The Villain (The Vigilantes #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Dare

H e was here somewhere. He had to be.

I scrolled through the images on the screen. Names and faces becoming a blur of pixels in front of me. I would find him. I had to. We were too close to have him slip away again. I leaned closer for a better look, and the surveillance footage started to swim and then split in two.

Dammit. A deep exhale carried a rough sound of frustration from my chest as I pulled out my earbuds and pinched the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes for what felt like the first time in hours. I was turning into a zombie—a creature consumed by the need for one thing: justice.

My hand strayed to the jagged scar on my left cheek, tracing the raised, mostly healed flesh. A potent reminder that there was work to be done. A criminal to catch. Ray Ivans. Up and down, my finger traced and retraced the path of the blade in a newfound tic. Ivans might not have wielded the knife that sliced open my face two months ago, but he was the man responsible, and I was determined to find him.

I forced my eyes open and back to the glowing screen, fresh resolve steeping my focus.

Appear, dammit. Just for one fucking second so I can find you.

The knock on the door jarred my concentration, and my head snapped up. The office took a beat to sharpen. Shelves of security, surveillance, and computer equipment surrounded a small table in the center. This office was the center of our operations for both our motorcycle garage, the Sherwood Garage, and our motorcycle club, the Vigilantes.

“Yeah?” I called just as the door opened, my gaze narrowing on the intruder: Rhys Garrick—a friend and fellow Vigilante . “What do you need?”

If he didn’t need anything, then I needed him to leave; I had work to do, and so did he.

There were five of us total in the club. Four of us—myself, Rhys, Tynan, and Harm—were former Special Forces. Green Berets. Fifth Special Forces Group, Third Battalion. Brothers by fire, we said, but in my case, the leader of our unit, Harm, was also my older brother by blood. The fifth member of our club was Rob—Robyn . My older adopted sister. She was the reason we existed in the first place: to get justice for what had been done to her and to those like her.

“I came to check on you.” Rhys shut the door firmly and flashed me his too-easy smile.

Dammit.

What we’d seen, what we’d lived through, and what we’d lost…they were the kinds of things that had both broken and bonded us forever. We understood each other in a way no one else could—a way forged from unbreakable trust and unimaginable tr agedy. And it was exactly that perceptiveness I didn’t want to deal with right now.

“I’m fine. Working?—”

“You’ve been cooped up in here working for weeks now. I’ve never seen you like this, man. Let me—let Ty— let someone take over for a little,” he drawled, approaching the desk.

I stilled and bit into my tongue, the taste of blood keeping me from snapping back. And do what instead?

I’d finished my last engine rebuild early for a client’s vintage Harley—no surprise there since I’d spent my days and nights in the garage working on it, and I wasn’t scheduled to start another bike until next month. If I didn’t focus on this, I knew exactly where my thoughts would go: to him and Harm. How they both had someone to go home to.

Fuck.

For some reason, I thought things would stay forever the way they were. Our unit, together, fixing bikes and seeking justice. It had been that way for so long. But then Harm found Daria, and Rhys fell for Merritt…and it wasn’t jealousy that hit me, it was reality.

After everything we’d been through, they’d found happiness. Love. The one thing I’d never allow myself to have. So, to take a break or let someone else take over meant having to face the truth: instead of a life here with the only people who knew me, I could end up facing forever alone.

“I’m handling it.”

“Dare, if this is about me and Merritt?—”

“It’s not.”

“No?” Rhys moved closer, his presence like a pin against the thin skin of a stretched balloon.

I glared at him, words balling on my tongue like a balloon inflating to the point of rupture. Carefully, I let the breath hiss out .

“I’m happy for you, Rhys. Honest to God,” I rasped, and it was the fucking truth. I was happy for him and Merritt. It wasn’t their fucking fault their happiness reminded me of my failure.

“But you wanted to be happy, too,” Rhys said, seeing more than I wanted him to see.

It wasn’t their fault the woman I’d fallen for betrayed me—betrayed us. Love had been a costly mistake for me, one whose price I still continued to pay. And who the hell could blame me for not wanting to sit around and dwell on how my attempt at happiness had almost cost us all our lives?

“No,” I said and scoffed. “I mean, I am happy. I have enough.”

I had the club. Freedom. Security. Life on the open road. And purpose. Holy hell, did purpose change a life— save a life.I looked back at the images on the computer, our purpose plastered all over them: vigilante justice.

