Chapter Eight
Ronan
We swap the old van for a new one and—of course—it’s also a van.
A truly hideous specimen this time. Rust eats through the white paint in blistered patches, and angry streaks of yellow slash across the side like someone tried to erase a crime and made it worse.
The thing looks like it’s one good pothole away from losing a wheel, and somehow that just makes Berk smile.
That smile of hers is subtle, sly, the kind that slides in at the corner of her mouth like a secret she’s letting only us see.
This is one of her jokes—the quiet ones, not for laughs but for meaning.
A van that looks like it should have been scrapped ten years ago, but underneath the grime is everything we need.
Hidden panels. Reinforced flooring. A removable plate under the back seat for storing explosives.
Classic Pixie.
I whistle low as I circle around the rust bucket. “Is this the new family car?”
“Absolutely,” she says with a straight face. “Luxury model. Vintage.”
“Vintage smells like feet and sadness.”
“That’s the air freshener,” she deadpans. “Someone probably died in here.”
Emerson snorts behind us. Rowan mutters something about tetanus—again. I’m grinning like a tool because this stupid, rusty van is ours now. Safe. Untraceable. Ugly enough to vanish in plain sight. Perfect for the kind of work we do.
And perfect because Berk chose it.
We load in, taking our usual positions. Rowan drives the first leg.
Emerson scouts through windows that are half fogged from whatever nightmare chemicals soaked into the interior.
I settle in the back with Berk, both of us surrounded by gear bags filled with weapons, cables, spare plates, burner phones, and her knives that gleam even in the dim cabin light.
She looks at home here. Like she was born for war in crappy vans.
“It’s a miracle you have contacts who can keep finding these,” I say as I buckle in.
She lifts a brow without looking at me. “I have many miracles.”
“You gonna introduce us to those miracles?”
Her gaze flicks to mine, amused and sharp. “Like I said, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
I chuckle, but she doesn’t. Not fully. Her eyes flash with genuine protection, not for us—for whoever her contacts are. Whoever hid and helped her. Kept her alive when we weren’t there, when she thought we didn’t want her.
They protected her when we failed.
Yeah, they’re already my people, even if I never meet them.
We drive like fugitives who know how the system hunts. Four splits. Two lane changes without signaling. An alley cut-through. We pull off into an underground garage to switch plates again and sit for twelve minutes in the dark in case anyone is tailing from too far back to see.
Paranoia isn’t paranoia when the monsters chasing you are real.
“Clear,” Rowan finally murmurs.
We pull back onto the road, the city lights crawling across the windshield like neon scars. I glance at Berk. She’s on her burner, thumbs moving fast, her face tight with concentration. Now and then her knee bounces, the same twitch she gets right before she throws a knife.
“What’s the update?” I ask.
Her fingers pause over the phone. She looks at me in a way that makes my chest ache, then gently nudges my thigh with hers. A silent acknowledgment and thank you. “Nothing yet. He hasn’t touched his phone. Once we’re back at the house, I’ll work backward through his activity.”
We roll on. The van hums like it’s fighting for air, the cabin answering with the soft clink of weapons every time we hit a bump. It should unsettle me—this whole situation—but instead it steadies me.
This is who we are.
This is how we move.
We survive, even in garbage vans and borrowed shadows.
We make it back to the house after taking so many detours, it feels like we’ve driven the whole damn city twice. When we finally step inside, the lights are low, the air thick with leftover exhaustion and focus, and Berk is already down the hall and hunched over her laptop like she never stopped.
Her screen washes her face in cold blue light, her expression cut from focus and something darker. The tension pulled tight along her spine tells me everything—I know exactly what she’s about to do.
She’s going to break herself apart again.
She has Jory’s entire digital footprint gutted open—his apps, contacts, browser trails, messages, deleted shit he probably hoped would stay buried.
It’s all there. Organized. Detailed. Labeled.
Waiting. She’s already ten steps ahead of us, running on adrenaline, obsession, and fueled by guilt so deep she’ll never admit it out loud.
I move toward her. She doesn’t look up. Doesn’t register the sound of the door shutting behind me.
She’s shutting us out. Losing herself again.
Not happening.
I rest a hand on her shoulder. She stiffens, weighing whether to shake me off—that reflex she has when she’s drifting too far into a headspace she thinks none of us notice. I tighten my grip just enough to make her pause, to bring her back.
“Baby.”
One word. Firm. Anchoring. She goes still.
