“Did I do this right?” Quinn’s tone remained harsh.
“Yeah.” Elijah grinned at him, and she watched Quinn’s shoulders relax completely. Every muscle relaxed, really. She hadn’t realized just how tense he was. “Now we just need to test the internet and electricity.”
“I let all those people in to handle it,” Quinn growled.
“We’ll get it figured out.” Elijah reached out and patted Quinn’s shoulder. After a moment, Quinn closed the distance between them, and Sawyer only watched the two of them quietly. “I think we should get a TV in here, a couple of couches. What do you think?”
“You say that like I am going to be up here,” Quinn huffed out. “You are here now, you do it.”
“Yeah, I’ll stop bothering you with this.” Elijah was still grinning, but Sawyer felt like she was missing whatever he found so humorous. He looked over to her. “But seriously, Sawyer, you want a TV in here?”
“I don’t really care… I can just buy one of my own, if I want one.”
“Well…” Elijah nodded slowly and looked back to Quinn, who held his hands up and left the room before anything more could be said. Elijah pulled his cowboy hat off, frowning at her. “We locked you out of your accounts.”
She finally blew a gasket. The lid on her temper popped off as it had been pressurizing since the moment Elijah put the handcuffs on her.
“I’m going to fucking kill all of you,” she growled.
“Now, wait a minute,” Elijah pleaded. “Our handler, James, made the decision. Even Vincent had thought to leave you with your money, but our handler made the final call.”
“I have accepted being dragged out of my house, away from my life, being sold out by my only friend,” Sawyer growled. “And you tell me now that I’m also poor?!” She ended in roar. “Who the fuck is James?!”
“Yeah.” Elijah gave a small but sympathetic shrug. “Sawyer, look, we’ll take care of everything-”
“Just. Get. Out.” She snarled, pointing back to the door. Holy shit, I’m poor. She pulled out her wallet as Elijah closed the door behind him. She opened it and counted her cash. A thousand in Benjamins. She always kept a steady amount on her in case of emergencies. She also had thrown a few grand into the bag she had packed, but now she was increasingly paranoid that money would be gone when she got the bag back.
“Fuck me,” she growled to herself. “I can’t believe this.” She sank on the edge of the bed, opening and closing her hands. She needed to resist the urge to break the cute furniture around the room. She reminded herself that they didn’t need to do this for her. They didn’t need to make a cute little room in their home. They didn’t need to keep her out of prison.
It was a sticky situation. Prison wasn’t safe from Axel. He was well known for staging breakouts or murders within prison walls. Being here might be safer, but it also put another IMPO team in danger; and she had too many dead bodies littering her past. She didn’t want to add Jasper and Zander to that trail of corpses. She didn’t want to add any of them to it.
But damn, here they were, dedicated to taking down one of the craziest men on the planet. Sawyer looked down at her left hand and felt a kernel of hope. A crazy feeling that maybe the IMPO could actually do it this time.
She was going to get her fucking money back, though. That shit was just unacceptable.
“Sawyer?”
She looked up to her door at the sound of Zander’s voice.
“Come in,” she called out, trying to leave her thoughts. He stepped in with two bags, neither being the one she packed.
“I figured you would want to help bring up all your stuff.” He grinned at her. “We have all your clothing from Charlie’s before we left, so there’s a lot of bags waiting to get brought up.”
“Yeah, I’ll go down,” she stood up and frowned at her stiffness. How long had she been sitting there? She waited for him to put the two he had down on her new bed and left with him. They waited for Elijah and Vincent to come up the narrow stairs, each holding two more. “Damn, I do have a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah, and you lied to me,” Elijah laughed. “You didn’t pack all of your panties.”
She groaned and punched his shoulder, making him grunt in pain.
“Alright,” Vincent hissed. “Both of you quit this.”
“Yes sir, Boss man,” Elijah laughed. “Tell her to stop hitting me.”
“Stop being a pervert and I might,” she growled.
“Seriously, Elijah,” Zander snarled. “Keep your fucking thoughts to yourself.” She turned to Zander and shoved him, making his green eyes widen with shock.
“I don’t need you backing me up,” Sawyer snapped. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Are you serious?” Zander glared at her. “After everything, you are going to tell me to mind my business? Sawyer-”
She turned and jogged down the stairs, ignoring whatever he had to say. She didn’t need him playing protector with Elijah. She didn’t need him to do it when they were teens, she damn sure didn’t need it at twenty-four. She could handle Elijah.
She made it to the garage before Zander was able to catch up.
“Fine,” he grumbled angrily at her. “It’s not my place. I won’t get involved like that, happy?”
“Yes,” she said curtly. She grabbed two bags from the open trunk of the Range Rover. Only three left, so she grabbed an extra, thinking Zander could get the last two. One of the bags she carried was her personal bag, and she didn’t want their hands on it anymore.
“Can I at least carry the extra bag?” He asked her, his face tight. There was the Zander she remembered. Trying to be helpful and angry all at the same time.
“No,” she grinned, walking away from him. Jasper was sitting in the dining room as she passed by. She had missed him the first time. “How was the drive?”