Our ex-military motorcycle garage and club were equal parts good business and a good cover. By day, we worked on expensive motorcycles, and by night, we used our unconventional skill sets to bring hundreds of criminals to justice by unlawful or lethal means. The criminals we hunted were the ones who used money and power to shield themselves from punishment. The ones who hid in plain sight, bribing the law for its protection.

“You can want more.” Rhys spoke, bringing my attention back to him, his hands propped on the desk as he tipped forward. “She already took enough from you, Dare, you don’t have to let her?—”

“Don’t,” I warned in a low voice. “Just…don’t.”

She was like fucking Voldemort—I didn’t want to talk about her, didn’t want to hear her name. Ever . She’d taken Ryan’s last breath—the only one of us who hadn’t made it home from that last mission, and I wouldn’t let Rhys or any of the other guys waste a single breath on the woman who’d betrayed me.

“You should take a break.”

“I will when we find him,” I gritted out.

Dr. Ray Ivans had worked at GrowTech, a biochemical engineering giant, and was involved in the cover-up of Rob’s parents’ deaths almost two decades ago—a cover-up that climbed a ladder of criminals right to the top of the billion-dollar company.

Magnus Sinclair. Les Wheaton. Ray Ivans. Lloyd Wenner. Bernard Belmont. They’d all been involved in concealing the cancerous flaw in one of their new pesticides. Rob’s parents became sick while working on the project, and Ivans downplayed their concerns and falsified their medical records to hide that the chemicals were killing them.

After their deaths, Ivans vanished. Belmont claimed the doctor had fled the States with all his documentation—leaving behind no proof of his crimes—but we knew better. Belmont paid him to disappear and start over. Paid for him to have a new face, a new identity, and a new life. But after so long, Belmont got tired of paying to hide a ghost.

I scrolled back to the beginning of the hotel’s security feed from two months ago, zeroing in on the few seconds that had captured Ivans entering the lobby and making his way to the mezzanine.

Dressed in a tux, he headed for the ballroom, where a black-tie fundraiser for GrowGood, an NPO associated with GrowTech, was being held. I followed his path to the door, where he disappeared into the crowd and off the cameras completely. If only we’d known then who he was.

Instead, Harm, Rhys, and I were there to track down a band of international jewel thieves who’d targeted and kidnapped Rhys’s girlfriend, Merritt. We thought their ring leader was the man who sliced my face when we captured him. In a twist of fate—and a bullet to that man’s chest—we realized that their leader was none other than Ivans, who’d been using an alias and who had surgically altered his face to look nothing like the man who’d fled the States two decades earlier.

Rhys made a low sound of disapproval, but I ignored him and the odds stacked against me. I didn’t care if the footage I searched through was two months old, there had to be something on it—something I could use to figure out where he was hiding.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, needing Rhys to leave so I could focus. “I don’t want to talk?—”

Another knock sounded on the door. “Rhys?”

Dammit. Merritt’s voice was unmistakable even before she opened the door and poked her head through, her bright eyes finding Rhys in an instant.

The way she looked at him…the way he lit up…my chest tightened. I’d never have that. I wouldn’t let myself. I didn’t deserve it.

Love was dangerous. Deadly . It was the goddamn bullet you didn’t hear until it was buried in the center of your chest.

“What’s wrong?” Rhys stepped in front of Merritt, blocking my view.

Good. Maybe they’d both leave now.

“Nothing, I—” Merritt said and peeked over at me. “Something came for you.” She moved around Rhys and extended her hand. “Sorry, I grabbed a bunch of envelopes from the mail, and this was stuck between them.”

Interesting. I took the envelope from her and muttered my thanks, but she was already back in conversation with Rhys.

I stilled when I looked at the front. There was no address on it. No return address. No address to the garage. Only my name. Darius Keyes.

My heart collided with the front of my chest. Shit. The last time a letter had been delivered like this to our garage, it had come from the Most Wanted criminal on the FBI’s list. Damon Remington. Former FBI agent turned fugitive. A broker for the criminal underworld. If he was sending me a message…

Fuck it. I ripped open the seam of the envelope and yanked out the contents. A single paper. No . Not a paper. I flipped it over. A photograph.

Air pierced my lungs like a bullet, stopping my heart on a damn dime.

No.

It couldn’t be.

My mouth went dry, and I brought the image closer like I could step right into it, absorbing every detail of a face I’d never forget.

Blond hair like soft wheat. Cornflower-blue eyes. But it was that smile. Fuck me. I pressed my fingertips to the image, tracing the gentle sweep of her cheek to the dimples pinned at the edge of her wide, beaming grin.

