38. Maddoc
I biteoff a curse and bottle up my impotent rage over McKenna getting the drop on us so I can absorb Riley’s tears as she collapses against me. She’s a fighter through and through, and has been since day one. This collapse is something else.
It’s a sign that I fucking failed her.
Now I need to fix that… and the clock is ticking.
“She’s gone,” Riley whispers in a broken whisper that rips something open inside me.
“It’s not over,” I tell her, stitching that shit right back up because I have to, no matter how much I’m still reeling from how close she came to taking a bullet just now.
If they’d gunned her down in the street like they did Payton, it would have gutted me, but this—the raw pain she’s radiating—is almost worse. My jaw clenches tight as she stares up at me with her eyes still overflowing, like she’s begging me to make her believe what I said is true. Like she’s still teetering on the edge of a fucking breakdown that I know damn well she understands we don’t have time for.
Riley’s breath hitches. “But what will they do to h—”
“Nothing,” I cut in before she can start spinning horror stories that aren’t gonna do us a damn bit of good to contemplate right now. “West Point is gonna keep her alive. They have to if McKenna’s gonna get his hands on that money.”
It’s not sugar coated, but it’s the truth. Most of it, anyway. West Point sure as shit won’t have any reason to keep Chloe alive after they get access to her inheritance, and “alive” doesn’t include any particular need to treat her well—especially not with a fucking sadist like McKenna calling the shots—but Riley doesn’t need to hear that shit right now.
And not least of which because there’s no way in hell that my brothers or I are ever gonna let it come to that.
“Do you understand?” I press when she keeps staring up at me blankly. “We’ve still got time to get her back. I need you to stay focused so we can get it done. The only way through is forward. Everything else can wait.”
Everything else has to wait.
It’s a lesson I’ve learned hard and often, and it’s the same shit I say to myself each and every time I feel like I’m spinning out, or about to collapse under the weight of everything. Again, not sugar coated, but true. No matter how much shit life piles on—and the worse it gets, the heavier she dumps it—the only ones who get bogged down and buried in it are those who are too weak to keep going. You can always carry more, power through, if you’re strong enough.
And I know Riley’s strong enough.
After a moment, she nods, proving me right. I can tell it takes an effort and that she’s barely keeping it together, but barely is good enough. I can practically see her spine stiffening, and then I feel it when she pulls away from me, throwing her shoulders back and angrily dashing the last of the tears off her cheeks.
“You’re right,” she says, her voice strained but determined. “Let’s go. Do you know where they’ll take her?”
“No.”
For a split second, her chin wobbles, but then she grits her teeth and steadies it. “Okay. Let’s figure it out. Let’s find her.”
I nod and call my people back, directing them to regroup at our vehicles. Riley turns to head back that way too once I get through to the whole crew, but before she can move I give in to the impulse to drag her back against me and kiss her hard and fast, just once.
It’s a promise.
Once we all make it back, I gather them close. The street is quiet, but it’s got eyes and ears. That’s how we got our sighting in the first place. I’m not gonna waste time bringing everyone back to the house before we move on this though, so I herd them into a tight knot and keep my voice low.
“McKenna got Chloe.”
“Motherfuck,” Dante spits out, a curse echoed by half the group.
“You’re sure it was them?” Logan asks, his eyes shards of ice as he skips the outburst and cuts to the action step.
“I recognized the players, but if you want to verify, it was a black Benz Sprinter. Plate number 8FCV723.”
He nods, his phone already out as he moves to verify.
Kieran looks at me, eyes hard. “You want me to take Greg and Amari and head over to Cliffton, boss?”
West Point territory.
I shake my head, grinding my teeth. It’s not the answer I want to give, but it’s the right one. “We can’t just bust into their territory.”
“Someone will end up dead if we try to get her back that way,” Dante adds.
“Sounds good to me, as long as the dead are all fucking weasels,” Kyle spits out.
