“In his case, to protect us and others. And no, the IMPO will never stop him doing what he did the other night. But then again, they don’t have a moral high ground to stand on, even if they wanted to. Neither does the WMC.”
“And you yelled at him because you’re worried about him.”
“I’m worried about what this world could be like if it continues to twist Quinn from a strange and wonderful man who happens to be powerful into…a vicious, rabid man with all those human faults who uses his power to get what he wants.”
“He’s not evil,” she bit out, refusing to think Quinn would ever take that path.
“Neither are you, but you’ll still use that human power to do what you feel is needed. Sawyer, the difference is that you’re on our league, our level. If you fell, then others can stop you.”
“But even with good intentions, Quinn could do serious damage and no one could stop him.”
“Exactly. So I’m taking him out of the IMPO, whether he likes it or not. He’s not happy, Sawyer. He deserves to be happy and have the time to live in this world without being consumed by it. And what if someone tries to use him one day? What if someone threatens us and tries to blackmail him? Look at what happened to those guards who killed Missy. They were good men, and look what happened to them and what they did for the people they love.”
“What would he do?”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s not this. As long as he’s not constantly exposed to this evil and being used. As long as he remains…good.” Elijah shook his head sadly. “I shouldn’t have a right in this, but I can’t not protect him from himself. I care too much to see him go down such a dark path thanks to the world we live in.”
“I understand and I’ll help you,” she promised. Now she really understood. She didn’t like it, but she understood. “We’ll make sure he’s always happy, Elijah.”
“I knew you would understand.”
“So this means I’ve lost four of you from the team, huh?”
“Yeah, but that’s all you’ll lose us from.” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you for backing me up, little lady.”
“Let’s go get our wolf,” she murmured, pulling him close to kiss him properly.
Together, they made the first step into the woods. They didn’t know these new woods well yet, but she knew Quinn wouldn’t let her and Elijah get lost in them. They kept going deeper in, knowing only the general direction of where Quinn had decided to set up camp. Since it was after sunset, she couldn’t find the landmarks she had begun to use during the day. There were no worn trails yet on their new property, so it was harder to navigate.
“There he is,” Elijah whispered. She looked around, trying to see what he did. Elijah grabbed her jaw and pointed her gaze.
And there he was. Quinn in his wolf form, staring at them from the top of a large rock. The scene morphed into Quinn just sitting on the rock, wary and confused. “Why did you two come out?” he asked. “I wanted to be alone.”
“We’ve been worried,” Elijah answered. “Talk to us?”
“Okay.” Quinn jumped up and walked away.
Sawyer and Elijah hurried after him and two hundred yards away, they finally got to Quinn’s new camp. Quinn threw some logs onto a lit fire and Elijah obviously pushed some magic into the flame, making it catch better and grow bigger. Next, several rocks rose from the earth, big enough for people to sit on. Sawyer just took her own seat, waiting on the two guys to stop dancing around each other. They worked well in tandem. Elijah was always so comfortable in Quinn’s space where no one else was.
Finally, they settled and she was in the middle.
“What do you two want?” he asked, rubbing his hands close to the fire.
“You haven’t come inside yet,” she reminded him. “What’s wrong?”
“Been thinking about what you said,” he said, directing it around her to Elijah. “I spent the day out here to remind myself what makes me really happy, so I could remember the feeling of it again.”
“And you haven’t been happy?” She felt wounded. She’d thought he was happy with them.
“I’m never happy in human cities. I’m comfortable around people I know and care for, but I’m not truly happy. This place, while it’s not the land I had a month ago, makes me happy already. It feels like a place I am meant to be.” Quinn stood up again, pacing. “Elijah, you’re right. Every case has eaten me up a little bit. Every single one. I’m beginning to think like them. I’m more powerful than them. I could just kill them and no one could ever stop me.” A vicious growl erupted and shook Sawyer to her bones. “And that feels so wrong. Like the bitch in the Amazon. Like Axel. But out here, I feel normal again, and I’m happy, and I don’t…hurt people. I never wanted to really hurt people like this before…The job doesn’t make me happy. It never has. It was just something I could do, and it gave me a place that I would have never had otherwise in this world I know so little about.”
