by M. Malone
“He is more dangerous than they are. But he’s also one of the good guys. And he’s not leaving me here.”
Sabine nodded her head. “I’m glad for you then. But when he comes for you, I’m expendable. You’re the one he wants.”
“Listen to me. He’s coming for me, but he’ll take you because I won’t leave without you. So he really won’t have a choice. But, like I said, he’s one of the good guys. He wouldn’t consciously leave here with them. Not with them. He hates them almost as much as we do.”
“You talk about him like he’s the second coming.”
“No, he’s not quite an angel. He’s more like the shadow that stalks angels. But he’s mine. And he’s coming for us. You just wait. In the meantime, we need to figure our own way out. Because when he comes, they’re not just going to let him take us. They want him dead. They want to destroy everything he’s about. They want him to suffer. So, it’s going to require us to fight. And we need to be ready.”
Sabine nodded. “Okay. Whatever you say. I’ll be ready to go. And I… Thank you for everything. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend quite like you before.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You thank me when we’re sitting in my flat back in New York, okay? That’s when you thank me. But for now, lay low. Get ready to fight, because he’s coming and he’s bringing a lot of help with him.”
12
Matthias
The thing was people were rarely ready for the unexpected. Oftentimes people wanted to profess that they were ready and they knew what was coming for them, but I thrived on the unexpected. I lived in those unexpected shadows.
As I tucked my phone back into my jacket pocket, I silently applied the decryption for the keypad lock and let it do its thing. In seconds, it was green.
I’d already bypassed the security system. In seconds, as soundlessly as a movie ninja, I was inside the house. Ryder, Dane’s contact, apparently thought that mere locks with government encryptions would keep somebody out.
The problem was it seemed no one told Ryder just how good I was at hacking. When I found him, he was sitting in front of the television, with his back to the hall.
Another rookie mistake. Never have your back to the exits. In seconds, I had my arm around Ryder’s neck in a modified arm bar, and boy did he flop around like a fish. The wild thrashing only lasted for a hair of a second though, and then Ryder was trying to employ all his defensive skills to get himself turned around. But I just pressured the trachea and then leaned forward. “There, there, calm down. It’s just me. First, you’re going to go to sleep. And then you and I are going to have a little chat, because I’m not willing to take no for an answer.”
More thrashing came about. As it was, Ryder didn’t seem to know what was good for him. Eventually, I could see the signs of him fading, the fight slowly leaking out of him like a slow drip. Then finally, he stopped moving.
For a long second, I wondered if I’d killed him. Good on ya, mate.
But a quick check of the pulse told me I hadn’t. It only took two minutes to get the zip ties and a chair and have Ryder positioned. Honestly, the hardest part of the break-in was moving Ryder’s dead weight into the chair. But once I had him positioned, I used a smelling salt to wake the little wanker.
Ryder choked and coughed and immediately tried to thrash his limbs around. “What the fuck, you psychopath? Father will end you.”
I grinned. “So you’ve heard of me. Brilliant. And, actually, it turns out I’m not a psychopath. A doctor told me that, so it must be true, eh? Apparently, you lot in the Family did something to me. I’m not a psychopathic killer at all, which is a relief. I was really starting to worry about that. But, that doesn’t mean I’m not dangerous.”
I leaned nice and close to Ryder’s face as I played with one of my knives. I flicked my fingertip over the very tippy top and then mulled over the drop of red that appeared on my fingertip. When I sucked it into my mouth, the brassy taste assaulted my tongue. But I lifted my gaze to my quarry and made it a point to look like I was enjoying myself.
“Now, why don’t you go ahead and tell me what I need to know, or it’ll be your blood on the tip of this knife. What do you say?”
“Fuck you.”
