Chapter 6 Talon
SIX
TALON
Day thirty-seven without Mara, and I’m losing my fucking mind.
“You’re pacing again,” Beck says without looking up from his laptop. He’s sprawled across the couch in the safe house living room.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”
“Then Dredyn needs better carpet.”
Dredyn, who’s at the dining table methodically cleaning his gun collection for the third time this week, doesn’t even glance up. “Touch my carpet and I’ll shoot you.”
“You’d have to catch me first.”
“Children,” Jasper signs from his position by the window. He’s been stationed there since dawn, watching the street like Mara might magically appear if he stares hard enough. “Focus.”
I stop pacing long enough to drag my hands through my hair. It’s too long, falling into my eyes, making me look like some kind of unhinged Victorian ghost. Which, fair. I feel pretty fucking unhinged right now.
Thirty-seven days.
Eight hundred and eighty-eight hours.
Fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty minutes since I watched Mara walk into that ballroom with her father and come out engaged to a murderer.
“We have to do something,” I say, not for the first time, and probably not for the last.
Beck gestures at his laptop. “We are doing something. I’m tracking every dollar that flows through Harrington. Every account, every shell company, every offshore—”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s what we have.”
“It’s not enough!” The words come out louder than I intend, echoing off the walls. Three sets of eyes turn to me.
Beck, surprised.
Dredyn, wary.
Jasper, understanding.
I force myself to breathe. “Sorry. I just... thirty-seven days. She’s been locked in that penthouse for thirty-seven days and we’re sitting here, looking at spreadsheets.”
“What would you have us do?” Dredyn sets down the gun he’s been cleaning, giving me his full attention for the first time all morning. “Storm the building? Get ourselves arrested or killed before we can actually help her?”
“That’s something you would normally be all for, Dredyn. What the fuck!”
“We’re waiting for an opening. One mistake, one gap in security, one chance to get her out without starting a war that’ll get her killed in the cross fire.”
“And what if that opening never comes?”
“Then we make one.”
Jasper signs, “She is strong. She is doing okay.”
The words hit harder than they should, because Jasper is right.
But it doesn’t stop the images that play on repeat in my head. Mara alone in that penthouse. Chase’s hands on her. The cameras we know are watching her every move. It doesn’t stop me from wondering if she’s eating, sleeping, if she’s scared or angry.
It doesn’t stop the guilt from eating me alive.
“I should’ve fought harder,” I mutter, dropping onto the couch beside Beck’s chaos of papers. “At the party. I should’ve—”
“You’d be dead, or in custody. Either way, you’d be useless to her,” Beck says.
“At least I’d have tried—”
“And she’d still be locked up, except then she’d be grieving you on top of everything else. You think that helps her? You think she needs that weight?”
No. Of course not.
But logic doesn’t touch the part of me that’s screaming to break down doors and drag her back to where she belongs.
“I need to see her. Just... just to know she’s okay. Five minutes. I’m not asking to extract her or start a fight. Just... let me see her face.”
Dredyn and Jasper exchange a look.
“No,” Dredyn says.
“You don’t even know what I’m planning—”
“I know you well enough. The answer’s no.”
“Dre—”
“They’ll be watching for exactly this kind of move. You show up at that building and they’ll either turn you away, or worse, they could use you as leverage against her. You want to give them that power?”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate all of this.
“There has to be something. Some way to get a message to her—let her know we’re still here, still working—”
“She knows,” Jasper signs. “She knows because she knows us.”
“That’s not... that’s not enough.”
At 3 p.m. on day thirty-nine, I break.
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, phone in hand, I’m scrolling through photos of Mara that I shouldn’t have taken but did anyway.
Mara laughing at something Jasper signed.
Mara asleep in my bed, hair spread across my pillow.
Mara in the library, highlighter in hand, so focused on her textbook she didn’t notice me watching.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m dressed and in my car, driving toward the city like a man possessed.
The doorman spots me immediately.
Of course he does. I’m twenty-two, wearing jeans and a hoodie at 4 p.m., and I definitely don’t live here.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mara Black,” I say, going for confident and probably landing somewhere near desperate. “I’m a friend from the university.”
“Miss Black isn’t receiving visitors.”
“If you could just tell her I’m here—”
“Miss Black isn’t receiving visitors,” he repeats. “Would you like me to call someone to escort you from the premises, or can you leave on your own?”
“Look, I know how this looks. I know you’ve probably got orders to keep people away from her, but I’m not trying to cause problems. I just need to know she’s okay. Sixty seconds, that’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m calling security. You have thirty seconds to leave.”
