The Redemption Saga Box Set

by Kristen Banet

  They spent the rest of the drive in silence. Jasper actually had the journal on his desk for her. He would give it to her tomorrow. He made that promise to himself, to give it to her and hope she used it. It wouldn’t help him, but it was the start of progress. In the meantime, he knew what he could talk about that was something not Sawyer.

  “What’s going on with that murder in Texas?” he asked Elijah. Elijah took a deep breath and groaned.

  “It’s a really Anti-Magi area. They aren’t going to ask the WMC to send the IMPO in. Whoever gets sent will need to contend with the fact that they will have resistant locals for the entire thing,” Elijah explained. “It’s going to be us.”

  “Yup!” Zander piped up. “Because fuck us!”

  “Is it definitely a Magi kill?” Jasper continued, firing off another question.

  “It’s definitely a Magi body,” Elijah growled. That made Jasper accidentally hit the brakes a little too hard. “Yeah, now you see the problem. We’ll be going into an Anti-Magi area to find out who killed off a Magi—if it was a murder. Nobody is going to be helpful.”

  “Fuck,” Zander sighed, quieting down in the back.

  That wasn’t good for any of them.

  They parted ways at their rooms, and Jasper tucked himself in for his first restful night of sleep in weeks, nearly months. But sleep didn’t come quickly, even far from Sawyer. The problem with what was going on was now he didn’t know if all the nightmares were hers… or if some were just his own.

  11

  Sawyer

  The next morning, Sawyer’s head still hurt, and her first goal was to find food, water, and any sort of pill to make the pain go away. She stumbled out of her room after getting decent and made it to the kitchen, groaning at the bright lights.

  “Good morning, Sawyer,” Vincent told her softly as she walked in.

  “Good morning, Vincent,” she greeted him with a muttered, half-cranky tone. He held out a glass of water, and she took it without question. She sipped it as he pulled pills down from a cabinet and handed her three. She took them quickly and drained the water. “Thank you.”

  “I was getting myself some as well,” he whispered. “Come here,” he said, looking a little vulnerable.

  She eyed him carefully and stepped into his space where he had an arm open. He wrapped it around her waist and held her for a moment: a hug.

  “There a reason for this?” she inquired, letting him do it. He had his face in her dark, tangled, wild hair. She needed a shower and a strong brush to tame it after the night they had had.

  “I just needed…” He trailed off and released her. “I’m sorry. About all of it.”

  “Vincent.” She sighed. “Let it go.”

  “Have you? Let it all go?” he asked carefully.

  “Most of it,” she answered honestly. “Some of it’s harder than the rest.”

  “I… yeah, I guess you’re right,” Vincent relented. “I thought this would be more awkward. Like very uncomfortable.”

  She had, too, but it didn’t feel that way. This was most comfortable she’d been with him since they had met. She didn’t think it was the sex that got them to this point, though, or the disastrous chess attempt. It was still a bit awkward, but it was now something she could push through. She also wanted to pretend nothing had really changed between them. Too bad last night was… a revelation. Her body had come alive for him, and she already knew he had accidentally stole a piece of her heart through it all. Just a piece, one she had already known had been holding a soft spot for the Italian. A piece was all it took for her, though. She seemed to give them away like candy, to children, Charlie, old friends, and it seemed, new ones.

  “We finally talked,” she suggested, trying not to mention the sex. “Are you feeling better about all of that?” She didn’t really want to talk about the sex unless he brought it up.

  “I am,” Vincent whispered. “I am. Thank you. For listening and… sharing Henry with me for a moment. I didn’t know how much I needed that. And thank you for listening to me… this morning…”

  “I’m sorry again,” she told him, leaning into his side, shoulder to shoulder. “I should have known that it could happen. I actually crossed Italians off my list because of…”

  “That’s why you rejected me the night we met.” Vincent chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  “Well, that, and I never slept with the other fighters.” Sawyer laughed, then sobered. “Sorry, Vin… about last night. Again.” She felt guilt gnaw at her heart. She’d tried to kill him.

