Chapter 32 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
M y mouth watered at the plate of food Corvus slid across the center island to me.
It was the third dinner he’d prepared for us all since we came back to the Nest. Three days and we still had nothing .
I was getting restless, and I could tell everyone else was, too.
Grey set to shoveling the brown butter potatoes and rare steak into his mouth, but I could tell he wasn’t really tasting it.
He had that faraway look in his eyes. The one he’d worn since the morning we woke up after he fucked me until I couldn’t see straight.
He’d gone straight back to work, wrapped in a blanket instead of bothering to get dressed. And even now, as he ate, he was still fucking working. His scholarly mind trying to find an angle he hadn’t already thought of.
Rook stood, elbows leaned on the center island as he pushed his steak and potatoes around on his plate with a scowl on his lips.
“Eat,” Corvus ordered, glaring at both Rook and me as he slid into the last stool, dropping his own plate in front of him. “I didn’t spend an hour mothering those potatoes for them to get fucking cold.”
I sighed, popping one into my mouth. It was incredible, but so was everything he’d ever cooked for us.
I couldn’t bring myself to give a compliment tonight, though.
We still had another day before our planned heist of female Hitler’s fancy eggs and pearls.
Grey needed a specific type of decoder to get past her home security system, which should be arriving tomorrow morning.
And then we’d have to wait a day or two while Diesel secured a black market buyer.
The day after that was the planned meet with the Mexicans, when we’d need to have the cash in hand no matter what happened any of the days before.
Once we had those weapons and ammunition, there was still the teeny tiny problem of not knowing where the fuck Carson was. Or the rest of the Kings for that matter.
While we sat here, eating a gourmet meal surrounded by grouchy sleep-deprived Saints, they could be planning their next move.
At least Corvus was looking and feeling better.
And I had to admit the time spent at rest made all the difference for me, even if it wasn’t what I wished I was doing.
The burns along my forearm were still gnarly as fuck, but they’d stopped seeping, and in another few days I figured I could remove the bandages for good.
The bruises along my stomach had turned a sickly shade of yellow, and would fade completely soon…
even if the internal trauma couldn’t be so easily healed.
But the main thing was the complete and utter lack of voices in my head. Aside from some very vivid dreams and night sweats, turned out that nurse was right. I wasn’t crazy. At least, I wasn’t hearing voices crazy. I was definitely the other kind.
“Try the horseradish sauce,” Corvus urged, pointing the sharp end of his steak knife toward my plate and the white sauce spilling over the sliced strips of steak.
I let my fork clatter to the plate and sat up, leaning to my right to take Rook’s half-drunk glass of the good bourbon he’d been slowly working his way through this week.
“I can get you your own,” he offered, and I lifted a brow at the hostility in his tone.
“I don’t want my own,” I parried, tossing the rest of it back with a shiver as the burn flushed down my throat to my belly.
He gave me a look before going to get himself a brand new glass from the cupboard.
“Someone’s grouchy,” I muttered to myself, setting the empty glass down.
“How’s the search coming?” Corvus asked Grey, and I caught the way he flinched at the question. It was all anyone wanted to know. The Saints asked him every time he left his room to take a piss. Diesel asked him every time he called. He didn’t need the pressure from us, too.
“Would you leave him alone?” I snapped. “He’s doing everything he can.”
Grey stood suddenly, the legs of his stool scraping over the tile as he wiped his mouth with his napkin and tossed it over his half eaten dinner. “I don’t need you to baby me, AJ. I’m going back to work.”
My nostrils flared as I leveled a murderous stare on Corvus. “And what have you done, hmm? Aren’t you supposed to be the one that thinks of everything?”
His brows lowered over his eyes, making the bright blue darken to a stormy navy under their shadows.
The threat of thunder in the hard set of his shoulders and bulging biceps.
“You think I haven’t been doing everything I can to find this fucker, too?
What is it you think I’m doing in my room all hours of the day and night because it sure as fuck isn’t napping.
I’ve exhausted all my resources. It’s like the guy doesn’t fucking exist.”
“Well, he does, and he’s still out there.” I pointed toward the window, to the long road curving away into the trees down to Briar Hall.
The reminder that not only was I likely going to be a dead girl within the week, but I’d also be a dead high school dropout , just made me even angrier.
Going back to class was completely out of the question.
