The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  THE

  FOUND

  Cole McCade

  A CROW CITY NOVEL

  Copyright © 2016 by Cole McCade

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher / author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at the address below.

  Cole McCade / Xen Sanders

  blackmagic@blackmagicblues.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  TMZ, Maytag, Saran Wrap, Coleman, Kevlar, Dexter, Hannibal, Google, Facebook, Chianti, Wal-Mart, Kool-Aid, Charlie Brown, Transformers, Pontiac Firebird, Terminator, Sailor Moon, Goodwill, Sharpie, Bambi, Jack Skellington, Taser, American Idol, Harley Quinn, The Joker, Popeye, Microsoft

  For everyone who’s ever been broken by someone else’s hands—

  but found the strength in your own to pick up the pieces.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Trigger Warning: A Word from the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Crow City Series

  Other Books by Cole McCade

  Writing as Xen Sanders

  TRIGGER WARNING: A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  THIS BOOK DOES NOT ACCURATELY represent BDSM.

  The tenets and practices of BDSM center around safe, sane, and consensual, with trust and respect between the Dominant and the submissive paramount to any BDSM interactions; often it’s the submissive who has the true power, when how much they give up to their Dominant is, in the end, their choice and at their discretion. That’s not what takes place in this book, and it should never be seen as an example of BDSM—or an example of an exciting relationship.

  The hero in this book is a disturbed, psychologically damaged individual who takes his damage out on others and has serious control issues. In a kink scenario, that makes him dangerous. In a relationship, that makes him a potential abuser. In any situation, it makes him a rapist. What is depicted here is not a D/s relationship, but a broken man engaging in a particular sort of kink play in a situation involving dubious consent. Enjoy it in the context of fantasy. Don’t let it bleed into reality.

  If you’re considering trying BDSM, please do research into the BDSM community and find a long-term practitioner to teach you the core tenets of safe, sane, and consensual (SSC); you can also find great resources online from respected experts on the subject. And if you’re a member of the BDSM community, please know that I mean no disrespect and appreciate you indulging this deviation into fantasy.

  Like The Lost, this book may contain triggering scenes—this time centered around emotional abuse, violence, and non-consent. There are also a few instances of ableist and homophobic language, though it’s used to depict the impact and harm it can have on people. If you feel you may be triggered by this, if you feel reading this may hurt you, please step away and focus on self-care above all. There’s nothing wrong with walking away from a book that triggers you. It may be “just a story,” but stories have the power to harm, and I would never want you to harm yourself.

  As always…be good to yourselves.

  -C

  PROLOGUE

  SHE HAD ALWAYS KNOWN IT would come to this.

  Willow stared at the blood on her hands and tried to breathe. She couldn’t get enough air; her breaths caught up against a block in her throat, each one filled with the taste of copper and salt and something tinny and mortal and red.

  God, why was it so red?

  Color so bright, so crisp. Everything was too stark: the press of icy concrete against her knees and the crushing weight of his trembling body across her lap, the cold rush of the air and the hot bleeding spill soaking her thighs, the tiny particles of dust drifting like sun-motes through the pale lamplight, the brimstone-metal scent of gunpowder, the screech of skidding tires outside.

  But what consumed her most was the red.

  She’d never seen anything so violently red before—as if his blood was a special kind of red that twisted the eye until she couldn’t quite focus. As if her retinas didn’t want to process it; as if she could block it out, make it unreal, a shimmer-burn double image that covered her hands in glistening, dripping gloves. She’d thought it would be hot. Sticky. An old memory—a memory of another Willow, another self she’d tried to forget—remembered stickiness and long, slick drips and a burn like crimson fire.

  But this red was watery and cool and strangely tight, and raised goosebumps on her skin.

  It matted in the fine translucent hairs on the backs of her knuckles, turning bright, soft copper into crimson. Somehow that was the worst. Like those little hairs would always be dirty, and—if she survived this night—in every day and every week and every year to come, every time she thought she’d finally washed herself clean…she’d find another filmed bit of red, crusted in the arch between hair and skin.

  She hated the color red, and everything it meant. She always had. She always would. Every time she saw red, it meant losing everything she had ever loved.

  How had everything fallen apart so quickly?

  You made this happen, her nasty side whispered. Her ugly side. You did this. Dirty thing, dirty thing.

  She curled her fingers into fists; the drying blood stretched and crackled over her skin like when she’d been a little girl and had let glue dry on her fingers so she could peel it off again. She’d never be able to peel this off. Never be able to lift it away, sloughing it like a second skin and taking her sins with it. This was her fault.

  And she should have known better.

