36. Isla
36
ISLA
It didn’t take long after the tears dried for me to realize that losing IKE might actually kill me. I’d already lost Kavanaugh and that was hard enough. Even his texts asking how I was doing weren’t really enough to gain back his friendship.
But what I had with IKE was so much more real than with Kavanaugh. There weren’t lies between us. There was no wall keeping us apart, and I knew things about him that he hadn’t shared with anyone else. Yet, Kavanaugh just couldn’t open up to me, and I had a feeling no matter how long I stayed with him, he never would.
I dropped the blanket on the ground and rushed upstairs, naked as the day I was born, and threw on anything I could find that was clean. I hadn’t showered and my hair was a ratty mess, but none of that mattered right now. I had to find a way to save IKE. He had done it plenty of times for me. I couldn’t fail him now when he needed me most.
“Hey, I’m home!” Riley shouted from downstairs. “Oh, God! Don’t tell me you guys did it on the living room floor again!”
I ignored her as I continued dressing. I didn’t have time to explain any of this to her. I ran downstairs, taking them two at a time and nearly killing myself on the last step. Riley spun and stared at me with wide eyes as I rushed over to the living room, throwing things around as I searched for my keys under the clothes thrown all around the room.
“Uh…hello?”
“I don’t have time to talk. I have to save IKE’s life.”
“Is he missing? Did he shrink and now he’s hiding under these clothes?” she teased.
I found my coat and shoved my hand in the pocket to dig around. “He had to go back to his job and they might kill him.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “So, why did he go back?”
“You know,” I muttered. “Same reason men do anything. Honor, glory, saving the day, keeping me safe. Where are my damn keys!”
“I don’t suppose you’ve thought about the fact that maybe you should stay out of it and let him handle this.”
“His idea of handling it is to go to the meeting,” I argued. “Does that sound like a good plan to you?”
“Well, I don’t know much about bad guys. Clearly, I’m not as up-to-date on my criminal activity as you are.”
I got down on my knees and looked under the chair, moving on to the couch. How far could I have thrown them? “I just need to get to OPS and beg them to help him. They can do that. I mean, he’s helped them before.”
“Right, and they do this sort of thing all the time. Taking out mobsters and bad guys and…thugs.”
I popped up and grimaced. “Actually, I think they’re more of a protection company, but I’m not one hundred percent sure about that.”
“Then maybe they’re not the right people to ask.”
“Who else am I going to ask?” I jumped to my feet and walked over to her, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m losing my mind. He was going to leave me. He wasn’t even going to say goodbye.”
“What an asshole.”
“I punched him across the face.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because I love him and he’s a stupid man!”
She sighed heavily. “Well, then I guess we’d better go save your stupid man.”
“I can’t find my keys,” I stomped.
She picked them up off the table and jingled them in front of my face. “Shall we go?”
I did something very unlike me and flung myself into her arms and hugged her tight. Of course, she didn’t hug me back. That wasn’t really our thing. We did joke hugs and things like that, but touchy-feely hugs were too…emotional.
She patted my back awkwardly and tried to step away. “I’m pretty sure that was way more than two Mississippis.”
“It was.”
“Then you should let go now.”
I stepped back and wiped my nose, laughing when she grimaced.
“If any of that got on me, you’re going to pay with your life.”
I would pay her a thousand times over if she helped me get IKE back. I didn’t question her as she got in the driver’s seat of my car or when she peeled out a little too quickly. I was desperate and that meant I was up for anything. She even made siren noises as we drove to OPS, which—while they weren’t actually useful in any way—made me feel a tiny bit better.
As soon as we pulled down the driveway, I was out of the car and running to the offices, banging on the front door. It was way too early in the morning for the front office to be open, but I knew someone was there. If I shouted loud enough, someone would answer.
“Hey! Is anyone in there? It’s me! Isla! I really need your help!” Over and over, I pounded on the door. My fists hurt and my throat was raw. The cold was seeping into my too-thin pajama pants that I had pulled out of my drawers, and my slippers weren’t really a replacement for winter boots. But they worked in a pinch.
“Hey! I will cut down this door! I will—I will break it down! Do you hear me? I will not be ignored! I am a fierce beast! You can’t keep me out. I’ll find a way in and I’ll make you listen to me!”
A shadow moved inside and someone walked toward the doors. Finally. I pounded again until he strode over and opened the door. It was Dash.
“Hell, do you think you could pound any louder? I don’t think everyone in town heard you yet.”
“If you heard me, why didn’t you answer?”
“Because some of us were working.”
“Well…I haven’t had coffee yet and I’m very upset.”
“You could have used a little thing called a phone. Or…” He stepped outside and pressed a button on the wall. “You could have used the intercom.”
Grinding my teeth, I glared at him. “Are you going to let me in or not?”
He looked me up and down, then sighed. “Well, based on how you look, I guess I’d better let you in.”
I couldn’t look that bad. Sure, I wasn’t dressed for the day and my hair was a little ratty, but that didn’t mean I was a horrible mess. I followed him into the elevator, gripping Riley’s hand as she stepped in after me. This had to work. I had no one else to turn to if they didn’t help me. I didn’t know anyone else who even had the manpower to pull off something like this.
When the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened, I took a deep breath and followed Dash as he headed into the bright, wide-open space. Everyone was too chipper for this early in the morning. They didn’t know that just an hour ago, IKE was breaking my heart. They didn’t realize that he was going to a life he no longer wanted or that he might not return.
Rae walked out of a room with all glass walls and stopped in her tracks, looking me up and down with large eyes. “We should get you some coffee.”
“That would be great.”
On the way, everyone steered clear of me, and more than one person asked if I needed coffee or a tissue. A few of them even asked if someone had died.
