Chapter 58
Jag keeps pace beside me, barefoot, shirtless, every inch of him streaked red. His body wobbles on sputtering adrenaline, each step costing him a world of pain. I would offer to carry him, but he would never permit it. So I keep him close enough to catch him if he tips.
We don’t stop running until the stairs spit us out into the vacant nightclub. The lights pulse to nobody, the bass thudding like a dying heart.
A few guards hover near the exits, weapons lowered, eyes wide. No one wants to tackle the psycho in a skirt with a live bomb and a bloodied smile.
We burst through the door into humid air and neon glare.
Monty is there, hands catching Jag’s shoulders, checking him for injuries, and finding too many. Kody flanks me, one hand on my back, the other on Jag, his eyes black and furious.
“Move.” Monty herds us forward. “Now.”
Sirens rise in the distance, swelling fast.
We half-jog, half-stagger down the block. Someone yanks the van door open, and we pile in. The sirens scream, and Monty slides behind the wheel. A second later, we’re moving.
Jag drops to the floor with his back against the wall, legs spread, head tipped forward.
He looks wrecked, face covered in stubble, skin blotched with bruises, hair standing in blood-soaked spikes. No less lethal.
“Where are you hurt?” I sink between his knees, hands already moving, scanning him by muscle memory and instinct.
“You came for me.” He lifts his head and stares at me as if trying to decide if I’m real.
“I was in the neighborhood.” A crooked grin pulls at my mouth despite everything.
His gaze darts around the van, at Monty, Kody, Mikhail’s calm silhouette, and Oliver already moving toward my vest.
“You came…” His voice scrapes. “With the Russian mob.”
“I saw what you did in the tattoo shop. The surrender.” I meet his eyes. “I knew you didn’t take her.”
He doesn’t soften. I’m not sure he knows how. But his expression eases, the smallest give, as his body stops arguing with reality.
The van makes a sharp turn, and I brace a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.
Oliver crouches and starts stripping the vest off me, fingers quick and practiced. Wires disengage. Explosives disarm. The weight lifts.
“That was a real bomb?” Jag watches in disbelief. “It was live?”
“It would’ve made a helluva mess.” I remove the earpiece and pass it to Oliver.
“Suicidal drama queen.”
“That’s me. But you’d already know that if you read my journal.”
“I did.”
“You did?”
“Every word.” He lines up his glare with mine. “I started reading the second you left and finished it right before the power shut off. I tried to hide it under the mattress.”
“We found it.” My throat closes, and traitorous heat crawls behind my eyes.
I look away before it spills and scrub a hand down my crusty face.
He reaches for me, his fingers tracing blood and ink from the corner of my mouth, along my jaw, and back toward my ear, slow and knowing. The compassion in his swollen, amber eyes says he remembers what I wrote about the last time I wore the Glasgow smile.
He knows about the devil’s bargain, the lifetime of abuse, the cliff, and the scalpel. He knows all my despicable secrets, and he doesn’t look away.
The van lurches, a hard sideways sway, and we both move on instinct. Our hands find each other and clutch tight, bracing against the slide.
When the rocking eases, our grip loosens but doesn’t break. Neither does our eye contact.
We hold each other’s stare, close enough that I feel the warmth of his body, the proof that he’s still breathing, still fighting. There’s no rush in it. No claim. Just shared ground after an ugly battle.
Ten days.
That’s how long they worked him. Beat him. Strapped him down, forced his eyes open, and made him watch Dove suffer on a loop.
By every rule I know, his brain should be soup. He should be curled in the fetal position, rocking, empty, gone somewhere I can’t reach.
It hasn’t hit him yet.
Shock is holding the line. Purpose is holding the line. Dove, being out there somewhere, is holding the line. He doesn’t have room to fall apart because this isn’t finished. Survival hasn’t loosened its grip.
I see it in the way his eyes never stop moving, and how his jaw remains fixed despite the threat being gone.
He’s functioning on borrowed time and unfinished business. His system hasn’t caught up to what his body just escaped.
Maybe he won’t break the way people expect. But I know this much. When we’re alone, when the noise drops and the danger clears, the demons will come. In the quiet moments. In the dark. In ways neither of us can outrun.
I’ll be there for it.
