The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow #1)

54. Vox Moretti

I knew that fucking bitch killed Gavin.

I fucking knew it.

And now he had fucking Cal in the basement doing god knows what to him. Not on my watch. I was done with Damian Ryker.

The only reason I hadn’t fucking left Apex already was because I couldn’t leave Cal behind. Damian had his claws so deep in my friend I didn’t think he could even leave if he wanted to. I’d seen the way Cal tended to freeze up whenever Ryker issued an order. I knew Cal had gone through more conditioning than all of us combined. For some reason, Ryker had always been obsessed with Cal. More so than the rest of us.

If I was going to extract my friend from this shit hole, I was going to need to be smart about it, and I was going to have to make sure Cal’s sisters and his new boyfriend were safe, or there would be no convincing him to leave with me.

My first order of business was figuring out how the fuck Ryker had been tracking us so easily. I always did my due diligence in checking our vehicles for trackers, and I had both of our phones locked down. It would be impossible for Damian to put tracking software on either of our devices without me knowing about it.

But still, maybe I missed something?

As soon as I left Damian’s office, I went straight for the garage and spent the next two hours dismantling the dashboard in Cal’s G-Wagon, looking for any signs that Damian had tampered with it.

Coming up empty, I gave up on the G-Wagon and went back to my room to grab one of my handheld metal detectors. (Don’t ask; they come in handy more often than you would think.)

I crossed the hall and picked the lock to Cal’s room, kicking the door shut behind me as I walked in. There were cameras in all our rooms, and I gave Cal’s the finger as I made my way to the steel rack that he used as a closet.

I didn’t give a fuck if Damian knew what I was doing. If he came in here to try and stop me, I would blow his fucking head off.

My Beretta was burning a hole in my jeans as I passed Cal’s desk and PC set up. He didn’t have much in this room. Unlike me, he hadn’t bothered putting anything on the walls or making it more homey.

This wasn’t his real home; he just slept here so his nightmares didn’t wake Naomi up. I heard them, though. He woke me up almost every night with his screams, not that I would ever communicate that to him. I was scared he would start sleeping in his car or something if he knew. He was annoyingly selfless like that. If he ever learned he was inconveniencing me in any way, he would immediately take action and do whatever was in his power to keep it from happening again.

He wouldn’t understand that I just wanted him to be safe and close to me. I would take a thousand sleepless nights over Cal suffering a moment longer than necessary. He had been through fucking enough.

All of us had.

The one thing Cal did keep on his desk was a mason jar full of teeth that he collected from his child abuser kills. He didn’t collect teeth from Damian’s assignments. They only came from marks he picked for his hobby, so there weren’t many. Maybe, like, ten of them.

I smirked at the jar as I passed it, resisting the urge to pick it up and shake it like some sort of macabre maraca.

I was annoyed at first when he picked up this hobby. It was enough of a pain in the ass trying to keep him alive and out of prison on Damian’s assignments. As his partner, it was easier for me to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t get too out of control.

But when he started going out on his own and murdering these ass fucks, it had stressed me the fuck out. Cal was an act first, think later kind of dude, and it was a full-time job keeping him from getting into trouble.

A job that I was more than happy to take on if it meant keeping him safe.

Cal was… everything for me. He was the closest thing I had to a family. He’d never cared that I didn’t speak. He always made up what he thought I was saying, and he was… freakishly on point. It was like he could read my damn mind.

Outside of Gavin, he was the only person I had ever met who got me. I didn’t have much. But I had Cal. And if I had to die in a blazing streak of glory protecting him, I would… because my life had no joy without him in it.

Since he’d found Ryan, he hadn’t seemed as interested in his hobby , and I was grateful for that, but now everything was all fucked up.

I had a feeling Damian wasn’t going to let Cal get away with keeping the small piece of happiness he clearly had found with Ryan.

It was only a matter of time before the bastard took Ryan away from Cal. That was why I had been so against visiting him while on the mission. I knew Damian would use it as an excuse to punish Cal and make a move to eliminate Ryan from Cal’s life.

See, Damian was smart. He knew killing Ryan would just push Cal away.