“You know, it’s weird because that saying has a lot more meaning to me now, mate. But that’s neither here nor there. What is here and there is that you’re going to give me the information I need. I’m very, very good, but I’m fresh out of fucks and patience at the moment. And I don’t want to fuck up and kill you because I’m one of the good guys now. Tell me what I need to know, and you’ll wake up tomorrow, a little bit groggy and not missing any limbs. How does that sound?”
Ryder’s eyes went wide as if judging if I would dismember him. The reputation I’d built over the years was serving me well. But there was a small part of me that didn’t want to have people look at me like that.
You are not this person. You’re just doing the job you need to do.
“So, what do you say? Are we going to do this the easy way? Because I don’t have a lot of time and I need to get to Gemma. I need to get to her now.”
Ryder’s eyes went wide, and he struggled against his restraints.
“Get to talking. I don’t have a lot of time, and I’m not feeling real patient.” I did the knife thing again and he shuddered.
“Okay… I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“Cheers, mate. No one needs to bleed today… too badly anyway.”
Matthias
Deep breath in. Count to three. Deep breath out. Deep breath in. Count to three. Deep breath out. I repeated this to myself over and over again as I left. I felt a little out of my body, like something was off, something was missing… like I’d forgotten something.
A part of me waited for the monster to stretch, to demand to be let out, to demand to go back and finish the job. But no, there was none of that. Instead, there was something slightly empty. It was as if the monster that had been attached to my back for the last several years was no longer there.
Not that I wasn’t still an efficient killer. A deadly one, if I chose to be. But now, I felt as if I was the one in control instead of being merely the one in charge of keeping the monster under control. I’d left Ryder alive. The fucker was still strapped to his chair.
But he was a member of the Family. He’d figure out how to get out eventually when he woke up out of his stupor. By then, I would be long gone and hopefully have Gemma back. And I sure as hell wasn’t worried about any repercussions. Ryder was of them. He’d gotten off lucky.
I rounded the corner and stopped short. “Fuck a twat.”
“Easy there, Prince Charming. Would you use language like that during afternoon tea?”
I glared at Oskar. The big German stood against the lamppost, legs crossed, arms folded over his massive chest, looking at ease and completely comfortable. Rafe was with him and leaned comfortably on the hood of my Tesla. Fucking ruining the bloody shine.
Oskar just shook his head. “You don’t look happy to see us. Rafe, buddy, it doesn’t look like he’s happy to see us.”
Rafe tsked. “No, it does not. Do you want to tell us why you’re not happy to see us, kid?” Rafe pushed himself up off the car, making it a point to get fingerprints all over it. I wasn’t picky about anything. Hell, I barely owned anything. The one material thing I cared about though was that car. And now Rafe had his bloomin’ mitts all over it.
“Mate, get your grubby mitts off my car.”
Rafe just shrugged. “Make me.”
I glared at him. “I don’t have fucking time for this. I don’t have time for your scolding and your antics.” I took several steps toward Rafe, and Oskar stepped in my path.
“Easy does it, kid. We have some questions for you.”
Oskar put a hand on my chest, and I glared down at it. “Are you a nutter, mate?”
A week ago, none of the lads, even Noah, would have put a hand on me like this. Touching was al
ways an iffy spot with me.
“Yeah, maybe a little. You left without your team.”
“Listen, I don’t have time to hold your fucking wanker for you. I had to get moving. I had intel from a contact to get. There was no time.”
Rafe finally stopped manhandling my car and walked around. I was still completely at ease, sensing no aggression coming off of him. “Oh yeah, Delaney was strapping-up to the teeth to come get you when we got home and he told us you’d booked without so much as a by-your-leave. There wasn’t time to tell us then?”
I rolled my shoulders. “You would have stopped me.”
“Oskar, tell your friend what he clearly seems to have forgotten: we are family. That means when one person in this family has a problem, we all have a problem. Therefore, we take backup.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do I look like I fuckin’ need backup, mate?” I gestured back toward the house. “I obviously had it handled. I got the information I needed, and I didn’t need you for that. Besides, after everything, I just—”
Both Oskar and Rafe grabbed their weapons and, without blinking an eye, raised them in my direction and fired.
