t need to tell the WMC. They never had to know. “I built this team to defeat him.”
“Yeah, and we’ve done it before.” Elijah smiled. “You coming back to me, Vin?”
“I’ve been distracted by my own feelings,” he admitted. “Elijah, I still don’t know if I can catch him.”
“We have things set in place. Sawyer is going to be spending the next couple of days looking over the Dark Web, I bet you. Jasper is setting up facial recognition. Vincent, we don’t need to catch him tomorrow. Stop rushing this. Focus.” Elijah snapped his fingers, as if he were trying to think of something. “Play the game. Slow down and play the fucking game. Like you and Sawyer always say.”
“He hit back hard because we hit him hard,” Vincent murmured, nodding. “It was an eye for an eye.”
“Exactly. But what did he do before we pushed so hard?”
“Nothing…” Vincent looked away from Elijah. “He did nothing since he was ten steps ahead.”
“Come on, man. I’m not this smart, not as smart as you two. I know you can see what I see.”
“If we regain the steps without him noticing, he won’t come back and hit us.” Vincent continued to nod. “So we play quietly.”
“Exactly. You and Sawyer got wrapped up in this idea that you could take everything from him. But he’s just going to do it right back and we have more to lose.” The cowboy groaned. “You even got Quinn…”
“Elijah?” He frowned.
“Quinn was good once, Vin. He’s never been a killer like that. Until this. He sees you and Sawyer hurting. He sees the team hurting and he’s retaliating in his own way. The only way he really can, and that’s being as powerful as he is. We taught him to hold back. Remember? Because killing dozens of people isn’t how you fix anything. He can get people hurt on our side, and it sucks to admit that, but it’s the truth.”
“Should I talk to him?” He would. This felt like it was his fault. Quinn was protective of all of them, and Vincent was the one pushing for more. For them to be more vicious, to destroy his brother.
“He wants to kill your brother to protect you and Sawyer. To protect all of us, just like Sawyer. Just like you. No, you talking to him isn’t a good idea. I…think him not in the IMPO is the only thing I can do for him right now. Him not on the team.”
“Excuse me?” Vincent leaned against the railing, holding off taking another drag from his cigarette.
“Once, he killed a bunch of people because he thought he was defending himself from them. He was. Now he’s killing people for human reasons, and with all the passion of a rabid animal. This isn’t healthy for him. Not constantly like this.” Elijah looked away this time, down to his boots. “I want to take Quinn out of the IMPO when this is over. Jasper and Zander are right. If we don’t finish this and then move on, we’re all going to die before we’re forty or become the monsters we hate. Jasper has a point. What’s the difference between the WMC and your brother right now?”
“Uh…”
“We gave the WMC the right to do everything we condemn Axel for. But either way, it’s the same thing. Using people to do things, a lot of times awful things, to achieve personal goals of power.” Elijah shook his head, looking back up. “And Quinn’s goodness is being shattered under the weight of it. So is Jasper’s, and he knows it. Vincent, in another decade, will we have the right to call ourselves the good guys? Do we still have that right after all of this?”
Vincent shook his head, but he didn’t know which question he was answering. Maybe he was trying to deny it. He came to the IMPO because these were the people on the right side of the law. They would give him everything he needed to defeat his brother and put an end to one of the most powerful crime families that the Magi ever had.
But he couldn’t de
ny the obvious.
“Okay. When this is over…I’ll let you all leave.” He wasn’t going to force them to stay if they were unhappy. He didn’t know what he would do, but he wouldn’t force them to stay.
“There’s no letting us do anything. We’re going.” Elijah said the words like it was for a funeral.
Vincent could see it already. The team was broken. There was no fixing this. This was over. When his brother was defeated, he had no idea if he would have any family left. He could hope they all stuck around, just to be with him, live in the same house as him, but he couldn’t force them.
And after everything, why would they want to?
“But we’re going to stop your brother, Vin.” Elijah’s voice was stronger now, full of conviction. “I’m not going anywhere until the team makes it through this storm.”
“Why does this matter to you?” he asked, hoping for honesty. “You could leave right now and not risk being hurt from all of this. Especially after that car accident. No one would blame you.”
“Because when we met, I saw a lonely man who needed a friend. A man who only had his conviction to catch his brother and nothing else. And I wanted to give him something else. Anything really, but mostly a friend, someone he could rely on. Together, we built a team. Together we fell in love with a spitfire of a fucking woman. Together we’ve made a family. Somewhere along the way, I realized you gave a lot to me, too. All of those things. We made them together.” Elijah swallowed. “A really fucked-up family, no doubt, but you’ve been my brother for years now. And I don’t abandon my brothers to their nightmares, to the things that haunt them. And I never will, because you’ll always be my brother. I’m never letting you go back to being that lonely man, Vincent.” Elijah reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “So we’re going to see this through. And even when we’re out of the IMPO, I’m going to live in the house and I’m going to trash the bathroom to make you mad and hope you loosen up.”
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 154