Using him as a means to control Cal made much more sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time Cal came out of recalibration, Damian would have convinced him it would be safer for Ryan if Cal didn’t see him anymore.

I knew how this fucker worked.

After all, that was how he controlled me.

‘What would Callum do without you, Mr. Moretti? Surely, he wouldn’t make it a day. If you left, it would be a shame, wouldn’t it, if Mr. Walker needed to suffer through recalibration that was meant for you?’

God, I fucking hated him.

I reached for one of Cal’s hoodies and yanked it off the hanger, clicking on my metal detector. Waving the wand over the black fabric, I grit my teeth in anger as the thing lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.

Mother fucker!

I threw the hoodie on Cal’s bed and pulled out my switchblade, flicking it open and feeling along the hemline of the sweater where my wand had detected a piece of metal.

Sure enough, there was a tiny, hard lump sewn into the hemline. I cut open the stitching and fished out a tiny Bluetooth tracker.

Fuming with rage, I repeated the exercise with the rest of Cal’s clothes. Literally, every hoodie, T-shirt, and pair of jeans had a tracker in it. I was surprised that the bitch hadn’t done his socks too.

What a possessive little fucking weirdo.

Once I was done uncovering all the trackers, I stuffed them in my pocket and went back to my room.

I went through the same exercise with my clothes, feeling surprised that there were just as many sewn into my shit.

Damn, Damian. Didn’t know you cared.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I pulled out an empty duffle from under my bed and started stuffing it full of tracker-free clothes and some of my favorite guns. I also added a few silencers and my laptop, just in case. Adding some of Cal’s stuff, I slung the bag over my shoulder. Gathering up the trackers, I made my way to the mess hall.

There were some guys eating lunch, but I paid them no mind, stalking past them to the communal microwave.

Dumping the trackers in the microwave, I slammed the door shut and turned the bitch on high for five minutes before stalking away.

Maybe five minutes was overkill, but whatever.

I had a point to make.

The microwave started sparking and exploding as I walked out of the mess hall, pulling up my hood as I went.

“What the fuck, man!”

The guys eating were yelling after me. I ignored them and kept going, pulling out a cigarette as I walked.

Now that was taken care of, I needed to go make sure his sisters were on lockdown and teach Ryan how to use a fucking gun.

I would bet my left nut that the mortuary boy had no idea how to use a firearm, and if shit was going to hit the fan the way I felt like it was, he was going to need to learn fast.

I hated leaving Cal here, but he was right. This was Damian’s turf. If I went and tried to extract him without a plan, we wouldn’t make it out alive.

I sure as fuck wouldn’t. Damian was pretty sick of my shit. He might finally cave and decide it would just be easier to kill me. I had been rebelling against him for years.

Entering the underground parking garage, I eyed my Aston Martin regretfully. It sucked leaving it behind, especially since I only got to enjoy using it for like a week. But whatever, the G-Wagon definitely made more sense if we were going to war.

Throwing the duffle in the back of Cal’s car, I slipped his keys out of my pocket and hopped into the driver’s seat. Next, I flicked on the monitors on the dash and loaded up the camera feed he had installed in Ryan’s house.

Naomi had been staying there while Cal was out, and it would have made my life a lot easier if I only needed to hunt down Cass.

Frowning, I flipped through the feeds for each room, feeling a mix of annoyance and worry twist my gut as I realized Naomi wasn’t there. Ryan was in his office doing paperwork, Theo was in her guest house, and Iris was in the garden… There was no Naomi, though.

Switching to the feeds at Cal’s house, I let out a sigh of relief when I found her on the couch with one of her little friends, watching a movie.

Fucking Twilight too. Ugh.

Well, I would just need to collect her ass and bring her back to Ryan’s. The funeral home was detached and would make a better base for a gun fight if it came to that. Less chance of casualties due to bullets passing through walls.

Before turning on the car, I flipped to the feeds in Cass’s condo. She was home too, working away on some paperwork in the living room with a glass of wine.

Out of the two of them, Naomi would be the easiest to collect, so I would start with her.

Pulling out of Apex, I tensed, wondering if any of the guards had any orders to stop me, but nothing happened.

I smirked at them on my way by.

Later fuckers. I’ll be back to kill your asses in a few days.