3. Jackson
Chapter three
Jackson
I can almost feel myself rising into consciousness out of oblivion. My last memories play before me like on a movie screen, and I watch it with rapt attention.
The island.
Thorne.
Escaping with Raegan.
My little one .
My mind is conscious, but it’s taking longer for it to connect with my body. I urge it awake, seeking any sign of my physical body so that I can move enough to fully rouse myself.
There’s a painful twisting in my chest as I think about where my little one is and what she’s dealing with at this very moment while I’m not there for her.
Finally, I’m able to drag my eyelids open. My entire body feels heavy and sluggish. And it aches . I should expect pain after the fight with Thorne. Far more actually, but my aches seem to be more related to stiffness all over rather than centralized on my back.
Above me is a white ceiling. I turn my head to the side, noting the pillow beneath it, to find Aiden sitting in a chair, watching me. He’s wearing a suit, as usual, but the shirt’s unbuttoned and rumpled. The rest of him doesn’t sound any alarms until I see the exhaustion written in the furrow of his brow and the tiredness of his eyes.
“Before you say or do anything, I need you to make our conversation here private,” he murmurs.
My gaze slides to the door of my room, where Kellan is leaning against it with his arms crossed over his chest. His expression is shadowed and tight, and when I try to make eye contact, he dodges it by turning his head.
I force myself upright, shucking the blankets that are surprisingly still on me—instead of tangled around me like usual—and turning my back against the wall so I can see them clearly. My fingers twitch when I realize I’m in nothing but boxers and I don’t have my knives within reach.
“Where is she?”
The fact that they’re both here and she isn’t is telling enough.
“If you want that answer, then do as I ask first. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
I do it without further prompting and give him a firm nod. I’m ordinarily quite patient. I can wait forever for something to be just right before I make my move. But with her? I’ve never felt the crawling need burrowed under my skin to move before. To find her. To hold her. To fuck her until there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s with me and she’s safe.
Aiden clears his throat. “Gordon has her.”
I don’t react. Not outwardly, at least. I expected it was bad. And I could lose myself to the rage, or I can save it, store it up for Gordon or anyone else who stands in my way. If there’s anyone to blame for losing her, it’s me.
I got her involved in my plan with Thorne. I let her stubbornness win in coming to the island when she should have stayed behind. I wasn’t strong enough to protect her after fighting only one man.
I know it.
And they know it, too.
Aiden looks determined over something, but it’s Kellan who’s glaring at me to make sure I’m clearly cued in on his opinion of how this all happened.
“Where?” I ask, even knowing it’s too hopeful to expect that they’ll have figured out her location and are here to come up with a plan to get her back.
He shakes his head. “We don’t know. We went back to the island for any clues, but there was nothing left by the time we got there.”
“How long have I been out?”
“About a week. We sedated you. It was the only way to let your back heal fully.”
“A week,” I repeat slowly. “He’s had her a week.” And they still don’t have a single clue to her whereabouts. A lot can happen in one week. Especially with someone who I suspect is the reason why she doesn’t see herself clearly anymore.
She told me she wanted vengeance. Was that for what happened with Vera and Dane, or something for herself?
I clench and unclench my hands in my lap. Where could she be? I killed everyone tied to GE in this city already, so I’ll have to spread my radius until I find someone who will know. Someone must know Gordon’s name and his location or contact information.
“He wouldn’t have her at all if you didn’t play villain and deliver her to the enemy!” Kellan snarls, stepping away from the door and closer to me.
Aiden sighs. “He’s not wrong. You swore you could be trusted to protect Raegan, and now, we’ve lost her.”
Kell growls at him now. “Don’t say it like that! She’s not lost.” He shoves his finger at the door. “That bitch knows exactly where she is, and she’s smug as shit about it.”
I glance to the door and back to Kellan. “Who?” I demand. If someone knows where she is, there is nothing, and I mean nothing , I won’t do to get that information from them.
