Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ELI
“If he was coming back, he’d have turned up by now.”
Ryder’s words landed between us like a stone, sinking the mood in the room. What had started as a simple team meeting had taken a turn. Cooper Sinclair, my new boss, sat at the head of the conference table, looking at the rest of us, a light of amusement in his icy blue eyes at Ryder’s flat tone.
He was amused because, in my opinion, he still wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up with the team from Creed Global folded into his own company, Sinclair Security.
Neither were we. The team—consisting of me, Ryder, Miranda, Maddox, Wren, and Shade—had worked for most of the last decade under the leadership of one Silas Creed.
Creed Global wasn’t all that different from Sinclair Security.
Not really. We handled similar business: protection, investigations, and, as the Sinclair Security website put it, problem-solving.
It was just that Creed Global solved problems with a little more edge than Sinclair Security.
We worked in parallel lanes. And while we’d always shared mutual professional respect, that was it.
Then Silas had disappeared, telling us only that he’d sold Creed Global to the Sinclairs, and we should move over there and take orders from Cooper, while Silas tied up some loose ends from his old life.
He’d dodged all our demands for more information, promising that he’d be back.
That was months ago. Since then, there’d been no sign of Silas Creed.
If he was coming back, he’d have turned up by now.
Ryder’s words ping-ponged in my head. The amusement left Cooper’s eyes once Ryder’s flat tone penetrated. Leaning forward, Cooper tapped the tip of his pen on the conference table, drawing all eyes to him, before he said, “You don’t know that, Ryder.”
Ryder didn’t reply. Shade leaned forward to catch Ryder’s gaze, her dark, sleek ponytail sliding over her shoulder. “Silas has gone undercover for longer than this. He told us to trust him. If we don’t know what he’s doing, we can’t assess if it’s taking more time than it should.”
“I don’t buy it,” Maddox said in his low rumble. “Loose ends can be slippery, but there hasn’t been a trace of him. I looked. I asked Emmett to look—” He flashed a glance to Cooper, maybe waiting for a protest, but Cooper only gave him a short nod.
“Emmett didn’t find anything either?” Cooper clarified.
“Nothing,” Maddox said with a quick shake of his head.
“Neither did Lucas.” Lucas Jackson ran the hacker division and was a genius with a keyboard.
He’d been the best at Sinclair until Emmett signed on.
Maddox was good—maybe as good as Silas. I knew my way around a computer, though explosives were more my thing.
But Emmett? Emmett was the guy everyone went to when they knew what they needed was out there and they just couldn’t fucking find it.
Emmett could find almost anything. But he hadn’t found Silas.
“So, what are you saying?” I asked Ryder. “You think he took off on us, or you think he’s dead?”
Miranda flicked me a worried glance. I avoided her eyes.
I knew why she was worried. From me, you were more likely to get a joke than a blunt confrontation, but I never minded laying it out when I had something to say.
And I didn’t see the point in avoiding reality.
Because Maddox was right. Silas going undercover for a few months wasn’t out of the realm of possibility—especially if he was tying up unfinished business from a life he’d walked away from decades before.
But to do it and drop out of sight so completely?
That didn’t fit. There were any number of ways he could have communicated with any one of us and still stayed off the radar.
A simple proof of life would have been enough.
If he wasn’t going to contact us because we were practically his fucking family, he at least should have done it because it was company policy.
I’d been over it in my head, going in circles trying to come up with an explanation, and kept ending up at the same conclusion. The only reason Silas wouldn’t have contacted us was if he couldn’t.
I swallowed at that thought, pushing away the cold nausea turning my gut.
Silas wasn’t dead. Silas couldn’t be dead.
Silas was the guy who’d saved my unit when everything had gone to shit, turning up in the dark out of nowhere with a vehicle and firepower exactly when we’d needed it.
I’d seen him make the impossible possible too many times over the years to imagine something had gone that badly wrong.
But nothing about this had made sense from the beginning.
Why had Silas sold Creed Global to Sinclair? He should have put Ryder and Miranda in charge. Ryder had been working with Silas the longest, and second was Miranda. She had the logistical skills to run the team. Hell, she practically ran it for Silas until he disappeared.
And if Silas was coming back, why sell his company? As the thought unrolled in my mind, I felt it leave my lips. “I still don’t understand why he sold Creed Global to you and your brothers.”
