“God,” Sawyer groaned. Travis. Her list of problems never seemed to end. “Sometimes I wish I cared less about these people.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Charlie shrugged, “but I do think you should stop bringing them home. To my home, I’ll remind you.”
“You can’t deny I’ve turned into New York’s fucking resident babysitter,” Sawyer mumbled a little petulantly. She didn’t mind it as much as she pretended. She loved it. She loved helping all of them, but sometimes it was nice to complain a little.
“I’ve turned into New York’s babysitter. You are their damn vigilante,” Charlie told her in an even tone that impressed her. “Now get the fuck out of my office and stop moping.”
“I’m going.” Sawyer raised her hands and retreated.
She didn’t eat dinner. She helped Liam prepare it and then decided to go on her walk. She didn’t want to sit there and pretend everything was fine when Charlie was about to dump her life story on his head. It was cowardly of her, but Charlie had a way with words that she didn’t.
She strolled at a leisurely pace for nearly two hours. She didn’t do this often. She didn’t like wandering around the city with nowhere to go, and it seemed to always get her into something. It was how she met Liam and a few of the other kids in her class. She stopped a mugging once, and then there was the time she found Travis coked out in an alley.
It was late, nearly nine, when she decided to start heading back to the gym. She hadn’t run into anything yet, but Sawyer knew something was going to happen soon.
She passed an apartment building and heard the yelling. She heaved a sigh and looked up at the window it was coming from. Second floor. Yup, there it was. She was getting into trouble tonight.
“This is why I don’t wander around the city,” she murmured to herself. “I just can’t catch a single break. Just one night, New York. That’s all I want.”
She pondered her next move and saw a teenager running down the street. He was panting and cursed when he got close enough to hear the yelling.
“What are you looking at?” He asked her as he got even closer.
“Nothing,” Sawyer shrugged. “You know what’s going on up there?” She pointed to the window, and the teenage boy glared at her.
“Yeah, you got something to say about it?”
“Who?”
“Who what?” He wrinkled his nose at her, confused.
“Who’s yelling?” Sawyer rolled her eyes.
“My step-dad,” he told her tentatively. “Look, stop being fucking weird and get off my front step. I need to get inside.”
“Wait,” Sawyer stopped him from running inside for a moment. She pulled out her wallet and removed a card. When she handed it to him, she added, “Call me or show up if the arguments get violent. I can help. I teach teenagers and kids self-defense, so they protect themselves and their loved ones.”
“Serious?” He took the card from her slowly, and she shrugged.
“Yeah,” Sawyer stayed nonchalant about it, but she wanted him to show up. She didn’t want to have to go up there and deal with it if she didn’t have to. If they were just arguing, it wasn’t her business. “I need to head out. You have a good night, kid.”
“You too,” he mumbled back. She left him on his front step holding the door knob. She really did need to get going. It was time to face Liam, and she couldn’t wander around the city picking up strays all night.
She was a block away when she realized she had forgotten to ask for the kid’s name.
“Damn,” she sighed. She shook her head and kept walking. Her knee was starting to ache in a way that worried her. Charlie was going to be cranky that she walked on it for so long.
She crept into the apartment and instantly found both of the guys on the couch in the living room. Liam’s eyes were big as he stared at Charlie, who was still whispering.
“She is what she is,” Charlie sighed. “And she’s not… she’s not bad. She’s dark. She helps you kids because of…”
“Henry,” Liam mumbled.
Sawyer swallowed and hid in the shadows of the apartment to listen. Henry. Charlie hadn’t skipped any details, she realized. There were a couple things that Charlie didn’t know, but he knew most of it; and damn, he had told Liam everything he knew, if Henry was being brought up.
“Yeah.” Charlie nodded.
She stepped out and coughed softly. They looked at her, and she blinked back a flood of tears. Liam looked horrified.
“Sawyer,” he whispered.
“You can go if you want,” she whispered kindly, gesturing towards the door.
