Chapter 7 – Grey
GREY
B ecca sat rigidly in a stool at the bar upstairs, staring at something on her phone that made tension radiate up her arms. She sighed, all but tossing her phone face down on the bar in favor of the glass of clear liquid I didn’t think was water.
“Hey.”
She jumped as I dragged out the stool next to her.
“I-I swear I’m going to pay for this,” she stammered, indicating the vodka. “I just lost my wallet somewhere at the Docks and?—”
“Becca, I don’t give a fuck about the vodka, drink as much as you want.”
Her cheekbones flared, but she nodded. “I just wanted the one. To take the edge off, you know?”
“Corv said it was bad.”
“She was… until the Docks, I’d never seen a dead person you know. Well, not unless you count my mom, but they had her all made-up and pumped full of whatever the fuck they put in dead people to make them look alive at a wake. Julia was way worse than the Aces at the Docks. She died badly.”
She was rambling, and she realized it before I could say anything, sighing before she sipped the vodka, her hands trembling slightly.
“What were you looking at just now?” I asked her. “Before I came up here.”
Becca shook her head, snorting derisively. “Nothing from Ava Jade if that’s what you’re thinking.”
It was hard to keep the disappointment off my face, but it was clear whatever it was upset her.
If AJ were here, she’d ask her friend what was wrong.
I didn’t have a lot of time, but after all the shit Becca had had to endure over the past few months, deserved or not, I owed her at least a few minutes of my time.
“What was it?”
She bit the inside of her cheek, flipping her phone over to flick open the screen and slide it over to me.
On the screen was an open email. An acceptance letter to CalArts. No, it was a scholarship. As if Becca Hart needed scholarship money.
I’d all but forgotten her love of art. She was leagues better than me and my notebook scratchings. Her talent was probably what had gotten her in.
“Congrats.”
“A couple months ago, I would have been over the fucking moon if I saw this. Now, I just… I don’t feel anything.
” She sipped her vodka. “Doesn’t matter anyway.
I’m going to tell them to give the scholarship to someone else.
My dad would never let me go. He expects me to follow in his footsteps.
Already has an in for me at fucking MIT. ”
“But that isn’t you.”
“Tell him that.”
She finished her drink and set the glass down, fixing me with a hard stare. “So?”
I lifted a brow.
“You didn’t come up here to talk to me about potential colleges. What’s up? Corvus didn’t speak to me at all on the way back here, but I could tell something was up.”
I reached over the bar to grab a glass and fill it with OJ from the hose, needing some sugar in my system before I crashed.
“We’re going to look for AJ.”
She sagged in relief. “Thank fuck. When do we go?”
I fixed her with a look.
“When you say we ?”
I licked my dry lips. “I mean the Saints.”
“I can help. You know I can.”
I nodded, mostly to myself, because she probably could. She’d just seen a mangled body and was still here. Waiting to be helpful. Becca was more than I ever gave her credit for, and I was starting to see what AJ probably saw in her friend. Someone much stronger than met the eye.
“This is Saint business,” I started, trying to hold a gentle tone. The one I used when I needed to do the sweet talking Corvus and Rook weren’t always capable of. “And since your Ace is dead now, you no longer need our protection.”
She stiffened at that. “How do you know?”
“They’re all dead, Becca. We triple checked. And we don’t think any got away.”
She shook her head, swallowing before she spoke again, pushing the curtain of long straight hair back behind her ear. “I looked at every face, Grey.”
“What?”
“When one of the Saints led me out of the Docks. I made myself look at every face. Every bloody, awful dead face. I didn’t see him. What if he’s still out there?”
She pressed her hands between her knees, shoulders drawing in until she looked very small.
“It’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?” she all but snapped. “He wasn’t there.”
I had to admit, it was odd, and kudos to her for being able to look at so much death and still be sitting here mostly stable. But her guy had to be dead. We left none alive, and Mav said himself they’d checked for any who might’ve escaped.
“All right,” I said decisively. “Then I’ll send you back to Briar Hall with a guard.”
“I want to help.”
“You will be helping. If you’re at Briar Hall, we won’t have to do rounds checking the academy. That way if AJ shows up you can call us.”
She looked like she wanted to argue some more but also knew I wasn’t wrong. And she wasn’t going to get what she wanted this time no matter how hard she pushed.
“I guess.”
Something scratched at the back of my mind, and I struggled to grasp it, remembering what Becca did to get herself tangled up in all of this to begin with.
Her boyfriend.
Her Ace boyfriend who she swears wasn’t among the dead at the Docks.
One of them is staying with her tonight at Briar Hall , Becca said in Diesel’s recordings.
I could text her to find out.
My mind raced, trying to recall the exact words.
I just don’t see how feeding you information on my friend is going to help you do all that.
“Becca?”
“Yeah?”
“Your Ace boyfriend?—”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“You said you had no pictures of him.”
