But first, she had something to do. She rolled out of the bed and pulled on a tank and some sweats before falling into her desk chair. She logged in and grabbed her headset.
It took a few minutes, but soon the video call was live. She was muted on her end, but she could hear him.
“Hey, Sawyer.” Charlie grinned at her. “How are things?”
She typed her response. They had planned this all week, and she wasn’t going to risk it by being heard.
Good. I’m having frequent nightmares, but I half-expected that. The agents aren’t so bad, though one definitely hates me. His wolves adore me, but he despises me.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Charlie laughed. “Though… Sawyer, you aren’t the most likable person on the planet.”
You think I don’t know that, old man? Haha. How’s everything up there?
“Same old, same old.” He shrugged. “Let’s talk about what I’m sure is bugging you, though—why I ratted you out.”
She didn’t respond to that, looking away from the camera. She didn’t want to ask. She knew why he did it. He had wanted her out of the game, and, in the scheme of things, he could have done worse.
“Kid, you mean the world to me, and when they approached me, I saw an opportunity to get you a real chance at a good life,” Charlie began quietly. “I don’t have kids. My love and I didn’t get the chance, but you became one for me, and then you filled my life with so many more. If I could do one good thing for you, I figured this was it.”
Damn it, Charlie. I get it alright? I’m not mad. You didn’t tell them about me, so it’s fine. Why them, though? Why didn’t you just turn me in as a thief years ago, if this was what you wanted?
“Because turning you in would have put you in jail, which I don’t think you deserve,” Charlie sighed. “And I recognized those two from your old pictures and figured they would do anything to keep you safe from Axel and his crew. Those two being there was really the deciding factor.”
They want to get me to help them with catching Axel and to become a consultant for the IMPO.
“Oh,” Charlie frowned, “that’s not safe for you. If you help them go after …”
Yeah, it’ll get me killed. I figure though, he already wants me dead, right? Why not try one more time to take him down?
“You always did want to try one more time.” Charlie nodded. “You just never acted on it before. The time was never right.”
Exactly. I’m here now. There’s no better time. I just need to keep myself out of prison. Catching Axel comes with the risk of exposing myself.
“I don’t think you deserve prison, and I know everything.” Charlie shrugged again, as he placed his arms on his desk. “Once I heard your full story, I didn’t think you deserved the sentence laid out for you. I considered it but… it never seemed fair to me. You didn’t ask for any of that and maybe they will understand.”
I don’t want to rehash all of this with you, tell me about the gym instead.
“Ha, alright.” Charlie smiled at her, nodding. “Well, I’ve got someone here to see you and he can tell you.” He moved from the camera, and she waited, wondering which kid he had roped into joining the call.
She grinned at Liam.
“Sawyer,” Liam grinned at her.
Liam!!!! How’s college?!?!
“It’s been good,” he laughed. “I’m wondering something, though. Why did my school tell that the next two years were paid? I thought they took all your money. I had a nest egg and was going to cover it, but then they called me and said it was fine.”
She leaned back, grinning madly. She had convinced Zander to get some of her money to his college. It took a few days of convincing, but he eventually relented and got it done. The money she had stashed away was for her students, anyway.
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Liam laughed. “Come on, Sawyer!”
You know the answer already, stop playing stupid. Though, there is something else we need to talk about.
“Everyone is fine,” he confirmed for her. “No one has had any trouble since you left. We had a bunch of your cards made, though, and we’re keeping them on us, so we can get more people into the class if they need it.”
I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that. Put Charlie back on for me. I have something to ask him really quickly, then I need to go.
“I’m here,” Charlie grumbled, leaning back into the screen for a moment. “I can read what you’re saying.”
How’s Travis?
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Charlie chuckled. “He’s sober and the IMPO hired him to portal them around.”
Are you fucking serious?
“Yeah, and they took him out of the apartment you put him in. I think your guys had something to do with it,” Charlie continued, grinning at her.
They aren’t my guys. I’ll ask them about it though. It’s good to hear he’s got a legit job now, though.
“Yeah,” Charlie nodded, “I can’t think of anything else.”
I should let you both go. I don’t know how long I have until one of them bothers me. My alarm was telling me it was time to go. Charlie, tell Liam who Travis is.
“I miss you, Sawyer,” Liam told her.
“Me too,” Charlie huffed off screen. “Be good, kid.”
“I will,” she whispered, unmuting so they would hear her. “Love you both.”
She disconnected after that, shutting her laptop. She dropped the headphones and sighed. She had no idea how often she could call them before it became dangerous, but she was aiming for once every few weeks. She couldn’t let them drift away, not like she had with Jasper and Zander as a teen.
She looked at the box of photos and flipped it open. Inside were little tied-together groups of photos, each a different day or different group of people. Her oldest stack was everything with Jasper and Zander.