Aiden’s eyes narrow at me. “No. That’s not an option.” I raise an eyebrow in his direction. So he thinks. There isn’t a single person I’ve interrogated who didn’t tell me what I wanted to know for the information they had. This one will be no different. “Vera is here.”
Well.
I’m not surprised often, but I wasn’t expecting that.
She may have started out in our group, but I was never close with her. There was always something about her that annoyed me. From the brief time I saw her on the roof of the warehouse, it looks like her irritating attitude has been amplified, and whatever good that had been in her is now twisted. Her life means nothing to me against Raegan’s.
No one’s does.
“You can’t hurt her. Any harm comes to her, and Gordon will take it out on Raegan,” Aiden adds, bringing my attention back to him. “She traded herself for Vera and our lives. As long as Vera stays with us, then Raegan won’t try to escape. And if she does, then he can take Vera back and will most likely punish Raegan by going after us.”
He can come after us all he likes. Even better, because then I have a simple trail that will lead me right to him.
I cock my head to the side, studying Aiden and wondering why he’s here. He has to know that I’m not going to sit back and wait. “Why are you both here?”
“The only way we’re going to get her back is by working together. I need to know that you’ll work with us and not run off on your own like last time,” Aiden answers. “Vera can’t find out that we’re all looking for her. I’m sure she’s still communicating with GE, and they have to believe that we’re happy enough with Vera to leave Raegan alone.”
Kellan snorts from where he’s standing.
Aiden continues, “If too many of us are missing or keep going in and out, she’ll notice. I leave enough as it is for the Guild, so I can’t go as far as I’d like, and Kellan has to stay here to keep an eye on Vera with Dane.”
Which leaves me to be able to go wherever. “What does Dane think of all this? That he may have to return Vera once we bring Raegan home?”
Kellan shifts, and I catch him rolling his eyes. “Rapunzel wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He’s all in on this plan, but he wants us to trap Vera once we find and get Raegan so she doesn’t leave.”
Aiden nods. “Dane will help try to narrow down locations and people with ties to GE. Once you’re out there, keep us updated on what you find out so we can dig deeper and point you to people with possible information. Keep your cell phone and this credit card on you. Eat and sleep so you’re not useless when we do find her location because we’ll be moving immediately using Reid.” He passes a card over to me, which I flip between my fingers. “And Jack...” He pauses until our eyes lock. “This isn’t a solo mission. We’ll find her faster if we work together. It’s already hard for some of us to trust you after what you did.”
“You pretended to be evil way too well,” Kell chimes in, and I smirk at him.
I never said I’d been pretending.
But I like this plan, and believe it or not, I’ve learned my lesson about going solo.
For now.
I hop off the bed, using a push of air to help me to my feet and start pulling on clothes and loading them with my knives.
“You’re going now?” Aiden asks. “You’ve just woken up and should rest a bit longer.”
I tug the gaiter over my head to settle around my neck. “I’ve rested long enough.”
“Then at least grab something to eat on your way out so I don’t find you passed out from hunger in the drive later.”
I smirk at Aiden. “Anything else?”
They shake their heads, and I nod, releasing the sound bubble I’d buffered us in and opening the door to walk out. I can already hear Vera’s bothersome voice in the living room groaning about something, but I don’t care enough to focus on the words. I’m planning on stopping in the kitchen, but once I’ve entered the main room, I can’t not hear Vera.
“Ugh! I can’t just sit around here forever, Dane! This place is boring . Is this how you live your life? Just sitting around here all day? I want to go out!”
Smirking, I lock my cold blue eyes on the woman who’s standing between me and Raegan before I speak. “I’ll take you out,” I offer chillingly.
Vera’s head whips around, and her eyes widen when she sees me. “Oh, you’re—”
“—awake,” Aiden finishes for her as he walks past me and into the living room so he’s between us. As if that makes any difference to me. I’m sure she was going for alive and disappointed in that. “And, not funny,” he shoots my way.