I give him a grim smile. “If I could guarantee that would be the case, we’d already be moving out. We need to be smart about this, though. A full frontal assault is McKenna’s fucking wet dream.”
And we all know he’s too well fortified to risk it.
“So what then?” Kieran pipes up. “Where do you want us, boss?”
Riley leans into my side, her body so tense I can practically feel her thrumming, and I wrap an arm around her as I trade looks with my brothers. I trust their judgment and rely on their strengths, and it only takes me a minute to organize my thoughts.
I hand out assignments, making sure we’ll have people in place once we figure out where the fuck we need to go, then get behind the wheel of the Escalade to head back to the house while Logan and Dante reach out to put pressure on everyone we know who has information about McKenna’s business.
Riley stays focused but silent, even when we get back to the house and bust out a map of the city. It’s the one I’ve got specifically marked up with all West Point’s holdings, known safe houses, and the establishments under their “protection.” The map is knowledge, which is leverage, which is the key to staying one step ahead of them at all fucking times.
“We can rule the cannery out,” Dante says as we start to pore over the map, drawing a fat “X” over the spot as he explains his reasoning. Logan nods and makes a suggestion of his own, and Riley bites her lip, a furrow appearing between her eyebrows as we start working through it block by block, narrowing in on where to plan the extraction.
This isn’t the same as when Riley was working with Logan to hunt for her sister, and I can see that she’s battling a feeling of hopelessness as we go over what we know about McKenna’s activities to work out where he would have stashed her.
“This is the club he had her dancing at, right?” Riley asks, stabbing at the map as her frustration bleeds through. “How about I go check there?”
Logan launches into one of his too-fucking-detailed explanations about why there’s no way in hell McKenna would be dumb enough to hold Chloe at Club Prestige, and when he draws another “X” over it, Riley makes an inarticulate sound of rage, her frustration bleeding through.
Dante wraps his arms around her from behind. “Settle, princess,” he murmurs in her ear. “This ain’t a setback. It’s progress. The more locations we can eliminate, the tighter our extraction plan will be.”
Her eyes jump to mine, and when I nod in agreement, she takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders again, staring down at the map with a look of determination. “What about this bodega?” she asks. “West Point has some connection to it, right?”
Wrong, but it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know how McKenna’s fucked-up head works the way we do, or much about his gang activities. I still want her here. I want her to see progress being made. I want her to know we’re not gonna stand by with our thumbs up our asses while she’s hurting.
We work late into the night, Logan verifying shit online as we continue narrowing it down and hacking into city-wide cameras where he can, and Dante coordinating with our crew for on-site surveillance wherever we can manage it.
“We got enough to make a move yet, Madd?” Dante asks as Riley stifles a yawn, his face uncharacteristically grim. “I’ve got Shae over near The Barrows, but if we keep him there all night he’s gonna get spotted.”
I want to say yes, but I’d be a fucking liar.
I shake my head. “Send him home to get some rest, but tell him that come hell or high water, we’re gonna get her tomorrow.”
Dante nods, and when he hangs up with Shae, I manage to convince him that he should get some shut eye too. All three of us can and have gone on little to no sleep when we’ve had to, but this fucking day has taken a toll on each of us and it’s better to stay sharp where we can.
Not that I’m planning on calling it a night yet. And not that Riley looks like she has any plans to close her eyes, either.
“Where else does that fucker do business?” she asks, glaring down at the map.
“Here,” Logan says, tapping a few blocks in the heart of West Point’s territory. “We can’t get our people in there to check, but I’m going to go upstairs and hack into the ATM machine cameras in the area to look for that van.”
I nod, and he heads up.
“Riley,” I start, resting a hand on her back as she tries to drill a pair of holes through the map with those gorgeous coffee-colored eyes of hers.
“I’m not quitting.”
“Of course not.”
