Chapter 20
RYKER
The suburbs were too clean for what I’d done earlier that week when I walked away covered in a man’s blood.
The lawns were trimmed into obedience. SUVs lined up as if they’d been assigned parking spaces at birth. Morning joggers with earbuds, bright shoes, and no idea what a body looked like when it stopped being a person.
I kept my speed legal. Not because I gave a damn about traffic laws, but because I had a woman chained to the seat with cuffs on her wrists.
Sloane shifted in the passenger seat beside me. Not much, but enough to remind me she was there. As if I could ever forget.
The hoodie I’d forced her into swallowed her frame.
Her hair was tucked up under a beanie, low over her forehead.
The cuffs were hidden beneath the sleeves, and the chain threaded through her belt loop and under the seat so she couldn’t bolt when I stopped at lights.
She was also belted in, secure enough to survive a sudden stop.
It was containment.
She’d seen what she wasn’t supposed to see, and the second the wrong person got a whisper of that—Death and Kip would pay for it.
Sebastian too. Still, she was a problem with a pulse.
I told myself that’s what she was, anyway.
I repeated it with the desperation of a prayer I didn’t believe.
Sloane was a witness to what I did to Mick.
Witnesses turned into leverage and that turned into bodies.
My people were the ones who paid, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.
I glanced at her once. Her gaze was fixed on the road ahead, chin lifted high enough to hold the world back by pride alone. She’d been silent since the bunker door had shut behind us. Quiet in a way that wasn’t surrender. She was cataloging.
I didn’t like it. “Rules.”
Her eyes slid to me, filled with ice and anger. Maybe there was some fear buried under her facade, too.
“I know,” she said.
“No,” I corrected. “You think you know.” I turned onto a side street lined with maple trees stripped bare for the winter. “You don’t speak unless someone speaks to you. You don’t tell anyone where you were. You don’t mention Portland. You don’t mention last night. You don’t discuss—”
“Murder?” She flashed me a sugary sweet smile.
My fingers tightened on the wheel. “That word doesn’t fucking exist.”
Without looking at her, I felt her gaze trained on me. “You’re bringing me to your parents’ house and pretending this is fucking normal. That’s insane.”
I didn’t flinch at the word. I let it land and die. “It’s my family. You’re going to act like you understand how to behave for the next hour.”
“And if I don’t?”
I cut her a look and held it. God, she was beautiful. Stubborn as hell. Smart.
Worse, she was brave. Not the performative kind, but the kind that dug in even when it got someone buried.
I stared straight ahead, the words leaving my mouth without my permission.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Inwardly I cringed that I’d admitted that to her.
After three days together, I wasn’t looking at her the same way.
No matter how much I argued with myself that it couldn’t happen, it seemed like a losing battle.
I had to keep reminding myself that Sloane was too dangerous for everyone around me.
My gaze dropped to my phone, but the screen was dark, so the image wasn’t available for anyone to see. Good. I knew it was there, and it offered a hard reminder of what happened to the people I loved … The switch flipped and my brain stepped into control again.
Her mouth twisted. “That’s comforting.” Her reply was thick with sarcasm.
“It’s the truth.” I pulled onto a residential street and slowed. “But make no mistake. I will do what I have to.”
That did it. Her expression flickered a fraction. Not concern for herself, but most likely for Nate.
“You’re talking like there are people you’d burn for,” she said quietly.
I didn’t answer. If I opened that door, it wouldn’t stop at just my found family. The thing I didn’t want to look at wasn’t simple. Somewhere in the last three days, I’d started watching her like she mattered. Where her hands were. Whether she was cold. Whether she ate. If she slept.
That night I’d killed Mick, when the tracker lit up, went quiet, and the dot stopped moving, my first thought hadn’t been good, I can handle this. It had been Jesus Christ … she’s in danger. That pissed me the fuck off more than it should have.
A little voice in the back of my head whispered mine.
Shut the fuck up. I swatted the stupid thought to the side. Too much had changed since the Ritual when I’d claimed her.
