“And what could possibly make this worse?” Vincent demanded, glaring up from his phone, where James could be heard yelling through the line.
“They don’t know we’re all sleeping with her. Small miracles, right?”
“No, they just assume Elijah is,” the Italian snapped. “James didn’t pick up because he’s been called into the main office and was getting his ass chewed out. They want to pull him from the team for this.” Vincent put the phone back to his ear and sighed. “Yeah, James. I’m not sure why they’re trying to do that. They know we’re close to her. They know that. We wouldn’t have done any of this if we wouldn’t have been.” Vincent pulled the phone away from his ear and suddenly, they could all hear James.
“Are any of you sleeping with her? Answer me now and answer me honestly. I can help you hide it but I need to fucking know. I’m in a soundproof room right now. No one else will hear it. Right now, they think it’s Elijah, and I would be inclined to believe them, knowing Elijah, but I already heard her threaten to end something going on with Zander. I chose to ignore that at the time, because of her history with Jasper and Zander. I wasn’t going to stop any of you from dating her, if it came to it. I need to know which one of you is actually with her. I don’t care that someone is dating her, but I can’t keep having secrets between us all. I can’t tell them that she’s not with Elijah unless I know the truth.”
Zander swallowed on a lump of dread. He met Vincent’s eyes.
This was it.
“All of us,” Vincent whispered. Stronger, he said it again. “She’s with all of us.”
The silence was deafening and too long. Zander couldn’t believe it had just been said out loud. To someone who probably didn’t understand, who would never understand.
“We’re all dating her,” he said for Vincent, so their leader didn’t have to repeat himself again. “Me, Vincent, Jasper, Quinn, and yes, Elijah. We’re all…”
“What the actual fuck is going on with all of you?” James snapped. “What the actual hell made you all think any of this was okay? All fucking five of you are dating her? Is she playing you against each other? I’m just…fucking astounded. God damn it.” He hung up.
“Well…” Jasper hadn’t moved. “That could have gone better.”
“Did he really need to know?” Quinn asked, sitting back down as well. “Also, it will be hours before they get back from the city. There’s nothing for us to do until they do.”
“He did need to know, since he was right. He can’t cover for us unless he knows what he’s covering. And he needs to cover, since the press is already under the assumption that the outing she’s had with Elijah is romantic,” Vincent explained. “I…I never considered how he would react to the truth. I never thought we would tell anyone.”
“For you, that surprises me,” Zander mumbled, sinking down into his recliner with the rest of them. “Sit down and finish your drink. Someone turn the fucking news off, too. We don’t need to watch this shit.”
Jasper was the one who grabbed the remote and turned them back to the movie. Zander wasn’t interested anymore. He just stared blankly at the screen, his mind on everything else.
“I should have been ready for this,” Vincent muttered. “I’ve been so distracted with everything else. We knew this was going to happen eventually. And…I should have known James wouldn’t take the news of our romantic situation well. It’s not normal. None of this is normal.”
“It’s…ours,” Quinn cut in. “It doesn’t matter if it’s normal or not. It’s ours. And it’s what we want. Who cares? It’s just sex and dates and our pack.”
“The world will care,” Zander whispered, closing his eyes. He could see the condemnation in the news anchors’ eyes. The hate. The fear. “The world will care,” he repeated weakly.
9
Sawyer
Sawyer pulled away when she felt Elijah’s phone vibrate on her hip. She needed to put some space between them anyway, since she needed to get another drink, but she hadn’t expected it would be because of his phone.
“Someone is calling you,” she whispered to him, smiling. She would make sure it was on silent when they left the bar, that was certain. “Didn’t turn it on silent so you could have the night just with me?”
“Little lady, our jobs are too important for a phone to just go on silent,” he reminded her, as he pulled out his phone. “I mean-oh fuck.” His face went pale in the dimly-lit bar, and he shoved his phone back into his pocket without saying anything.