Her second oldest stack were photos she took of anything while she was with Axel. Never him, she had burned those, but others, like a little boy, a prostitute’s four-year-old son. He had been such a sweet boy. Then there were the places. Rome, London, Venice and all the other places she had traveled with him. He never let her leave a city without him, not until the very end of their relationship. No one knew it, but Axel had been close by for every single one of her kills. Some of the photos in this stack also included a cat, a sweet, yellow-eyed runt. Midnight was buried in a tiny yard in Rome. The little boy… she had no idea.
That brought another wave of tears to her eyes.
Her most recent stack was her, Charlie, and all the kids from New York. She flipped through those. She was lucky enough, she even got a picture of Trevor on his first day in the class, unsure and wary of everyone around him. It only took that one day for him to become a part of the group, though. Once he realized that everyone was there for the same reason, he was more at ease.
She blinked back more tears as she looked through the photos. So many of them. So many small battered children that she had been watching grow up into exceptional people. She made it to the first picture. One of Charlie and her about three weeks after she had healed from what Axel did to her. She hadn’t taken the photo, but she did have the only copy. Charlie was teaching her to fight, and while she had knife skills, she wasn’t any good at hand-to-hand at the time.
She held the set of photos to her chest and cried. She was never seeing them again; she knew it. She knew she couldn’t keep up with her lies and secrets forever. She was either getting out of this by going to prison or getting killed. It was a truth she hadn’t wanted to confront for two weeks, but now, seeing them, she knew it.
She just needed to choose which was the better option. Dying with her secrets, or being free of them and going to prison. Her stay would be short because Axel wouldn’t let her live long after exposing all of his secrets with her own.
18
JASPER
Jasper groaned and threw down the book he was reading. He couldn’t focus. Particle physic
s just weren’t cutting it for him today.
“You should talk to her,” Zander told him for the tenth time. Jasper was counting.
“About what?” Jasper growled. “What on earth do I possibly need to say to her?”
“How you feel.” Zander smiled at him. “I know that’s really hard for you, but I think it would help with… well, how you feel.”
“She…” Jasper shut his mouth before he said more. No. He wasn’t going there. Not with Zander or her.
“Alright,” Zander shrugged. “You continue trying to be an emotionless rock. You’ll crack eventually. You aren’t as good at it as Quinn and Vincent are.”
“Like those two could possibly be feeling what I am right now.”
“Who knows what they’re feeling? That’s the point—they are better at covering things up than you,” Zander chuckled. “Seriously, this ‘bottle it up and it will go away’ nonsense has never worked for you. I’m not sure why you’re still trying.”
“I’m not talking about this.” Jasper glared at him and grabbed his book from the desk. He stood up and shoved it on the shelf. “You have no idea-”
“Don’t even think I don’t get how you’re feeling,” Zander’s tone turned hard, and Jasper looked back at him. Zander’s neck was turning red. “I know exactly how you feel, but the difference is that I’m able to deal with it. I don’t stand rigidly in my own point of view and refuse to see it from her side.”
“She didn’t even look for us,” Jasper mumbled angrily. And there was no way Zander had no idea what he was feeling. None of them could even begin to understand, which made this so much harder on him.
“She was already a criminal, and, as far as she knew, we were still in the IMAS. We were people dedicated to taking the bad guys down. We still are dedicated to it,” Zander reminded him. “She made a decision to keep herself safe and out of prison. I can’t blame her for that.”
“I can!” Jasper snapped. “That’s part of the problem!”
He stormed out of the office and went straight for the garage. He wasn’t thinking, but he knew he wanted to get out of the house for a little while. He felt cooped up, suffocated, with emotions and memories, some that weren’t his own.
His dreams had taken a dark turn. Her nightmares were bleeding into his nights, and he couldn’t stop them. He knew more than he wanted to, more than she figured, more than the entire team could even dream.
Axel.
While most of the nightmares were just flashes and images to him, every now and then he got a word or two. Axel was one that stood out. In her nightmares, Axel and blood were prevalent. Abuse. Fear. Pain. He caught the emotions that flavored every piece that he accidentally picked up.
Dream walking directly into her nightmares would give him the full picture, but he refused to cross that line. It would give him every piece of the puzzle, but damn, that scared the hell out him.
He didn’t want to know the things he already did.
“Jasper?”
He jerked to a stop, holding his keys. He turned slowly at his name and saw her covered in grease and oil, under the hood of their work truck. It was an old thing that was used for work on the property. It never ran right. He couldn’t ignore the sweat that made her tank top stick to her, outlining the hard lines of her body. Did she really need to be wearing white?
“Sawyer.”
“How have you been?” She seemed wary of him, and he was wary of her. He didn’t like knowing why there were dark circles under her eyes. They had grown worse over the last two weeks, and he wondered how she dealt with the nightmares that haunted her.
“Good,” he said curtly with a shrug.
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow and stepped closer to him.
“Yeah.” He gave a short nod and pointed to the Range Rover he was about to take. “I’m going into town. Tell them for me?”
