by S. Massery
Jackson… Jackson fought. Fists. Blood. It was all that could soothe the beast inside of him. And each of us had to help him through that, because there’s only so much a punching bag can do. Sometimes, he had to be hit back.
Once we were out of Scorpion, their communication with us was severed. It was as if they didn’t exist.
“You met Santos?” Dalton asks Hadley. He looks at me. “It couldn’t be him, Griff. I saw him die.”
I shake my head. “You saw him go into a building. There could’ve been another exit, an underground escape route—anything.”
Dalton sucks in a breath. “They fucking confirmed it.”
“They confirmed a pile of bones,” I retort. For the millionth time, I wish Wyatt was here. He was always the planner. Him and Jackson. They came up with strategies. They knew how to get out of jams. Jackson’s official title with Scorpion was Tactical Specialist, and I wish, I wish we had that right about now.
“So… he’s back,” Dalton says. “No one else would use his name.”
“He didn’t happen to mention he was a ghost, did he?” Shade murmurs.
Hadley snorts. “Not that I recall. But who was he to you?” she asks me. “Why is he so dead set on revenge?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea how I caught his attention.”
Well, there goes that.
Dalton perks up. “At least we know the guy we captured wasn’t lying.”
Hadley scowls at me. “The one you shot in cold blood, you mean?”
Griffin shrugs, while Shade pales. “Shot?”
“Water under the bridge. I’m going to call Mason. Did you happen to pack your laptop?” Dalton asks. He pulls out his phone. Shade nods to the small bag Dalton must’ve carried up. Resting next to it is Dalton’s sniper rifle. Dalton stands, already dialing Mason’s number as he wanders toward the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” I ask Hadley.
She shrugs. “They kept saying you were hiding something.”
I look into her eyes. There’s no distrust there. No discomfort. Just… openness. It’s refreshing, and I want to dive into her clear grey-blue eyes. “I have a bad past,” I say. “A past that was a present up until about a week ago.”
Shade gets up from the table, leaving us alone.
“And that’s why you thought you had to stay away?”
“I stayed away to protect you.” From me. “I get calls from clients. Usually, they’re bullet wounds that need to be closed. Internal bleeding. Setting bones. I didn’t go to an official medical school, but the Navy and Scorpion made sure I knew enough trauma medicine to keep people alive.”
She frowns. “That’s it?”
My muscles lock up. “No, that’s not it. I try not to think about the rest, though. It brings out a darker side of me.”
“I saw that,” she murmurs. “When Shade—Devos—” she shakes her head. “It looked like you were wearing a mask.”
“There’s part of me that thrives in that,” I admit. “It’s why I keep going back to it. I love the rush.”
She flinches and pulls back as Dalton and Shade return to the table. It wasn’t the reaction I want, and I don’t know what to say to make it better. That was my naked truth I just spoke into existence.
“Can you be okay with that?” I ask her.
Dalton looks back and forth between us, the phone in his hand.
“I’m trying,” she says to me.
“Mason’s on the phone,” Dalton says.
“A little late for you guys to be calling,” Mason says. “D says you have Shade there?”
“Hello, old friend,” Devos answers.
I grit my teeth. “He got us into a little mess.”
“Unintentionally,” he adds.
Mason chuckles. “Yeah, Dalton filled me in. You have good timing. I just finished work for the night, but I’m still at the office. What do you need me to do?”
Shade plucks the phone from Dalton’s hand and tells him exactly what happened. A lot of the language goes over my head. While he talks, my eyes roam Hadley’s bare arms. There are new black and blue bruises overlaying the red and green ones. It makes me want to stalk out of here and find Santos, just so I can put a bullet in his brain.
How dare he hurt Hadley?
“Griffin?”
I jerk.
Hadley has stood up, and she stands behind my chair. “Come with me?”
I stand, too, and follow her through the room, toward the hallway where the bedrooms are. She stops in the shadows and turns back to me.