  From the moment she’d met him, her life had been the toss of a coin. Give or take. Truth or lies. Right or wrong. Love or hate. Live or die.

  Stay…or leave.

  And from the moment he’d bound her in this deal with his devil’s tongue, she’d known she would have to choose. Now his blood was on her hands, her fingers shaking, pain a razor’s weeping slice inside her chest, the sound of sirens growing closer and closer—their screams the cries of baying hounds on the hunt, wild with the scent of blood and closing in. Red and blue strobed through the narrow windows: a warning, a threat, a metronome flashing out the beat of her heart, and yet still she remained paralyz
ed.

  She didn’t know what to do. The wrong choice could kill him. Could kill her. But every second she waited brought the answer closer and closer, until it wouldn’t be her choice but the choice of men with guns and handcuffs and no interest in asking questions, in learning the truth, in understanding the darkly beautiful man who looked up at her with his face a mask of pain and pleading and need, flashing lights drawing out the stark lines of his cheekbones, his full lips smeared in heart’s-blood red, calling to her even now. Plucking the strings of her heart until they tangled, binding her in hopeless knots, keeping her chained while he slipped further and further away.

  No. No. Not like this. She wasn’t ready to let go.

  But she couldn’t live this way.

  “Choose,” he rasped, labored and gasping, a broken growl. “We don’t have much time.”

  No. Yes. No. I won’t, I can’t, I need…I need… Her tongue twisted around the words, and if she opened her mouth they would fly out in a strangled scream of sheer, terrified madness. Her eyes burned, blurred. She couldn’t think, not when everything inside her was being pulled apart by two opposing forces, yin and yang with her caught in the no-man’s-land in between, where only one question mattered:

  Keep him, or let him go.

  I…I need…

  I need you.

  And that terrifies me.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I can’t, I don’t know what you want, please—”

  “Tell me.”

  She turned away, pressing her face into hands wet with crimson and filled with the coppery scent of a life taken, of blood spilled.

  “I need you to say it,” he snarled. “I cannot do it for you. For once in your life…”

  She closed her eyes. She couldn’t stand it but he wouldn’t stop, cutting her open in that way only he could, tearing into her deepest weaknesses and spitting acid in the bleeding wound.

  “For once in your life, Willow…choose for yourself.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  WILLOW STARED DOWN AT THE phone, and told herself to make the call.

  In the slanting golden bars of three p.m. sunlight, The Track was quiet: filled with nothing but a few day drinkers holding down their stools, and the stale scent of old smoke. The owner leaned behind the bar, staring off at nothing. Or…Willow thought he was staring at nothing. Maybe he was staring at her, and judging her for sitting here with her palms sweaty and her nerves prickling little sharp needles along her arms. The bar was hot as a suckling mouth, but still she was cold as a December morning—and something in that eerie false eye of his spoke to her as if he knew. She could never be sure where he was looking, with that glass eye that made her think of a green marbled fish bowl. She thought his name was Gary, but she’d never had the courage to ask. The few times she’d ever come here, he’d looked at her like she was missing something; something he hoped to find in every new face that came through the door.

  It’s not in me, she thought. Whatever you’re looking for…it’s not in me.

  There’s nothing in me. I’m too small.

  I’m too small to hold anything at all.

  She was too small to make this phone call. There wasn’t space enough inside her to fit both her courage and her pride, and her pride said making this call would make her even smaller still. A beggar. A pauper. This sad, pathetic epitome of failure to launch who couldn’t even get her feet off the ground, let alone reach for something above herself.

  Maxi’s arm brushed hers, her thick, soft warmth shifting at Willow’s side. She swilled her beer straight from the bottle, propped her chin in a heavy hand, and eyed Willow with her gaze gleaming yellow as a canny old owl’s and the witch-marks along her face swirling into new patterns with every purse of her lips and arch of her brow. The pattern of dots corkscrewed into a spiral now as she twisted her mouth, and the tattooed lines sank into the dimple plunging deep into her dark brown skin.

  “It ain’t gonna dial itself, you know,” Maxi said.

  Willow winced. “Mn.”

  “Want me to do it?”

  “No. Yes? Maybe. No.”

  She pressed her thumb over the listing for Devon West in her phone’s address book, but didn’t lift. As long as she didn’t lift, didn’t complete the gesture, the touchscreen wouldn’t actually click and she could avoid this for a little longer. Her breaths shook. She slid her thumb up and down the slick screen, making the rows of names and numbers scroll, but still didn’t lift.

  “I think I need to be drunk for this.” She laughed; it hurt like swallowing scissors, this cold and cutting thing in her throat. “I can’t afford to get drunk for this. That’s the problem.”

