25. Silas
Silas
The night air outside the PalMerc office was biting, but the frost in my veins was far colder.
We didn’t talk as we loaded the weapons into the helicopter. Reid had pulled out what he called his old faithful, an old Huey that was already warming up on the tarmac when we pulled up.
Within ten minutes, we were in the air.
The name Peter Sale had blown the doors off every encrypted firewall, property registry, and police file I could pull from the States in less than twenty minutes once Mack and Callan beamed that scrap of paper back to us.
Peter Sale.
An old-school friend of Ray’s from their juvenile detention days, a fixer deep within the Seattle syndicate, and the owner of a secluded property registered under his dead wife’s name, a woman whose death had conveniently been ruled an “accident” years ago before Peter inherited her estate.
Once we had Peter’s name, the entire puzzle fell into place. Jack hadn’t just been fighting in random low-tier circuits; he had been pulled into an invite-only underground syndicate operating out of a heavily fortified warehouse complex owned by one of Sale’s shell companies.
Everything was completely off-grid. They were old-school; paper, envelopes, posted invites only.
Phones were confiscated at the entrance to ensure nothing leaked out; it was a strictly electronic-free zone.
No wonder my searches had turned up nothing.
They had locked him away in a digital dead zone.
I sat with my knee bouncing as we flew over the border into the States. I looked at CJ, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek, while Deck sat next to him, checking the slide on his weapon with a rhythmic, metallic click that set my teeth on edge.
“We’re forty minutes out from the city limits,” Reid’s voice came over my headset. “Mack and Callan are already waiting for us at the rendezvous point near the warehouse district. I’ll land us as close as I can get.”
I didn’t answer. I just reached down, my thumb and forefinger instinctively brushing against the heavy gold band on my pinkie finger.
Find me, Sol.
Jack’s voice from that cruel, phantom dream echoed still in my skull, refusing to let me rest. After three months of empty screens, dead ends, and a grief so heavy it felt like swallowing glass, we finally had a pin on the map.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered, my voice dangerously low. “I’m done waiting.”
Reid huffs through the comms. “Patience, brother. I’m pushing her as fast I can.”
I huff a response as I look out the window watching Seattle come into view.
* * *
The rendezvous point was a rusted-out shipping yard three blocks away from the massive brick warehouse tied to Peter Sale’s shell company.
Mack and Callan stepped out of the shadows, and stand in front of two trucks as the Huey lands, the rotors slowing. I take the two men in, their faces grim under the amber wash of the overhead security lights as we jumped out.
“What’s the status?” I demand as we loaded our gear onto our bodies, vests, spare rounds, knives.
We suit up for war.
“We scouted the perimeter ten minutes ago,” Mack said, pulling up a live thermal feed on his tablet. “Everything was clear. Too clear, so we thought we’d take a look inside again. but it was empty, nothing. No guards, no fighters, no Jack.”
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped animal. “They moved him?”
“Or they knew we were coming,” Callan added, his hand resting on the grip of his sidearm. “But we found something in the front office. It points to Dale and Ray operating out of a secluded safe house two miles north when they aren’t at the venue. That’s where they take him to lock him down.”
“Then we don’t waste time,” Deck snapped, stepping up beside me with a cold, lethal smirk on his face. “Let’s go fucking crash a family reunion.”
We pile back into the trucks, moving fast and running dark without headlights as we close in on the house hidden behind a thick wall of towering pine trees.
The house looks quiet from the outside, dark windows staring out into the drizzle, but my instincts scream that a nest of vipers are waiting inside.
Excellent, time to chop the head off the snake.
We move tight and silent toward the house. Mack and Callan take the rear, while CJ, Deck, and I swept toward the heavy oak front door.
I didn’t bother with subtlety.
I raised my boot, slamming it square against the lock. The wood splinters with a deafening crack, and the door flies open.
“Federal! Clear!” Deck roared, stepping across the threshold first with his weapon raised.
I bark a laugh at that. “Federal?”
He shrugs at me and a heartbeat later, all hell breaks loose.
From the shadows of the hallway, muzzle flashes erupt in rapid succession. Bullets chew through the plaster board inches from my head. I drop low, returning fire as Dale steps out from the living room doorway, a shotgun raised in his hands, his face twisted in a mask of manic rage.
