51. Zyran #2
Which means I have time.
I drag in a breath, and this one goes down my chest all the way to my lungs.
Then another, and it’s slow as the room stops closing in around me. My hands slowly feel the cold ground, and I’m able to lift my head from my hands.
Michaels has been watching her longer than we thought—I know that. There was a reason he snapped, and it was now, and the only thing I can think of is that it was because of me.
He saw her with me.
But where would he have seen us?
My brows pull together just as the front door opens—Raiden comes in first, doing one sweep like he always does, Sybil following close to him.
She stops for a moment, staring at me, and I can feel the pity seeping through the air.
I shake my head, refusing to look at her a second longer.
Slater suddenly comes through the door, filling the entire thing out, and he immediately goes to the corner of the shop.
Rhys moves in next, carrying his tablet, barely glancing at anything before he’s following Slater to sit down.
And then Cyran comes in; immediately he stops next to me, sliding down against the wall. His shoulder presses against me as he pulls his knees up to match mine.
“I can’t find her,” I whisper. My voice comes out wrecked. “Cyran, I don’t know where she is and I can’t?—”
“Stop,” he says gently. “You do know. You’re going to figure this out, the same way you always do.” He pauses, eyes burning into the side of my head. “But you can’t do it from inside your own head, not like this.”
I press the back of my wrist against my mouth, eyes burning.
“She’s scared.”
“I know.” He agrees, and for a moment I almost break down right there.
“But Zyran,” he pauses and doesn’t say anything for a minute, not until I peer over at him.
“She’s waiting for you to come get her. She’s not waiting for anyone else, but you.
So, get your head out of your ass and do what you’re trained to do. ”
I look at him, vision blurry. And he just looks back, and in his expression it’s every version of us that has ever existed—kids, teenagers, and all the years in between; it's all sitting right here, and I breathe in and then out. Slowly coming back to myself.
I blink once, giving him a curt nod.
For a second I feel a ping of guilt—in all the years between then and now, in everything that’s happened and everything I’ve become after being shot, I forgot that there is exactly one person on this Earth who has never needed me to explain myself.
Never needed the full sentence. Never needed anything other than what I actually am.
I straighten up, rolling my shoulders before I reach a hand out for Cyran.
A smile spreads across his lip, and he takes it, slapping me on the back.
“Rhys,” I snapped, turning my head in his direction. “What do you have?”
Rhys, already tapping away at his iPad, sits against the wall, not bothering to look up. “Still pulling; give me two minutes."
I nod, jaw tightening while I turn to Raiden, the one who usually calls the shots, expecting him to be angry, but instead I find him waiting for direction.
“We need weapons, lots of them. I’m taking him out.
” My brother nods, walking to the door and out, going to the place we have in town that holds some.
I look at Oliver, who has gone very still, watching me, stepping forward. “I’m like… I’m like the nerd over there.” Oliver waves his hands towards Rhys, who looks up at us with a scowl plastered to his face. “Give me research or something?—”
My eyes stay on Rhys. “I need every property within a fifteen-mile radius—make it twenty—that’s been cash-purchased or leased in the last three years. Warehouses, residential, anything that can be used.”
Rhys nods his head and moves through the screen.
“Zyran—”
“Find Michael. Figure out what he did after he went to that plastic surgeon.”
Oliver holds my gaze for a second longer than necessary, and then he nods and moves towards the door. “I’ll just grab my bag from your truck,” he mutters as he walks past.
Cyran squeezes my shoulder. “Where do you want me?”
“With Rhys. When he finds a location, I need you to run points on approach. I don’t want any surprises.”
The corner of Cyran’s mouth moves, and he nods, moving his hand off my shoulder before moving forward to Rhys.
My gaze drifts across the room and lands on Sybil, who is already watching me. She doesn’t say anything, just tilts her head toward the back of the shop, a quiet motion, telling me to follow her.
One foot in front of the other, I move toward the office before stepping inside. Sybil leans against the far wall, arms crossed loosely, looking at me like she always does.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
A short huff, laugh sort of thing escapes my lips; it’s short and humorless, absolutely nothing funny about it. “I think I understand Raiden a little better now.”
She frowns, opening her mouth and then closing it, eyes moving over my face, and I wait for her to understand what I mean. I almost call her out on being unpracticed and slow, but a smile tugs at her lips as if she suddenly realized what I mean.
“We’re going to find her,” she finally says.
“Is this what you felt like when Raiden went missing?”
She exhales slowly, and for a second I don’t think she’s going to answer, and then she nods.
“I couldn’t breathe.” Her voice is quiet, barely above a whisper as she shifts on her feet.
“It was like someone was ripping a piece of my heart out. Like a part of me was just… gone. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to survive without him.
It’s… there were two reasons I went after him alone.
I was either going to get him out, or I was going to die trying.
Because I wasn’t going to live in a world where Raiden didn’t exist anymore. ”
I look at the floor, my entire being focused on Esperr.
The version of her I keep returning to isn’t the terrified one, nor the one I discovered standing in the wreckage of an apartment, trying to hold herself together.
It’s the one before all of it, laughing at something stupid, her feet in my lap, toes rubbing together, completely unaware that she was even doing it while she read her book.
I want to take her somewhere far from all of this—where she’s not looking over her shoulder, where she’s not performing or trying to be strong.
I don’t want her waking up in the middle of the night with that careful stillness she uses instead of falling apart.
I want her to be herself, a girl who laughs too loud in the grocery store and picks fights with me just because she’s bored.
I want her to read as much as she wants until the spines are giving out.
I want to give her everything she’s never had in life.
“I just feel so lost,” I admit.
I feel Sybil’s gaze on me almost like she’s waiting for me to look up. “He’s been watching her for a long time.”
My brows pull together at her words. But before I can say anything, she continues on.
“Probably even longer than you know. Men like that—they don’t just watch from a distance.
They’d want to get close, inserting themselves, needing to be a part of her life because that’s the only way it feels real to them. ”
He inserts himself.
Two years behind that counter. Every coffee and every morning—every time she walked through that door—he was already there, waiting for her, right in her line of sight, so she had no choice but to look at him.
He was already inside.
“Oh fuck!” I growl, pushing off the wall.
“What?” Sybil is already trailing after me. “What did I say?—”
I don’t answer her, already moving through the door and back into the main space, and every head comes up at once.
“Oliver.” My voice cuts across the room. “Look into Eli, the… fuck, the baker! He works here, has for over a year—pull everything, his schedule, his address—anything that has his name on it.”
Oliver frowns, but fingers begin to tap at the screen.
“What’s happening?” Raiden asks from the table that’s loaded with guns and knives.
Sybil shrugs, glancing between me and her boyfriend. “I genuinely don’t know. I just?—”
“He inserted himself,” I say like it explains everything.
“Michael didn’t just watch her from the outside; he built a whole life around her.
He was always here when she was working.
” I look at Rhys and then Oliver. “He’s not hiding in some random location.
He knows her routines, her schedule, everything.
He’d pick somewhere close, somewhere he could’ve scoped out while he was standing right here. ”
Rhys nods and types faster, fingers flying across the board.
I crack my neck, left and then right, and wait.
The version of me that was on the floor twenty minutes ago with his head in his hands feels like a different person—he’s long gone.
Because what comes next is simple.
I find her, and I bury Michael, or whatever fucking face he’s wearing now.
He’s not walking away from this. Esperr is going to see his life drain from his eyes as I bash his head in.