Chapter 2
Five days.
That was as long as I could get the doctors to keep Zander out.
It wasn’t enough. Hell, they could have kept him out for the week, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Not unless we had Jade back by then, and even if we did, he would still probably go off the deep end for a few.
Having her here would have helped him come back from it, though.
Might have kept him from going all out the way I know he’s bound to with her gone.
As it stands, we have no idea where Jade is, and it's not for a lack of trying. From the moment they cleared Zander in surgery, we’ve been looking.
Everything leads to more dead ends, or in Randall’s case, dead bodies.
We’ve searched this city street by street, both as Vengeance and with the police's help.
Trent and my father have had every unit on the lookout for her, and we have yet to get even a whisper.
Jake has hit every fucking junkie in the neighborhood, and just like the rest of our deals, everything is quiet.
Not even Spencer can find a lead.
It’s as if she vanished. To make matters worse, she isn’t the only one missing.
Charlotte and Dom are both gone in the wind.
Kratos got a call from Charlotte’s parents shortly after we arrived at the hospital with Zan.
They found Tobias in the backyard with a bullet between his eyes; no sign of Dom or Charlotte.
The cleanup crew came back with a 9mm bullet that they say was fired from a Sig P229.
It’s a pretty standard gun, making it more difficult to trace, which leads us to believe he and Dom were ambushed.
We don’t know by whom or where they might have taken them, though.
We failed Jade.
Not only did we not keep her safe, but we also let them take the one thing that was most important to her.
I pace the length of the room over and over. Even for a private room, it’s not very big, and with my growing irritation, I clear it in about five steps.
“Sit down, you’re making me dizzy!” Trent snaps from his seat next to Zander’s bed, but I ignore him. I don’t give a fuck what he wants right now, and pacing helps me think. If he doesn’t like it, he can leave.
I turn, retracing my same five steps, going over everything we’ve found and the lack of what we know from the past three days—looking for something we might have missed, as I watch Trent from the corner of my eye.
Tension has been high these last few days—higher than usual—and we’ve all felt the pressure.
Trent isn’t used to this world—our world—and I can see it eating at him.
He wanted a life on the straight and narrow, but even the police are failing right now.
It’s shaking everything he knows and putting him on edge.
I haven’t seen him this worked up since we were in high school. Right now, he’s a ticking time bomb.
I should know. I’m exactly the same.
He opens his mouth, no doubt ready to snap at me again, when his phone cuts him off with a shrill ring that grates on my nerves almost as much as he does.
“Grey, talk to me,” he answers, masking his irritation and once again falling back into his role as a cop, pushing his monster back down into its cage. I can’t hear whoever's on the line, but I watch as he sits up straighter and know it’s something worth hearing.
“Yeah, I’ll head down now,” he says, ending the call.
“Forensics found a few things with Randall, including some DNA and the make of the gun that killed him,” Trent calls back over his shoulder, already headed for the door.
We’ve been waiting for the department’s slow-ass team for two days. If our guys had gotten there before the police, we would already have this information, just like we did with Tobias.
Trent stops, his hand gripping the handle, looking back at Zander, where he lies in the bed, still unconscious. The nurse said he could wake up at any time. That was over an hour ago, and while I’d rather he stayed down, I can’t deny my need to go is eating at me.
“You guys got him?” Trent asks, looking from me to Kratos, who sits in a chair opposite the bed.
He doesn’t look up, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
He hasn’t been very talkative since Jade disappeared.
If we thought he was scary before, it’s worse now.
Resting bitch face has nothing on him. Kratos looks ready to kill anyone who so much as speaks to him.
“No, but we’ll do what we can,” I tell him when it becomes clear he’s waiting for an answer, and nobody else is going to offer one.
I’d love to tell him we have Zander under control, but that’s a lie.
Nobody controls Zander, especially when he gets emotional, and I can guarantee he’ll be emotional when he wakes up.
I’d hoped that Trent could be here. His dad was one of the few people Zander listened to, and while I doubt it would calm him down much, I’d hoped it could do something.
But we need whatever information they pulled off Randall.
With any luck, that will get us one step closer to Jade, and that will do far more for Zander than Trent being here would.
Trent knows Zander. He’s seen what he’s like, so he understands.
“Call me if you need any help,” he says, giving me a stiff nod before he heads out, letting the door fall closed behind him.
I appreciate the offer, but we all know there won’t be anything he can help with. All we can do is keep looking and hope we don’t fall apart at the seams before then.
Relief fills me at the first sign of him waking. His pained moan sounds like music to my ears after being unsure if he would survive just a few days ago.
It’s short-lived, though.
I stride toward his bed, ready to answer any questions he might have. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve all had our share of stays at the hospital, and I don’t need to be a doctor to know waking up like this is disorienting as fuck.