My cock twitched at the memory of her in the mud the last time we were at the game—messy, feral, hers.
I’d been drawn to her fight, the strength she wore like armor, the way she made herself a challenge I wanted to break.
It wasn’t the first time I’d pictured taking her again while I kept her captive.
Then she finally said it, the cold case was her brother, and her face shifted. Pain, raw and quiet, the kind that didn’t ask for sympathy. It bled anyway.
Then the flashback hit after she told me about him, yanking me sideways.
They’d been getting better since Sloane was around.
Somehow, she kept me anchored, held the monsters back.
Grounded didn’t mean calm, though. It should’ve disgusted me.
Should’ve been leverage. Something to twist. Instead, the riddles took over.
The hunt stopped being about her body and became about the answers. My dick went quiet. The obsession moved. It latched onto the case, onto the missing pieces … and, whether I liked it or not, onto her.
What she’d told me earlier still scraped at the inside of my skull. That I’d gone missing as a kid. How the hell could that be true? My parents would’ve told me. They would’ve had to.
I turned onto another street and parked in front of a two-story house that looked ripped from a Realtor’s brochure. Gray siding. White trim. A porch swing that creaked in the winter breeze, steady as a pulse.
This wasn’t anything like where I grew up.
It wasn’t about my childhood house being bad, though.
It was about Sebastian and what had happened.
What it had done to him. Those memories stained everything I touched.
And maybe that was the point. Maybe I’d let them and use them to bury the rest. If I dug deep enough, I might find answers I didn’t want.
Like whether I’d really gone missing … or whether someone had made me forget I had.
Why didn’t I remember the part about me that mattered?
Why did my childhood feel like a book with chapters ripped out?
I turned off the engine.
Sloane stared at the house. “Your parents live in Vancouver. From the way you talked, I thought they were farther away than an hour.”
“Don’t talk.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but she shut her mouth.
I got out and walked around to her side, opened the door, and held out my hand. She hesitated like she’d rather fall onto the pavement than take help from me. She slid her hand into mine anyway. Her skin was cold. That shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
I helped her out, unlocked the chain before I pulled her sleeve down so the cuff stayed hidden, then leaned close enough that my voice was for her alone. “You’re a friend. You’re in trouble. Someone’s looking for you. You keep your story clean.”
She went still. “So, I’m supposed to trust you to write my life?”
“You’re supposed to survive,” I said. “Same difference.”
Her gaze lifted, and for a second, I saw what was under her anger. A woman who’d been alone for too long. A woman who’d been chasing a ghost named Nate until it hollowed her out.
And my chest did something it had no business doing. A quick tug and pull as if my heart was trying to start a war with my head. I fucking hated it. I dropped her hand and walked her up the driveway.
The porch boards were solid under my boots. The air smelled like fresh laundry and pine. Someone inside was making coffee. Normal. Appearances were never what they seemed.
I knocked once since my visit was unannounced.
The door opened fast.
My mom stood there, wrapped in a cardigan, hair twisted up in a clip like she’d been moving since sunrise. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, right before she smiled. Not the careful smile people gave Ryker, but the real one she saved for Dope.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, and then she was in my space, arms around me, squeezing like she could press the year I’d been gone back into my bones.
I went stiff on reflex. Then, slowly, I let her. I didn’t hug people often. When I did it was only people I trusted with my life. If I had gone missing and she’d kept it from me, this might be the last hug I gave her.
Her hands on my back did something old and ugly inside me. A part of me wanted to go soft, but I fought the pull of it. “Hi, Ma.” My voice was rough.
She pulled back and cupped my cheeks like I was still twelve. “Look at you. You look … good.”
I almost laughed. Good was a lie. Good was clean hands and clean choices and a clean conscience, and I had none of those.
Behind her, my dad appeared in the hall. Tall, broad, graying at the temples. He took one look at me and his jaw tightened, but not in anger. He looked relieved.
“Ryker,” he said, softer, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Dope.”
My mother swatted his arm without taking her attention off me. “We don’t call him that anymore.”