“You shouldn’t have come looking, hacker,” Dale snarled, swinging the barrel toward me.
Before he could pull the trigger, CJ’s sidearm barks three times. Two in the chest, one in the forehead. Dale jerks backward, the shotgun clattering to the floor as he hits the hardwood, dead before he lands.
“Clear left!” CJ shouted over the ringing in our ears.
From the kitchen, Ray comes barreling out with a pistol in hand, his eyes wild and desperate.
He fires blindly, a bullet catching Deck across the shoulder. Deck doesn’t even flinch, returning fire and puts a round straight through Ray’s right knee. Ray screams, dropping his weapon and collapsing into a heap on the floor, clutching his shattered leg as blood pooled beneath him.
He walks up to Ray gun trained on his chest, and kicks the pistol away leaving Ray completely unarmed, and completely at my mercy. Deck turns, looking at me, a small, predatory smile touches his lips, “He’s all yours, rook.”
I step up to Ray slowly. Calculated.
I have now become the predator, and this sniveling little rat is my fucking prey.
I take my time watching him writhe in pain from Deck’s bullet, Ray glaring at me like he’s still got a chance.
“Where is he?” I snarl, reaching out so quickly he flinches from me. I grab Ray by the collar of his shirt and haul him off the floor.
“Go to hell,” Ray spits, blood dripping from his chin.
A sudden movement by the back patio doors catches my eye, and I watch Peter Sale bolt through the glass sliding door into the backyard, sprinting toward the tree line in a desperate bid to save his own skin.
“Callan! Take him!” I roared.
Callan doesn’t hesitate. He vaults over the ruined living room sofa, burst through the shattered glass door, and pursues Sale into the wet grass. Two sharp cracks echo through the pines outside, and then silence falls.
A moment later, Callan stepped back inside, wiping his wet face with the back of his hand.
“He’s done,” Callan said flatly, moving to stand behind me.
“I won’t ask again, Raymond.”
My hand moves instantly to his neck, my fingers locking around his throat. I squeeze until I felt Ray starts to struggle for air, his face flushing dark and his eyes bulging as I maintain my grip.
He doesn’t speak, still clinging to that pathetic arrogance, thinking he could talk his way out of this, thinking he still has the control.
But I can see the sudden panic flickering behind his eyes, the cold realisation that these were his final moments on earth. And I was going to be the one to strip it away, because his life had belonged to me the second he touched my dove.
He can’t speak, but I watched as his eyes darted slightly toward the dark hallway behind him.
A cold, smug smile touches my lips just before I let go, dropping Ray back onto the floor like a piece of trash, my chest heaving with adrenaline.
Ray groans against the floor, clutching his shattered, bleeding knee. He spits a mixture of dark blood and saliva onto the wood, a twisted, wretched grin stretching across his pale face as he looks up at me.
He thinks he can still bite.
He thinks he can still sink his teeth into the one thing keeping my chest from caving in.
“You think you won?” Ray wheezes, a wet, rattling laugh bubbling up through the blood in his throat.
He forces his chin up, his eyes locking onto mine with a venomous, triumphant gleam.
“You think you’re walking out of here with your precious boy?
Look at what’s left of him, hacker. You think he’s ever going to be okay again?
I made damn sure he wouldn’t be. You can stitch his skin back together, but his mind?
His soul? He’s hollowed out. He will never be your sweet little dove again.
He’s damaged goods, Silas. And every time you look at him, you’ll remember who broke him first.”
I don’t flinch. I don’t let his venom touch a single nerve. Instead, a cold, lethal calm settled over me, sharper than any blade.
“You don’t know a damn thing about him,” I whisper, my voice slicing through the room like ice.
“You think you’ve broken him, but all you’ve done is show him how hard he can fight back.
He’s stronger than you could ever comprehend, Ray.
He survived your hell because he’s built of something you’ll never understand, and I love him enough to drag him back through the fire and hold every single piece of him together until he heals. ”
I don’t blink or raise my voice as I speak.
The cold metal of my sidearm felt heavy and steady in my palm, the gold ring on my pinkie finger branding my skin as it taps out a short beat against the gun grip.
Every word he spoke about my boy was a nail driving into his own coffin, a reminder of the suffocating hell he had put my dove through.