A knot formed between her brows. “I already told you that, he wouldn’t let me take any. I gave Diesel his description and everything else I knew.”
I waved off her concern, ignoring the defensive tone.
“Did he ask about Ava Jade a lot?”
Her jaw clenched. “He asked about all of you.”
“Yes, but did he ask about her specifically?”
“ Ow .”
I released her wrist, not even realizing I’d grabbed it or how my knuckles were white against her perfectly tanned skin. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Becca, I need you to answer the question.”
Becca rubbed her wrist, thinking. “I mean, yeah, but that was because she was a direct line to you three.”
“Was it?” I asked, the question more for myself than her.
She opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her with a look. “You’re absolutely sure you didn’t see him among the fallen at the Docks?”
She nodded slowly, going pale. “You don’t actually think that Jericho and Ava Jade’s stalker are…”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it fucking tracks, doesn’t it?”
I bit my lip, trying to connect the dots even though the pain in my fractured skull was reaching a breaking point. It was usually the others who figured out shit like this. The chances that I realized something this monumental before either of them were slim to none.
It could’ve been nothing.
It could be everything .
To find this guy and crush him once and for all.
“You don’t have any pictures,” I repeated.
“I already told you?—”
“I wasn’t finished. You don’t have any pictures, but you’re an artist. Can you draw him? Paint him?”
Her expression soured, but I could tell she would do it. No matter how much it would repulse her. “I can.”
My fingernails dug into my palm. Why hadn’t we thought to ask her to do that before?
Oh yeah, because before he was only a threat to her . Now, maybe, he was a threat to our girl, too. To us.
The door at the front of Sanctum opened, and I fixed Becca with a hard stare. “Keep this between us,” I said before Corvus, Diesel, and Pinkie could reach us at the bar.
“But…”
I shook my head no to drive my point home, and Becca shut her mouth.
There was a damn good chance this would lead absolutely nowhere.
That I was more than just wrong, wasting brain power on something so completely useless when I needed to be focusing on more important things.
I didn’t need to distract the others too if this was a dead end.
Right now we needed to find Ava Jade. Once she was back here safe, we’d have a meet about it.
“We need to get moving,” Corvus announced before they reached us. “We’ll have one of the patrol’s take Becca back to Briar Hall.”
Another Saint ran into the bar, bringing a wrapped cloth to Corvus. “Only found three,” the guy said, and I couldn’t be bothered to recall his name right now, my head still spinning with possibility.
“There should be four,” Corvus growled, unwrapping AJ’s blades, still stained with blood.
The crow handled one, and two from her father rested in Corv’s hand.
“That’s all we found,” the Saint shrugged, leaving the way he came in.
“She’s going to be pissed,” Becca said, leaning over the bar to put her used glass in the bar sink.
“We’ll replace it.”
Corvus’ pocket vibrated, and he cursed, stuffing his oversized hand into it to wrench his phone free.
He clicked the side button and slipped it back in without answering.
“Who’s that?” I asked, not able to interpret the look on his face.
“Max.”
“You’ve been ignoring her calls for ages.”
“Think there’s more important shit to worry about right now, don’t you?”
“Max,” Diesel said. “That’s your manager, right?”
Corvus didn’t answer.
“Don’t waste your talent, Son. Call her back.”
I didn’t have time to consider the fact that our father just basically gave his blessing before Corvus was snapping at him. “Not. The. Time.”
Diesel lifted his hands in a placating gesture.
Becca hopped down off the stool, a little unsteady.
“I’m sending a guard with Becca,” I announced, sliding off my stool as well. Corvus was already on his way back to the front of the bar but paused to peer over his shoulder at me with a questioning stare.
“We can’t spare anyone,” Corvus answered before Diesel could. “She doesn’t need a guard. Her shit stain of a boyfriend is dead.”
“I’ll go with her.”
As one, we turned to find Axel getting up from a cot, gritting his teeth as he did.
He managed to escape with moderate injuries even though he was there with us from the start, when our odds were a million to fucking one.
His shoulder was all kinds of fucked up, and the gunshot wound had nicked an artery, making him loose a fuck ton of blood, but he’d be okay with rest .
“You need fluids.”
No sooner had Diesel said it than Axel removed the IV needle from the back of his hand and tossed it aside.
I shared a look with Axel, realizing he’d heard at least some of what Becca and I had been talking about from where his cot near the bar.
He may have been injured, but he was also probably the one who would take watching over her seriously. And the only one who Diesel and Corvus would consider sparing.
“Let me go, Dies. I’m not going to be useful anywhere else.”
“You could’ve taken the fucking IV bag with you, genius,” Diesel said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
I nodded to Axel and he nodded back. “I’ll keep an eye on her,” he promised.
“Thanks, Axe.”
I turned to Becca, listening to the front door bang closed behind Corvus, who’d clearly grown tired of waiting. “And you, uh … you’ll work on that thing for me. Tonight?”
Her brown eyes met mine. “I will.”