29. Riley
I’mup late enough with Dante that when I open my eyes the next morning to find my bedroom filled with pre-dawn light, the first thing I want to do is roll right over and go back to sleep. I grab one of the extra pillows on the bed and pull it over my face with a groan, sluggishly wondering why the hell I’m actually awake this early. I’ve never been a morning person, and the faint soreness between my legs reminds me of exactly why I deserve a little extra sleep.
I smile, an echo of pleasure rippling through me as my tired thoughts drift back over the time spent in Dante’s studio, but then I remember exactly why I’m awake. I shove the pillow away and scramble out of bed, fueled by a surge of adrenaline-laced anticipation. Logan promised to take me around the city to check out some of the potential areas that Chloe might be hiding out this morning, based on the areas we marked when we went over the map the other day.
I’m showered and dressed and practically bouncing when I walk into the kitchen a few minutes later.
Logan is already there, and he hands me a travel mug filled with coffee already doctored exactly the way I like it. “You don’t want breakfast.”
I’m not sure if he’s asking or if he’s simply saying it to prove that he understands my state of mind. Either way, I nod in agreement, then moan with pleasure as I take the first sip of the coffee he made for me.
The sound makes Logan go utterly still, his pale eyes locked on me.
“What? It’s good,” I say, feeling self-conscious for no good reason.
He blinks, shaking his head slightly, and turns toward the garage. “I’m glad you like it. We’ll take the Audi.”
“Okay.”
I follow him out to the sleek, sexy car and slip into the passenger seat, extra grateful for the coffee as he silently pulls away from the house and heads toward the part of Halston we agreed to start searching in. Sipping it gives me something to do since Logan doesn’t say more than two words to me once we’re on the road.
The silence is pretty much what I’m used to with him by now, and even though I feared him in the beginning, I can’t help but wish things were different now. I can’t get a read on him, and it might be greedy of me, but after Dante’s confession last night and seeing what I thought I saw between four members of The Six—I want to.
Logan slows the car. “This is still Reaper territory,” he says, scanning both sides of the road. “But barely.”
He parks in front of a run down, empty storefront sandwiched between a sketchy corner store and a brick building pockmarked with what looks suspiciously like bullet holes. It’s a part of the city we decided to check because I know Chloe is familiar with it, but I’m torn between hoping she hasn’t been hiding out in such a sketchy part of town and hoping that we’ll actually find some clue about where she is.
Or find her, of course.
“God, this fucking city,” I whisper as we both get out of the car.
It’s one thing to worry about Chloe from the safety and comfort of the Reaper house, but out here on the streets, the danger she’s in feels even more real.
“So if this is your territory, that means West Point won’t have people in the area looking for Chloe, right?” I ask.
“They shouldn’t,” Logan says, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “But let’s go find out.”
We split up, Logan heading into the corner store with a comment that makes me think he’s familiar with the owner and might be able to get something useful out of him, while I start checking the other side of the street. I’m not sure what exactly I’m looking for—anything really, any sign that Chloe might have been there or any clue about where she would have gone—but after a while, I start to lose hope of finding it.
I tell myself it’s a good thing. Hopefully, she’s holed up somewhere safer.
I head down an alley a few blocks from where Logan parked. There’s a check cashing place with a backdoor that lets out into it, and the guy who runs it, Wayne, isn’t a total asshole. His cousin went to school with Chloe. There’s a chance she could have stopped by, but she’s too smart to have gone inside where the cameras they’ve got rigged in the front of the shop would have caught her. If she’s been here, she would have come this way.
The narrow passage is blocked off by a chain link fence, and it’s empty other than a dumpster and some garbage blowing around. I’m not sure what I hope to see exactly, but when I notice a distinctive orange wrapper for Chloe’s favorite avocado bacon burger among the trash, there’s a painful surge of hope in my chest.
Maybe she really was here.
Maybe she knocked on the back door of the check cashing place and hit Wayne up for a place to stay.
Maybe—
“Find something?” Logan comes up behind me, looking over my shoulder as I crouch down to poke at the wrapper.
It’s… a wrapper. I sigh. “No. Maybe? Chloe might have eaten this.”
I gingerly pick it up and Logan cocks his head to the side, as if he’s actually considering it as a clue.
A little frisson of hope goes through me. It’s ridiculous, but then again, this is Logan. His brain seems able to make connections that anyone else would swear don’t even exist.
Then again, it is just a wrapper. Even Logan can’t pull miracles out of his ass. A wave of despair goes through me, and I crumple it up and chuck it toward the dumpster with a curse.
“Forget it,” I say, stomping past him, back toward the street.