She didn’t know what else to do except jump up and pull him into a hug. She just held him as she realized the job had been rotting everyone on the team. Jasper, Zander, Quinn. She knew Vincent was a mess. She looked down at Elijah as she held Quinn. He wasn’t like the rest of them. He knew what needed to be done.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to her wolf. “It’s okay. You aren’t like them. You never have to be like them. You can stay out here forever. You’re better than all of them. You’re so much better.” She knew why Elijah didn’t want to see Quinn torn apart by the modern world he wasn’t raised in. He was so wonderful exactly the way he was, and he would lose all of it if he stayed in the mess. He was too good for all of it.
“I just want to protect you all,” he murmured, his head buried into her shoulder. “I can do that-”
“But at what cost, love?” she asked softly. “At what cost?”
Not a cost she was willing to let him bear, certainly. One she would bear. One she already carried. She could do it one more time, she was sure of it. Just one more time. For Quinn, for Zander and Jasper. For Vincent.
For the teary-eyed Elijah, who waited silently.
When she released Quinn, he went to the cowboy and the two big men embraced. She heard Quinn whisper an apology. Elijah offered one back. And she knew those two would be okay.
The emotions were running so high on the team, she knew these moments were bound to happen. She knew they were all shaken by their own experiences and issues. The case with Axel kept bringing it all to a head and she was tired.
She was so tired.
“What’s next?” Quinn asked. “I know Vincent sent me here to think, to get right again, but what’s the team’s next move?”
“Are you sure you want to keep going?” she asked, needing to know he would be okay.
“I won’t make the same mistakes,” he promised. “I lost control. Of my magic, of myself. While I was out here, I remembered all the reasons Elijah and Vincent wanted me to control everything, to hold back. Like Jasper in Atlanta. He wouldn’t have lost his leg if I hadn’t brought the building down.” She winced. She had asked him to do it. “I’m not going to risk any of you, and I’m not going to become them.” He pointed away, out into the world. “There’s better ways. I just have to always remember that. I needed today to remember that.”
He wasn’t going to become the monsters they kept running into and battling against.
“Tomorrow night is the third raid,” Elijah explained. “A replacement team is going. We’re going to review everything we know. Let’s hope we can find where he’s hiding and finish this.”
Sawyer nodded. That was all they had. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. She knew Vincent was back in the house, probably pouring over things she didn’t know yet. She knew Jasper was digging around photos of Axel lookalikes, hoping for one to be him. Zander was keeping Charlie occupied and safe in their home.
And now she and Elijah knew Quinn would be okay, and it was his final missio
n. Elijah’s too.
“I think we should have a team meeting,” she declared. “So everyone can talk and clear their heads.” She was seeing her wonderful guys break apart and she couldn’t allow that. Anything but that. Was she hurt when they announced they were leaving the IMPO? Of course, but she couldn’t let them lose each other. This argument between Elijah and Quinn had proven her point. This could have broken them.
“That’s a great idea.” Elijah ruffled Quinn’s hair as he spoke, causing Quinn to try and push Elijah away. “Everyone’s still up. We can do it right now.”
“I think that’s for the best. Right now, I think we’re all over the place, and it’s not working.” She was glad her cowboy agreed with her. She had plans, ones her men might not like, ones they might leave her for, but she wouldn’t be responsible for them falling apart. They were a team before her and they should always have each other, IMPO or not.
“Let’s do it.” Elijah kept an arm wrapped tight around Quinn, not letting the feral Magi get away. “You too.”
“I figured,” Quinn growled. “I wasn’t planning on avoiding it.”