“Good. You like the room?” He looked up from the book he was nose-deep in.
“Yeah. I met Quinn too.”
“Good,” he nodded as she looked back to Zander, who was stuck in the door to the garage, waiting for her to move. She did, ignoring him and making the long climb back up to her new room. Vincent and Elijah were still there, opening bags and putting stuff away for her.
“I would thank you for that, but I would also like you to stop touching my stuff,” she told them with a polite sweetness. She could have sworn Elijah paled a little.
“Forgive me,” Vincent raised his hands, “my mother just raised me to be helpful to guests, and I figured since we packed it, we could help unpack it.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” She smiled. That was actually nice. Strangely, it made her a little uncomfortable. “I appreciate that though.”
“Alright, we’ll be out of your way.” Vincent grabbed Elijah and led him out, taking Zander with them, as well. She dropped the bags she was holding and closed the door. She noticed there was no lock. That was going to have to change, and fast.
She opened her personal bag and took inventory. Only half of it was underwear, she knew that. Her two vibrators were wrapped exactly as she had placed them, so that was good. A small set of black throwing knives were untouched, and now she wondered why she had even brought them.
Because if I had left them out, she thought, they would have found them. And then I would have probably gone to prison.
She ran a hand over them and left them in the bag, so she could find a hiding place for them last. The next item she looked for was also there, her small box of photos. She took that out and put it on the desk. That box also had tons of secrets, but they were more personal in nature. She would rather they learn those secrets than find the knives. She really preferred that none of her secrets came out, but she needed something easy for them to find if they snooped. If she was too secretive, they would look for other hiding places.
Her laptop was next. She didn’t know if she was allowed to have it, but she hadn’t been willing to leave it behind. She placed it on desk next to the box of phot
os.
Last but not least, her money. It was all there, and she knew she would hide it with the daggers, wherever that would be. She looked around the bedroom a little more and then rolled her eyes upwards.
Beams. She was in the attic. Oh, this was perfect.
She grabbed the case holding the throwing knives and climbed onto her bed. She took a deep breath and remembered she was going to have to get up there without her powers. It wasn’t the highest vertical jump she had ever done, but the bed made it harder, not easier; and she didn’t want to make too much noise by jumping on it.
She got it on the second try, her hands latching onto the lowest beam. It left her feet nearly three feet from the bed, and she pulled herself up. She was thankful for all the upper body training Charlie had recommended for her.
Once she was up, she straddled the beam and opened the folding case again. Five throwing knives were all she kept her old weapon set. The rest was hiding… in Atlanta. Holy shit. She closed the case and put her face in her hands. She had chosen this city because she refused to work here. Because she was never active in the city, they had never thought to look there for her or for her things.
She had buried all of her past in Atlanta. The last place she’d seen Jasper and Zander, the last place people would look for her stuff as Shadow.
She laid the daggers carefully on another beam and then crept on the balls of her feet to another section of the tall ceiling and stashed her cash.
She swung down carefully over her new dresser and tried her best to keep her controlled fall silent. This would have been such a simple task with her magic.
She groaned when she got off the dresser and looked to her other bags. She turned to the second door in her attic bedroom and opened it. A closet. Perfect. She at least had a place to throw most of this without worrying who saw it.
14
SAWYER
Sawyer lay in bed long after dinner, frowning to herself. She couldn’t sleep at all. She hated trying to sleep in new places. She also needed a shower and forgot to ask where the bathroom was on the second flood. The only bathroom she had found in the house had been on the first floor, near the living room, and it didn’t have a bath or shower in it.
She pulled on her gray sweats and a tank top. She usually slept in the nude, so getting a lock on her door was becoming a major priority.
She quietly crept out of her room and down to the second floor. She heard voices from a couple of the rooms, but further listening told her it was televisions, not talking. She didn’t know where to go, and that made this awkward. She would need to knock on a door and ask.
She picked the one closest to her staircase that had noises coming from it. She rapped on it three times, crossed her arms, and waited.
The door opened to reveal a shirtless Zander. He wore low-slung black sweats, and she looked him over in shock and appreciation. He’d been fit when he left, but now? He was ripped. She had a decent six pack, but she wanted to know how he had fucking eight. He had two revolvers tattooed pointing down that V men got from working out. Sure, he was covered in ink, but those guns were pointing to place Sawyer suddenly wanted to visit.
When she finally looked up at his face, away from the V that led beneath the sweats, Zander was smirking at her, leaning in the door frame. That V had been doing awful things to her—things Zander was not allowed to do to her anymore.
“Sawyer,” he stated simply. She could hear the small hint of amusement and arrogance. Zander had always been a bit of a ladies’ man.
“Where’s the bathroom I can use?” She tapped her foot as he looked her over slowly. “I want to get a bath or shower in before bed.”
She looked down at herself and groaned. She’d pushed her breasts up, making her lack of a bra obvious. She placed her arms over her tits and waited for an answer.
“Zander. Bathroom.”
He looked lazily back to her face and nodded.