He continues to stare at me, never letting his gaze drift as if I might vanish. His focus isn’t frantic. It’s fierce and clinging, threaded with the heaviest, most pressing thought.
“Dove.” A wet sheen veils his eyes, and he blinks. “I can’t breathe. She’s…”
“I know.” My heart hurts. It fucking howls and thrashes and doesn’t stop.
I press a hand against my chest, rubbing the stabbing pain as everything inside me tries to rupture right there.
But I don’t let it. I can’t. He needs me stitched up and sane. So I fight the urge to spiral. Fight the images. Fight the clock that’s suddenly loud again. I don’t know where she is, but panic won’t help him. Panic won’t find her.
“Mikhail.” I twist toward him, where he hunches over a laptop. “Pull up the video of Dove’s capture.”
His fingers tap over the keyboard. Moments later, he swivels the screen toward us and hits play.
I shift to sit beside Jag and force myself to watch Dove’s capture again.
“That’s my camera. I hid it on the street outside the mechanic shop.” Jag leans in, eyes locked. “That’s not what they showed me when I surrendered. Their video had her dragged off the pier and thrown onto a boat.”
“Another fake.” Mikhail turns away with the laptop.
“How was she taken from your guards?” Jag stares at me. No accusation. He seems genuinely baffled.
“There was a decoy.”
I walk through every detail of that vile day from the moment I left her in the shop. I describe the slaughter I found in the tattoo parlor, the decoy that ran from the security team, the realization that we fucked up, and Dove’s disappearance without a trace.
“A decoy.” Something ignites behind his eyes. Not panic. Realization.
“What?” I clasp his arm. “You know something.”
“Show me the video again.” He looks at Mikhail. “Pause on the man who took her.”
“He was masked.” Mikhail twists toward us, the video already cued up.
“Zoom in on his hands.” Jag grips my thigh as he bends toward the screen. “There.”
As the masked man snatches her, his sleeves inch up, revealing black gauze around his wrists, threaded neatly with thin white thread.
“Fucking hell.” Jag’s breathing goes ragged, heaving his chest, as he slumps back against the van.
“What?” Panic detonates, shooting shrapnel through my veins. “You recognize him.”
“Yeah.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and a single tear slips free.
That’s all it takes. My control snaps, sending my hysteria from functional to feral.
“Who has her?” I shove my face in his and roar, “Where is she?”
He blinks, directs a pointed look at Mikhail, at Oliver in the front, and shakes his head.
A shut-mouth, don’t-ask no.
But when he turns back to me and sees my expression, his stubborn armor slips.
The horror must be written all over me. His eyes go round, filling with something akin to affection or mercy. He opens his arms and pulls me in. His hands cup my jaw, and his thumbs rest against my cheeks.
“She’s safe,” he whispers.
“Safe?”
“I promise.” He holds my gaze and lets me look as long as I need, laying it all out there for my inspection, for my doubt, for my fear.
I search his eyes and find only certainty.
Air flees my lungs in a violent rush. “Safe where?”
He glances at the van’s occupants and looks back at me, apologetic but resolute.
I don’t push. I think.
Whoever Jag is mixed up with isn’t a name he’ll drop casually. That narrows the field fast. If he won’t say it in front of the Russians, they must not play well with whoever’s holding her.
“He’s retired.” I gesture at Oliver, keeping my voice low.
Jag arches a brow, but it barely works given the swollen state of his face.
“Fine. Does that mean she’s not a hostage?” I whisper. “She’s a protected asset?”
He nods and lets his head rest against the wall like it weighs a ton. Spent. He rolls his face toward me, inches away from mine, watching me process.
He believes she’s okay.
I see it in the way his shoulders finally loosen. In the tear he didn’t mean to let escape. In the way his hands stop shaking. Most of all, I see it in the way he looks at me. Open, pleading, asking me to trust him with the one thing that matters.
I do.
I trust him because I know this about Jag Rath. He would carve out his heart before letting harm touch her. He would burn every bridge, sell every secret, and ruin himself without hesitation if that’s what it took.
So if he says she’s safe, she is.
We’re not done. Not even close. The second we’re alone, I’ll demand the whole story. I’ll want names, locations, motivations, and an idiot-proof backup plan that comes with vodka, eyeliner, and a spare apocalypse.
But for now, I wait, clinging to the one solid truth I have left.
We’re coming for her together.