“What is going on?” I hissed at Riley. “Do I really look that bad?”
She snorted, covering her mouth. “Okay, I really didn’t want to tell you, but…”
“But what?”
When she didn’t say anything, I knew it had to be bad. I saw the sign for the restrooms up ahead and rushed down the hall, shoving the door open, gasping in horror when I saw my reflection in the mirror.
My red hair was a knotted, ratty mess on top of my head, but much worse than I expected. But that wasn’t the worst part. Thick streaks of mascara ran down my face from all my crying this morning. I hadn’t taken it off last night, and while I didn’t normally wear makeup, I had put it on yesterday to make myself feel better since it was so depressing just wandering around the property, waiting for IKE to return.
And I had completely forgotten about it.
I grabbed paper towels and ran them under the water, pumping way too much soap onto them. I started scrubbing the skin under my eyes, but all it did was get into my eyeballs, burning them instantly. I hissed in pain and flushed them with water, cursing myself for not showering before I came. I was a disaster. No one was going to take me seriously when I looked like this.
The door opened behind me and Rae walked in, sighing when she found me nearly weeping over the sink. “Come on. I can help you out. Drink this.”
A to-go cup was shoved in my hands and I was pulled out of the bathroom. I didn’t have much of a choice but to go with her as she dragged me down hallway after hallway.
“But I really need to talk to everyone.”
“And you thought doing it like this was the best way? You look like something from Night Of The Living Dead .”
I wanted to tell her it wasn’t that bad, but that would be a lie. She shoved me into a locker room and handed me a fresh towel, washcloth, and toiletries. “Last door on your left is a closed stall. No one will bother you. Take your time. I’ll lay out fresh clothes for you.”
“I—” I swallowed hard, feeling a fresh wave of tears coming on. I was going to have to buck up if I was going to save IKE’s life. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
I hurried to the last stall and washed in record time. Everything I needed to freshen up was inside her tote, along with an extra toothbrush in a package and toothpaste. After my shower, I dressed in the cargo pants and plain T-shirt she left for me. And while the underwear and sports bra weren’t exactly my style, it would do in a pinch. Anything was better than walking around in my Winnie the Pooh pajamas in front of all of them.
Twenty minutes later, I was walking back down the hall with Rae, coffee in hand and ready to take on the world. Or, at least, OPS. A bunch of them were gathered in the same glass room I walked past earlier and Rae made introductions before she sat down. Riley sat in the corner of the room, leaving me all alone to do this.
“So,” Lock asked. “What do you need from us?”
“I need you to go rescue Knox.”
They all looked around at each other in confusion, but it was FNG who spoke up. “Who’s Knox?”
“IKE,” I said, remembering they didn’t know him by that name.
“ That’s his name?” he asked, leaning forward.
I nodded. “Um…yeah.”
He leaned back curiously. “So…do you know what IKE stands for?”
My lips twitched in amusement. “I know everything.”
The entire room burst out in a roar of argument over who guessed correctly or who was wrong. “Fucking hell,” Lock grumbled. “Prick.”
“But that’s not the point!” I shouted, trying to regain control of the room.
“Sorry,” Lock said, whistling loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Continue.”
I licked my lips, nervous now that they were all staring at me. “Knox told me this morning that the men he works for…he hasn’t exactly been returning their phone calls and they’re sort of pissed about that.”
“Who does he work for?” FNG asked.
I shrugged uselessly. “I have no idea. Bad people. Basically, he was supposed to check in a while back, but he ran into a few issues—like being locked in the shipping container and then staying with me and getting wrapped up in catching Shawn. None of which I knew affected his life in any way,” I explained. “Until this morning when he said he had to go back. They’d been calling and if he didn’t go back, they’d come for him. And probably me. He said—” My eyes dropped as I tried to force out the words, but I just couldn’t do it.
Lock snagged my attention. “If you want us to help, we need to know everything.”
“He was going to leave without saying goodbye because he doesn’t think he’ll be coming back. He doesn’t think they’ll let him live,” I clarified.
Everyone was silent as I looked around the room. I expected them to jump up and shout at the very idea that IKE would just hand himself over like that. Or say they had a plan to get him back. But instead, they all sat there silently, none of them looking very optimistic about any of it.
“Well, say something,” I scoffed.
Lock sighed. “There’s not much we can do, Isla. We have no intel.”
“No idea who he works for,” Slider spoke up.
“Don’t know what state he’s in,” Nicholas added. “If we did, I could reach out to some old contacts with gang units, but…”
I turned to Rae. “You’re in tech. Don’t you have some way of tracking him?”
“He wasn’t part of the team. He never let us put a tracker in him.”
“But you had to have some idea of where he went. I could tell you where I first met him.”
“That doesn’t mean he worked there,” Johnny spoke up. “That’s just one of the places he had a job.”
I huffed out a laugh. I couldn’t believe it. In a room full of operatives, none of them were willing to do anything to help IKE. “He’s your friend.”
“I wouldn’t call him that,” Chase muttered under his breath.
“He’s worked with you on jobs before. He’s—he may not be part of the team, but he was here for you when you needed him, and now that he needs someone, you’re all just—just sitting around doing nothing? You’re not even willing to try?”
“Isla, it’s not that we don’t want to,” Lock said gently. “IKE was very private. He didn’t tell us anything. He didn’t share anything with us. We literally have nothing to go on.”
“But you can track his car. You do that. Rae, you told me that you do that.”
“In cities with cameras. This is a small town. We don’t have traffic cameras here.”
My chin quivered as they all stared at me with those hopeless expressions on their faces. They didn’t think there was anything to be done, and I was going to lose him.
I felt Riley’s hand in mine as she tugged me from the room, but the rest was just a blur of us walking to the car and leaving. My heart was breaking, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.