  Maxi snorted. “I’ll buy you a round of tequila if you’ll stop mooning and damned well do it.”

  Maybe-Gary scowled, swiveling his head toward them. “Goddammit, Maxi, stop nagging the girl and let her do what she’s gonna do.”

  Maxi thrust out both middle fingers. “Shove it up your hole, you crotchety old shit.”

  “Love you too.”

  “Love ain’t free, asshole. And you ain’t got the collateral.” Maxi eyed him, then pointedly twisted her stool to give Gary her back and Willow her ample, sagging front. “Don’t know why I put up with his shit, I swear. Talk to me, girl. Why you so scared? Sure it ain’t nothing tequila can’t fix?”

  “That’s not…I mean…” Willow swallowed. She wanted to say I’m not scared, but it would be a lie. “No tequila. I’m calling. I’m calling.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t see that finger moving.”

  Willow wrinkled her nose at Maxi, expelled a heavy breath…and lifted her thumb off the touchscreen. That little pop-click of a button press chirped out of the phone, before the screen folded up into the dialing notification. The faint sound of ringing came through the speaker, and—heart doing a little jitter-dance that wanted to hope but couldn’t stand to be crushed—she lifted the phone to her ear and prayed he would pick up.

  It took six rings before the line clicked and a drowsy voice rumbled over the phone, deep and with an odd rawness that made her wonder if he’d been shouting, crying…or if by now, Devon West was nothing but a permanently open wound.

  She wouldn’t blame him.

  All of Miriam’s children bled in their own way, one way or another.

  “Yo,” Devon slurred.

  Willow sighed. Just like Dev to sleep until three in the afternoon. He’d probably been out partying all night, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he was wiping glitter off his face—and out of other unmentionable places—while scrubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Hi, Dev. It’s Wil.”

  His voice instantly perked. “Big sis. Hey. What’s up?”

  “Um.”

  My life is falling apart and I don’t know how to put it back together?

  I made some really bad decisions and I can’t take them back?

  I messed everything up, how’s that?

  That’s what Mr. van Zandt had said to her. That she’d messed everything up. No, he’d said fucked up, called her a lying little whore, and for a moment she’d thought he would hit her before he’d slammed out of the room to call the police.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m not doing so great. How’re you?”

  “Same as always. Nothing ever changes around here. It’s all assets, portfolios, and day drinking.” The sound of glass clinking came over the line. “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced up at Maxi. At Gary. Both watched her, Gary with a sort of baleful interest, Maxi with curious warmth and that cloud of amused cynicism that radiated from the tips of her fingers to the swinging beads laced into her hair. Willow flashed a faint smile, then slid off the stool and slipped outside. Late summer heat fell over her like a furnace’s breath, and she leaned against the wall outside the bar and watched the traffic go by.

  “I…” She wet her lips, her throat too small to let the words pass. “I hate aski
ng—”

  “You need money.”

  “Ouch.” She closed her eyes against the glare winking off passing cars in flashes of quickburst silver, as if hiding from those little stabs of light could hide her from the stab of guilt, too. She tried to tell herself Dev was young, barely twenty-one, and that made him careless, reckless with his emotions and others’, his resentment running hot—but it wouldn’t hurt so much if she wasn’t already bent and straining under the weight of her own shame. “You know I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t desperate.”

  “You could try calling to talk sometimes. Is that bothering me, too?”

  “That’s not fair, Dev. I haven’t had time. Not with work, college, Dad—”

  “Yeah.” He made a soft, distressed sound. “Yeah, you do have all that. And I have no goddamned clue what that’s like. I’m sorry. I—I shouldn’t be such a dick.”

  “When your big sister is a freeloading mooch—”

  “You’re not that,” he said sharply. “It’s not your fault how the dice fell.”

  “Whose fault is it?”

  “I don’t know. Mom’s, maybe.” He sighed. “Maybe no one’s. Look, how much do you need?”

  Willow bit her lip. Her pride rankled, but she wasn’t asking for herself. If it was for herself, she’d have struggled and starved and done whatever it took, but she had someone else to think about.

  She always had someone else to think about.

  “Five thousand,” she whispered. The number stuck in her craw, ugly and foul-tasting. “That should be enough.”

  “Fuck me, Wil. Five thou? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No!”

  “What happened?”

  “I…I lost my job.” It came out defiant, daring him to call her on it. “About three months ago. And no one’s biting on my applications. I’ve been trying to make things stretch while I look, but with Dad’s meds, his treatments…they cut the water off two days ago, Dev. And we haven’t had power for a week and a half. I don’t even know how I’ll make the mortgage on the house this month.”