In that fine line between knowledge and the subconscious, I gleaned the danger and hit the deck. I was only able to get one gun out.
I’d be able to take one of them out if needed, but the other was going to definitely shoot me. What the fuck?
It was only after I palmed my weapon that my brain triggered and started using all the synapses it had. I hadn’t been hit. They hadn’t fired at me. Rafe was a crack shot. Oskar might even be a better shot than Rafe, and that was saying something. So why wasn’t I hit?
Slowly, I rolled onto my back and aimed my gun in the same direction as they fired again.
Ryder was on the ground. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
I lay back on the hard concrete, my breath jaggedly tearing in and out of my lungs.
Oskar leaned over me in a squatting stance, hands placed on his knees. “You see, kid, that’s why you bring back up, because sometimes, motherfuckers are slick. And they think they can get the jump on you.”
I blinked rapidly. Ryder had gotten loose? But how? Maybe he hadn’t been knocked out after all.
Shit. Careless.
Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind, a last smidgeon of my monster tried to shout out, ‘You should have just killed him.’ But I was able to shut that thought down easily enough.
When I slid a glance over at Rafe, he just shrugged and re-holstered his weapon. “You can relax. He’s not dead.” Rafe reached down a palm for one of my hands and Oskar did the same for the other.
For a long second, I stared at their outreached hands, symbols of olive branches. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to do this alone. Maybe I could actually lean on family for once. I re-holstered my weapon, then took both their hands, and was up in a second.
“I have an address for the Family’s transporter here in New York. He’ll be able to tell us how they got her out and, at the very least, where they’re taking her.”
Oskar nodded. “Yep, sounds good. But first, here you go.”
He handed me the comm unit and I stuck it in my ear, adjusting it so it fit. “What channel are we on?”
Rafe automatically mumbled, “Three.”
I tapped the unit three times and said, “Mic check.”
Oskar said, “Clear.”
Rafe echoed the sentiment. And then there was another voice in my ear. “I hear you loud and clear.”
I held my breath. “Noah?”
“Hey, kid. I hear you went out on a little excursion and hogged all the fun for yourself.”
“Look, Noah, it’s not what you think.”
“So you mean you didn’t leave me at home all by my lonesome to watch Rafe and Oskar brood about getting left behind?”
“Well, yeah. Okay, I did do that. But I had a reason.”
“You’re one of us now. Your past is our past. Your battles are ours too.”
Oskar groaned. “Are we going to hug it out now, or should we go kill some assholes? Because someone promised me assholes, and I demand assholes.”
Rafe chuckled. “Then you’re easy to please. I have a mirror right here. Hold on.”
Oskar just muttered under his breath, “Fucktard.”
Rafe didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t be mad because I’m prettier than you are.”
Oskar flashed a grin. “We all know I’m the prettiest one at the house. Matthias, tell him.”
I slid my glance between the two of them and sighed. How was it that this ragtag bunch had become my family? At this point, I didn’t really care. I was happy to have them, because without them, there was no way I was getting Gemma back. “I have the address. Who’s ready for some assholes?”
Rafe and Oskar both raised their hands. Oskar added a little jump to his step. “Oh me, me. Please pick me. I want to kill the assholes first.”
Noah just chuckled on the other end of the line. “Just punch in your coordinates when you get in the car and let me know if you need cleanup.”
“Will do.”
I climbed back in my car. It was time to go get my woman, by any means necessary.
Matthias
“Let me wake him up. I want to wake him up.”
I rolled my eyes at Oskar. “I did the hard work of getting his name and location. I get to wake him up.”
Rafe just shoved us aside. “I’m the most efficient. I should wake him up.”
That was how Ryder’s contact was woken out of a drug-induced stupor, with the three of us standing over him, wanting to deliver the first bout of ass kicking. Immediately he sat up and scooted back. “I don’t have your drugs, man. I don’t have anything you need. There’s no money here.”