“Can I come?” She asked him, tentative. He ground his teeth at the idea. It would leave him stuck with her, and he wasn’t ready to talk to her. He didn’t know how to deal with this.
“Why?”
“Maybe because I just want to hang out with you?” She threw her hands up. “Plus, I need to grab a few tools for this truck. I don’t have everything I need.”
“Fine,” he sighed, unlocking the vehicle. “Go put on… something clean, please.”
“Sure, give me ten minutes.” The smile she gave him made his heart ache. The fact that she could smile like that killed him a little inside. How could she go through what he saw in her nightmares and still smile like hanging out with him was the best thing that ever happened?
And the most fuck up thing about it all was that he was mad at her. For all of it or none of it, he didn’t know which. He was mad that she became a criminal, mad that she took the law into her own hands, mad that she never looked for them to help her when it got bad.
He wasn’t mad that Zander had to tell him about it, though. He was jealous that she told Zander and not him.
He got into the Range Rover and waited for her. He leaned his head on the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
“Axel.” He mumbled to himself. That was the who... maybe. He was missing something very important, and that was also driving him mad. Maybe it was Axel in her dreams because he recently tried to kill her. Dreams were fickle things, wreaking havoc on memories and confusing the truth.
“I’m here.” She jumped in, and he sighed. “Let’s go.”
Jasper opened the garage door and started the Range Rover without saying anything. He knew he was cornered. He could have told her no, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to.
It took her two minutes to begin nailing his ass to the wall over avoiding her, and she did it in true Sawyer style.
“What the fuck has been your problem?” Her excited and happy outlook over going into town with him was dropped in favor for a glare. He shook his head.
“Nothing.” He was going to fight this with every fiber of his being.
“Liar,” she growled.
“You don’t get to call me a liar,” he bit back. “Not after the life you’ve led.”
“So that’s where we’re at? I tell you and Zander something important about myself and then you avoid me? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, even for you, Jasper.”
“You didn’t tell me anything,” he snarled, pointing a finger at her. “You told Zander, and he had to tell me. The only thing you’ve told me was that you didn’t look for us when we searched for you for years.”
“Is that what this is about?” She looked to be feeling some blend of anger and confusion. “I… didn’t want to tell the same story twice. Sorry for not wanting to… I thought you would like hearing from Zander more anyways since you two…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jasper sighed, clenching his fists on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.
“It does,” she insisted. “Jasper, I didn’t do it like that to hurt you.”
“It. Doesn’t. Matter.”
“Well, if that’s not the problem, then what is?” She was back to glaring holes into the side of his head.
He flatly ignored her and continued driving them to town. He wasn’t even sure he could put it into words. His rigid sense of morality was furious at her life of crime. His old feelings for her were being pulled back to the surface by her gorgeous body, sense of humor, and tough spirit. He was upset for her because of what happened to her. He was haunted by her nightmares. He wasn’t sure which one was worse. He was positive there were more emotions hiding underneath those. It was all just too much for him.
He refused to say a word until he parked them at the small hardware store in town.
“Let’s get this stuff you need,” he mumbled, cutting the engine and getting out. He waited for her at the door. She wasn’t allowed to be more than ten feet away from a member of the team while they were in town. She couldn’t be out of their line of sight, either.
She didn’t say anything to him this tim
e, just stomped around him and inside the store. He followed as she filled a small cart. He had no idea with what, not paying attention to what she was grabbing.
When they reached the check out, he paid for it. She could have, if she knew she was rich again, but she didn’t. They had unlocked her accounts, convincing James that the money should be given to her students and Charlie. They hadn’t told her that all the money was slowly being funneled to them, but they would eventually. They didn’t want her knowing that the money was accessible.
They loaded the car in silence until Jasper decided to try a different approach to the problem.
“I’m hungry,” he said, trying to sound friendly. “Want to grab a bite to eat?”
“Sure,” she responded brusquely. He winced at it. She was furious with him.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?” She snapped, slamming back gate closed. “Be a friend? A human being? What, Jasper? Act like an adult about your problems?”
“Damn it,” Jasper snarled, hurt by what she was saying. “I’ve never been the one you argue with. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to fix how I feel. I’m sorry for that but I don’t need your bad attitude.”
“You don’t fix feelings,” she hissed. “You confront them, and you talk about them. It’s fucking hard, I know, but it’s not a math equation that you just solve and there’s a definitive answer at the end.”
“You want to talk?” Jasper glared at her. “I am fucking furious with you. You became everything I hate in this world. You have a complete disregard for order and the law. You think that just because the law isn’t doing something, that means that you can. You’re arrogant, secretive, and have only given me half-truths since the moment we saw each other again.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “And I hate myself for being angry at you.”
“Jasper,” she looked stunned, “you are allowed to be angry over that, I get that.”
A Life Of Shadows Page 20