A guy is standing at the end of the alley, blocking the way. He’s also clearly tweaking. Not surprising for this neighborhood, but since there’s a fair chance that he bought whatever he’s on around here, it means he may have seen my sister.
“Hey,” I call out. “Have you seen a girl hanging around here recently?”
His left shoulder twitches twice, then he lurches toward me aggressively. “I see, yeah. See a girl. See one right now.”
I roll my eyes. He’s as useless as the wrapper. “Whatever.”
The guy moves to block my way when I try to brush past him, a sick leer on his face. “Where are you going, baby?”
“Away from you.” I try to side step when he grabs for me, but he moves with me, his hand darting out to latch onto my arm in a claw-like grip.
He’s not the first to try that shit with me.
I twist away from him, sending my knee toward his balls.
“Bitch,” he grunts without letting go, spittle flying in my face as he shoves me back against the pock-marked brick behind me and presses his clammy body against mine. His ragged nails dig into my skin, and his pupils are dilated wide.
And then, just like that, he’s gone.
“Don’t touch her,” Logan says in a flat, it’s-not-a-threat-it’s-a-promise voice, holding the man by the throat.
He gurgles, clawing at Logan’s wrist in vain, but none of the sounds he’s making are anything like words.
“Did he hurt you, wildcat?” Logan asks, his pale death-gaze locked onto the tweaker.
“No. Uh, no. I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
I am, although I have no idea how Logan noticed since he still hasn’t looked away from the asshole who grabbed me.
I brush my hands over my arms, scored red now by the tweaker’s nails.
“I’m okay.”
Logan’s gaze finally swings in my direction for a second, raking over me like he needs to see it for himself. Then he gives a decisive nod and drops his hand. “If he touches you again, I’ll kill him.”
“I doubt I’ll run into him again,” I say as the man scuttles away, broken curses trailing after him.
Logan’s eyes narrow, flicking toward the fleeing tweaker. “Maybe I should just kill him now to be sure.”
“Logan,” I start, my heart suddenly pounding when his icy gaze returns to me. Except it’s not icy at all this time, and I’m not sure what it is I meant to say anyway.
When he’d yanked the tweaker off me, he’d stepped between us, protecting me from him, and he still hasn’t moved away. Now, we’re standing close enough that our breath starts to sync… and I can’t move.
I lick my lips, and Logan’s gaze drops down to follow the movement.
“I, um…”
Logan waits like he doesn’t have anywhere else to be, his body unnaturally still in that hyper-focused way only he can pull off. I can still hear the fading sound of the tweaker’s feet pounding down the street, almost covered by the sounds of traffic from the main road, but Logan waits like nothing else exists except the two of us.
It’s like he goes through the world always a little bit separate from it, and yet right now, I feel more connected to him than to anything else around us.
I rest my hand against his chest, and I’m a little shocked to feel his heart beating madly when he looks so calm and unflappable on the outside. “Thank you,” I whisper, realizing that’s what I’d meant to say all along.
He opens his mouth, but then closes it again and just nods, the movement looking awkward.
Then he turns away and scoops the wadded-up orange wrapper from the ground. “We should check…” he smooths it out and glances down. “Chester’s.” The name of the burger place. “They might remember her.”
“Okay. Yeah. Of course. It’s over on—”
“Fourth.”
I smile. I’m not even sure why. Of course Logan knows, though.
He leads the way out of the alley. “I like their zucchini.”
It startles a laugh out of me. “What?”
“Zucchini. They bread it. Then fry it.” Logan’s gaze flicks toward mine. “At Chester’s.”
I grin. “Yeah, they do. I didn’t realize you ate fast food like that.”
It seems so un-Logan-like.
He shrugs. “I used to… live around here. Sometimes I ate there.”
“Around here?” I look around at the shitty little businesses and empty, boarded-up storefronts. “Are there apartments above some of these places?”
“I didn’t have an apartment.”
I frown. Then it clicks. “Were you living on the streets?”
Logan gives a sharp nod, striding purposefully down the cracked sidewalk toward Chester’s. It’s a little hole in the wall a couple blocks over.
“Why?” I press, hurrying to catch up to him.
Logan doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at me, and his silence would have felt unnerving a few weeks ago. But now I’m not pushing just because I’m curious. I feel like I need to know. I want to understand him, and that means understanding where he came from.
I reach for his arm, pulling him around to face me. “Logan, why were you homeless? What happened? When was this? Before you joined the Reapers, right? Before you met Maddoc?”
He doesn’t shake me off, which feels like a win even though I can tell he’s not going to answer. But then he surprises me and gives me something.