“What?”
“Come with me,” he demanded. He grabbed her upper arm and she followed him quickly down the stairs, then through the crowd in front of the stage.
“Elijah, where are we going?”
“We need to get somewhere more private.” He sounded harried and frantic. She didn’t like that, but she didn’t know what he saw on his phone to make him this way.
“Is someone trying to kill us? I don’t understand.”
He pushed them into the back kitchen, startling the cooks and other employees. “I need a way out back,” he told them.
“Oh shit, is that her?”
Sawyer felt cold run through her. She looked at who said it: a wide-eyed bartender, staring directly at her. In his hand was a phone.
“It is! Holy shit!” A cook nearly jumped away from her.
“Sawyer, let’s go!” Elijah snapped. “Fuck, who’s calling me now?” He yanked his phone out and answered this time, holding Sawyer next to him. “If any of you take pictures, I’ll fucking break hands, is that clear?”
“There’s no way out the back here,” someone said.
“Elijah?” she asked again quietly. “Did it happen?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Yeah, Vincent, I know what the fuck is going on. We’re trying to find a back way out of the bar, but apparently this place doesn’t follow the fucking fire code and have a second exit. God damn it. We’re going to have to go out the front.”
Sawyer stood in relative shock as the staff all stared at her. No one blinked as Elijah hung up the phone.
“We need to go out the front, then.”
“Why aren’t you in prison?” someone dared to ask her.
Her heart was beating too hard. She hadn’t been ready for this. Minutes ago, she was thinking about how she was excited to get another drink and rub against Elijah’s body back at the hotel like she was a fucking cat in heat.
She just wasn’t ready.
“Because that’s not what was decided,” Elijah snapped. “You’ll learn more when the IMPO and the WMC release a statement to the press, and not a moment fucking sooner. Let’s go, Sawyer.”
There was one good thing about leaving the well-lit back area and kitchen of the bar. One good thing about going back into the crowd. The drunks, the partiers, the revelers, hadn’t looked at their phones, hadn’t seen the news.
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling it in her chest.
“Sawyer, are you okay?” Elijah asked softly, holding her close in the bodies dancing around them. “We need to get out of here.”
“This is the last time I’ll ever stand in a group of people and be unknown. Be normal,” she whispered. “By morning, every Magi on the planet is going to know who I am. I’ll never have a normal day again.”
“Little lady,” he murmured. “We’ll give you as much normal as we can, I promise. I’m sorry.”
“How did this happen?” she asked.
“We’ll talk about it once we get back to my truck and begin driving home.”
She nodded and waved a hand, letting him know to lead the way.
“There’s going to be press outside,” he warned as they got closer to the door. The bouncer there narrowed his eyes on her.
“Get that out of here,” he demanded of Elijah, nodding at her.
“You aren’t very scary so don’t think you can force me or her to do anything,” her cowboy retorted. “Why don’t you just keep your fucking mouth shut, you two-bit sec
urity guard. Probably an IMAS drop out.”
“Fuck you.”
“He’s right,” she snapped. “You aren’t very scary.” That got the pale-faced fear she wanted. She looked back into Elijah’s hazel eyes and nodded again. “I’m ready.”
“That’s a lie, but I’ll ignore it.”
“Thank you.”
There was no being ready for this. Already, just inside the front door, she could hear them: the paparazzi, waiting for her. They knew she and Elijah were in the bar. Which meant someone in the bar had seen her, saw the news, and called it in, gotten everyone’s attention. It was moving so fast, she wasn’t even sure she could process it.
She was outed.
Elijah pushed the front door open and walked out first. Somehow, it was louder outside, in the middle of the screaming reporters, than it had been in the bar with the band. She kept her chin up. She couldn’t show that she was trying to hide now. It was too late for that. She tried not to wince and blink at the flashes from the cameras. She tried to ignore the larger cameras and reporters who were probably live.