I folded my arms and shook my head. “Now, now, don’t get your knickers in a twist. We’re not here for money or drugs.”
Maybe that wasn’t the most reassuring thing I could have said, because the guy’s eyes opened wide and he tried to shrink back even more against the headboard.
Oskar didn’t help by leaning over the bed a little bit more. “You’re what we’re after.”
There was never anything good about hearing a grown man whimper. And honestly, as ass-kickers went, Oskar was by far the least scary of the three of us. He was badass, but he hadn’t gone through the kind of stuff that Rafe and I had gone through. At the core of Oskar there wasn’t anything dark and scary. But the sniveling guy on the bed didn’t know that. And given that Oskar, with his height, broad shoulders, and ice-blue eyes, resembled a Viking, it worked for intimidation tactics. But Oskar had no stomach for wet work. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure he’d ever killed anyone before.
In our little scenario, Rafe was acting as a good cop. “Relax. No one’s going to kill you right now.”
Oskar threw up his hands. “Why did you have to lie to the guy?”
Rafe just sighed. “It’s called relaxing the subject. People are more likely to tell you things when they’re calm. Not when you’re peeling back their fingernails or threatening to cut off their balls. Honestly, don’t you know this?”
While watching the three of us bicker was fun on most days, we didn’t have time to waste. “If you lot are done, can we get back to the witness please? I need answers, and I need them now.”
Rafe just rolled his eyes and nodded but grabbed the sniveling Aiden Wex by the shirt. “Come on powder puff. We have questions for you.”
They guy wasn’t small by any means. And it was a testament to Rafe’s strength, the way he just held him up out of the bed like he weighed nothing. The guy was over two hundred pounds at least, but all of him soft. And what the hell? Was that the smell of… Oh hell, the guy had pissed himself.
For the love of Christ! “Mate, you’re giving new meaning to taking the piss.”
The German flashed me a grin, and I frowned. “What’s so funny?”
Oskar shrugged. “Nothing, you just made a funny. I’m not used to it. It must be
your shit-is-about-to-get-real demeanor.”
I could only roll my eyes as we followed Rafe out to the living area where he’d already set up a chair with zip ties at the ready. “Is there any time when you’re not joking around? You look so serious all the time that one would think that you’d actually be a serious person.”
“I am a serious person. I just happen to have an amazing sense of humor. I can’t believe you don’t notice.”
“Let’s just fucking get to work, mate.”
Rafe had the guy strapped in the chair in no time at all, almost like he’d done something like this before.
As much as we were joking around with each other, as soon as we had the guy where we wanted him, we went all business.
Rafe was the calmest. He had questions like: Where was the Family’s facility? Where might they hide a prisoner? What were the transport routes?
Oskar was the menacing one. He just went on fully detailing all kinds of fascinating things about Viking conquest. Like what they liked to do with the skin and scalps of those they raided. And when it was my turn, I just sat in my chair across from the guy, took out my knives and started playing with them. And then very calmly I said, “You ran the shipping route for the Family. I would know, because I’ve been disrupting them for months. Last night, you had to sneak cargo out of here on one of your planes. I want to know exactly what route you took, where you landed, and the nearest Family facilities surrounding that runway. Do you understand?”
And on and on it went like that for another forty-five minutes. All in all, it hadn’t taken that long. But every minute it took with the three of us playing our roles to perfection was time Gemma didn’t have.
At one point, Aiden started to cry. We hadn’t even touched him at that point. It was then that I lost my temper. “I’m sick of playing these games. You’re going to tell us what the fuck we want you to tell us now. Otherwise, I will kill you slowly. But I’ll leave you tied up here first. When I finally find her, and if someone has even hurt so much as a hair on her head, I will come back for you. And I will draw out your killing and enjoy it. Do you understand me?”