Athena Holman.

God, I’d never forget how that smile felt like the sun when it had shown on me—or the way I’d sentenced myself to a life of darkness when I’d broken her heart.

Fuck .

In almost two decades, I hadn’t let myself think of this woman. Hell, she’d hardly been that the last time I’d seen her standing on her mom’s front lawn with tears in her eyes. She’d been heading off to college, and I’d been heading off to war.

We were young. Hopeful. Foolish to think it could last. I’d ended it before someone got hurt.

And after I came back from war, trying to think about who I was, the people I’d known and cared for… hurt. There was no going back—no making it right. To try would be like trying to open a door with no knob. So, for two decades, Athena Holman had remained safely and securely behind that door, untouched by any more of my trauma and tragedy.

Until now.

Until this photograph, where she sat at a restaurant smiling at the very man I was hunting—smiling at him the way she once smiled at me.

Fuck. My blood turned to ice, hard and sharp as it sliced through my veins. What the hell was she doing with Ivans?

In less than a minute, I’d searched her information and found her current address—ironically, it was her old address, too. Her mom’s house, which was only about twenty minutes from here. All this time, and she was that close… and so was he.

I dropped the photograph and shoved up out of my chair, ignoring Rhys and Merritt’s stares as I headed for the door.

“I’ll be back,” I shouted, not needing to be stopped by one more of Rhys’s welfare checks.

I made it down the hall in a blink, the door to the garage banging open into the wall before it slammed shut behind me. It couldn’t have taken another ninety seconds to make it through the massive ten-thousand-square-foot garage to where my Harley was parked. My leathers stretched over my shoulders like a second skin. I didn’t bother with the clip on my helmet before revving my bike to life.

I flew down the miles-long length of the tree-lined drive, the overcast sky turning everything gray. The irony of the shadowless day mocked me at every turn, as if it were the shadows of my past looming heavily over me.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes to figure out what I was going to say to a woman I hadn’t seen in twenty years. A woman I’d promised forever back when we were too young to understand everything forever could mean. A woman whose heart I’d broken .

Twenty minutes to figure out how the hell I was going to tell her that her new boyfriend—an assumption I made on her smile—was a criminal. A murderer, thief, and liar. Twenty minutes to figure out how to get a woman who surely hated me to believe I was telling the truth.

The house was a small, single-level structure at the end of a cul-de-sac. Brick with worn red shutters and a bright red door.

… I don’t want a house with a white picket fence, but I do want a red front door. Do you think that’s too much? I just want to look at it and know I’ll never have to watch you leave through it again. I miss you. —Athena

The smallest smile started to curl at the corner of my mouth, remembering her words from the very first letter she’d sent me after I left. God, those letters. Pain seared through my chest, my small smile dying like an ember tamped out before it could turn into a flame. Remembering what I had—what I could’ve had—would only make this worse.

Those letters…that woman…she didn’t belong to me anymore.

I slowed and parked in front of the neighbor’s yard, letting my bike rumble so I wouldn’t have to be alone with my thoughts. There was a car in the driveway; hers, I presumed, and it was still running. I’d gotten here just in time.

I peeled my fingers off the handlebars and unclipped my helmet. Fuck, this was going to be difficult. But that didn’t matter. I would protect her even if she didn’t want me to. Even if she hated me. After everything, I would always protect her. Even if she wasn’t mine to protect .

“Hey, Athena. It’s me, Darius. I know we haven’t spoken in a long time, but I had to find you and tell you you’re dating a killer.” No—“Hey, Athena. Sorry to come back into your life like this, but you’re dating an internationally wanted criminal.”

Fuck. My fingers went to my scar, feeling the ragged flesh.

How was I going to get her to believe me? Tell her the truth? The truth was hardly believable—a criminal doctor who had a full-face reconstruction and turned into a thief was taking her to dinner. A short, bitter laugh escaped. The alternative was I could beg her to trust me— to trust the man who’d broken her heart. My laugh turned into a groan, weighing the options of bad and worse.

What if she already knew who he was?

No.

I cranked off the engine and got off my bike in a swift, angry movement. There was no way she knew Ivans was a criminal—no way she’d smile like that at him if she knew the truth. Not a damn chance. A lot of things could change over the course of decades, but not that. Not the way she valued integrity.

