23. Jake
23
JAKE
“Just got a message from Mason,” Killian mutters to me as I join him once more at the edge of the clearing that leads to the warehouse. “He has the cartel leader. Intercepted him before he could make it down to the warehouse, it looks like.”
“Good,” I reply. “But we still need to get Callie and Vanessa out of there.”
Killian nods as he drops his phone back into his pocket. His jaw is set tight, and I can see the tension written all over his face. I don’t often see him like this, so lost to fear and anger and desperation, but I get it. All of us have lost enough as it is. And the threat that’s hanging over their heads right now—I won’t let it come to fruition. I just won’t.
“There’s one guard inside, looks like he has a gun, but I doubt he’s expecting any kind of attack,” I explain to him swiftly as we turn our attention to the warehouse. “Probably just waiting for his boss to arrive so he can get this over with.”
Killian narrows his eyes. “I don’t see what we’re waiting for,” he mutters. I grab his arm before he takes a step toward the warehouse. I can tell from the look on his face that he means business, but I don’t want him running in there, all guns blazing, only to wind up getting injured in the process.
“Keep your head, Killian,” I warn him, and he inhales deeply. His eyes are so dark they almost look black, and I can see in his face some memory of the day we lost our parents, not too far from here. He might not want to admit how hard that hit him, how much pain he still carries, but he can’t deny it.
None of us can.
“I’ll go in first,” I tell him. “Through the front—you head in the back, see if you can find them. I couldn’t see them through any of the ground-floor windows, so chances are they’re being held somewhere further into the building or on the second floor. You got that?”
“Got it,” he replies. And with that, we move in on the warehouse, ready to end this shit for good.
It’s a tall building, at least for this part of the forest—used to be an old logging warehouse, I’d guess, judging by the smell of sawdust in the air. It looks as though it’s been a good decade or two since someone has been using the place, but it doesn’t surprise me. Not as though sawing through this forest is exactly a good look, especially not after the wildfires…
I push the thought aside quickly as I close the distance to the front door, pressing myself against the wall just beside it and stealing a glance through the slat in the metal that looks inside. I can’t make out the attacker I saw stalking around in there when I did my recon, but I know he’s in there somewhere. And he’s armed. We don’t have guns, don’t need them out here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use them. And if I have to pull that trigger to save their lives, I’ll do it. I won’t hesitate.
I inhale sharply, let it out, and then turn to slam my foot into the door. It takes a couple of tries to send it flying from its hinges, but after a moment it crashes into the ground. Not exactly a subtle entrance, but that’s not what we’re going for, not here. No, we have the element of surprise on our hands, and we need to instill as much panic as we can to give ourselves the upper hand…
“What the fuck?—”
I hear an exclamation from the other end of the corridor, and I flatten myself against the wall just in time for a bullet to fly past my face. Shit—he’s ready to go. I hoped he might be reticent about actually pulling the trigger, but I should have known better, especially when it comes to these cartel bastards. Once he’s let off a volley of panicked shots, I turn to face him again as he scrambles to reload. Before he can get himself ready to go again, I rush him, catching him around the waist and sending him smashing into the ground with a painful grunt.
The gun slips from his grasp and skitters across the floor beside us. He scrambles to try and grab it, but I kick it aside, sending it flying along the corridor where he can’t reach it. Slamming my arm into his throat, I pin him to the ground, my eyes blazing into his as I stare down at him.
“Where is she?”
“Get the fuck off me!”
“Where the fuck is she?”
The words surprise even me—I haven’t heard myself this angry in a long time, though I know it’s fear that truly underlies the emotion. He tries to squirm loose, and I drive my knee into his stomach, knocking the breath from his lungs. I need him to talk, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want him to suffer first too.
“You have no idea what you’re getting into,” he wheezes back at me once he finally manages to catch his breath.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You so sure about that? Because if you think your little cartel boss is going to make it, you’ve got another thing coming. In a few minutes, the cops are going to have him in handcuffs. If you’re lucky, they might let you testify against him, get a few months off your sentence, yeah?”
His eyes widen—I can tell it’s not what he expected, but there’s a thrill of satisfaction in watching him start to really panic like that.
“So tell me,” I growl, pushing my face close to his. “Where are they?”
He parts his lips, but before he can answer, I hear a voice calling my name.
“Jake! Hey, Jake! Up here!”
It’s Killian—he must have figured out where they are.
“What’s up?” I call back, keeping my eyes pinned on him.
“They’re upstairs,” he yells down to me. “We need a key. You got anything?”
I reach into the man’s pockets, and find another handful of bullets—along with a keychain with a single key dangling off of it. I grab a fistful of his hair and slam his head back against the cold concrete floor.
