Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

3. Jace

It was fucking dark when we got to the Mossy Glen trailhead. Not city dark, but dark the way it got in the woods around the Blades compound on a moonless night.

It was good for us — it would make it harder for whoever was holding Daisy to see us coming — but it also meant visibility was shit.

Wolf took Benji off road, moving slowly through a wide trail that led into the trees. I looked in the side mirror, saw the black Hummer driven by Neo was still behind us, the lights of another vehicle behind that one.

“They still there?” Wolf asked, his eyes on the trees, packed so tightly on either side they brushed against the car.

“Yeah.” I wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t like relying on anyone else to rescue Daisy.

I didn’t like relying on anyone else for anything.

But the drone we’d sent up after our meeting with Crash showed at least six guys around the old dam complex, and those were the ones we could see coming and going. There were probably more inside, and while I wasn’t opposed to taking a few licks — or a bullet — to save Daisy, I wasn’t up for blowing our chance to get her out.

The Kings didn’t seem any more excited about the possibility of working together than I was, but they owed Daisy, and they didn’t want this shit in their backyard with Willa pregnant either. It had been their idea to invite Rafe Wilson to the party.

I didn’t know Rafe — he’d been a few years ahead of us in school and owned a private security firm — but he’d brought two of his men, and that was good enough for me.

“There.” Otis pointed from the back seat to a narrow path winding through a stand of trees.

Wolf eased off the gas and rolled into the path, then continued for another minute before stopping the car.

“This should do it,” he said, turning off the engine.

We got out of the car and watched as Neo stopped the Hummer behind Benji. Rafe parked his black Range Rover behind the Hummer and everybody got out to take a look around.

“Where the fuck are we?” Neo asked, looking around.

I wasn’t surprised he didn’t know the woods. Those Aventine assholes were more into VIP rooms and bottle service.

“Off one of the trails in the state park,” Otis said.

“This is state land?” Drago asked.

“Technically,” Wolf said. “It’s part of the Blackwell Preserve. The dam too.”

“You sure we won’t be seen here?” Rafe took in our surroundings like a giant fucking robot cataloging details. He was tall, built like a guy who spent time in the gym but could still move fast when he needed to.

I hated him already. Maybe it was his swagger, the way he walked into a situation like it was his when it was actually mine, or maybe it was because he seemed more inclined to give orders than ask questions. Rumor was he’d made it through SEAL training, then got kicked out, but I didn’t know if it was true, and I didn’t care about his fucking history anyway.

“We’re fine,” Wolf said. “If the sun was up, I’d be worried about hikers, but there’s no camping allowed in this part of the preserve.”

“Drones?” Rafe said, looking at the sky.

“There are no fucking drones,” I said. “We scoped the place.”

Rafe held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, like I was a hothead and he was the reasonable one.

Fucking asshole.

Neo opened the hatch of the Hummer and Drago joined him at the back of the car. “Let’s move.”

We geared up from our respective trunks. I lifted the flap hiding Benji’s spare tire and handed Otis a weapon. We had our regular weapons too — those were registered and licensed — but these ones weren’t legal here and it would have been stupid to drive around with them in plain sight.

I looked at Wolf. “Want one?”

He shook his head and patted the sheath holding his knife. “I’m good.”

“These guys aren’t townies having a little fun,” I said.

We’d left the diner after our meeting with Crash, gone to an electronic store to buy a drone, and driven straight to the woods to scope out the situation.

It wasn’t great: lots of big guys wearing tactical gear, looking like soldiers guarding a dangerous prisoner rather than a twenty-year-old girl who’d probably never been farther than a hundred miles away from her rich dad’s property.

“I know,” Wolf said.

I took one of the semiautomatics, then closed the panel hiding the spare tire compartment.

Wolf could handle himself — with or without a gun.

Neo and Drago were already there, armed and ready to go. A minute later, Rafe and his men — I hadn’t bothered to memorize their names — joined us in full tactical gear: Kevlar, grenades clipped to their belts, the whole bit.

He looked us over. “You want some more gear? We have extra Kevlar.”

“I’ll take a vest,” Neo said.

I looked at him in surprise.

He glared, silently daring me to say something. “I’m going to be a father. You think I’m going to leave my kid without one of their dads for this shit?”

“I’ll take one too,” Drago said.

Jesus fuck. If loving a woman and becoming a father made you a fucking pussy afraid of a firefight, one where we had the advantage of surprise, that was a hard pass for me forever.

Daisy’s face flashed in my mind, the way she looked when she was sleeping, when I watched her on the security cameras Otis had installed in her bedroom. Would my life matter if she loved me? If she had my baby?

Would I matter?

It took me about a half second to get real. Daisy would never — could never — love someone like me.

Not that I fucking cared.

I was only here because she was Blake’s little sister, because we’d promised each other a long time ago that we’d keep her safe.

“You pussies ready now?” I asked after Neo and Drago had strapped on the Kevlar.

“We don’t have to be here you know,” Drago said, his dark eyes flashing.

“Let’s fucking go,” I said, heading into the trees.

I slowed down to let Wolf move into position in front of me. No one knew these woods like Wolf. He’d get us to the dam.

And then we’d get Daisy out.

I tried not to think about Blake’s phone, about the fact that we’d found it in her bag, our last conversation right there in his text history for anyone to see. I wasn’t naive enough to believe Daisy hadn’t seen it: she’d had Blake’s phone for a reason, had been angling for the truth about his murder since the night she’d invited us to stay at the house.

She knew we’d killed him, and that was going to change everything — if we could get her out alive.