“We’re not taking any questions right now. You will all need to wait until the IMPO and the WMC release a statement. It’s also their call if there will be any interviews,” Elijah declared. She just stayed at his side. “Make a path!” he roared.
None of them moved.
She could feel the heat pouring off of him. She heard a yelp and saw a glimpse of a camera drop from someone’s hands. “MAKE A PATH!” he roared again, louder than she’d ever heard him.
This time, with heat lashing out from Elijah, threatening to damage equipment, they moved.
She refused to fall to the urge of running. She wanted to. Now that she saw the way out of the mess, she wanted to take off and run, never looking back. Instead, she kept her chin up and walked with Elijah by her side towards the restaurant and valet parking.
They were followed. They were photographed and recorded. Questions were still thrown at them, but there were so many that she couldn’t make out what was being asked. She caught that they were angry. Some accused her, she figured, of fucking Elijah. Some accused Elijah, she thought, of betraying his government. Some just yelled.
And with every step, Sawyer realized there was no going back to the normal she had come to enjoy. Or the anonymity that she’d relied on. Never again would she be able to separate the two. She was never going to be able to hide in a crowd, glad that no one knew that she was the monster, the killer.
Never again.
“Where’s Rogers?” Elijah demanded as they walked into the restaurant.
“Here. Elijah, I’m so sorry-”
“What the fuck? How did they know? How did they know where we are?”
Elijah was furious, but Sawyer couldn’t muster anger as the overwhelming despair continued to consume her. She’d just lost the last thing she had to hide her, to give her any peace. All of her people, every Magi, were going to hate her now, distrust her.
“I…I had my suspicions and asked a friend if she was really her. I didn’t think it was going to leak from me. I’m sorry!” Rogers was stammering. “It’s not like I’m mad! I don’t care who she is, I was just curious!”
“It’s fine,” she mumbled.
“It’s not,” Elijah growled. “It’s not fucking fine at all. Where’s my goddamn truck?”
“On its way already. I knew you would be coming back for it right away.” Everything about Rogers’ posture and voice was apologetic, frantic, even desperate. He knew what he’d done. “I’m sorry, Elijah, you need to believe me.”
“If we weren’t already over, we are fucking now,” Elijah snarled out like an animal. That, under other circumstances, would have gotten her attention. Rogers must have been a fuck-buddy, someone Elijah went to when he wanted to get laid.
“I know.” There had never been a more defeated sentence. Sawyer could relate. She was feeling more lost in that moment then she had ever felt.
There was no way to be ready for this. How was she ever supposed to look people in the eye anymore?
Elijah pulled her out of the restaurant moments later, and she let him nearly throw her in his truck. When he got in the other side, he laid on his horn, causing the people with cameras and microphones to jump and scramble out of his way. “Sawyer, snap out of it,” he demanded. “I need you with me.”
“I don’t…”
“You handled the team finding out. You handled the IMPO, the WMC, and the IMAS. You can handle this. You hear me? None of these people know you. None of them understand. None of them matter. So snap out of it.”
She looked over at him as he floored it and they jumped into movement.
He was right. She had handled it all so far. She handled the leaders of their people knowing who she was. She handled the men she loved knowing, her friends. Charlie knew. Liam had taken it well. So had her kids.
“Thank you for saying that.” Already she was overcoming the shock. She could feel something strong in her chest begin to form, a wall that she would use to guard her heart from what was about to come. “I mean, what difference does it make? Every time they decry Shadow, they were decrying me. Now they have my name and face. So what?”
“Exactly, little lady.” Elijah grinned at her as he had them practically flying through the back streets of Atlanta. “I’m going to get us on the freeway and gun it. Hold on.”
“Think we’re going to have tails?” she asked, looking out the back window. “Oh, we already do.” There was already a pack of cars and news vans trying to follow them. That wasn’t good.
