24
Sawyer
“Hey Vincent?” she said brightly as she walked into his office. “I wanted to run something by you, then head out to do it.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.” Vincent pushed back the papers he was looking over. It was early and she was positive they were the only two awake, which suited her. He wouldn’t give her a hard time for wanting to go.
“I’m thinking about a trip to the prison. Take a look at what happened there while you deal with paperwork here.” She said it innocently enough, but she had no intention of dealing with the things going down there. She had another objective.
“Let’s have breakfast and talk about what everyone wants to do today. We’re all going to be anxious with the last raid tonight, especially since we won’t be there.” Vincent stood up and began to do that thing where someone organizes because they have nothing else to do. “Jasper and I are going through financials. I’m going to place Zander on looking at pictures of Axel lookalikes all day, which is going to drive him mad, but it’s busy work. Quinn has free time. I’m hoping he enjoys the woods more. Elijah might go with you.”
She didn’t like the sound of any of that. She eyed him. “I can go alone. I’m not going to do anything stupid, Vincent.”
“No, but you yelled at me for going by myself, so you don’t get to.”
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going. And you’re probably a high value target for Axel.”
“And you aren’t?”
He had her there. She raised her hands in defeat. Fine. She would see how things played out at breakfast and go to the prison with Elijah if she had too.
After breakfast, she realized she should have known better. She really should have known better. Sawyer walked into the prison with the team instead of just alone or with Elijah. They all wanted to see the damage that had been done by the staged riot. It could possibly give them some clues, but really, they wanted something to do until the raid.
Sawyer was the only person in the building with an agenda. She just needed to shake the team for a moment. When she had mentioned making the trip, she hadn’t expected all of them to come with her with this excuse.
“What did you want to do?” Vincent asked her causally.
“Exactly what everyone else wanted to do, but maybe alone.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You know I like working without all the distraction. Not that having everyone here is a bad thing, but I might wander off, see what I can see.”
“Be safe,” he murmured, kissing her cheek. She smiled at him as he waved her away.
“Thanks,” she told him as she backed away from the group while the rest of them were too busy talking to guards about what happened. Only Vincent was paying attention to her.
It was sweet, completely appropriate, and worrisome. He would be the one to figure out she had a plan that she wasn’t telling them. She was thankful he was letting her lie for the moment. Or maybe he just trusted her enough at this point.
She wasn’t doing anything incredibly stupid. It wasn’t about something dangerous. They would be mad at her about this for principle. Though, as she walked to Naseem’s cell, she knew they hadn’t figured out she’d visited him once before. She didn’t bother having the assassin brought to an interrogation room this time.
And as she walked closer, she grew angrier.
Leonard had known she was coming and his words had thrown her off. He’d been ready. Axel would be as well. He wasn’t going to let her within a hundred feet of him.
And Naseem could tell her how to fix it. She needed to know. Now it was imperative, and she knew the guys wouldn’t like it. It was just another skill for a trade she needed to get out of. But she couldn’t get out of the trade until she was the absolute best, until nothing and no one would see her coming. She knew it, but explaining that to the guys? No, she was going to do this alone, like she had tried once before.
She was feeling bloodthirsty as she made it to his door.
“Guard!” she called. “I need to speak to this one.”
“Coming, ma’am.” The guard walked quickly, punching in the code for the hour. The codes for individual cells changed every hour. A random thing she knew from times when going to prison was her number one concern.
She walked in without announcing herself. Naseem was lying on his bed, reading a book. He moved the book and curiously stared at her.
“I don’t know anything about the riot. I’ve been locked in here since that happened with my meals brought to me. I didn’t participate.” He smiled. “So this must be about something else, since you would have been told if I was involved.”
“Teach me,” she demanded.
“No.” He lifted his book and began to read again.
“Damn it, Naseem. Teach me.” She snarled, grabbing the book and yanking it away from him.
“I’m not going to teach the person who defeated me the one thing I have that she doesn’t.” Naseem sat up. She tossed the book across the room. The temper, the anger she was always hiding strained her control. “And something has obviously upset you.”
She grabbed his jumpsuit and dragged him up, forcing him to stand. “Naseem, I need to know.”
“So you can kill him, because he’ll obviously be on his guard. I’m not stupid.” He tried to pull away, but she had the upper hand and anything she did in the cell would be forgiven.
And she strongly considered testing that, so she shoved him back.
“I was noticed by my last target,” she explained. “I refuse to get noticed before I have him. I need to know how you do it. I’m willing to make a deal.”
“Parole? Commuting my sentence?”
She bared her teeth. She couldn’t do either of those, not for any reason.
“Thought so,” Naseem snapped. “There’s nothing you can give me that is going to convince me to teach you.”
She glared at him, trying to resist crossing the line. She was already toeing it.
“And if you fail to kill him, oh well. It’s really not my place or problem. I’m not getting involved between you and your old sugar daddy.”