“No.” Liam shook his head and stood up. He crossed the living room, and she took a moment to realize he was taller than her now. When had he passed her five-feet eleven?
She found herself holding him in a tight hug.
“You and Charlie are the only family I have,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you.”
“Told you,” Charlie said gruffly from the couch. Sawyer could only choke out a laugh for a moment, pushing Liam away.
“We might have a new kid showing up,” she told them.
“Nice change of topic,” Liam smiled at her. “Charlie told me everything… I take it you won’t want me asking more questions about it.”
“I definitely don’t want you asking questions about it,” Sawyer confirmed with a tight smile. “Better if you don’t.”
“Tell us about this new kid, then,” Charlie waved them back to sit down and she grinned.
“Well, I was out on the walk, and I heard arguing,” she began as she sat down.
“Every fucking time,” Charlie groaned.
5
ELIJAH
Elijah sat in the office and ran a hand through his hair. Zander looked like he was about to blow a gasket, and Jasper was pacing on the far side, looking uncomfortable with the revelations they had uncovered. Vincent was watching them patiently.
In the two weeks since the LA incident, the team had picked apart Sawyer’s life as much as they could. Fake identities so she didn’t put her real name on anything, corporate espionage jobs, millions in offshore accounts. The mask she left behind in LA had been enchanted so a Magi Tracker couldn’t use it, and it didn’t have any residual Source from her at all. She had been thorough and careful.
Only a few photos ended up giving her away. The security footage in LA and one single photo that had found itself on Facebook, posted by a non-Magi who must not have realized she was protecting her identity. It had been tagged with the location, and that had been the break they needed to completely invade her life.
They didn’t know what she was up to in New York, though, only that it was her home base where she always settled between jobs.
“Why?” He snapped. Elijah looked at Zander for a long moment as they all considered the question none of them could help him with. The tall, lean, redhead was covered in freckles and had somewhat of a boyish look, but Elijah didn’t let that fool him. Zander tended to have a red-hot temper that matched his hair. “Why the hell would she become this?”
“Considering it’s been nine years since you’ve seen her, who knows?” Vincent reminded him. Elijah sighed and nodded in agreement.
“She’s not even the worst, Zander. Sure, she’s good at what she does and gets paid a lot of money, but she’s not evil. I think she’s more… chaotic neutral. We can work with that,” Elijah put his cowboy hat back on.
“We’re still missing over three years of information on her,” Jasper said, stopping his pacing to look over to them. “Sixteen to twenty-one. We have no idea where she was or what she was doing during that time. We know she got adopted after we joined the IMAS, but what happened after that? Where was she? She didn’t go to college.”
“We can ask her when we go get her,” Vincent told him. “There’s no reason to sit here pondering over it.”
“So, how do we want to do this?” Elijah asked, grabbing a bag of sunflower seeds off his desk and kicking hi
s feet up. He admired his cowboy boots for a moment as he threw a few seeds in his mouth.
“We need to watch her closely and figure out her schedule,” Jasper walked over and grabbed a chair to sit. Elijah frowned at the sight. Jasper’s limp got worse the more he moved around, and it was pretty pronounced now. Elijah would need to tell Zander to look it over before Jasper screwed up his left knee and hip any more than he already had. “Then we need to decide who goes to speak with her.”
“What do you mean by decide, Jasper? You and I grew up with her, we should talk to her,” Zander glowered to Jasper, and Elijah shook his head.
“No,” he chuckled. “That’s exactly why you two shouldn’t approach her.”
“Elijah is right,” Vincent nodded, “and Quinn is a no-go. He’s staying here. New York isn’t the place for him, even if you ignore the fact that he would probably just scare the shit out of her. We need to keep her from bolting. She’s skittish, most thieves are, and she’s incredibly reclusive. None of her employers even know what she looks like. We’re lucky we got the break we did. If Axel hadn’t knocked her mask off, we’d have no idea who to look for to help.”