I shrug because I wasn’t trying to be.
I meant it.
“Well, great. But I want Dane to take me out so we can spend time together doing fun things.”
“You guys fixed up your room together. You can work on the others. Watch movies. Play video games,” Aiden offers her.
She scoffs. “Video games? What am I, twelve?”
Her attitude is grating. I’m surprised Kellan hasn’t done anything yet, but then I see him leaning back against the kitchen cabinets with a bottle of liquor in his hand, as far away from her as possible while still within eyesight.
I call on my gift, on the power I finally obtained to match Thorne’s, and thrust it at Vera. The wind shoves her up and against the wall, her head inches from the ceiling and her body pinned where she can’t do anything but listen.
“Jack!” Dane shouts, turning to look at his sister, who is trying to fight me. She can’t, but I let her try, anyway.
Aiden’s dark gaze swings my way, silently asking me what I’m doing.
I can feel Kellan’s presence at my back, but he doesn’t move to attack me. His dislike of Vera is strong enough that he’ll wait to see what I plan to do first.
She struggles like a fish at the end of a line. “I just need your attention. Then I’ll let you go.”
“You psycho ! Put me down! Dane!” she screeches. Before Dane can say anything, I begin my piece. If I’m going to be out hunting, it means that this is the only real interaction I’ll have with her before my little one comes home. And I have a message for her.
“Where is Raegan?” I ask calmly, still smiling. I can tell it freaks her out—as it does so many others—when I look so collected while I have their life in my hands.
Even though she can’t know we’re all looking for Raegan, I’m enough of a wild card that she won’t think the others are connected at all. And one person looking in a big world for another doesn’t seem like much for her to worry about.
“I. Don’t. Know,” she spits out. I don’t believe her. Maybe she doesn’t know where she is right now, but I’m sure she has a short list of guesses. It would be so much easier if I tortured it out of her. I can do it without lasting damage. “But even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. You were too busy being asleep, so you missed the part where she chose to leave you all so that I could be reunited with Dane. What do you think she’d do if she found out it was all for nothing because you dragged her back? Do you really think that’s what she wants?”
I know what she wants better than anyone.
She doesn’t want to be anywhere near Gordon or GE, especially not under the terms she agreed to. I don’t like that my little one isn’t fighting back right now. She isn’t trying to escape. How can she hold on to who she is if she has to fight against her instincts?
“The deal between you isn’t my problem.” Besides, she broke a promise to me that came first. “I’d like you to know that when I get her back, and I will, I am going to find out every mark or transgression made against her. And I will personally mete out the same on you to match. So, you’d better hope that Raegan is being treated well. Or else wake up and fight GE to get her back yourself. It’s your call.”
Her face pales and another drop of rage falls into the pool I’m cultivating. She knows something about what’s happening with Raegan, and it isn’t good.
Dane storms over to me. “I won’t let you do that.”
I raise a brow in a mock challenge. “She did this for you ,” I remind him. Raegan sacrificed herself to give Dane this time with Vera, and all it looks like is a waste of time. “If she’s being tortured or hurt wherever she is just for you to sit and listen to your sister complain, then you’ll be lucky if I don’t do the same to you.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t argue. Hmm, interesting. Is he feeling guilt over Raegan being gone? Is he wondering what she’s going through for him to have his sister back?
I drop Vera while my eyes are still locked with Dane’s, letting gravity yank her down to crash on the floor. Dane rushes over to her and tries to help her up, but she swats her arm.
“If Raegan is Gordon’s prisoner, then you’re ours. Remember that the next time you think to complain about being bored, because I can always give you far worse things to do.”
She looks around the room for a friendly face. Even Dane’s is tight, like he doesn’t completely disagree with some of what I said.
Vera turns and speed-walks out of the room, slamming a door in the dorm hallway.
Aiden sighs and runs a hand over his head. “So much for subtlety.”
“Fuck subtlety,” Kellan chimes in behind me. “Now, let’s get our girl back.”