Chapter Twenty-Six
“H ow far out are Rip and Winter?”
“They just landed. They’ll be here real soon.”
Crow nodded and winced as Wrath stitched up the wound on his arm. The damn thing just wouldn’t stop bleeding if he moved his arm at all. They were encased in another room, same hotel, just on a different floor while the cleaners took care of the other one.
Stone wanted him to go to the ER, but he’d flat-out refused. He didn’t want to waste one more fucking minute.
He needed to find Rebel. Their last words spoken had been in anger and he wanted to take them back.
Of course, he still wanted Rebel to explore other options than being an assassin, but he would take back the other thing he had said.
Mainly the part where he’d claimed there was no us.
He was a fucking liar. He had broken Rebel’s heart. He could see it in the man’s eyes before Rebel had leaped from the tub.
Regret cleaved through his gut and he grunted.
“Sorry,” Wrath said, interrupting his thoughts and bringing him back to the pull of skin on his arm.
“What’s the plan for getting Rebel back?” Crow turned his attention to Stone.
The man was a fucking force. All broody, controlled, and definitely in charge at the moment. But Crow knew he was in no shape to take point on this. Especially when Rebel’s life was at stake.
“You calmed down now?” Stone asked him.
Crow grimaced. He wasn’t proud of his moment upstairs when he had taken a swing at Stone. Rogue had intervened and Crow found himself pinned to the bed until he tapped out.
All he had wanted in those few moments after waking up was to go after Lincoln and kill him.
Stone had nipped that shit right in the bud.
“You go off half-cocked right now and Rebel is as good as dead,” Stone had snapped.
Seconds later, Crow understood that, but that first rush of fear and rage had sent him into panic mode.
“Yeah,” Crow said, gazing at Stone across the expanse of the new hotel room. “I’m calm now. Sorry about earlier.”
“Good. We wait for Rip and Winter to get here and then we make a plan to infiltrate Lincoln’s house and take back what’s ours.”
That plan was welcome news to Crow.
“What about Lincoln?” Crow asked.
“We leave the Russian mobster’s man alone for now.”
“What the fuck? Since when have we ever left anyone who fucked with us alone?” Crow said, scowling.
“We have a team who can handle that. This doesn’t fall within the scope of Genesis.”
“Then whose fucking scope is it?” Crow asked, clenching his fists.
“Phoenix.”
Phoenix…he knew of them. He’d even met some of them at Dave’s place once a while back.
They were a group of elite government operatives that were brought in when cases got messy or law enforcement needed plausible deniability. Phoenix worked both nationally and internationally and had been instrumental in taking down Yakov Lakhonin, the head of an Eastern European drug and human trafficking ring.
And while all that was fucking awesome…
There was no way in hell Crow was going to walk away.
One way or another, he would kill Jimmy Lincoln.
Rip and Winter arrived at the hotel and met them upstairs in the new hotel room.
Stone had called room service for food and told them all to eat.
“That’s an order,” Stone said.
Crow grabbed a breakfast sandwich and ate it in four bites. He wanted this waiting bullshit done.
Rip and Wrath hugged each other and Wrath ribbed Rip about getting a haircut.
“And a shave,” Wrath told his brother.
Rip smirked, munching on fries. “Some people like my looks.”
Wrath rolled his eyes, but a small smile tipped the corner of his mouth.
“How you holding up?” Winter asked around a bite of his own breakfast burrito and sat on the bed next to him.
Crow shrugged.
“I’ve been better.” What else could he say? It was the fucking truth.
“I saw the room upstairs.”
“You did?” That surprised Crow, normally the cleaners don’t let anyone inside. “How’d you manage that?”
Winter grinned and took another bite. “I have my ways.”
“You have connections,” Rip said, interjecting with a snort.
“Maybe.” Winter didn’t elaborate.
Rip settled on the bed on the other side of Crow.
“You really ok?” Rip asked.