“Yup, and I need to lose them before I can take us home. We can’t have our house’s location exposed to the press. We’d have to move and it’ll be a fucking pain. We worked hard getting the place we have for Quinn to have the space he needs. It’s our home, ya know? So, while you might be outed, we still have to protect it.”
“I get it,” she replied, watching him try to make distance. She could feel the acceleration as they hit an on ramp for I-75.
“Put a damn seat belt on,” he told her. She nodded and righted herself in the seat, clipping herself in without an argument. “I’m sorry it went this way on us. I can’t fucking believe Rogers would out you, or even figure out who you were.”
“He didn’t out me. He wanted to say he met Shadow and tried to confirm who I was with someone in the IMPO. That person outed me.”
“We’ll fucking find who it was, I swear. Call Vincent and tell him that, what Rogers said.” He took a hand off the steering wheel and pulled out his phone. “Give him Rogers’ number too, since Rogers could give us his contact’s name. The sooner we move on this, the sooner we can put that mother fucker in his place.”
“On it.” She called Vincent and waited, hoping he picked up. He obviously had to know what was going on, since Elijah had been on the phone with him earlier.
It only had to ring a couple of times. She pulled up Rogers’ number on Elijah’s phone during the wait.
“Elijah, make it-”
“We’re in the truck, leaving Atlanta right now. He’s trying to lose the tails.” She glanced at the cowboy. “Might be hard, since they now know what the truck looks like though.”
“Yeah, anyone would be able to see you on the road and stop you. This would also be a bad night to get pulled over, so once he loses the tails, tell him to slow down.”
“Did you hear that?” she asked Elijah, who shook his head in return. “He doesn’t want us to get pulled over, so we should slow down once we’re away from the cameras.”
“Makes sense. I’ll lose them soon enough. None of them can go as fast as me.” Elijah threw a grin her way.
“I’m going to die in this truck,” she mumbled to Vincent.
“You’ll be fine. He’s a great, if incredibly fast, driver.”
There was a pang of guilt in her chest over being such a raging bitch earlier in the evening. “Let me give you Rogers’ number,” she muttered, holding up Elijah’s
phone. She read it off to him. “So, he said he wanted to confirm I was Shadow - he had a suspicion about it. The person with the IMPO he contacted was the one who went public. So he says.”
“How did he behave?” Vincent asked softly. She knew when her Italian was angry, and he was fucking pissed.
“He acted incredibly sorry. I had no reason not to believe him, but I only met him tonight for a few moments. We didn’t get the chance to ask him for the name of his IMPO friend.”
“He knows every Magi of importance that’s ever gone through Atlanta. I’ll call him and see what I can learn. I’ll need to pass this all onto James as well. Oh, there’s something you two need to know. James knows about us. All of us. And the press thinks you and Elijah are a thing. Intimate dinner gave them the impression. You know, perception. This is going to get uglier before it gets better.”
Sawyer sighed, glancing again at the cowboy. She wished this hadn’t happened. She had really wanted to break some of the tension between them, had every intention of acting on every sly, flirty comment, every touch they had ever shared.
The press had gotten it right, in a way.
“Thanks. We’ll call you when we’re closer,” she promised.
“Wait. How are you handling this? I’ve been worried; so have the others.”
“Elijah had to snap me out of the shock, but I’ll be fine. I mean, we knew this was coming. Wasn’t expecting it like this, but we knew it was coming.” She took a deep breath, trying to remind herself to stay calm. “Being in public when it happened, being in the middle of all of that, really did a number on me for a moment. Elijah reminded me of something important, which I’m thankful for.”
“What was that?”
“I could handle everyone else who already knew, already judged me. This doesn’t really change anything.” Even repeating those words made her feel better. “You know, this might just be the distraction I need right now.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Public opinion could cause us some problems,” Vincent chastised her gently. “But I think if we just weather the storm, everything will be clear on the other side.”
An Echo of Darkness (The Redemption Saga Book 4) Page 10