“Anything that might give away we’re looking for Sawyer the thief, and she’s going to disappear,” Jasper sighed. “Vincent, why do you even want to go get her? I know why Zander and I are going to pursue this but…”
“She’s got a connection to Axel, and this team was built to catch him and the other most dangerous Magi on the planet.” Vincent lifted a photo from his desk and handed it to Jasper. Elijah knew the photo. Axel and Sawyer in the hallway with all the Ghosts around them, right before she dropped through the floor and made her escape.
“Fine, we go to New York, stalk her for a couple of weeks, and then figure out how to get her to stay still long enough to talk to us,” Elijah grinned. Easy enough.
“Not just talk to us,” Vincent looked at Elijah, and Elijah frowned, “I want to get her in protective custody.”
Oh, fuck. Elijah wasn’t so sure that was going to fly with anyone outside the team. The IMPO and the WMC would be furious if they harbored a criminal. Their handler would lose his mind, that was for sure. James hated dealing with the big wigs on the Council, and bringing her into protective custody would mean he’d have to go sit in meetings and shit.
It’s not that it was a bad thing to do. It happened all the time, but they were talking about taking in a criminal that another criminal wanted dead. This was rife with complications, but Elijah knew better then to bring all those up to Vincent, strategic master. He still needed to ask though.
“Vin,” Elijah raised an eyebrow, “have you thought this through?”
“If they want me to catch Axel one day, they will give me whatever I want.” Vincent gave him a tight smile, and Elijah sighed.
Wasn’t that the truth?
“We also don’t want her to die,” Zander huffed. “Right Vin?”
“Yeah, sure,” Vincent shrugged, and Elijah winced. Sometimes the similarities between Vincent and his brother were just too much.
Two days later, they were on a plane to New York to hunt down a woman, and they had permission to take her into custody.
“This is going to be so easy,” Zander mumbled gleefully. Elijah laughed, nodding as he slapped Zander on the back.
“Won’t it? Once we figure out what she gets up to in New York,” Elijah shrugged, “should only take a week to figure out how to grab her.”
“Both of you need to not get overconfident,” Jasper cut between them and found his own seat. Sure enough, Elijah learned that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pretty boy had overworked his left hip and knee again as they were trying to get to the airport. It was an old childhood injury, and Elijah knew there was really nothing they could do, even if they hired the best healer on the planet.
“And you need to take better care of yourself,” Elijah reminded him. Vincent might have been the team leader, but Elijah had to play mother hen for all the guys. He took care of them on a personal level while Vincent took care of them on a professional level.
“He’s right, Jasper,” Vincent remarked as he walked down the aisle of the plane. He sat next to Elijah and stretched his legs out like the rest of them. They were all too tall for planes, even the private jet the IMPO was letting them use. The shortest of them, Jasper, was still sitting at six feet even. He and Zander were around six and a half feet tall, the tallest in their group. They stood out, that was for sure. Zander’s flaming red hair, gauged ears that had inch-sized holes, and his obsession with body art made him even more obvious.
“I’ve been a bit stressed out,” Jasper mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Just makes sure you keep up with the physical therapy, bud.” Zander grinned at Jasper, and Elijah chuckled a little sadly. Seeing those two always made him miss Quinn when they didn’t have him. Vincent must have noticed his mood change because he elbowed Elijah.
“Quinn would hate New York, you know that,” Vincent whispered. “He can barely go into town, and it’s three streets.”
“Yeah, and we need someone watching the house when Shade and Scout can’t go on a mission,” Elijah sighed.
“You talk to him about us bringing a woman around, if we can catch her?” Vincent leaned over to rest his forearms on his knees, watching Elijah.
“Yup, and he took it about as well as anyone can expect from him.” Elijah gave a dry chuckle. “You know him. I was lucky to convince him to get everything set up.”
“Who on this plane doesn’t know Quinn?” Vincent smiled. Quinn was their most precious teammate, and most peculiar, as well. “He can handle it though, right?”