There were too many opportunities for Carson to get to us there, not to mention the possibility of innocent teens being put in the line of fire.
But whether the reasoning was sound or not didn’t fucking matter to me.
I’d worked hard to get to where I was with my grades, and it was all for nothing.
Christmas break would be starting in two weeks and then it would be an entirely new semester with new classes.
No way to make up for lost time or projects from the previous semester.
But who fucking cared, right?
Not like you needed a high school education to handle a weapon.
Dad would be so proud.
“You don’t think I know that?” Corvus growled. “You don’t think it makes me sick knowing he’s out there, walking free, breathing , after what he put you through? Hmm? ”
“Then why are you in here ‘mothering your potatoes?’ ”
The darkness ebbed and flowed, fully set free to swell and crash against my walls inside. A part of me knew I wasn’t being fair, but I couldn’t seem to help it. Couldn’t seem to stop.
Couldn’t fucking sit here anymore.
Corvus snatched his dinner from the counter and pitched it into the sink, shattering the plate before he stalked from the room.
Rook slid onto the stool next to me as though nothing had happened at all, sipping his fresh glass of bourbon.
“Damn Ghost…”
He grabbed the bottle to top off my glass. “You really know how to clear a room.”
He knocked his glass into mine in a mock cheers before draining the rest of his drink and lighting a cigarette.
“Corvus will kill you.”
Rook smirked around the cigarette at the edge of his mouth. “Nah. He’ll stay in there the rest of the night now.”
He took a drag and ashed onto his plate. “No one gets to him like you do.”
Rook took my untouched glass of bourbon and put it to his lips.
I bristled. “Thought we weren’t sharing,” I said bitterly.
He bit his lip ring, sliding the glass back my way. When I reached for it, he settled his hand over mine, and I noticed the fresh ink on his middle finger. A little ghost with black oval eyes. My rage slipped away, replaced by a fierce tightening in my chest that almost had me choking.
“We’re all a little on edge right now, Ghost. For what it’s worth, sorry I snapped at you.”
I lifted his hand, studying the new ink. He grinned. “You like it?”
I shifted my gaze to the hand wrapped around the bottle of bourbon, and the name ROOK displayed over his knuckles, and I understood the significance. He fought for himself with that hand, but now I’d always be right here, on his left. The other thing he would go to his grave fighting for.
I opened my mouth to tell him how perfect it was when a horn blared long and loud out the window.
Saints rushed in from the living room, their weapons drawn.
Voices crackled over the radio.
“Incoming!”
The horn honked insistently now, over and over again as the sound drew nearer. Rook slid from his stool with a spark of life in his eyes I hadn’t seen in days as he drew his gun. I loosed two blades from their holsters, making a beeline for the side door with Rook on my heels.
“Hold your fire!” Corvus bellowed over the radio, but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said as Rook and I left the Saints behind, rounding the house, positioning ourselves behind a parked car, backs against the cool metal.
“Ready?” Rook asked.
“Ready.”
We jumped out from behind the car just as the dark green truck appeared down the road. I reeled my arm back to throw, but Rook caught my wrist, stopping me.
“What are you?—”
“It’s my uncle,” he hissed, releasing me as he stepped out into the road, waving his arms at the truck. “Damien!” he hollered.
“Rook, get out of the way!”
My heart lurched, legs poised to tackle him out of the truck’s path and take the hit myself, but the tires screeched as Damien St. Vincent ground the truck to a stop, cranking the wheel sideways to spew gravel in our direction as it came to a jarring, shuddering stop. I sheathed my blades.
“What the fuck, Uncle D?” Grey slammed the front door behind him and Corvus as they stalked into the driveway and Damien St. Vincent shoved out of the truck.
“Get in,’” he said, his face flushed. “I just got off the phone with the hospital. She’s awake.”
The words were a punch to the gut, and my hand flew to my chest as tears sprang to my eyes.
She’s awake?
A sob grew in my chest, and it let free as someone’s arm came around my waist, breaking me out of my frozen state.
The driver’s side door shut and Damien revved the engine as we raced to the back of the truck, launching ourselves into the cargo bed.
“We’re right behind you!” one of the Saints, Mickey, shouted, tossing a set of keys to someone. The engines of all the cars in the driveway turned over as one as Damien chewed gravel, whipping the truck around to go back the way he’d come.