CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WELLS
“G oddamn motherfucker!”
My fist strikes. Ice picks of white-hot, unbridled rage split my knuckles open, spilling my boiling blood.
I rear back again.
Blinded.
Wrathful.
Murderous.
Broken.
Another wallop so violent that the force yanks me with it. My scotch-induced trance sobering from the collision.
Blood pours.
It’s not enough.
No amount could atone.
Like a flip of a switch, clamoring and pandemonium pummel into me, my brain swimming against the currentin a sea of shouts and commands.
Gage smashes me into the wall, pinning me there. In all our years, he’s never done that. Never had to. I’m the one who’s always in control. His face is stark, irises darkened with affliction as he flexes his temple vein with warning.
“Not like this, Chief,” he urges, but the room is still abuzz with outrage, and I can’t restrain myself from shoving against him. In my fury of adrenaline, he wrestles to contain me as Ty’s voice crashes through my bloodthirsty haze .
“It was the loyalty test, Wells. And he took a fucking bullet for her!”
Loyalty test. They all fucking knew.
The five most agonizing weeks of my life are somehow worsened by what he stole.
Gage loosens his clutch on my neck, stepping aside in a credulous act of trust. No one should trust me in this state. I pull my pistol from the harness, raising it before any of them can blink, my seething gaze scanning Gage and Ty.
And Liam.
His face is cracked and bruised and bloody from my punches. Swollen and guilty. His arm is stationed stiffly at his side, wounds from his chest surgery still healing.
But all I see is her.
Her hollow eyes and pleading cries.
The gauntlet of torture inflicted.
Her withering spirit spiraling and distorting until it emerged as a destructive disconnect.
Bile coats my heavy tongue. I detest every last one of them, including myself.
But Liam. He kissed her. Laid down his life. Her hero.
It’s my only thought, looping in an internal rant that drowns their indignant demands.
Liam gathers the blood pooling from his brow, nose, and mouth with a swipe of his shirt, his valiant chest scars mocking me. “It’s all on video. I didn’t even use my typical polished moves. It was innocent.”
“Innocent?” The word tumbles out, charged with poisonous accusation. He’s always wanted her. Nothing about this is innocent.
Except my Little Storm.
That much I know.
He slinks down the wall, unfazed by my gun threatening him.
“Yes,” he snarls, stretching his legs out to find a less painful position.
“Watch it. Goddammit , I did it for you , for her , and it nearly cost me everything.” His eyes narrow at mine, glossy and plagued, a reflection of my own torment. “It nearly cost me Ivy.”
I reholster my gun and drop into a chair. Fucking Christ, I can’t get my head straight.
Ty drags a chair beside me, collapsing with a remorseful groan. “Your grandfather contacted us, giving us the option over someone else he’d choose to do God knows what. We weren’t about to let that happen. Gage and I couldn’t sell it to her. It had to be Liam.”
It had to be Liam. That isn’t the cushion Ty intends. It had to be him because on some level, she deemed him an option. My gut wrenches. “Let me see it.”
Liam’s finger swipes over his phone without hesitation. “There’s a time-lapsed part in the car. She wouldn’t talk to me. Ty edited and sent it to KORT while I was in surgery.”
It pings on my phone, and I put my earbuds in, not willing to share this even though I know they’ve seen it.
The video is shoddy, the angle poor. She didn’t know she was being filmed.
In the dark, like always. I watch their playfulness, their lighthearted laughs volleyed back and forth.
Different from her and Ty. Different from us.
She enlivens with a zeal when he smashes the doughnut into her pouty lips, my little brat ready for a takedown, giving it right back.
Then the kiss.
Liam’s right. It’s quick and chaste. Not his usual ferocious swallowing. Eviscerating all the same.
And her eyes. They pool with both betrayal and empathy. Her serene demeanor is sweet, letting him down gently, before the panic hits her and her storm brews, clouded with conflict. In a flash, they’re parked in the driveway.
Talk about nailing a fucking loyalty test on every account—grace for us all. Over and above what would be expected.
Jesus. That’s why Liam said nearly. Ivy made it clear he’d never lose her, and in spite of my impulse to disembowel him, I love her even more for it .
There’s no video once they’re out of the car.
Only the shot blaring through the stale air.
Her sobs. Her shock. Her terror and pleas.