She’s just strung out and fucking exhausted, and not doing a damn bit of good here. I hold back from saying so though, and keep working through the city with her as she sags against my side, closer and closer to passing out. Long after midnight, her body finally betrays her, and I lower her onto the couch, smoothing out all those vibrant purple and blue waves that frame her face the way I wish I could smooth out the pain that tightens her features, even now that she’s given in to sleep.
I want to take that pain away.
I can’t stand to see her fucking hurting like this.
And I stand there way too fucking long, staring down at her as I battle the rush of unexpected emotions before a thought occurs to me that I instinctively shove away before realizing what a dumb-ass move that is.
It might be a long shot and it’s somewhere I’ve got nothing but shitty memories about, but there is one place we haven’t checked out yet that I know damn well McKenna has used in the past when he wanted to stay under the radar. Under my radar, specifically.
He’s got no idea that I followed Sienna to his little fucking love nest back when I first caught on to her cheating ways. Neither of them do. I confronted her about it after I saw them there, but I wasn’t stupid enough to let my emotions cloud one of the most basic rules of survival. I told them what I knew, but I didn’t give away how I knew it.
Neither of them have any reason to believe I know about the safe house they used to fuck in, but I know it’s still leased in the name of one of the shell companies McKenna runs his legit-on-the-surface businesses through. I also know it’s right on the edge of West Point’s territory, and that if I don’t go check it out right the fuck now, I’ll lose my best chance to stop that asshole from moving on Chloe’s inheritance at the start of banking hours tomorrow.
I stare down at Riley for another two seconds, then toss a blanket over her, grit my teeth, blow out a fast breath, and move.
The house is in a run-down residential neighborhood with trash in half the front yards and more street lamps dark than lit, and I cut the lights on the Escalade and coast to a stop three blocks down and one block over before cutting the engine. A dog barks from behind a rusted chain link fence when I slip out to cut across a few lawns, and I go still, waiting to see if the sound will bring unwanted attention from the direction of the West Point house.
It doesn’t, and after a minute, the owner yanks a door open and screams at it, finally getting it to shut the fuck up. I curse under my breath when he lingers and do my best to blend into the shadows, waiting again to see if McKenna’s men will react now that there’s a human voice in the mix. But when the dog owner slams his door closed again, returning inside, and no one heads in my direction from the safe house, I finally figure it’s safe to move.
And the minute I peer around someone’s shed to look down the right street, I know I’ve hit pay dirt.
The house isn’t empty. It’s two in the damn morning, and while the shitty little bungalow isn’t the only house on the block that’s not dark, it’s the only one with every single window lit up. The guards McKenna left around the perimeter are basically like a neon sign all on their own, but when I use the cover of another neighbor’s rotting pergola to move a little closer, getting a visual of Chloe right through the back window cinches it.
She’s here, and I’m getting her the fuck out.
I watch for a few more minutes to confirm my first impression. That fucker drugged her, and he’s dumb enough to let it make his security slack, even with the guards he posted. It might be smarter to get some backup, or at least let my brothers know what’s about to go down. Hell, there’s no “might,” it hands down would be. But remembering that pain on Riley’s face, even in her sleep, I just don’t have it in me to wait now that I’m so close to being able to make things right for her.
The weapons I always keep on me aren’t enough if I’m going it alone though, so I turn and stealthily make my way back to the Escalade to better arm myself, justifying the risk I’m taking with the knowledge that there’s no way in hell McKenna will be expecting me here tonight. The bullshit his men are pulling inside the house proved that, and even the guards he’s got on duty are fucking off their responsibilities from what I’ve just seen. They continue to fail to make an appearance when that fucking dog—a Rottweiler, I see this time—starts up at me again.
I ignore it just like McKenna’s guards and the dog’s owners do, but if my Reapers ever act as incompetent as those West Point assholes? They won’t be Reapers anymore.
When I finally make my way back to the West Point safe house, approaching from the back the same way I did all those years ago when I came here and found Sienna riding McKenna’s cock like the faithless whore she turned out to be, I know I’ve made the right decision to get Chloe out on my own. The two weasels that had been in the room with Chloe when I first arrived are now playing a card game in the kitchen, and the lights in what I know to be a couple of front bedrooms have gone dark.