“Yeah,” Elijah nodded, just once. “He was fairly adamant that he would be fine.” Elijah started laughing as he said it. Quinn hadn’t been truthful, but Elijah could still appreciate the effort Quinn gave to making Elijah believe him. “What do you think we’re going to find in New York, Vincent?”
“Hopefully, the key to catching Axel. At the least, Zander and Jasper’s long-lost friend so they can stop wasting resources on that.” Vincent shrugged. “We’ll see which when we get our hands on her. Let’s review what we have so far. We tracked her to the city, but we don’t know what she’s up to there. While it’s the main headquarters for the entire Magi world, information about the underworld there is scarce because there’s barely an underworld at all.”
“You know,” Jasper looked up at them from his book as he spoke. Advanced particle physics. Elijah felt a headache coming on just looking at the title. “If you had let us use the facial recognition software years ago, we might have already been able to catch her before Axel tried to kill her.”
“Yeah,” Zander waved a hand around, glaring at Vincent. “This would have never happened.”
“You’ve said this already,” Vincent mumbled darkly. It had been an ongoing argument since LA, and Elijah kept his nose out of it.
Elijah watched Vincent pull out the massive manila folder they had. Vincent kept files on fucking everything, from their groceries to any case they would ever possibly work on. His organized, control freak nature made Elijah itch sometimes.
“We know that she’s pretty hot,” Elijah mumbled, grabbing a recent photo of Sawyer from the top. It didn’t have the grainy, low quality of the security camera from LA. Someone had been able to snap a picture of her standing in a gym, then shared it on Facebook. They had run every piece of facial recognition software they could get their hands on to find it. She was so hard to find, if they hadn’t gotten a look at her from the LA incident, they would have had no idea that the toned, gorgeous fighter was also the thief Axel was trying to kill.
“Of all the things you notice.” Vincent rolled his eyes. Elijah only offered him a grin in return. He knew Vincent had noticed, too, or there would have been a discussion about why Elijah thought she was good looking.
“I hope she doesn’t let you within ten feet of her,” Zander called from his spot next to Jasper, who ignored them
all for his book.
“I’ll make you a bet,” Elijah taunted. “A hundred dollars says I’m the one who captures her.”
“Deal,” Zander grinned back. Vincent groaned and pushed the file away. They weren’t supposed to bet on missions, but Elijah couldn’t resist trying to get close to a beautiful woman. “She’s not going to fall for your shit, I promise. She’s never fallen for your type.”
“And what is my type, fuck head?” Elijah laughed. “Attractive and wonderful?”
“Southern and arrogant,” Zander threw a balled-up napkin at him. Elijah lit it on fire and let it burn away before it got close to him. Zander narrowed his eyes at him. “Damn cowboy.”
“You grew up in Georgia, and you call me a cowboy?” Elijah raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “Redneck.”
“Jasper and I don’t run around in boots with actual spurs. If you don’t like cowboy, how about Texas boy?” Zander looked Elijah over. Elijah looked down at his feet. Well, Zander had him there. He was wearing cowboy boots and spurs. “And I’m not a fucking redneck.”
“Doesn’t matter what you call me, as long as you remember that women love a good, down-to-earth, country boy. So, we got a deal?” Elijah pulled out his wallet and showed Zander the cash he had as Zander nodded. “Let’s see it, you know the rules.”
Zander did the same, proving he had the money to back up his mouth. Elijah was going to have a lot of fun trying to take the poor guy’s cash.
“That’s if you are needed, Elijah,” Vincent finally told him blandly. “We don’t even have a plan, yet, so both of you put your money away.”
Elijah and Zander both sighed but maintained eye contact, trying to hold back smiles. The bet was still on, but they needed to keep Vincent from strangling them. Not like the six-two Italian could, but he was their boss, so they had to keep up appearances.
“She’s not going to fall for you. Maybe Vincent, but not you. I hope you keep that cash ready.”
A Life Of Shadows Page 5