Chapter 14 – Corvus
CORVUS
“ R ook, wait, ” I shouted, chasing him through the hall to the stairs. I only managed to catch up at all because his leg was slowing his ass down.
“ I said wait ,” I tried again, my growl echoing in the stairwell, making him whip around to face me, white knuckle grip on the railing, face a mosaic of unleashed fury.
The mirror image of what I felt inside but was fighting past because we couldn’t waste this.
We had the advantage here. The upper hand.
And we couldn’t let it all go to shit because we wanted this fucker’s head on a platter.
“What?” he barked. “What the fuck are we waiting for?”
Grey caught up, letting the door bang closed behind him, sealing us into the stairwell alone.
“Stop and think for a fucking second,” I implored him, noticing his rapid breathing.
The way his whole body moved with the simple act of taking in air.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him like this.
So wound up he could explode at any second.
It was shocking he’d stopped at all. That he was listening.
His black eyes searched the dead air in front of his face as he tried to figure out what I was getting at, clearly getting more and more frustrated by the second.
Grey padded down the few steps from the landing to us, stopping in front of Rook. “AJ still isn’t back. If my theory is right and I think it is then…”
“He might have her,” Rook finished for him, his eyes wild now, but focused.
“And if we rush in guns blazing…”
“So, what then?”
I licked my lips, my body alive with a savage flutter behind my rib cage. The crush of anxiety I hadn’t felt since I was a fucking teenager rearing its ugly head. Everything depended on us doing this right .
“We don’t let on we know anything,” I started. “First, we need to find out where he is.”
Rook lifted his phone to his ear and I grabbed his jacket sleeve, jerking him toward me. “Who the fuck you calling?”
“Diesel.”
I released him. “Tell him not to let on a goddamned thing.”
He nodded, and Diesel picked up on the other end. “Dies, you alone?”
Rook shuffled down a few steps, turning around to speak to Diesel in hushed tones.
Grey ran a shaky hand through his hair. “What are you thinking? Tail him?”
“If Drake is who we think he is, it won’t be easy. He’s a smart motherfucker but that means we’ll just have to be smarter. He probably has all his bases covered. He’ll notice a tail straight off. We’ll have to be more creative.”
“So, we’re just supposed to pretend we don’t know? Be in the same room as this fucker? Breathe the same air?”
“Unless there’s some way we can get our hands on him without setting a war in motion with the Kings.”
“Fuck the Kings,” Rook injected, coming back up to where we stood near the window, looking out over the rapidly darkening parking lot. “How do we know they aren’t in on this shit? He’s one of theirs.”
“And if going to war is what it takes to get her back, then so fucking be it,” Grey added.
The uncomfortable flutter behind my rib cage died, swallowed by the familiar heat of the animal within coming back to life. They were right. It didn’t matter what it took.
“Where is he?”
Rook’s lips twisted into a wicked grin. “At Sanctum. Diesel’s going to try to keep him there.”
Fuck. I gritted my teeth, shaking my head. “If Drake gets the feeling something’s off, he’ll bolt.”
“Diesel won’t let him.”
A new worry took root. “Why’s Drake there?”
“It was another meet with Mav and his main crew. About what happened with Becca. He’s putting the pressure on Mav to bring Aries in.”
But we knew now it wasn’t Aries. Never was. He was always a distraction. Something to keep us busy while the real threat worked alongside us. Right under our noses. This whole fucking time.
“Who’s with him?”
Rook lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, his expression filled with questioning annoyance, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Overeager for action. “I don’t know, man. I heard Pinkie in the background. The others are still on patrol for Ghost.”
The lines of exasperation in his forehead softened as he realized what I’d already figured out. Diesel was in a closed space with the enemy. Diesel and Pinkie and maybe one more Saint if he was lucky. Meanwhile Mav was there with Drake and the rest of their inner circle.
“We don’t know for sure if the Kings even know about Drake. The alliance could still be legit. There’s no reason to think…” Grey trailed off. The placation was more for himself than for us. He could be right, but I doubted it.
“We need to move.”
Grey pushed the Rover to its limits as we sped across town to Sanctum, still better with one eye than any driver I knew with two.
“Slow down a bit,” I warned as we turned onto High Street, nearing Sanctum. We didn’t need to come peeling into the lot and set anyone on edge. We were going to walk in there, take Drake, and tell Mav that if he didn’t cooperate, it would be his head.