Her head snaps up, and those iridescent eyes of hers meet mine—sharp, haunted, lethal, and exhausted. Ready to argue with me. Ready to go to war with the one person who will always, always choose her over everything else, even the mission.
She draws a breath to argue, but I cut her off before a single word lands.
I crouch beside her, elbow braced on my knee, leaning in until we’re almost nose to nose. “You just hauled yourself back from the edge,” I say, voice low and steady. “You haven’t slept. You barely eat. You keep trying to carry all of this on your own.”
Her jaw tightens—not with anger, but guilt.
Good. It’s landing.
“You think I don’t see what you do to yourself?” I continue. “You think I don’t know what happens when you’re hurting and pretending you’re fine? We know you, Berk. Better than you know your own damn pulse.”
She swallows, throat working like she doesn’t want us to notice.
I ease my tone, just a fraction. “You’re back. The real you. Brilliant. Vicious. Beautiful. The version that scares me and turns me on in the same breath. Don’t lose her again—not over guilt you never earned.”
She shifts, ready to push back, so I lift my hand.
“No,” I say. “Listen. Kimber needs us sharp. All of us. You’ll burn yourself to the ground before you let that girl suffer alone—but running yourself into the dirt only puts her in more danger.”
Her breath catches. The truth hits her in the chest.
I lean closer, letting my forehead brush hers. “We will find her. We will tear Dean and Bryce apart, one bone at a time. And you will get to dip every one of your pretty knives into whatever you want. But you have to stay whole. You have to stay you. Sleep is not optional.”
She tries again, softer. “Ronan—”
I shake my head. “We work for a couple of hours, then we stop. All of us. Bed. No negotiations.”
She studies me—really studies—searching for the lie she wants to find so she can argue. But all she sees is resolve carved into stone. A certainty that only exists in the moments I’d raze the world for her.
Her lips tilt. Slow. Dangerous. That wicked little smirk that makes my blood heat.
She’s daring me. Tempting me. Testing me.
I lower my voice. “Push me again, sweetheart, and I will hog-tie you to that bed myself.”
Her smile blooms wider, dark and inviting. “Maybe I want you to.”
A soft, bitten-off sound escapes me—half laugh, half groan. Fuck, she’s going to kill me.
But she also nods. A tiny one. Barely there.
Agreement. Trust. Understanding. A promise she’ll try. That’s all I need from her right now.
Behind us, Emerson and Rowan fill the doorway. They don’t interrupt or comment. They don’t need to. I know they saw it—and I know the quiet relief sitting in their chests mirrors mine.
Berk releases a slow breath and turns back to her screen, but this time she doesn’t look like she’s drowning. She looks anchored. Grounded. Ours again.
I settle in beside her, even though every instinct wants to pull her into my lap and force her to rest. She’s still wired, nerves humming from interrogation and blood and adrenaline.
My girl doesn’t wind down—she coils tighter.
And if we don’t mind those edges, she’ll cut herself open from the inside.
She mutters, “All right, let’s see if this asshole was worth my knife getting dirty.”
I grin, leaning back in my chair. “Could’ve stabbed him a few more times.”
Rowan snorts. “You would’ve snapped his femur just to hear the sound.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Berk flicks a sideways look at him, lips twitching, her exhaustion swallowed by the thrill of having something to tear apart. “If we broke him more, I wouldn’t be able to interrogate him later. Had to restrain myself.”
“Baby,” I murmur, “you’re lucky we restrain ourselves at all.”
She kicks me under the desk in retaliation—light, sharp, flirtatious—and turns back to the screen.
Emerson drops into his seat next to Rowan and rubs his face with both hands. He looks like a man held together with vengeance and coffee. “What’ve we got?”
Berk doesn’t look up as she answers. “Everything Jory ever touched, and a lot he thought he deleted.”
I lean closer as Berk restores his wiped texts. They flicker onto the screen one by one. Blank bubbles swell into conversations. Gray becomes black. Missing attachments reload in jagged pieces.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter, tapping the desk. “He really thought deleting the chat app was enough?”
“He deleted,” Berk says, tapping quickly. “But he didn’t overwrite. Or encrypt. Or scrub the metadata. Amateur hour.”
Rowan’s jaw ticks. “That means he isn’t the brain; he’s just one piece.”
“Middlemen always are,” I reply.
Emerson cracks his knuckles. “Good. Easier to break them when the time comes.”
Berk scrolls.
Drop logs. Timestamps. Locations.