“Please—”
“You’re an idiot,” Dredyn says when I slink back into the safe house.
“Yep.”
“You could’ve been arrested.”
“Yep.”
“Or worse, the Syndicate could have taken you into their custody.’”
“I know.” I collapse onto the couch, exhaustion finally catching up with the adrenaline crash. “I know, okay? It was stupid. I just—I needed to try.”
“I get it.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve driven past that building four times. Haven’t gone in, but… I get it.”
Rook’s fist whistles past my jaw with enough force to make my ears ring.
I duck, feeling the air move, and grin up at him. “Careful, Bishop. You chip my teeth, I’m sending you the dental bill.”
He snorts and comes in harder.
Rook fakes left and drives his weight into a right hook that actually clips my cheek. My head snaps sideways as the taste of copper hits my tongue.
Yeah. There it is.
Heat flashes through me, sharp and bright. I straighten slowly, jaw ticking, and he backs off a half step, because he knows that look.
“Hit ya good?” he asks.
I roll my neck. It pops. “You wish.”
I crowd into his space, tap his guard twice, then sink a jab into his ribs hard enough that he grunts. He recovers fast, but I’m already moving, feet light on the mat. This is better than thinking. Better than seeing Mara in my head for the thousandth time.
Mara on that stage.
Mara in Chase’s grip.
Mara in every fucking headline.
I swing high, but he blocks it, so I go low. It’s all muscle and motion. Sweat stings my eyes, and my lungs burn in a good way.
Behind us, Dredyn slams someone into the cage wall with a bone-shaking crash. The metal rattles, and the pledge he’s manhandling makes a sound like a dying animal.
“Guard up,” Dredyn growls. “You drop your hands like that in a fight, you lose them.”
He’s not wrong, but he’s also not talking to the kid. He’s talking to himself.
Jasper’s on the other side of the room, bare back slick with sweat, pounding a heavy bag. He’s all lean muscle and controlled wrath, like someone took the word “rage” and carved it out of marble. Every time the bag swings back at him, he drives another strike into it.
Beck’s parked at the folding table against the wall, laptop open, blue light washing out his face, one earbud in, Monster can in his hand.
“You know,” he calls over the music with a grunt, not looking up, “most people just go to therapy.”
“Most people haven’t met your therapist,” I shoot back. Beck’s therapist is hot, and the videos he’s shown us of her sucking his dick during sessions are even hotter.
Rook takes advantage of my distraction and snaps a jab into my shoulder. Pain lances down my arm.
“Focus, Reed,” he warns.
He’s right. My head’s not here, it’s in that ballroom, a month ago. Confetti falling like ash while Clark Black smiles for the cameras and announces he’s giving his daughter away like a prized cow.
It’s Mara’s face when she looked at us.
Yeah. Focus.
I bare my teeth, wipe the smear of blood from my lip with my thumb, and lunge. We trade blows. He’s heavier, stronger, but I’m quicker, meaner. I use the edge of the mat, the cage, his momentum. He overcommits on a right cross, so I step inside his guard and drive an uppercut up under his chin.
His head snaps back and he staggers. But I don’t stop, following with a hook that crashes into his jaw. He goes down to one knee, palms catching him on the mat before he face-plants.
I shove my mouthguard out with my tongue and spit a little blood onto the mat next to him.
Before I can give him my victory screech, there’s a loud, wet crack across the room.
We both look over as Dredyn knocks the pledge flat with a clean cross, then just …
keeps going. One more punch. Two. The kid’s out but Dre’s still swinging, fist rising and falling like he can’t feel the difference.
Jasper abandons the bag, strides forward, and snaps a hand between them. “Enough.”
Dre freezes mid-swing.
His chest heaves, eyes wild, then they flick to the kid, currently limp on the mat, and some of the madness slides off his face. He steps back, flexing his taped hands.
They’re red.
So is the mat.
“He should’ve blocked,” Dre mutters.
Jasper’s jaw ticks as he signs something clipped and fast. I can’t catch what he says to him even from here.
Dre looks away.
The atmosphere down here has been like this since the election.
We have Evie’s truth burned onto a USB drive. We have a president-elect who thinks he’s untouchable. We have a girl with a ring on her finger that might as well be a shackle.
We’ve got a lot of reasons to hit something.
My phone pings from the bench where I tossed it.
Beck is closest and he glances over, seeing the screen light up. “Hey, Reed.”