The monitors beep as Zan groans and recoils at the bright hospital lights. Yeah, he’s going to be feeling this for a while.
Kratos stays in his chair, leaning forward, watching.
It’s the most I’ve seen him concerned about anything other than our missing trio in days.
I can’t help but wonder if he’s concerned for Jade’s sake or his own.
Kratos might be a tough motherfucker, but he isn’t as heartless as he appears.
Vengeance is his creation, and no matter what the original purpose of it was, he takes care of his people.
“What happened?”
Zander’s voice cracks, and if this were any other situation, I might have found it funny. He sounds so much like his younger self. But the reason his voice is cracking now isn’t the same. His throat is dry, his voice hoarse from lack of use. Probably overused from before he was shot as well.
Without a word, I grab the cup of water from beside his bed and hold it out for him.
He takes a second, looking at the cup before looking back at me, as if he’s trying to put the pieces together.
He can’t possibly, considering how much of the bigger picture he’s missing right now.
I push the cup forward, and this time he takes it, flinching when he lifts his arm, probably having pulled at his stitches.
He gulps down the whole cup in one go before shoving it back into my hand. “Do you need more?” I ask, but he’s not paying attention to me anymore.
He looks at Kratos before sweeping the rest of the room and coming back to me. His brows knit together, his lips turn down, and I know what he’s going to say even before he opens his mouth.
“Where is she?” he demands, his words stronger this time, though still rough. His eyes harden, and I see the second it all sinks in.
I’d gone over what I would tell him at least a dozen times in the last few days.
I plan; it’s kind of my thing, but standing here looking at him right now, it’s as if I don’t even remember how to speak.
He turns his attention to Kratos after a moment, unwilling to wait for my reply any longer.
“Where is she?” Zander repeats in a tone he usually wouldn’t dare take with him. Kratos’s brows pinch, the answer clear on his face, but still, Zander watches him as if needing to hear the words spoken aloud.
“She’s gone,” Kratos answers. His voice is low and full of pain that I never would have thought possible for someone like him. Someone who seemed so untouchable.
My eyes volley back and forth between them, unsure who to watch.
“What do you mean she’s gone?” Zander spits, attempting to push himself up into a sitting position.
He doesn’t make it far before he damn near collapses back down with a groan.
I reach out to help him, but he bats my hand away, turning his gaze to me, and it’s as if I can see the anger lighting inside of him.
“I mean, she’s gone. Someone took her,” Kratos says, his anger ringing in his words, but a glance his way tells me it isn’t Zander he’s mad at. He isn’t even looking at Zander anymore. Instead, his focus is now on his hands fisted in his lap.
Anyone with eyes can see he blames himself, and he’s not alone. We each carry our own blame, and it’s been slowly eating at us since the moment she disappeared. Growing with every passing day.
Another pained groan pulls my attention back to Zander as he pushes himself further up the bed. Before I can stop him, he begins pulling at wires, causing the monitors to go crazy.
“Stop, Zander,” I say, but it’s useless.
He grips his IV and tugs, ripping it from his hand and letting it fall, dangling beside the bed.
“We’ll find her,” I tell him, hoping to stop him before he does anything too rash. I know it’s a long shot, but damn it, I have to try.
He stops, and for a second, I hope maybe it worked. But when he looks up at me, I know I couldn’t be more wrong.
His eyes are dark, full of anger and a need for violence.
Zander has always been a little more bloodthirsty than the rest of us.
It’s served him and Vengeance well over the years.
He has a way of getting information out of people, knowing just what buttons to press without fear of overstepping for the sake of morals.
Zander doesn’t have the same morals as other people do.
No, he lives in the gray now, but for a long time, he thrived in the shadows.
He brings people’s fears to life, loving every moment of it.
It takes a lot for him to get to this point, but he’s here now, and I know from experience and years of friendship that nothing but finding her will be enough to stop him.
His lips pull up into a wicked smile as I watch him.
“Damn right we will,” he says, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, watching me as if daring me to stop him.
I won’t. I know better when Zan gets like this; there’s no reasoning with him. All we can do now is damage control. Making sure that his victims are those who deserve his punishment.
“I’ll bleed every single person in this damn city if I have to!”
His legs wobble as he stands next to the bed, his hospital gown falling open at the top to show off his gauze-wrapped abdomen.
This isn’t the first time he’s taken a bullet, but this was the most serious—the first time I thought he might not make it.
It doesn’t matter to him, though; there’s no stopping him now.
As scary as it is to think about him loose like this, and as much as I want to make him take it easy, I can’t deny the thrill I feel.
Zander is great at getting information out of people who intend to take their secrets to the grave.
He might be one of our best shots at finding a lead on Jade.
Only time will tell.