  “Don’t be, not about how you woke up, not about what happened between us. I’m not,” he whispered, looking at her. Her cheeks heated for a moment, and she swallowed, stepping away from him. “But I don’t think it should happen again,” he added gently, looking a bit pained.

  That stung more than it should have. It shouldn’t have stung at all. Sawyer was going to say the same thing, but hearing it from him now, the morning after and sober… it stung a little.

  “And you would be right,” she whispered back, watching Vincent wince. “I’m going to go shower and mentally prepare myself for the hell that’s going to break loose.” Vincent only made a noise in reply. Sawyer still believed he had the easy two team members.

  Then his phone started going off. She stopped and waited for him to answer when he held a hand and frowned.

  “James,” he bit out.

  Silence as Sawyer waited to hear what was going. She jumped up on the counter and kicked her feet around, stealing Vincent’s water to drink it.

  “I’ve got a headache,” Vincent growled. “What do you need?”

  Sawyer caught Texas. Well, that meant she knew what the call was about. This mysterious body out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

  “Tomorrow?” Vincent snapped. “We’re going out tomorrow?” Vincent switched the phone to speaker. “Say that again, James. I have a witness now that will testify in my favor that you drove me mad before I kill you.”

  “There’s a second body out that way, same story. The big guys are deciding to send you out. Sorry, Vincent. This is how it goes, sometimes.”

  Sawyer winced as Vincent let off a string of profanities in Italian.

  “We haven’t even gotten twenty-four hours. I needed more time.” Vincent snarled.

  “We don’t all get what we want, Vin.” James sighed sympathetically. “Who’s the witness you found?”

  “Hi.” Sawyer groaned.

  “Ah, Sawyer! I hope everything is going well for you. Vincent, she’s not going to be able to keep you out of jail the way someone like Jasper can if you kill me. Sorry.”

  Sawyer would have laughed at that, but it was a reality. No one would ever want her on their side in a court of law. The WMC would laugh her out of the room.

  “I mean, Shadow defending a Castello? The world would grind to halt, and you would both get thrown away. So, I’m safe, once again, from your wrath.” Vincent looked at her as James laughed. They both were probably having the same murderous thoughts about James. Sawyer hadn’t spent a lot of time with the man, but she was quickly realizing that he seemed to always have jokes.

  “The last time this came up, Quinn was my witness. He wouldn’t be very helpful, either.” he informed her quietly.

  “Texas tomorrow, huh?” Sawyer asked, looking away from Vincent and down to the phone.

  “That’s right. You guys will have to fly on this short of notice. The jet in Atlanta will be ready for you. Sawyer, it’s the same one you took from New York.” James was shuffling some papers around. “You’ll land in Dallas and pick up a few vehicles. Three Explorers. They’ll be your rides for the entire operation, and the IMPO is paying for them so… don’t break them… or blow them up… or let Elijah race them. Please?”

  “Can do,” Vincent groaned.

  “Where was this murder? And the second?” Sawyer asked, before James or Vincent could try and end the call.

  “Moran, Texas for the
first body…” James trailed off. “The second body is in Albany, Texas.”

  “Damn, Elijah might have a fit,” Vincent mumbled. “We’ll get ready to head out, James. I’ll let the team know.”

  “You know why they are sending you, right?” James asked quietly before Vincent could hang up.

  “Yes,” Vincent sighed. “I know.” Then he hung up on James, and Sawyer stared at him until he sighed again. “They want to throw you out in the field as fast as possible, so you fuck up and they can end you. They weren’t excited when the team threatened them over your freedom. We’re all in the doghouse now.”

  “Makes sense,” Sawyer whispered, jumping down. “I’m going to shower. You can talk to all of them.”

  “Okay,” Vincent said with a grunt, looking more than a little frustrated.

  Sawyer got out of the shower an hour later and poured all her focus into the IMPO handbook. If they were going to try and make her fuck up, the WMC had another thing coming. She’d already been studying it for weeks, but she wanted to brush up on procedure and rights of a probationary agent. She needed to go in without needing the guys to guide her through it constantly. She liked being mildly self-sufficient, and she knew to put the time in to make that happen.