“You spent your whole life trying to break something you never had the right to touch,” I growl, stepping closer until the barrel of my gun rested right between his eyes. “You taught him how to survive the dark, Ray. But you forgot one simple rule.”
Ray’s arrogant grin finally faltered, his breath catching in his throat as he stares into my cold eyes.
“I built the light he’s walking back into, and you are nothing more than the shadow I’m erasing.”
I pull the trigger. The gun kicks back, but I hold it firm.
It’s done.
* * *
The rest of the house is a ghost town, but my gut pulls me toward the back hallway behind the kitchen. Tucked at the end of it is a heavy, bolted wooden door that is at odds with the rest of the place.
Reaching for my sidearm, I stare at the thick steel padlock securing the deadbolt. I don’t waste time looking for a key. I raise the barrel of my gun, aim straight at the lock, and pull the trigger.
The deafening blast echos through the enclosed hallway, the metal shackle shattering into pieces. I kick the door open, revealing a steep set of stairs descending into absolute, suffocating darkness.
“Jack!” I shouted into the void.
No answer. Just the damp smell of mould and dampness.
I descend the stairs two at a time, my boots clattering against the stairs until my feet hit the basement floor. Deck flicks on the flashlight mounted to his rifle, sweeping the beam across the room.
“Oh shit, what the fuck is this…” Deck says, his voice low, a tone that simmers with a cold, quiet rage.
I look as the light cuts through the gloom, illuminating a nightmarish scene.
In front of us stands a heavy steel cage, filled with free weights and a blood-stained heavy bag.
But my eyes doesn’t stay long on the cage, they lock onto the narrow cot pushed against the concrete wall and the broken body laying there.
Jack.
He’s curled up, his back to me and he isn’t moving.
Nothing
My breath catches in my throat, a sharp, violent pain slicing through my chest. I reach the cage door, but it was locked. I roar in frustration as my fingers grip the chain link, my face against the mesh.
“Jack!” I scream, begging him to turn.
He doesn’t move as I feel CJ step up to my side. “I found keys. Move, Rook.”
I move slightly, never taking my eyes off my boy, the feeling of sheer panic that I’m too late screams through every fibre of my being as CJ unlocks the door.
I push past him the second it clicks open and race to the cot.
My hands move to touch him, but they freeze at what I see.
His clothes don’t hide the fact that he is skin and bone, his pale skin covered in a sickening tapestry of purple bruises, black eyes, and raw, bleeding welts across his back and thighs where whips have torn him apart.
I turn him slowly, and the sight of his body kills me slowly with each blink.
His shirt is stained with blood, both fresh and old, and when I lift it to see his skin, what hits me makes me turn, vomit spilling onto the floor.
His stomach is torn, shredded as if he was in a fight with a wild animal. Bruising, cuts, and shredded skin greet me as tears stream hot and fast down my cheeks, as I choke on the tightness in my throat.
I suck in a deep breath, “Jack..”
His breathing is shallow, a faint, rattling wheeze that barely sounds human.
“Dove…” I whisper, the word tearing out of my soul as I drop to my knees beside the cot.
My hands hover over him, terrified that if I touch him too hard, he will shatter completely. I gently brush the sweat-matted hair from his forehead. His eyes flutter open, glassy and unfocused, staring up at me like a ghost who couldn’t believe the light had finally reached him.
“Sol…” he breathed, his voice a cracked, broken whisper.
“I’m here,” I choke out, tears finally breaking free, burning hot down my cheeks as I gently gather his frail, battered body into my arms, pressing him gently against my chest. “I’m right here, baby. I’ve found you.”
As I hold him, my eyes drift away from his face, catching the pale light of Deck’s flashlight sweeping across the back wall behind the cot.
My breath catches at what I see.
Scratched deep into the cold, damp concrete are dozens of thin, jagged lines. Grouped neatly in sets of five, crossing over each other, row after row after row. A calendar of torture.
Ninety-two days marked in blood and stone, counting every single second my dove had spent locked away in this tomb.
My tears mix with his as my grip on him tightens, the gold ring on my pinkie finger pressing hard against his skin.
They had tried to break him. They had tried to bury him.
But they underestimated my boy, and he had left a breadcrumb.
“It’s over,” I whisper into his hair, kissing his brow as the rest of the team secures the perimeter upstairs. “Nobody’s ever taking you from me again.