3. River
RIVER
I am losing my control.
Each day that goes by without Freya in my grasp snaps another of the tenuous threads holding me together. A darkness has gathered around me like a storm cloud to electricity and all of my focus, all of my attention, is narrowed in on her. On finding her. On keeping her. On owning her.
The doors of the elevator I’ve been waiting for hiss open, and I step inside. It’s been seven weeks since Freya ran. I never thought it would take us this long to find her, but I finally have a lead.
My fingers vibrate with anger as I swipe my ID and press for the sub-basement, the one most agents don’t even know exists.
Once the biometrics have scanned my face I step back and force myself to take a moment, to wrap chains around all the emotions that are overriding my system.
I won’t get anywhere if I’m not thinking straight.
The elevator slows to a stop and I walk out into the cold, concrete space.
Jude calls our offices the Lair, but the sublevel takes it to a whole new level.
White strip lighting hangs from the ceiling.
Everything is metal from the tables to the chairs, to the raised scaffolding platform at the end of the room.
The place looks more like an underground warehouse than an FBI office but then again, the people who work down here aren’t quite FBI. More like FBI adjacent.
The sublevel is home to Black Ops. The missions and cases the higher ups don’t officially sign-off on but want to happen anyway.
In other words, all things unsanctioned.
Not everyone has the stomach for the work they do, which means there’s a high turnover rate and the unit currently only has two agents. Jack and Reaper.
Jack, the unofficial team leader, looks over from his desk when I enter.
His dark brown hair is cut short on the sides, with the waves on top pushed back, and despite spending his days in the basement his white skin is tanned.
In some ways Jack and I are a lot alike.
We both crave control, except where mine is sharp and neat, his is sharp and dangerous.
Normally, I’d say his moral code is darker than mine but with Freya gone I find myself slipping far deeper into morally gray than I ever wanted to go.
Maybe that’s necessary though, because right now, Jack has information I want, and I have a feeling he’s not going to be happy to part with it.
“Jack,” I greet.
“River.” Jack watches me carefully as I approach.
Reaper, on the other hand, grins like the maniac he is. “Well, well. The Chief of the SCU, to what do we mere mortals owe the pleasure?”
“Acting Chief,” I correct. It feels wrong to be doing Farrah’s job.
She should still be here, and I view it as a personal failure that she’s not.
Every time I step into her office, or someone calls me Chief, it cuts a little deeper.
Zach will pay for what he’s done but first, I need to find Freya.
The whole reason I accepted the position of acting chief was so I could have access to the entire FBI database and after weeks of scouring through information it’s finally paid off.
“Potato, po-tah-to.” Reaper shakes his head, his long black hair dancing across his teak-colored skin.
“Do you like the vibe we’ve got going on?
It’s very Mulder and Scully, shoved in the basement—shotgun Scully by the way.
I keep telling Jack we need some flowers but he’s too insecure in his fragile masculinity to co-exist with beauty. ”
“You find your girl yet?” Jack asks, effectively ignoring Reaper like that’s what he does ninety-nine percent of the time.
“That’s why I’m here,” I say.
He flips his pen over in his hand, the movement not agitated but rhythmic. “Want me to set up another meeting with her mother?”
Jack was who I entrusted to take care of Hannah after Eli shot Freya’s father. He tracked down her parents and she’s currently recuperating with them in an FBI safehouse.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Jack puts the pen down and holds my gaze.
“What’s your connection to La Tormentita ?” I ask.
“I don’t know. What is La Tormentita ?” Jack’s poker face is pretty much indecipherable, but Reaper goes deathly still.
“Not what, who. The direct translation is Little Storm but you may know her as Carmen,” I say.
Jack twists his lips and shrugs. “Sorry, it doesn’t ring a bell.”
He’s lying and the last threads holding me together snap. I lunge for him.
My fingers curl around Jack’s neck, the chair scraping against the concrete as I lift him up by the throat.
“Don’t fuck with me, Jack.”
“Ooh, I like him,” Reaper quips, watching us without the slightest concern. “Much less stuck up than the last one in charge.”
I glower at him. “Insult Farrah again and I’ll have you sent back to Poseidon.
” That’s another thing I found while digging through the database.
Reaper is a transfer from a CIA unit that recruits their assets from juvenile detentions.
The little I could uncover suggests most of them would have been better off staying in jail.
The only warning I get is the slight flick of Reaper’s wrist before a dagger flies through the space between Jack’s face and mine. The gap is mere inches and the blade whistles past before embedding in the wall several feet away.
Jack closes his eyes, looking utterly bored despite the near miss and my hand still around his throat.