“Thanks for your help,” I mutter to the now-unconscious man, and I spring to my feet and take off up the stairs. I round the corner to find Killian standing there next to a door with a frosted glass window. On the other side, I can make out a mess of hair, and a face that I recognize at once.
“Jake!” Vanessa cries out to me, her voice laced with relief. “Do you have the keys to get us out of here? Please, we need to be quick, he told me that?—”
“I have the keys,” I tell her, slipping them into the lock and opening the door. “And you have nothing to worry about. Mason already dealt with the cartel leader on the way here.”
Her eyes widen as she stares at the two of us. Her face is stained with tears, her lips chapped from where she’s been chewing them, nails bloody from picking at them.
But she’s alive. And beyond her, I can see Callie, curled up in the far corner of the room. She looks terrified, but she’s okay. And that’s all that matters.
“Oh my God,” Vanessa gasps, and just like that, she sinks into my arms, crashing her full weight into me as though it’s the only place in the world she wants to be right now. I hold her close, squeezing her tight against me, rubbing my hand along her back and closing my eyes as I inhale the scent of her.
“You’re okay,” I murmur to her. “You’re okay, Vanessa…”
When I finally pull back, my eyes travel over to Callie—she’s still cowering in the far corner of the room, her eyes wide as she looks between us. It’s almost as though she doesn’t believe what she’s seeing, and I crouch down and hold out a hand to her.
She doesn’t move. Vanessa is leaning against Killian now, her breathing heavy as she catches her breath, and he’s stroking her hair, doing his best to bring her back down to earth. But at least, on some level, Vanessa understands what’s going on here. To Callie, all of this came swinging out of the clear blue sky, and she clearly has no idea how to navigate the enormity of what this means.
I’ve been there too—maybe not at the same age, but I’ve felt what she’s feeling. That terror, that certainty that nothing is ever going to be okay again. It’s what I felt when I stood there in the smoldering ashes of my family’s home, and tried to imagine how I could ever recover. I don’t want her to feel as though nobody understands her. I need her to trust that I get what she’s going through, and more than anything, I want to be there for her.
“Hey,” I murmur to her. She jumps when I speak, clearly not quite ready for it.
“Hey, you’re okay,” I continue. I want to move closer to her, to give her a real hug and promise her it’s all going to be okay, but she doesn’t need that kind of pressure right now. No, this has to be on her terms. Because everything that has happened since last night has been anything but.
“Callie—”
“It’s okay, I’ve got this,” I promise Vanessa as she takes a step forward to stand at my side. She rests a hand on my shoulder, and Callie’s eyes dart to it at once—it seems like the promise of her mother’s approval is all it takes for her to see this clearly, and at last, she takes a step toward me out of the dark and shadow.
“See, you’re going to be alright,” I murmur, and I hold out a hand for her. Finally, she gingerly reaches out to take it. As soon as our fingers touch, it’s as though a dam breaks inside of her. Her eyes well up with tears, and she dissolves into sobs. Vanessa drops down on her knees and wraps her arms around her daughter, pulling her in close and rocking her slightly, doing everything she can to ease the pain.
But the whole time, Callie keeps hold of my hand. As though she can sense that I understand where she’s coming from, that I understand some part of how she’s feeling. I squeeze it tight, knowing that I might not be able to lift the weight of everything that’s happened from her shoulders completely, but glad that I can go some way to helping, even when it feels impossible.
Vanessa kisses her daughter on her head and tightens her grip on her again. I can see her lips mouthing the word sorry, and I wish there was some way to assure her that there’s nothing for her to be sorry about. But I doubt she’d believe me, even if I told her that. The guilt of this shit, it lives with you for a long time, no matter how much you might try to deny it. The best you can do is embrace it and hope that you can prove to yourself and the people you care about that you want to make things right.
“We should go meet Mason,” Killian remarks, after a long silence settles over the room. “The cops are probably here by now. No doubt they’ve got questions for all of us.”
Vanessa straightens up at last. I can see how drawn she is, how exhausted, but she nods.
“Good,” she mutters. “I want to tell them what happened. I want to make these bastards pay for what they tried to do to my daughter…”
“Mommy, what’s a bastard?” Callie asks, with all the sweet innocence that only a little girl using curse words she doesn’t know the meaning of can muster. Her question breaks some of the tension in the room, and the three of us laugh.
“I’ll tell you some other time, baby,” Vanessa replies, scooping her up into her arms. “In the meantime, let’s get out of here, okay?”
And with that, she heads for the door. I can hear people talking outside, no doubt Mason having made it here with the cops, and I’m sure there are a million questions we still have to answer. But right now, all I care about is that we got Vanessa and Callie out of this in one piece—and I don’t intend to let anything else bother me. They’re safe. That’s all that matters.
And now, whether I like it or not, I have been faced with just how much I care about them. But what I’m going to do about that? I can figure that out later.