  The hours flew by, and before she knew it, a knock came to the door. She called out for whoever was to come in without looking up.

  “Hey, Sawyer,” Jasper greeted her. She closed the book and looked over. He didn’t have crutches. She looked down to his leg and laughed.

  “Nice leg!” She chuckled, standing up. He lifted it and balanced on his real, right leg to show her the prosthetic. “This is what Elijah’s been working on? He told me that you were just going to get one of the standard simple ones for the night.”

  “Then he lied to you.” Jasper chuckled. “Yeah, he and Zander worked on getting this for me.”

  “It looks cool as fuck,” she told him, grinning. She let him right himself before he lost his balance and looked up to his stormy blue eyes, seeing the happiness shining in them. “You know about the case in Texas, right?”

  “Yeah, I was expecting it,” Jasper said with a shrug. “He told us the moment we got in, before beginning a rant to Elijah about it. Elijah’s not looking forward to going home either.”

  “Home?” Sawyer asked, confused.

  “Elijah is from San Angelo, or rather, the area around it,” Jasper sighed. “He grew up in the sticks about two hours from the second body.”

  “Figures,” Sawyer snorted. She looked him over again and noticed the book he carried. “What’s that?” He held it out to her.

  “A journal,” he said, seeming a bit bashful all of a sudden. “Rather, a dream journal. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.”

  “You should have brought it up sooner,” Sawyer replied glumly, taking the journal from him. “I’m leaking my nightmares to you, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah,” Jasper whispered. “Start recording them, and we’ll see if that helps. I want to talk about maybe dream walking and working with you while your subconscious rules, and a couple other options. But for now… it’ll have to wait until after the case.”

  Sawyer opened and closed her mouth. She considered what she was going to say. She turned, put the journal on the desk and looked down at it. Jasper cared, he really did. She knew that and she…

  “I slept with Vincent,” she choked out, suddenly finding the words much harder to say than she thought they would be. Suddenly, this hurt so much worse, as her heart decided to remind her of everything stirring between her and her two old, sometimes idiotic, friends.

  “Excuse me?” Jasper stumbled over the words.

  “Last night,” she groaned. “We got drunk and started talking about Axel and Henry and, fuck. Yeah, it happened.”

  “We’re not telling Zander,” Jasper mumbled suddenly. “No way. He’ll fucking lose his head.”

  “It’s really not his business, either,” Sawyer snapped, frustrated that Zander’s feelings were so important. She didn’t fucking belong to him. “But he does need to know because everyone on the team is going to know.”

  “Why?” Jasper growled. “Why put him through it?”

  “Because I’m fucking tired of keeping secrets,” Sawyer snarled, “that’s why.”

  Jasper snapped back like she’d slapped him and then nodded. She could tell he was literally biting his tongue and watched him rub his left thigh as if it ached.

  “No more secrets,” Sawyer said again to make sure it was clear. “I’ll tell him.”

  “Let me,” Jasper snapped. “I’ll do it.” He turned to leave and then swung back to look at her. “You and him, huh? You and Vincent? A thing?”

  “No.” Sawyer sighed. He was pissed and confused. She’d hurt him, but she wasn’t going to do the whole ‘keep it a secret until it became too much to bear’ shit again. She wasn’t going to treat them like that. She was going to be better than that, and they deserved better than that. “We both know we fucked up. It happened… fairly spur of the moment and under the influence.”

  “You had a drunk, grief fuck with our CO,” Jasper growled. “I hope it doesn’t happen again. Sawyer, if anyone off the team finds out, they can rip you from us, and there might not be another team willing to keep you. The WMC will lock you up until they need you, for whatever they might need you for.”

  Sawyer winced. Yeah, Vincent was technically the team’s boss. Yup, this couldn’t get much worse. She hadn’t even considered what would happen off the team. She didn’t think Vincent had either. They hadn’t considered much when that kiss happened, only that they could try to steal a night together.