Dad held up his hands. “I’m trying.”
I shifted sideways, blocking the doorway enough that Sloane stayed half-hidden behind me.
My mom’s gaze flicked past my shoulder and landed on her. The curiosity in her expression was immediately followed by concern. She was the kind of woman who noticed bruises. The kind who saw pain long before someone confessed it. “Who’s this?” she asked gently.
Sloane stiffened behind me like she’d braced for this.
I didn’t give her time to overthink.
“This is Sloane,” I said. She’s a witness, a risk, a knot I can’t cut without bleeding out. “A friend. She needs somewhere quiet for a little bit, so she’s staying with me.”
My mom’s expression softened. “Of course. Sweetheart, come in. You must be freezing.”
Sloane stepped forward, and I felt the exact second my mom decided something about us.
Her gaze did that quick female sweep to my arm, Sloane’s posture, the way Sloane stood close without touching, the way my body angled like a shield. Mom smiled as if she’d been handed a secret.
Sloane caught it too. Her cheeks colored with irritation or embarrassment; I wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
I despised the heat that sparked in my gut too.
“Shoes off if you want.” Mom moved back into the house. “We don’t care if you don’t. Just … come in.”
Warmth hit us the moment the door shut. The smell of coffee and cinnamon and something baking. A fire crackled in the living room, and a framed photo of Sebastian on a shelf flashed in my periphery. Bass was younger, grinning with my dad’s arm around his shoulders.
My dad noticed me looking. “He called last night to check in. He let us know you were back.”
I didn’t answer. Sebastian was the one who had always held his friends together, until he couldn’t. Then we had his back.
It was the first time I’d reached out to my mom and dad in months.
I’d gotten on FaceTime with them a few times during recovery, enough to prove I was still breathing.
I wanted to spare them the nightmare I was living, but I still needed them.
I knew they were worried too. They were the only ones I could stand to let see me like this.
I let them see the weak parts of me, and they never pointed them out.
Only words of comfort and praise. Even when they realized I wasn’t the son they used to know.
Sloane’s gaze landed on the photo. Her expression flickered. Shit. She was connecting things.
I placed my hand on the small of her back, an intimate move for most, control for me. I moved toward the kitchen with Sloane next to me.
Mom was already pouring coffee into a mug she kept for me.
The one with a chipped rim. The same mug as always, even though we weren’t in the same house that I’d grown up in.
After I started college in Washington State, they moved to be near me.
We were only an hour drive away now, but it was enough to allow some distance between us.
They didn’t need to know what I did for a living. Who I was. Who I protected.
“Sit.” His mom nodded to the table. “Both of you. You’re too thin.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t argue. Even with your new muscles, you could add a few pounds.”
Sloane hesitated, then sat. The chair creaked under her like it was judging her for existing.
I stayed standing for a beat, scanning exits out of old instinct.
My dad clocked it, but he didn’t comment. He opened the oven and pulled out a plate of still-warm muffins like he’d been waiting for the sound of my boots on his porch.
That should’ve gutted me. Instead, it made me angry. Angry that I’d left. Angry that I’d come back. Angry that good people could exist in the same world I’d learned to survive in.
Mom slid the mug across to me, and her fingers brushed mine. “How are you, really?”
There it was. Not the rehab question, or the sobriety question. The real one. How are you when you close your eyes? How are you when you remember nothing but the feeling of straps on your wrists?
I swallowed coffee that tasted like home. “I’m fine.” A lie.
Mom’s gaze sharpened. She looked as if she wanted to press. Instead, she glanced at Sloane and softened again, switching tracks without missing a beat. “And you, honey? Are you hungry?”
Sloane’s mouth tightened. She looked at me as if she didn’t know what she was allowed to say.
“Eat.”
Mom arched a brow at my tone.
Sloane picked up a muffin and tore off a piece with fingers that trembled once before she stilled them.
My dad sat across from her, casual on the surface, but underneath was a different story. “Ryker said you’re in trouble?”