Liam calling her baby girl and telling her she was worth it all—deathbed devotion completely removed from the loyalty test. If I don’t tarry there, a thankfulness bubbles over from my boiling blood.
He protected her, would’ve died for her.
Then, she’s gone, and I’m frozen, staring at the blacked-out screen, wondering if any part of that girl is left. I’ll love her regardless, but she’s harder.
Because I allowed this to be her fate.
Both Gage and Ty are eyeing me, foreheads scrunched in question. Ty spins the monitor they’re viewing. It’s stilled on our land, an image ablaze.
“Know what that is?” he asks when I remove my earbuds, his tenor leery.
The answer is an anvil clobbering me. My lungs empty all the air inside them. “It’s a phoenix. A phoenix clutching a sword.”
They all gape at me to confirm what they’re already speculating.
I exhale another ragged breath. “She’s erasing herself and taking her sword with her.” A fuck you to both us and KORT. I don’t share that though, not with all the chairs on video conference.
Gage muted their chatter, but they’re still privy to ours—the only reason Ty, only Ty , was permitted to call Ivy and also why he couldn’t share anything.
I snap into action. She spoke to us on a burner, but she was in the Ferrari, and we have that tracked too. I pull up the tracking app, gushing relief. “I’ve got her.”
Ty’s face relaxes as Liam whoops a stilted laugh. Our heads all whip toward him in question. His eyes twinkle in a way they haven’t since before .
“Our girl is … fucking impressive. Not only did she handle all aspects of closing—proper paperwork filing, lifted signatures, the whole gambit. But you know how she paid for the house?” He makes us wait through a silent drum roll.
“Us. She funneled our money from one account to another, minus the big fat bonus she afforded the realtor.” He howls with pride.
“And torched it all. Ruthless, but fucking genius.”
Gage claps with a hearty cackle. “Jesus, I fucking love that girl.”
Ty’s face twists, his mouth creased with mirth. “You finding her playing us endearing is baffling.”
“We deserve it,” Gage insists, shrugging. “I’m not a moron. Ivy is who I want by my side when I get mine.”
When I glance at the tracker, panic seizes me. He’s right. Much like her message , my Little Storm is on fire. Even with her in our sights, we need to be on.
“She’s got thirty minutes on us,” I announce.
They swiftly pack what we need from the apartment we’ve been holed up in, without me issuing the order, none of us sparing a glance for the members of KORT awaiting on the screen. They can fuck their trials.
We climb in Gage’s Jeep, charging after the blinking dot that is my wife.
“Fucking hell, she’s driving possessed,” Gage roars, but it’s steeped in admiration.
“Sounded possessed too,” Ty muses, chewing another goddamn hole in his lip.
He’s been tied in knots, mangled really.
We all have. The last five weeks have colored our prisoners-of-war days in a pastel easiness.
They weren’t. But it was all training and instinct kicking in—until we ultimately ravaged, killed, and tunneled our way out, just so the US government could inform us we’d been so successful at hunting the terrorists that when the rest of our unit blew up, they buried us too.
Erased so we could become independent-contract erasers and identity miners—a secret weapon.
That whole time period is murky, tinged more with exhaustion and raw determination than torture.
But these weeks away from Ivy, helplessly viewing her agony, not having her in my arms? I’ve never known a greater suffering. Neither have the three men crowded in this vehicle .
Gage struggles to close the gap, but fortunately, it’s clear where she’s headed.
“The private hangar off 76,” I offer. “She’s taking Tom’s plane.”
“Fuck,” Liam hisses from the back seat.
I dismiss his panic with a terse grunt. “No. It’s tracked. I installed it after she and Celeste took the Carvers’ plane to Vegas in the middle of the night.”
After the girls pulled that stunt on Ivy’s twenty-first birthday and skipped town without our knowledge, we installed a tracker on both Tom’s plane and the Carver family’s plane.
Leaving at one in the morning had been the genius part of the girls’ plan—when everyone believed Ivy was tucked in bed at Celeste’s house.
Five hours after they’d left, we realized they were gone and were able to catch up to them, but it was a harrowing night.
Tom’s jet is already preparing for takeoff when we’re still a good ten minutes out.
But I tap into the registered coordinates.
We have a plane in this hangar, too, for precisely this purpose— storm chasing .
They staff round-the-clock, last-minute flight crews, so those in certain lines of work can flee at a moment’s notice.
“Paris,” I supply, a consoling blanket assuaging some of my fears.