“No. I need to find Rebel.”
“We will. And as soon as we do and you guys get to the ranch, things will fall into place.”
Crow shook his head. “I’m not so sure the ranch is the best thing for Rebel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want him to have a chance at a normal life,” Crow said.
“What does Rebel want?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it?
When had he stopped long enough to ask Rebel what he wanted?
Crow knew the answer.
He hadn’t.
Rebel screamed so long that he almost lost his voice.
Crow was dead.
He fucking felt it to his soul.
He’d seen Crow go down and that meant that Jimmy’s men had beaten Crow when he was already unconscious.
Their sadistic laughter was all he remembered hearing.
Fucking animals.
This was his fault. Somehow, he fucking knew it. If he hadn’t taken that job with Jimmy then Crow would have never been killed.
If he hadn’t made that pass in the Jacuzzi, then Crow would have been dressed and armed with his weapon.
He hated that the last words between him and Crow were said in anger.
“I didn’t mean them,” Rebel whispered, his throat raw.
On his knees, he gripped the toilet bowl and gagged up bile.
A few hours ago, he had been dumped into a room he wasn’t familiar with, and judging from the view from the window, it was not Jimmy’s Hollywood Hills home.
Mostly, they had left him alone.
Except for the cameras at two different angles in the corners of the ceiling.
The only person who had checked on him other than the guard bringing him food had been Jimmy’s doctor. The doc, Rebel only knew as Clifford, had ignored his plea for help.
He refused to eat.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t gone weeks without a decent meal before. Besides, food was the last thing on earth he wanted.
He wanted Crow.
Tears welled and the bathroom blurred.
Why?
Why the fuck was this happening?
After everything he had been through, why did fucked up shit keep happening?
Because this was the shitty hand life had dealt him. It was one of the reasons he’d never gone to church or believed in a higher power.
And if there was one? It was a fucking asshole. If there really was a pie-in-the-sky super being who was all judgmental and shit, then Rebel would surely go to hell because the next thing he was going to do was kill them all.
He glanced around. Other than the bed and a dresser, there wasn’t much else in there, but there was bedding.
Staggering to his feet, he yanked the top sheet from his bed and twisted it into one long rope.
If he made it look like he was going to hang himself, then they would come through that door.
If they came through that door, he was going to rip their throats out with his bare hands. He climbed up on the mattress and tossed the roped sheet up and over the fan that hung above his bed.
When he jumped down, he shoved the bed until it was just out of the way, but not too far.
He would use the edge of the mattress to stand on.
He had seconds. Leaping to the bed, the door slammed open.
Sure enough, Jimmy had been watching him or had one of his men monitoring the cameras.
“Rebel, what are you doing,” Jimmy said, walking into the room.
Rebel glared holding the roped sheet up.
“You can’t keep me here!”
Jimmy jerked his head and two men charged forward, grabbing him just as he lifted the circled sheet upward.
When they got close, Rebel launched.
He sank his teeth into one man’s neck and tore out a bite-size chunk of skin close to the artery, but he’d missed.
The man howled, released him, and staggered away.
Rebel wouldn’t miss next time. He spat flesh and blood from his mouth right at Jimmy, who stepped to the side.
The other man grabbed him from behind around the waist, locking his arms to his sides.
Jimmy made the mistake of stepping closer and cupping the back of Rebel’s head.
The man holding Rebel loosened his grip and that was all it took for Rebel to yank one arm free and gouge his thumb into Jimmy’s eye.
“Fuck!” Jimmy stumbled away holding one hand over his face.
Rebel had felt the eye give a satisfying pop. If it didn’t come completely out of the socket, then the fucker would at least be blind.
Several more men converged into the room along with Doctor Clifford.
Rebel knew what that meant and he screamed and fought like a wild thing until the doctor administered the sedative.
“I’ll kill you all. Every single one of you,” he vowed as darkness closed over him.