“Sure.” Elijah was teasing now. Sawyer felt glad that everything seemed more relaxed between them. That meant they were moving on past the argument.
On the way back, she and Elijah made sure to put Quinn in the middle. They found Vincent sitting in the new dining room and he looked up from his papers with a sigh. Kaar bounced around on the table, eating seeds from Vincent’s free left hand.
“Why are all of you up so late?” he asked. He eyed her the most, almost accusingly.
“We want to call a team meeting,” she explained. “Care to call down those two?”
“Why?” He was suspicious now.
“For everything. Anything. We have the night free. Let’s do it.” So she could make sure they would survive this mission, emotionally and physically. She had already fucked up and Zander got shot. She had already messed up and Missy was killed, something Vincent, and in turn, her, had promised wouldn’t happen to the doppelganger.
Vincent’s eyes went unfocused for just a split second. “They’ll be down soon.”
She slid into a seat as Zander and Jasper entered. Elijah found a seat as well, as Quinn went to get the wolves and Sombra out of the office. She noticed that the wolves were already in a better mood. That was good. Sombra sat next to her, leaning against her thigh so she could have her head scratched. Sawyer obliged, unable to resist the physical connection with her bond.
“So, a team meeting,” Vincent declared. “Who wants to start?”
The deafening silence made Sawyer more uncomfortable than anything else she had ever encountered. She had never really known a time when these guys seemed like they couldn’t really talk to each other, but tonight it seemed like everyone was having a hard time.
So she started.
“I’m worried about all of you,” she admitted. “That this case might be taking a deeper, more painful toll than it should. That maybe I should have forced all of you to rest more after James died instead of jumping to chase Missy’s information into the raids.”
“I hate that you wear the mask,” Jasper mumbled, looking across the table at her. “I hate it, Sawyer. I don’t want you to.”
She’d figured that was coming.
“The mask doesn’t bother me,” Zander said, shrugging to prove how much he didn’t give a shit. “I’m more wondering how we’re all not going to die.”
“Reasonable for the team healer, especially one who was just shot,” Vincent conceded. “But we’ve done dangerous before.”
“Yeah…that’s the point,” Zander said with more heat than she had expected. “Vincent, one day our bosses are going to push us into something stupid, and it’s going to end with more gravestones. They’ve tried before, actively tried. There were no accidents when it came to the Amazon mission with the IMAS.”
“The team wasn’t supposed to go on that,” Quinn reminded him.
“So?” she snapped. “We weren’t going to leave you out there to die for their idiocy.”
“So we all hate our bosses, except maybe Thompson, who is genuinely trying. The only problem is that he’s overruled by the WMC a lot. They make the real decisions.” Elijah groaned.
“I think we can all agree that the WMC sucks and we just need to make it through the case.” She threw her hands up. “And yeah, it sucks that a bunch of you don’t want to stay on the team and do more after this, but I also get it. In the end, it’s safer, healthier. It’s just a better idea to get out while you can.”
“So, there’s no reason to drag all that up?” Jasper watched her carefully. “You’ll be okay?”
“She will be when she figures out what she’s going to do with her life,” Elijah commented, nearly grinning as he called her out on the one thing she hadn’t yet wanted to talk about. She brought this on herself.
“I’m okay. Vincent?”
“The team’s health and happiness is more important than our bosses. Fact. There’s a lot of other things I can do with the IMPO that don’t involve big cases.”
“You would stay in?” Zander exclaimed incredulously. “Really?”
Well, this was interesting. She knew a team meeting would drag some things up. She had silently hoped this was one of them. Would it just be her and Vincent looking for justice now?
“I know all the faults and problems everyone has with them, but none of them change the fact that for me, there’s only two options. Working for the government, trying to be the good guy, living by and upholding the law, or…Well, my other option would be people wondering if I’m always going to walk in my brother’s footsteps. I know that.” Vincent pushed his papers away, reached into a baggy and fed Kaar more seeds. The raven made some weirdly affectionate noise. “Sawyer? Me and you?”