I smile with grim satisfaction. McKenna’s stable of lazy shitheads are all making my job easier. It’s an ideal time to strike, and going in alone is gonna allow me to slip in and right back out with Chloe before McKenna has a fucking clue I’ve taken back what he never had a right to.
I move quietly, double checking positions of all the players I saw on hand to make sure I’m not in for any nasty surprises, then make quick work of the half-ass lock on the back slider and slip into the house.
Chloe is right where I first saw her, hands loosely bound and propped against an entertainment center with a first-person shooter game frozen on the flat screen at its center. The rest of the room is empty.
That dog starts up again, his late-night rage muffled this time, and I cut the bindings off her hands and haul her to her feet.
“Wha—” Chloe starts, shaking her blonde hair out of her face as she frowns blearily up at me. Her eyes widen just a fraction, and I can see panic trying to work its way through whatever they’ve drugged her with.
“Quiet,” I whisper, stabilizing her when she sways. “Riley sent me. I’m taking you to her. You’re safe, Chloe.”
Chloe’s eyes are a lighter brown than her sisters, but they gut me just as hard when they spill over with tears at those last three words. But the minute she nods in understanding, I ignore both the tears and the distraction of how hard her similarities to her sister hit me and tuck her hand through my arm, putting one of mine around her waist to hold her up and moving us toward the door I slipped in through.
The two shitheads playing cards laugh at something, and she mumbles something inaudible, shuddering against my side.
“Stay close. Stay quiet,” I murmur.
She seems too out of it to follow directions, but when I keep moving, she stumbles after me obediently. We make it out the back without incident, and are ten feet from the Escalade before that fucking Rottweiler starts up again.
I make the mistake of assuming McKenna’s assholes will continue to ignore it.
I’m wrong.
“The fuck?” I hear along with the sound of pounding footsteps behind me, a split second before gunfire lights up the night.
I shove Chloe to the ground and swing around to return it, picking off three of the guards racing toward my position when their muzzles blaze and give theirs away.
“Fuck,” I bite out after the third one drops, reaching down to yank Chloe up as lights come on in every goddamn house in the neighborhood. More West Point men are on their way, and no matter how well armed I am, the only way out of this is to escape quickly now that my stealth plan has gone to shit.
I manage to shove Chloe into the car before any more of McKenna’s people make it to our position, but when I dive for the driver’s side, a familiar line of white fire blazes across my neck, the bullet slamming into the Escalade’s framework.
I growl out another curse and slam the door shut as adrenaline does its fucking job and keeps the pain at bay long enough for me to peel out of the neighborhood and call for backup. Some of it shows up as I fly through Halston’s streets, Reaper-driven vehicles blocking off the ones I can already see giving chase, and the rest is waiting for me back at the house.
I’m bringing Chloe home, and unlike that incompetent motherfucker who doesn’t deserve the territory he’s laid claim to—or anything else in this city—I’ll have a full protective detail in place. One who knows how to do their fucking job.
“Shit, boss,” Vic, one of my lieutenants, growls when I finally make it back to the house and pull Chloe out, his black scowl promising pain to West Point.
Chloe is still drugged up, and it’s not until I realize how out of it she is and sling her over my shoulder to carry her inside that I understand the grim nod Vic directed at my chest.
My shirt is soaked in my own blood and my neck stings like an angry bitch, but that shit doesn’t matter. It’s just a fucking scratch, and one that Logan will bitch less about stitching up than he will about the bodywork the Escalade is gonna need when we dig the bullet out of it. Right now, what matters is that I’ve kept my promise and brought Riley’s sister home. What matters is that she was fucking hurting, but now I’ve brought Chloe back to her, she doesn’t have to anymore.
And whatever it fucking takes, I’m gonna make sure she never has to again.