Reaper just smiles. “Sorry. Knife play is kind of my kink and big dick energy really turns me on.” He keeps smiling, but it’s tenser than before. Enough to know that my threat hit the mark.
I let go of Jack, shoving him back into the chair. “I’ve been going through all the Bureau’s open case files looking for anything that relates to Carmen.” Because I have zero doubts that’s where Freya has gone. She’s the only person with the skills to keep Freya hidden from Oz.
Jack opens his mouth. “I?—”
“Shut up and listen,” I cut him off, anger burning on the harsh edges of my words. Freya has already been out of my grasp for too long, I don’t have time for this. “Imagine my surprise when I find you’ve been keeping tabs on someone off the books.”
Jack looks up at me. His eyes are sharp, the calm mask he’s wearing belayed by the dangerous energy vibrating off his skin.
Jack and I have been associates for years now but I have a feeling I’m on the verge of seeing the real Jack for the first time.
This is the reason he’s down here, working Black Ops, because he’s willing to do the things most people won’t touch.
What he doesn’t understand yet, is that right now, out of the two of us, I’m the more dangerous one.
I’m the one with something to lose.
I cross my arms and stare down at him. “This is the part where you talk.”
Jack holds my gaze. “Who I keep tabs on outside of my work hours is none of your business.”
“It is when you’re using FBI resources.”
A slight tilt tugs at Jack’s lips, and he shakes his head. “I hate to break it to you, River, but down here, your rules don’t matter like they do up there.”
I grind my teeth together and force a breath through my nose. “I swear to god, Jack, I don’t give a fuck about Carmen. I don’t care who she is to you or why you’ve been tracking her, but she knows where Freya is, and you don’t want to find out what I will do to get that information.”
Honestly, I don’t want to know either. I can feel myself getting more desperate, my compassion draining, my morals shifting. Freya is all that matters in my world and I don’t think I’ll start seeing clearly again until she’s back in my arms. Or maybe cuffed to my bed.
Jack pushes up off his seat. He taps his fingers against his thigh and shares a brief look with Reaper, who quirks a brow and shrugs. “The Little Storm will slice him to pieces if he sets a foot wrong.”
Jack’s fingers stop tapping. “Fine.” He tears off a strip of paper and writes down a number.
“I’m not giving you a location, you can call her.
If she wants to tell you where Freya is, that’s her choice.
” He hands me the note but doesn’t release it.
“And River, I respect you, but if you endanger Carmen in any way, just know there are no rules that will stop me from returning the favor.”
“And I like knives,” Reaper adds, somehow having acquired a new dagger that he’s now spinning on his fingertip.
“Noted.” I take the scrap of paper off Jack and spin on my heels. I don’t hang around, taking the elevator back up to the underground parking garage and heading to my car.
The phone number is an itch in my palm, begging to be scratched, but I force myself to wait to make the call so Oz can track it. This is the closest we’ve gotten to finding Freya and I’m not about to rely on Carmen telling us where she is out of the kindness of her heart.
If we can’t trace the call, then the digging I did on Jack’s files means I already have a backup plan in place. For some reason that man has enough information on Carmen to get her to agree to anything.
The old version of me, the one who followed the rules and kept things professional, is reluctant to use the information I’ve discovered, but I’m quickly learning there is no line I won’t cross when it comes to Freya.
I pull open the car door with more force than necessary. My phone syncs to the car system but before I can call the guys my phone buzzes, Freya’s old police captain’s name flashing up.
I brace my arm on the passenger seat and reverse out of the parking space. “Talk to me, Roarke.”
“He’s taken another girl.”
I slam on the brakes. Fuck.
Voices and music stream down the phone.
“You sure it’s Zach?”
“I’m at the crime scene now. He left the same calling card and the girl’s his type—Jenson don’t let the friends’ parents leave yet and for the life of me someone turn that music off.” Selene’s voice goes muffled then comes back strong. “The Arcade at the Mall, River. Get here, now.”
I screw up my eyes and slam my fist against the steering wheel then spin the car around. Every cell in my body wants me to find Freya, to call the number Jack gave me right fucking now, everything else be damned but this, this is the one thing that could stop me.
I can’t leave a little girl in danger. Freya would kill me if I even thought about it. So I call the guys, tell them to meet me at the arcade, and speed out of the parking garage.
I will deal with this case and then I will find Freya.
The need to reclaim my little runaway, to dominate her, shadows my every thought.
Maybe I should be worried about this possessive need to own her, but Freya has lost the privilege of freedom.
When I get her back, and I will get her back, she’ll be lucky to even breathe without me.