The red door opened, and through it stepped a sight that stole my breath. Almost twenty years later, and she looked the same as the day I’d left her.All willowy grace, smooth skin, and hair spun of sunshine. There were all kinds of beautiful, but for me, there was only ever one definition of breathtaking. And I was looking at her.

I stood dumbstruck, watching her fumble to lock her door and then move toward her car, a small duffle over her shoulder.

She must’ve either forgotten the bag inside or had only stopped home for a minute to grab it. It looked like a gym bag, but she was already wearing gym clothes.

Was she taking clothes to Ivans’s house?

Goddammit. A surge of emotions that I lacked both practice and a right to feel swept over me, and I quickly channeled them into my pace, closing the space between us.

“Athena!” I called, my voice deeper than usual.

She stopped and turned just a few feet from her car. Her eyes met mine, and air rushed from my lungs like I’d been punched in the gut.

The wind dragged a strand of hair over her face, catching on her parted lips. She might look like an angel, but she had a mouth made for sin. Full, pink lips, the bow on top promising they were as kind as they were soft. Heat injected into my veins, melting away the cobwebs and cold that had lingered there for a decade. Damn, those lips.

Lips I’d tasted. Lips I’d dreamed of. Lips I’d fought over when other guys talked about her in a way I didn’t like.

Time didn’t stop; it turned back. It spiraled like a top out of control, winding back the clocks, unraveling the fabric of decades until we were just teenagers. Until the moment I’d last seen her, standing here on this very lawn.

“Don’t say goodbye,” she’d begged, her hands clutching my shirt and tears streaking her cheeks.

I jolted, and the memory dissolved into the present moment.

Athena’s jaw went slack, the first touch of recognition sparking in her gaze and reaching for her mind.

And then everything went to hell.

A loud boom. A force that threw me back. Fuck!

My head slammed into the ground, pain erupting aseverything went black. The blast knocked my consciousness straight out of me fora split second.

I came to with a heavy breath, consciousness returning full force asheat and debris sprayed over me in a way I wished I wasn’t familiar with. My eyes opened to a violent show of flames and fragments and destruction, her car an exploded mass of tangled metal.

Fuck!

Ears ringing, I forced myself to move. Years of training and even more years of experience that no training could prepare for had me on my feet and looking for her. Looking to protect her.

I found her in an instant, all that sunshine streaked in ash, curled in a heap on the lawn. No. My heart dropped into my stomach, beating like a bird in a cage.I stumbled toward her lifeless form.She’d been close to her car—closer to the source of the blast that was now a flaming metal cage, plumes of black smoke blotting the gray sky.

“Athena!” My voice was raw, breathing in too much of the thick smoke as I kneeled beside her.

Soot, but not a lot of blood. Nothing glaringly broken. I carefully took her wrist, releasing a breath I hadn’t realized I’d imprisoned when the faint thump of her pulse met my touch. Unconscious, not dead.

Instantly, a second truth struck with even more force. She was alive, but someone had just tried to kill her.

“Athena…”

Distantly, through the ringing, I heard the sounds of sirens and calls for help. I scanned the surroundings, starting to see people approaching the scene. Neighbors. Random cars stopping along the road.

Shit. I had to get her out of here.

Her soft whimper broke through the noise—it broke through everything. I froze, watching her eyes work their way open. It was only for a split second that she looked at me. A split second where she looked right at me, but didn’t see me.

“Help…me…” Her whispered voice cracked, and then she faded once more .

“Dammit,” I muttered, carefully lifting her and carrying her away from the burning car.

She wasn’t heavy, but the weight of my guilt was. She was in danger—had been in danger. And I hadn’t been here quick enough to stop it. The second time I’d failed her.

Taking Athena anywhere on my bike wasn’t an option. She wasn’t conscious and almost definitely concussed; it was too dangerous. So,I headed toward an old man standing by his pickup truck; he was wearing an Army sweatshirt, and therefore my best bet.

“Are you alright, son? What the hell?—”

“I need to borrow your truck. I need to get her to the hospital.” I went to the passenger door and opened it, placing Athena in the front seat before he even had a chance to protest.

“Someone called an ambulance?—”

I hooked her seat belt and then faced him.“It’s not enough, soldier.” I addressed him low so only he could hear. “I’m Special Forces, and I have to get her out of here. Her life is in danger.”

Instantly, his spine straightened, duty transforming skepticism into steel. His chin clipped. “Of course?—”

“I’ll return it,” I promised as I took his keys.

Ignoring the pound in my own head, I went to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. For being at least two decades old, the pickup moved with surprising pep as I put my foot to the floor.