“Follow me,” he stepped past her and went across the hall. He pushed the door directly across from his open and revealed a fairly decent bathroom with a shower and a tub. “There you go. “
“Thanks,” she waved him away, so she could get everything she needed. She needed towels and a change of clothes. She wasn’t going to walk around in a towel in this house.
He stayed in the bathroom’s door, not letting her pass. They were nearly chest to chest. She took a moment to really let it sink in that he wasn’t a teenager anymore. Neither of them were dumb teenagers anymore.
“Sawyer,” he mumbled. He was too close, much too close. “I missed you and-”
“Leave it, Zander. I’m not doing this right now.” She didn’t look up at him. He was practically talking into her hair, so looking up would put their faces inches apart. “I just want to get clean, not talk about teenage hormones.”
“Alright, but we will.” He stepped away and went back to his room. She heard the click of a lock and sighed heavily.
“No, we won’t,” she whispered to herself.
She got everything ready as hot water filled the tub. She sank in and moaned happily. It wasn’t her tub with the jets, but damn, it felt good. A few candles that smelled nice and she would be in heaven.
She kept thinking about Zander, what he had looked like, and felt the itch that needed to be scratched. Oh, no. That was not okay. Elijah was one thing. She didn’t know him, and even that had ended up with her getting arrested.
Well, not arrested, but she was still a criminal stuck in a house full of IMPO agents.
She tried to think of anything or anyone else, but as she soaked in the tub, she only came to one realization.
They were all hot as fuck. She at least had fantastic eye candy for the remaining short existence she was going to have until Axel found her. She might even have a good time before it happened, as stupid of an idea as that was.
She did the only thing she could—she laughed until she cried.
She was so fucked.
She dipped her thick hair into the water and sighed as she surfaced. Twenty-four hours ago, she had been getting ready for another standard Friday Fight Night. She should have known LA and what happened wouldn’t just disappear, but she hadn’t been expecting this.
When she was done, she rose and grabbed a towel that she had waiting. She wrapped her hair first, deciding that it was too late in the evening to give it a blow dry. She dried the rest of herself and put on her clean clothes.
By the time she was back in her new room, it was nearly midnight. A howl rang out, and she looked out her window to see the woods beyond the house. When a second wolf joined, she raised an eyebrow. At the sound of a third, she realized that magic was involved in this. Wolves didn’t live in this part of the country, only coyotes, but those were definitely wolves out there.
The midnight serenade continued as she set her laptop up. She didn’t use the Wi-Fi for the house, instead she plugged in a USB with a program that allowed her to use the internet without being charged. She didn’t have a Facebook or anything like that, but she did have some things she needed to check out.
She typed in the address to the Dark Web site that she normally got her jobs from. She had avoided looking at it for a couple of weeks, but now it was time to see what was waiting for her out in the world, since she was no longer sheltered in New York.
She clicked through the chats, keeping an eye out for any names she knew. Then she stumbled on it. Talyn had been active in the last… twenty-four hours. Talyn was one of Axel’s closest… friends? She snorted softly at the thought. Axel didn’t really consider any of them friends, but the top, most trusted members did get special privileges and freedoms that Axel didn’t allow others.
She didn’t find anything interesting about his activity or posts. She ended up finding three other Ghosts from Axel’s inner circle as well, but none of them had much to their activity either. She closed her laptop and leaned back.
She grabbed the box of photos and immediately put it back down. She didn�
�t need to go through those tonight, there was no reason to see those memories.
She gave up on trying to be even remotely productive and moved to her bed. She didn’t know when she fell asleep, but eventually, the darkness claimed her. Like normal, it wasn’t peaceful.
She woke to something else in her bed. She could feel the weight of it, but she couldn’t identify the what… or who. She opened her eyes slowly and focused on what she could hear. Even breathing. A who, then. Which one of these assholes decided it was okay for them to get in her bed? How had she not woken up and noticed?
She rose slowly and went still when she saw her bedmate. Oh fuck. The dark gray wolf was obscenely large, and behind it was a smaller, lighter gray one. The smaller one lifted its head and watched her while the darker one just bared its teeth.
The intelligence in those eyes told her something important.
“Shade! Scout!” Quinn’s harsh voice yelled. Both wolves were up in a beat and ran for her door, leaving her shock. She woke up to wolves in her bed. How did they get into the room?!
She started shaking a little as she got out of her bed. What. The. Fuck. She walked slowly to close her door, and took a long, shaky breath as she found clothes to wear. It was Sunday, so unless they had plans, she would be staying sweats and a tank. She frowned. No, not sweats. It was too hot for that. She found some gym shorts and pulled those on instead, making sure to wear a bra this time before leaving the room.
She made her way downstairs, keeping a wary eye on the halls in case the wolves were back. The intelligence in the wolves’ eyes made it obvious they were bonded to a Magi, but she didn’t know the magic signature of the guys around her well enough to identify which one it was. Her first guess was Quinn since he had called them.
The guys were all sitting in the dining room, and sure enough, both wolves flanked Quinn with their own bowls on the floor.
“Good morning,” she said cautiously, her eyes on the huge wolves. “They were in my room when I woke up…” Quinn looked up to her and his ice-blue eyes narrowed.
A Life Of Shadows Page 14