“I’m scared,” she admits. “Santos—”
“It’ll be okay,” I tell her. I cup her cheek. Her skin is warm against my hand, and I lean down and kiss her.
She presses upwards, her hands going to the back of my head, and she parts my lips. Her tongue is tentative when it sweeps across my lower lip. I let her explore me. Her hands in my hair, then down my back. I walk backwards, to the wall, and lean further into her. Her teeth graze my lower lip, tugging, and my blood ignites.
All at once, her mouth leaves mine, and we’re left panting in the darkness.
“Everything in me is screaming to run away,” she says. “But I really don’t want to.”
“Everything in me is screaming to save you,” I whisper against her neck. I chase my words across her skin with my lips, and she shivers. “I know you don’t want me to, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to let you go.”
I finally back away from her. “You can sleep if you want,” I say. “We’re just going to be working with Mason. Going fishing, so to speak. It could take hours.”
“Or it could take minutes,” Devos says behind me. “Either way, Hadley should be here to identify Santos.”
She sighs and nods. “I’m okay,” she tells me.
I watch her walk back to Dalton, Devos following her. There’s a lump in my throat that I can’t swallow around. It appears every time she alludes to dying. I know her symptoms have been more severe than she has said. Her window of opportunity for treatment is shrinking.
Even if she hates the idea of being trapped in a hospital, she could survive it for a month or two. As long as the end result was that she lived.
17
HADLEY
I fell asleep at the table.
It was inevitable, after the night I had, and my eyes only cracked open as Griffin laid me in bed. I vaguely remember him climbing into bed with me, his arm wrapped around my waist and his lips in my hair, and then I sunk further into sleep.
Had it only been a few days since we flew to Amsterdam? And in that time, there’s been so much… so much of everything. Trying to lay it all out in my mind is like trying to build a puzzle blindfolded.
I wake up with the early morning light, and my face is sticky with blood. The copper taste coats my mouth.
Horrified, I slide out of bed and rush into the bathroom. I gargle, rinse, wash my face clean of it. Finally, I feel halfway human. There’s still blood on the collar of my shirt, but I don’t have clothes to change into. Our bags are probably at the train station, abandoned, or still on the train and headed to god-knows-where.
Griffin is on his back, lips parted, and breathing deeply. I don’t know how long they were awake after I fell asleep, or if they accomplished anything. The last thing I remember is Shade sending out a message.
I pull on a sweatshirt in Griffin’s closet—total flashback to Amsterdam, although this flat feels so much more lived in—and a pair of shorts, then slip out of the room.
I stop short when I see Dalton at the window in the kitchen. He sits on the counter, leaning against the window frame. The cigarette dangles from his fingers over the sink.
“You’re up early,” he says. His eyes are half-closed as he raises the cigarette to his lips again.
“That’s an awful habit,” I answer. I make a beeline to the coffee pot. “Don’t you worry about it killing you?”
He leans toward the window and blows out a stream of smoke. “I’ve
tried to quit,” he says. “But…”
“There’s a good excuse?”
“The other guys always had each other. With Scorpion, I got a spotter twenty percent of the time if I was lucky. That’s a lonely way to spend the days. And nights.”
I nod like I understand, but I can’t see the picture he’s painting. I pour myself a mug and find cream. Sugar. Dalton slides his cup toward me. I refill it and push it back.
“Imagine being in hostile territory, surrounded by the enemy, and it’s your job to find a location that will give you vantage, keep your team safe as they move on the ground, and not lose your shit when people start shooting at you. Because if you move, you’re dead.”
I blink at him.
“Smoking calms my nerves,” he says. He stubs the thing out in the sink and hops off the counter, swiping both of our mugs. I follow him to the living room and fall onto the couch beside him. “Delia and I don’t get along. But you?”
I blush when his eyes cut sideways, looking me up and down.
“You and I could be friends.”
“Why’s that?” I ask. “What made her so different?”
“She’s like Jackson.”