“You ready to jump ship so fast?” Cooper asked, which wasn’t an answer at all.
“No,” I said, looking out into the array of partitioned desks in the center of the office opposite the conference room.
Our setup at Creed Global had been a little more low-key—a converted warehouse kind of thing.
This was— I rolled my neck, stretching out the stiffness.
This was corporate. Cooper was wearing a suit, for fuck’s sake.
I could wear a suit if I had to, and we did corporate work at Creed Global.
It just felt—I don’t know—more relaxed the way we did it.
“I don’t love the cubicle farm, but I’m not looking for an out. Not yet, anyway.”
“Fair enough,” Cooper said, setting his pen on the table and sitting back in his chair, propping his ankle on his knee.
“Look, I don’t know why Silas sold us Creed Global instead of turning it over to Ryder and Miranda.
” He shifted his gaze to them, sitting side by side.
“You’ve been here a couple of months now.
You’re familiar with our people. You’ve seen how we work. Do you want out?”
“Are you offering us an out?” Miranda asked, one red eyebrow raised in an arch. She was cool, Miranda—her expression pleasant but giving away nothing.
“I’m keeping the client list and the contracts, and I’ll hold you to the NDA, but you’re all at-will employees. I signed a contract with Silas, not with each of you individually. And frankly, given the nature of what we do, if you really don’t want to be here, I don’t want you to stay.”
A jolt of panic hit my chest, the unexpectedness of the emotion taking my breath for a split second.
Yeah, Sinclair Security wasn’t where I thought I’d end up, but it hadn’t occurred to me that any of the team might jump ship.
We’d worked together for years. They were my family.
I clamped down the panic, forcing myself to take a slow breath and look around the table—really look. When I did, calm chased out the nerves.
“None of us are going anywhere,” Maddox said, sitting back, mimicking Cooper’s posture down to the ankle on his knee.
“Not saying I’m going to retire here, but you run a good shop.
I like most of your people. Your cases are a little more straight-edge than what we’re used to, but you know, I can adapt. Maybe you can adapt too.”
Cooper acknowledged that with the slightest nod. “All right, then.” He put his foot down and slid closer to the table, braced his elbows, and said, “Then what do you want to do about Silas?”
“What do you mean?” Wren asked, tucking a sandy strand of hair behind her ear.
She was doing her unassuming girl thing: no makeup, hair in a messy, stubby ponytail, flannel shirt, and jeans.
Like this, she could disappear almost anywhere in America, unnoticed and unremarked—which was a load of bullshit, because she was one of the toughest, most dogged investigators I’d ever known.
We could drop her in the woods or a city, and she could track anyone.
Despite her size, she fought like a demon.
And when she wanted to, she could look like an innocent kid a few days out of junior high.
“Obviously, you’ve looked into where Silas is, if you’ve tapped Emmett and Lucas?” Cooper asked.
Maddox nodded.
“What do you want to do?” Cooper asked. “Do you think he’s out there, up to something, or do you think?—”
He didn’t say it, and I was glad. I couldn’t get my head around the idea that Silas might be dead. We’d all seen enough death. I’d seen more than most. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—consider that Silas wasn’t coming back.
“It depends,” I said, slowly. “There are a few options here. It could be that he just isn’t finished with what he set out to do. Doesn’t explain why we can’t find a trace of him or why he hasn’t contacted anyone.”
“It’s possible he can’t contact anyone,” Wren said, the hope in her tone begging me to agree with her. We both knew better than to hope in a situation like this. We needed to see what was, not what we wanted to see. “What if he needs our help?”
“It could mean that,” Maddox said. “Or it could mean he’s dead.”
“He isn’t dead,” Wren ground out between clenched teeth.
I found myself agreeing. “Not Silas.”
“Everybody’s ticket gets punched eventually.” Maddox crossed his arms over his chest, his chin lifted.
“So, you’re just willing to give up on him?” I demanded, suddenly irritated with Maddox’s dogged pessimism.
“We’re not doing ourselves any favors by hiding from reality,” he shot back.
I wanted to argue, but I’d been telling myself the same thing only minutes ago.
“So that brings us back to my question,” Cooper said. “Are we looking for Silas, or do we give him more time?”