The Kings might’ve outnumbered us now, but not by much. Not by enough.
Was I thinking straight?
I shook my head, blinking away the exhaustion clinging to my eyelids, trying to drag them down like lead weights. Sleep wasn’t a luxury any of us could afford these days. If I didn’t get my Sparrow back, I doubted I’d ever sleep again.
But if I did get her back…
I’d do whatever she wanted. Be whatever she wanted. I’d share her with my brothers. Let go of my control.
Falling for someone was never in the cards for me, but I didn’t just fall for Ava Jade.
I’d crashed and burned, and I’d keep burning for as long as she wanted to hold me in her fire.
Love was something meant for story books and fairy tales.
A lie people whispered to each other in the dark to justify and rationalize their most carnal desires.
To control. To protect. To dominate. To fuck. To own .
I didn’t love Ava Jade. What I felt for her went far beyond such a simple emotion. It was a nameless thing that kept me going, breathing life into my battered bones and weary mind. She was the spark.
Grey ground his jaw as he forced the Rover to a crawl and Sanctum came into view.
Rook’s fingers dug into the front seats from where he sat in the middle behind us, ready to launch at a second’s notice.
“Remember,” I said, working to keep my voice at an even timbre so as not to set him off. “We can’t kill him. Not yet. We need him alive.”
“Fine.”
“Rook.”
“I said fine .”
Grey cranked the wheel to pull in next to one of Dies’ cars out the front of Sanctum at the same time as a loud bang ! rang through the evening air, forcing him to hit the brakes.
The front door of Sanctum crashed open and a storm of gray smoke chased Drake from the building.
Diesel.
Rook darted from the backseat, leaving the door open behind him.
I opened my door, the instinct to chase searing through my blood, but Grey shoved the Rover into reverse, jostling me back into the cab.
“He’s going to get away,” Grey shouted, throwing the Rover back into drive.
Drake straddled a motorcycle parked down the street from Sanctum, but Rook was almost there, his wraith-like shadow on top of him.
Diesel poured out of Sanctum with Pinkie and Mav right behind him, coughing.
My relief at finding him alive fled as the roar of the motorcycle’s engine filled the night, droning out the sound of their coughing. Even the sound of our own engine, revving to give chase.
“How did he know we were coming?”
I barely registered what Grey had asked as he cranked the wheel, jarring to a stop only long enough for a cursing, out of breath Rook to clamber back into the back seat as we sped off after the single tail light curving up the blacktop ahead.
“Keep them here,” I hollered out the window to Diesel, gaze cutting to a genuinely stunned-looking Maverick. “And call back the others.”
Diesel nodded through another hard cough from the smoke bomb and whipped my head around, taking out my gun and checking the clip before pushing myself half out the passenger side window, into the whipping wind.
“We’re going to lose him!” Rook roared and Grey punched it, propelling us like a speeding bullet down the road after Drake.
“Watch out!” I called and Grey barely managed to skate around a merging SUV, nearly jostling me out the fucking window.
Ahead, Drake’s taillight grew smaller. Further.
No .
“Grey!”
I fought the wind, firing, but the shot went wide and still his fucking taillight grew smaller until it vanished around a corner.
“Hold on!”
I threw myself back into the seat before he pulled the e-brake, skidding us to the side before speeding off again, down the narrow alley between two buildings.
The side mirrors sparked, scraping against weathered brick as the Rover ran over empty bottles and cardboard boxes, smashing trash cans out of the way.
The instant we were clear of the alley, both Rook and I leaned out our windows, searching.
“There!”
The motorcycle dipped to the left off the end of Main Street, merging onto the southbound highway.
Grey followed, swerving around two cars in the slow lane to slide all the way to the fast lane, pushing the Rover to its limits.
Honking sounded all around, but he ignored everything except the Rover and the road and the bob and weave of Drake’s tail lights ahead.
The unparalleled focus in his eye told me he wouldn’t be letting Drake go. Not while this car was still moving and he was still behind the wheel.
“Get around this van,” I shouted over the roar of the wind rushing into the cabin, pushing back out the window, taking aim.
The business end of my Colt traced the erratic driving pattern of Drake ahead between two other cars.
Fuck. If I fired I’d risk hitting one of them instead of my intended target.