The callous comment snapped something. She roared, grabbing him again and forcing him to the bed. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she swung downwards, slamming her fist into his face.
It was like every comment about her being Axel’s whore came back. It was like every moment someone disregarded her, not knowing what she could do, who she was.
And once Axel was dead, it would all be behind her. She was nobody’s whore. She didn’t need a sugar daddy. She didn’t need anything except the one skill to help her bury all of it.
“Teach me!” she demanded, a roar of pain and anger.
“Fuck you,” he growled, trying to shove her off. She was so enraged that he didn’t have much of a chance. She slammed another fist down, busting his nose open, blood pouring everywhere.
“FIGHT!” someone screamed beyond the door.
“SAWYER! Someone get this fucking door open!”
“Teach me!” She had to know and she didn’t honestly give a fuck about Naseem anymore. Not that she ever really had, but she didn’t know how to stop now. He had no right to say anything like that. No right.
Someone grabbed her and she sublimated out of the hold when she was ripped off Naseem. She reformed to tackle the beaten-up assassin back on to his bed, since he was trying to get up.
More hands grabbed her, yanking and trying to pull. They were screaming something but she was only focused on the man her hands were on. Finally, something snapped on one of her wrists and when she was pulled away from her target, she couldn’t sublimate.
Naseem began to laugh. “And even if I wanted to teach you, you’re a lost cause. This just proves it.”
“FUCK YOU!” she roared, fighting against the large hands dragging her from the room.
Her back slammed into the far wall and the door to Naseem’s cell shut with a resounding thud. Flaming red hair blocked
her view.
“What the fuck!” Zander roared. “What are you doing?”
She tried to breathe and quickly realized what had just happened. Looking down at her hands, she felt lost for a moment. She hadn’t just crossed a line, she had blown through it like it never existed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry? You just beat a defenseless man!” It was Jasper yelling now. “What the hell were you even doing here?”
“I…” Oh shit. She knew they would find out. She would have had to tell them eventually, but she hadn’t thought it would be like this. There must have been something strange about the way she looked, because when she looked at Jasper, he stepped back. “I’m sorry.”
“Why. Were. You. Here?” Elijah enunciated every word. “A guard let us know you came by this way. We didn’t like it, but we didn’t expect a fight when we arrived. Sawyer, what’s going on?”
“I…wanted him to teach me,” she admitted, pulling her hands to her chest. Her right knuckles were covered in Naseem’s blood. She hadn’t hit more than a few times, she was certain of it. She had still done damage, enough damage.
Too much damage.
“Teach…” Zander backed away from her now. “Sawyer…”
“I asked him when I came…to see Missy, after the funeral.” She looked away from all of them, unable to handle it. “He can do one thing I can’t. Disappear. I melt into the night, but I’m still a Magi. I can still be sensed. Leonard caught me before I made it into his office. It made the fight so much worse than it needed to be. And Axel? Axel is never going to let me within a hundred feet of him. I can’t…” She turned so her shoulder would be on the wall. Wrapping her arms around herself, she continued. “Naseem made a comment and…something snapped.”
“We’re leaving,” Elijah declared. “Let’s go. You’re not coming back here. We’re going to have a talk about this at home.”
“I’ve got her,” Vincent said from the back of the group. “I’ll drive her home.”
For some reason, everyone seemed uneasy about that. She nodded. She would go with Vincent. He would understand, she hoped. She knew the guys would be mad, she knew it. That wasn’t what she was upset about.
She had lost control. She had just beaten a prisoner who had no one protecting him. She had known she could legally get away with it. No one would arrest her. The handcuff was only on her wrist, a dangling reminder, because they had to inhibit her magic to make her stop.
She hadn’t lost control like that in a very long time.
“Come on, Sawyer.” Vincent gently grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the center of the group. Her hands were shaking now, so she just held herself tighter.
“I don’t-”
“I know what happened. We’ll talk about it in the car.” He kept leading her. Out of the hallway, past the front desks, out into the parking lot. He had brought his own car for the trip and opened the passenger’s side door for her. He helped her in and waited for her to have her seat belt on before he went to the other side. When he was in, he turned the car on before fishing in his pocket. “Those are Elijah’s. Here.” He pointed out a specific key on a small keyring. “This one.”
She took it and undid the cuff on her wrist as he put his seatbelt on. She held onto all of it as he pulled them out of the parking spot and left the prison behind them.
“We all knew you were dealing with some anger issues after we discovered Axel was free. I thought you were focused and dealing with it better. What happened?”
“You know, Vincent. He made a comment. There’s been so much. I need to know what he can do. I need to know how. I can’t keep failing. I can’t fail again, not this mission, not now.” She shook her head. “I figured I would talk to him today. He would tell me or he wouldn’t, then I would tell you guys that I already tried any leads through him. I never thought…”
“So, last night, you were just pretending everything was okay?” He sounded hurt.
“Like you don’t do the same,” she snarled. “Like you don’t just keep focused on the case like nothing else is wrong. Like you don’t hide it all.”