  Some heists were doomed to fail.

  “On top of that,” Jasper paused and released a small, crazed chuckle. “He’s Vincent Castello. He’s Axel’s brother, Sawyer.”

  “Oh, yeah, I fucking figured that one out, thanks,” Sawyer growled, mad at that coming from Jasper. “With no thanks to any of you telling me. I learned in the middle of a meeting before the fucking parking garage was blown to hell, and we all almost died. So, when I say I’m fucking tired of secrets, that’s from all of you, too.”

  “Fuck,” Jasper moaned. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” she mumbled, feeling guilty about hitting him with that. “How was Atlanta?”

  “Awful,” Jasper disclosed. “And none of us got laid.” She rolled her eyes and looked away from him, back to the journal on her desk.

  “I’ll use it. Thanks.” She sighed. “And nice leg.”

  “You’re welcome, and thanks,” Jasper whispered angrily and stormed out of her room. Probably to tell Zander about her escapade in a fit of rage. The damn slamming of the door hurt her ears and her heart.

  She gave it twenty minutes before the hotheaded red-head was in the room to yell at her.

  He never showed up.

  The silence around her hurt, too.

  12

  Quinn

  Quinn sat in the small office feeling closed in. He didn’t like the offices. They were too small, too tight, and had too much stuff in them. Vincent was standing behind his desk, explaining the Texas case to them, and Quinn checked out. They would tell him what to do and when. He didn’t need to follow along with the weird human things. He would offer his own opinion when it was asked for based on his own observations.

  “You did what, Vincent?!” Elijah roared. Quinn was startled enough to nearly fall out of his chair.

  “I didn’t expect you to be so angry,” Vincent muttered.

  “You picked the absolute worst night to do that,” Elijah stressed, and Quinn frowned. What had he missed?

  “To do what?” Quinn asked, and Elijah sighed, looking down at him.

  “He had sex with Sawyer last night,” Elijah said.

  Quinn watched his friend for a long a time, viewing how Elijah was taking that. He had a clenched fist, a sign that he was upset or frustrated. His jaw was set, and he didn’t have any sign of the normal, jov
ial attitude he normally did. Quinn rested a hand on his forearm and tilted his head to the side, trying to pretend to be okay. He held back his own possessive growl, swallowing it before it gave him away.

  “And?” Quinn asked, bringing his eyebrows together. He wasn’t in this fight. He wasn’t going to go there. Sawyer didn’t see him as that sort of male, a male worthy of her affection. He knew that. Modern, civilized females wanted strong and intelligent males, ones that understood them and vice versa.

  Quinn was just starting to enjoy reading for the first time in his life. He was the definition of not fit for a civilized human companion. He already counted himself lucky to have a friend in Elijah, and Elijah was more rugged than most humans. He was lucky to have any of them as friends. Until them, he’d only had his brothers, Shade and Scout.

  “See? Quinn doesn’t mind,” Vincent huffed. Elijah turned a glare on Vincent.

  “You picked the worst night,” Elijah said again. “The worst. I was just fucking asking Zander last night how he really felt about this. He’s not cool with it, by the way.”

  “I didn’t think he would be,” Vincent muttered, looking cross.

  Quinn just looked between them and finally groaned.

  “Is this that stupid, human thing where you seem to think sex and emotions are the same thing?” Quinn asked, rolling his eyes. Vincent coughed, and Elijah gave a small chuckle. Quinn wanted to mate with her, be claimed as hers, but he didn’t pretend to think it would be anything more. He wanted to be owned and used by her more than any female before her.

  Nothing more.

  He didn’t understand the feeling in the pit of his stomach or the ache in his heart. He knew what the concept of feelings were, but he had no idea how to identify most of his own. He knew he was insanely physically attracted to her, much in the way he was with Elijah. Quinn was friends with her in the same fashion as he was the rest of the team.

  This was something else. The idea of not being worthy of her brought on a feeling he’d never encountered before. Humans were complicated, and the emotions Quinn was feeling were a sharp reminder that he was human.