Griffin only mentioned Jackson and Delia in passing, so I’m trying to reserve judgement. Until I meet them, at least. If I meet them.
“That’s a bad thing?” I ask. Dalton is too pretty. That’s his problem. He probably attracts all the wrong sort of people, and it makes him distrustful. How he ended up as a sniper instead of a billionaire CEO or a freaking model is anyone’s guess.
“No,” he admits. “Jackson and I butt heads too much. He practically abandoned us once we got home. It reminded me too much of my dad.”
“So Delia reminds you of your dad, too?”
“She threatened every single one of us with her mafia issues,” he grumbles. “You don’t have issues. You’re nice.”
I snort. “I’m dying of cancer, asshole. I woke up because of a bloody nose.” I hook the collar of my shirt with my thumb and pull it above the neck of the sweatshirt. His eyes latch onto the blood.
“Fuck,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have plenty of issues. But you’re still nice.”
We both laugh. I didn’t expect a friendship in Dalton, but our silence is easy as we drink our coffee. The smell of smoke is just another facet of him.
“You should really quit smoking,” I mutter. “And also, what happened last night?”
He straightens. “You looked so young, sleeping with your cheek on the table. I’m surprised Griffin didn’t take a picture for blackmail at a later date.”
I punch his arm, and he pretends it hurt.
“Okay, okay. We spent three hours on the phone with Mason, waiting for someone to bite that stupid message Shade sent out. Nada. Plenty of people viewed it, though.”
“Maybe shooting Santos’ henchmen tipped him off,” I suggest.
“Maybe.”
“They kept saying I’d be afraid of him after finding out the Angel of Death stuff. But… I don’t get it. He’s protected me my whole life, and while this past week has definitely been a lot more… I don’t know. I was expecting another shoe to drop. Will there be one?”
Dalton raises his eyebrows. “No, I think that’s the gist of it,” he says. “Besides Jackson, we all strayed toward the dark side. It was inevitable, given what we were doing for Scorpion. Griffin is just as bad as the rest of us, but he’s been upfront with you. He just needs to get his head back in the fucking game so we can find Santos and end this.”
“Game?”
Dalton shrugs. “It was something our Scorpion handlers were always saying. ‘Keep your head in the game,’ was a phrase we heard way too much. It stuck.”
“Everyone keeps saying he’s done terrible things. You’ve all killed people—a lot of people—in the span of a few days. How do I reconcile that in my head?”
“You either do or you don’t,” Dalton says. He pats my shoulder. “We’ve had years to come to terms with it. Scorpion Industries made us this way.”
“And Santos…?”
Dalton’s eyes close. “He was someone that Scorpion ordered us to hunt down, but we failed. I thought I saw him die a few years ago. Mason is chasing leads back home.”
I try to swallow that information and move on. Focus on the bigger picture. “Does Mason ever come out to play? He seems to stay behind a computer a lot.”
He rolls his eyes. “Picture a hotter version of Shade. With a little more intellect. He doesn’t like people—he likes computers. Firewalls and backdoors and ones and zeros. That shit is black and white to him.” He shrugs. “He came to Salt Lake City a few months ago when Delia and Jackson needed help. We all went, then.”
“Why?”
“Jackson hadn’t talked to us in a year. If he was suddenly on the run and asking for help… There wasn’t a question.”
I cock my head. “You all are that loyal?”
“Hadley, I’m fucking terrified of planes and I’ve been on three in the past six months. If that isn’t loyalty, I don’t know what is.”
I sip my coffee. It sits low in my stomach, hot and rolling. Any minute now, I’m going to rush to the bathroom to puke it back up. If I can muster the energy to rush anywhere, that is. “Is that why you didn’t go back with Zach?”
He shrugs, shifting in his seat. “Yeah. I went to the airport with him, but… I couldn’t do it. I sat in the terminal all fucking night, trying to work up the courage to go home. It took me half the day to track down Shade. Then I had to convince him to tell me where you and Griff went.”