“Yeah, I haven’t thought that far ahead.” She looked away from them.
“Of course you haven’t,” Elijah muttered. “Sawyer Matthews, everyone. Mission oriented to the nth degree.”
“I have to be focused. Fuck, I need all of you focused. Getting this out right now, we can all work to achieve our own goals. If taking down Axel is the only thing between you guys and careers that would make you happy, then work for that. For Vincent and I…”
“He’s the last thing holding us back from burying the past,” Vincent finished. “Can’t have a future until you can let go of the past, not completely.”
“That.” She agreed with every word. There was no future for her and Vincent until this was over. Not even a small possibility of one. Axel would always be a shadow over their lives, their hearts. He fucked them over more than anyone else on the team.
“Yeah, but you two are taking this way too far-” Zander, trying to be the voice of reason. What a strange time the team was in if that was the advice. Zander telling people they were taking it too far.
“There’s no such thing with Axel.” Surprisingly, it was Quinn who said it. Her eyebrows went up. “But you’re right. We can’t become him while we’re trying to beat him. We would fail.”
“He plays his game better than us, that’s certain. He’s got wealth, power, followers so loyal that they would die for him like that.” She snapped her fingers. “You’re right. We can’t beat him at his own game. It’s not working.”
“Elijah said something to me earlier today. About playing a quieter game.” Vincent hummed, motioning at all the papers in front of him. “About trying to regain ground on him without exposing what we’re doing. I think he’s right.”
“And there goes the team meeting, back to the Axel situation,” Zander mumbled, rolling his eyes.
“Forgive me.” Vincent sighed. “It’s hard taking a break.”
“We know,” Zander teased. She was so glad to see the teasing was light. “How about we watch a movie? Why don’t we…really relax? Charlie is still puttering around with nothing to do. Does that old man sleep? We’ll drag him along.”
“No, he doesn
’t.” She chuckled. “When was the last time we had a real movie night?”
“After James’ funeral,” Vincent murmured, looking away from them.
“Before that…Georgia, at home. Weeks ago. Shit, maybe back in November?” Jasper stood up. “I like the idea of a movie. And you know, this needs to be said. Sawyer, Vincent, we’re all planning on leaving the IMPO, but don’t worry. Stop worrying even while you tell us you aren’t. We’re committed to this case. For you both. For justice. We’re going to bring Axel down.”
Zander began to clap, Elijah quickly following him. One even hooted as the wolves began to make short howls. Sawyer clapped slowly, watching Jasper’s stormy eyes.
“I was rattled for a moment,” Jasper continued. “And I don’t like the organization we work for, not anymore. Maybe never again. But we’re going to see this through.”
“Finish it,” Zander pressed.
“Because this is the mission this team was made to do.” Jasper smiled.
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered from his seat. “Does this mean I can keep working and not be dragged into a movie night?”
“No. We’re taking the night off,” Zander ordered, reaching out to grab Vincent. “Because I don’t get to fuck with you as much as I used to, and this is a great night for it.”
Sawyer laughed as Vincent was yanked from his chair by the redhead and pulled. He tried to protest and walk himself out, but Zander didn’t let him go. She eyed the papers left behind, wondering what Vincent was looking over. She didn’t have the chance to grab one and see. Elijah wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her as he stood up.
“Elijah!” she laughed out his name. She didn’t fight, though. Jasper and Quinn were grinning at each other as they walked out behind her and the cowboy. She saw Charlie grinning down the hall. “Save me!” she called out.
“No,” Charlie answered back.
She was glad he didn’t. The team was a fucking disaster, but at least they still could have moments like this and smile. They needed tonight.
Tomorrow she would do something they would hate, but tonight they could reaffirm the bonds of family and team, and everything would be okay.
A Night of Redemption (The Redemption Saga Book 5) Page 24