“I used to pick up work from Maddoc’s father. That’s how we met.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve when I started working for Jonas Gray. Thirteen when I first met Maddoc.” He pauses. “Ten when I… left.”
“Ten when you left your home?”
He gives me another one of those sharp little nods, all precision and control and economy of movement, and starts walking toward Chester’s again. “I had to. Everyone was dead. It wasn’t safe to stay there.”
“Who was dead?” I whisper, catching up with him. “What happened?” Then I remember. “You had a sister.”
He mentioned her once.
A bleak look flashes across Logan’s face, and something inside me cracks in two.
His steps speed up. “Her name was Emma,” he says without looking at me. “But the mons—my mother killed her, right after she killed my father. I tried to… Emma was standing too far away from me. I couldn’t get between them in time. I couldn’t protect her, and then it was too late and I had to get out before she killed me too.”
“Oh, Logan.”
I stop walking, but he doesn’t.So I run to catch up and get ahead of him, blocking his way.
When he stops, I put my hand on his chest to keep him there and just like back in the alley, the rapid patter of his heart is at odds with his emotionless demeanor.
“That’s horrible,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
It’s not enough, but it’s true. My own father is a certified piece of shit, but a parent who would do something like that…
I genuinely can’t imagine. Or maybe I just don’t want to. It definitely puts all Logan’s odd behavior and obsessive tendencies in a different light, and I’m not sure what to do with all the feelings that are stirred up when I think of him trying to survive that kind of terror at such a young age.
And I sure as shit can’t fault him for using whatever methods he needs to, to deal with it.
“There are a lot of horrible things in the world,” Logan finally says, obviously uncomfortable with my sympathy even though he doesn’t make any move to push me away. “It’s full of them.”
“Them?”
“Monsters.” He pauses. “Us.”
I shake my head, splaying my hand even wider across his chest. “You’re not a monster.”
There was a time I hadn’t believed that, but now I know it’s true. He may have survived one, but that didn’t make him one.
Logan cocks his head to the side. “But I am. I’ve always known it, and you’ve seen it too. I have her DNA inside me. I can’t get it out, but I’ve learned to control it. Use it. But I won’t, don’t, do the things she did to us. And never to children.”
He spits out the last word with pure venom, and something deep and pure opens up inside me.
Chloe and I weren’t abused as children. Our father used us, neglected us, but even though he never hurt us—not the way it sounds like Logan’s mother must have—I can still relate to that venom.
I recognize that poison, because it lives inside me too.
Even before Chloe was taken, there’s never been a single day that I haven’t felt the crushing weight of needing to stand between my little sister and the horrors of the world, and never a moment I haven’t fought against the knowledge that I’m not enough, not on my own, to truly keep her safe.
But like Logan, there was never anyone else, so I’ve had to try anyway.
And also like Logan, the one I had to protect her from first was the very parent who should have cared enough that I’d never have to.
“You’re not a monster,” I repeat softly, willing him to believe it.
I can see that he doesn’t.
His ice-blue eyes burn into me like he really can see into my soul… but now I’ve had a glimpse of his too.
I cup his jaw with my free hand, and after a minute—under my other hand, the one still splayed open on his chest—his heart starts to slow from a frantic gallop to a strong, steady beat.
I did that.
He has to feel this connection between us too.
It makes me want to kiss him.
“I promise,” I whisper instead, holding his gaze. “You’re not a monster.”
Logan finally breaks eye contact, looking over my head, down the street toward Chester’s.
“We’re going to find your sister.”
I nod, letting him change the subject because he makes that sound like a promise too.
“I know we are.”
I don’t let my voice waver. The only future I can let myself believe in is one where Chloe is safe… but I’d be lying if I said that being out here, seeing that wrapper that she may or may not have left in the alley after eating a burger huddled in the cold while dodging asshats like that tweaker, made me feel anything but frantic about it.
Even if West Point hasn’t found her yet, she’s not safe. Not while she’s living out on the streets, all on her own… like Logan once was.
The thought makes my throat close up, and even though I’m pretty sure I don’t make a sound, Logan looks back down at me.
“We’ll find her,” he repeats sharply. “Chloe’s smart, she’s strong, and she’s keeping herself alive.”
“She is.” My voice cracks, but I have to believe it. I do believe it. But then my fears force themselves out of my mouth anyway, my fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt and holding on tight. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
The ever-present ice in Logan’s pale eyes thaws, just a bit, and his mouth softens in what I’m almost sure is his version of a smile. “I’m sure because she’s your sister.”
Then he gently pulls my hand off him and side steps around me, striding off toward Chester’s again as if that’s all he needs to say to prove his point. As if, when it comes to protecting Chloe, he actually thinks I am enough.
As if Logan believes in me too.