“We’re glad you did,” I murmur. “I’m glad you did. How did I miss you on the train, though? I walked through all the cars.”
He shrugs. “We went to the dining car in the front. Saw Griffin, and then followed him back to your seats as we were getting into Brussels. You were gone. We told him to stay on the train in case you were just in the bathroom, but after Shade and I searched all of the cars, we got off. Shade guessed where someone might go, and it happened to be right.”
“That was dumb luck.”
The door to Griffin’s apartment slides open, and Shade walks in. He drops the bags we had left on the train by the door and closes it. “They were holding them,” he says. “Figured I could be helpful, since…”
Dalton rolls his eyes, but I notice there’s a small gun in his hand. I hadn’t even seen him move to draw it. He tucks it back in his ankle holster, staring at Shade. “Talk to Reece today?” he asks Shade.
The man pales. “Did you do something to my son?”
Dalton shakes his head. “No. But he’s with Zach…”
“Are you threatening him?” I ask in a low voice. My stomach twists.
“No,” Dalton says, his eyes on Shade. “Just pointing out what’s at stake.”
My stomach cramps, and I leap up from the couch. I just barely make it to the kitchen sink before I heave, expelling minutes-old coffee and bile.
“Poor dear,” Shade says from a distance.
There’s a ringing in my ears.
Cool hands brush my hair away from my face, collecting it at the base of my neck as I tremble. I turn the water on and rinse out my mouth, then the sink, before I straighten. Dalton gives me a sympathetic look, and I shake my head. “Don’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re okay with being friends with me,” I say. “Because I’m not a long-term commitment.”
Dalton’s face darkens. “Griffin is going to figure something out.”
“I don’t want him to figure something out. I just want a few good days. I want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I want to eat a fucking croissant.”
“That’s what we’ll do today,” Griffin says from behind me. His eyes practically smolder as he looks at me. “Come here, Hadley.”
I shiver. But I go to him. How could I not?
He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me
back into the room. To the pillow I slept on, flecked with blood.
“This is what I woke up to,” he whispers in my ear. He stands so close behind me, the heat of him radiates into me. I have a sudden urge to lean back into him. To turn around and kiss him. But he’s pissed. “This is what I saw, instead of you. A bloody fucking pillow.”
I do turn around, just to shove him away from me. He takes a step back, surprise flickering across his face. I have a feeling he wouldn’t move if I tried to push him again.
My own anger overflows. I keep such a tight lid on it, it’s hard to really understand what I’m feeling. White-hot rage rushes through me like a shot of adrenaline.
“That’s what I woke up to, too,” I snarl, stabbing my finger at the pillow. “This isn’t about you or your feelings. This is about me and how I want to deal with it. I’m sorry if that’s selfish—I’m sorry you were afraid for once in your life. You told me from the beginning that you don’t rescue people. So don’t try to rescue me, Griffin. Just let me enjoy my last days.”
He paces in front of me, a lion waiting to be let off its leash, but he stops short at my last few words. “I knew it was bad,” he murmurs, almost to himself. To me, he says, “It’s time to tell me just how bad it is, Hadley.”
I take a step away from him.
Instantly he’s there, in my space. I keep backing up until I hit the wall, and I can’t help but think that this is typical of us. My back against a wall. His arms around me. Our lips fighting each other. How many times do we have to solve our problems with sex?
“How long do you have, Hadley?” he whispers, and it’s a caress against my skin. His lips touch my cheek, the shell of my ear. I tilt my head when his teeth graze my earlobe, and then his lips move lower, feather-light. His tongue traces patterns on my skin.
“A few weeks, maybe,” I say. It comes out half-whisper, half-moan.
I jump when he bites my neck and relax when his tongue sweeps over it. He works lower, hands sliding over my breasts, my stomach, lifting the fabric away. I squirm under his attention. His fingers tug the shorts and panties off of my hips, and then his lips are on the most sensitive part of me. He lifts my leg onto his shoulder, and the vulnerable space in my chest cracks open.