It’s like watching a map bleed.
“There,” Emerson leans in. “Dockside bench. That’s the one Micah mentioned.”
“And the diner dumpster,” Berk adds. “The burned drive came from that one.”
She drags another window open and overlays the bank transfers. The numbers flash in a column—small deposits for months, then clusters of larger ones.
My skin prickles. I already know what’s coming.
“Horizon Logistics,” she breathes.
The room stills.
The name burns like acid in the back of my throat. The same shell company that funded the warehouse, paid Micah, and laundered Dean and Bryce’s money. The same phantom we keep circling, always close, never pinned.
Rowan exhales slowly. “These payments started years ago.”
“Shortly after they killed Reign… and when they thought they killed Berk,” Emerson murmurs, his voice going dark as the realization settles in. “This goes back much further than we thought.”
I grip the armrest to keep from punching the wall.
Berk finally leans back. Not relaxed—never that—but colder, leaner. “They expanded right when they thought they erased us. Built a bigger web. Hired runners. Increased drops. Hid deeper.”
I ask, “What’s Jory to them?”
“Errand boy,” she says. “Disposable. Paying him through the shell company means they trust him enough to use him—but not enough to tell him anything that matters.”
Rowan scrolls, eyes narrowing as the list grows. “He’s tied to at least three drops involving missing girls. Two shipments we never managed to trace.” He pauses, jaw tightening. “And one…” He squints. “Fuck. One right after the first fire.”
My stomach twists, bile-hot with hate.
Berk taps through camera footage we recovered from neighborhood Ring cams—Jory walking casually down a suburban sidewalk with a backpack full of blood money. Another angle. Another timestamp. Another location.
Piece by piece, we’re pulling him apart.
The minutes bleed into hours, and the hours grind down into bone-tired focus.
The room hums with the soft whir of machines, keys tapping, hushed curses when a trail dead-ends.
We picked Jory’s life apart, thread by thread, until even the shadows under our eyes appear bruised.
The clock hits two in the morning without mercy, and Berk is still hunched over her keyboard, fingers flying like she’s holding the world together with nothing but code and spite.
She yawns, quick and sharp. Then again, longer, her jaw cracking as she stretches her neck and keeps typing like she can bully her exhaustion into silence.
That does it.
I push my chair back and stand; the floorboards creak under my weight. “Alright,” I say, stepping behind her and resting a hand on the back of her chair. “That’s enough. Deadline’s here.”
She doesn’t fight. That alone tells me how wiped she is.
Emerson rubs his face, stifling a yawn behind his fist. Rowan cracks his neck and shuts down his monitor, muttering something about his eyes crossing. We’re all dragging, the adrenaline gone and leaving nothing but emptiness and the dull throb of worry for Kimber sitting behind our ribs.
Berk finally leans back and blows out a breath. “Give me one minute,” she says, already reaching for another window. “I need to set the auto-dump, so it’ll pull anything that hits the net overnight. If something big pings, it’ll wake us.”
Her voice stays even, but her shoulders sag as she types the commands. She’s trying to make it sound casual. It isn’t. She won’t rest unless the system is moving—even when she can’t.
Emerson stretches and heads for the hallway, dragging Rowan with him by the collar of his shirt, the two of them half-asleep already. The door down the hall clicks shut behind them, leaving the war room in a low hum and the glow of the monitors casting soft light across Berk’s face.
I don’t leave.
I cross my arms and stay right behind her, watching her fingers, watching her eyes glaze with a tiredness that makes her dangerous. Not outwardly. Inwardly. The kind that makes her spiral into the code until she forgets to breathe.
“Ronan,” she murmurs, not looking up, “I’m almost done.”
“I know,” I say. “Which is why I’m staying right here. Making sure you don’t start something new.”
She tries to hide the little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. It’s faint. Exhausted. But it’s mine.
Another few keystrokes, a final click, and she sits back. “Okay. It’s set.”
I lean down and press a slow kiss to the crown of her head, breathing her in, feeling her finally relax under my hands. “Good,” I whisper. “Because if you started something else tonight, I was going to carry you out of here kicking and screaming.”
She tilts her head back, smirking up at me. “Promises, promises.”
I chuckle, low and tired, and shut off the last monitor. “Come on, Pix. Bed. We find Kimber faster if you’re not coding in your sleep.”
This time, she doesn’t argue. Not a single word.
She just slips her hand into mine and lets me lead her out of the war room, the glow fading behind us as the house finally settles into silence.