He had no response to that. She knew he wouldn’t. They were both hiding all of it, thinking of everything else. As long as the case was moving, they were fine. But the case wasn’t moving anymore, and after twenty-four hours, she knew they were both itchy and angry. She knew that since the rest of the team was fine, they had nothing to worry about for a second. At least the team having problems kept their minds off Axel and how they had to get him.
“We can’t do this, you and I,” he finally said, a heavy sigh at the end. “So we’re going to have a talk. Just me and you.”
“We’ve had a few of those,” she reminded him.
“Not since the funeral,” he fired back. “And everything else we’ve talked about has been the case. So we’re going to talk now. About this. You told me that day to take it one step at a time and that day, it mattered.”
“And we’ve been doing that. I don’t see how that matters now.”
“I’m just saying, we had that discussion then. You taught me some good lessons about grief that day. You then forced me to step back and process things better. It wasn’t easy. None of this is easy. Now we’re going to have another talk, and hopefully we’ll both feel better for it.”
She nodded. Fine, she would talk to him.
“First, you want to defeat Axel for every reason I do. It’s our past, and it keeps coming back. He’s done terrible things to us, terrible things to people we care about. He’ll never stop. We both know that. The entire team knows that. It’s why they’re seeing this through to the end.” Vincent glanced at her for a split second before refocusing on the road. “But I think we both need to let go of the rage.”
“For what?” she demanded. “What else could I feel when it comes to him? And when you figure out how to get over it, let me know.”
“I think we need to remain as impartial as we can. I think it’s the only thing that’s going to keep us from doing things that could ruin us. Like today, Sawyer. We just got done telling Quinn that he can’t go too far. That we can’t become monsters-”
“I’m already a monster!” she roared, slamming a fist into the door. “I’m already one. No, I would never let Quinn become one. Or Jasper, Zander, and Elijah. None of them. Not even you. But I’m already one. I do this.”
“And it eats you alive every time you say it!” he snapped. “Every time you say it, you are angry, and guilty for it. You are not a monster, Sawyer Cambrie Matthews. You are a viciously protective woman who is willing to do anything to protect the people you love, and yes, that is admirable. It’s something I love about you, but this…Sawyer, beating Naseem is going to make you a monster. A man who is already doing his time, caught and defeated. He hasn’t put up any fight since you captured him, since you stopped him from killing Thompson. He knows his fate. Beating him is going to make you the monster, Sawyer, and for what? The ability to do what the Triad could? That’s not a skill to protect. That’s a skill to kill.”
“Kill the other guy first,” she mumbled.
“No.”
“Vin-”
“No, Sawyer. I’m not letting you go that far. Not anymore. You…you’ve been taught better. You told me not to let Axel destroy me, and we’ve come close a couple of times. Trying to rush into the third raid without Zander, pushing as hard as we have. But our team cares, and they keep pulling us all back. Because Axel doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve to win by letting us fall apart on our own.”
Tears filled her eyes as she leaned over to put her head down nearly to her knees. She hated how her words were thrown back at her. She hated she could give the lesson but not follow it.
“He doesn’t deserve you doing this to yourself anymore. We’re going to do this as a team. You aren’t alone anymore. Stop trying to be the solo fighter. Stop trying to think you can take everything on yourself. You don’t deserve
to carry all this weight anymore. It’s breaking you too. This is the team’s job, with you as a member of the team. You don’t need to keep hurting yourself anymore. We’re strong enough to carry this with you.”
“I’m sorry.” She had nothing else to say. She knew he was right. Everything, this team, how much she loved them. That made her want to keep them forever, not just together as their team but with her. Her hate for Axel, her terror of him coming back and hurting them…that drove her to work alone, to take it all on herself. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
“Let’s get home and just take the day to ourselves,” he whispered gently.
She reached out to his dash and turned the music on. Italian opera, his favorite. As she listened to it, she realized he’d done the right thing before the mission to deal with the Druid. Now, when she heard those beautiful words, she thought of Vincent. She thought of them when they went to the Met right before getting pulled down to the Amazon. She thought of countless times they laughed over something or just danced privately in his office. Private moments. Vincent and she were much more private about their love than the other guys tended to be.
“I always did really like this song,” she said, turning it up a little more.
“It’s a lovely piece,” he agreed. “You can change it-”
“No, this is our song,” she explained. “You told me not to let him take everything I love from me, not even the smallest parts. This is ours now.”
“And so is this case. It’s ours.”
She leaned back from the dash, stopping her distraction of fiddling with the volume. “Yeah, it’s ours,” she agreed. “Me and you. The team. This is ours.”
She didn’t say the exact words, but it was a promise to let the team help her carry the load.
He pulled them into the garage when they made it back home. She had figured the rest of the team would have followed, but she didn’t see them. When she inquired with Vincent about it, he smiled.
A Night of Redemption (The Redemption Saga Book 5) Page 25
