Chapter 48
RYKER
Inside the warehouse, time moved differently as I waited for confirmation about the man’s identity. I checked my phone.
Sloane:
That’s Nate!
The relief that hit was immediate and brutal. It didn’t come soft. It slammed through me and made my vision pinch for a second.
He was alive. It was really Nate. Then, the rage followed so fast it almost made me dizzy.
I shoved my phone in my pocket and stood.
“Cut him loose, Hamilton.” My voice was deadly, a threat he would soon realize was also a goddamn promise. “He can barely breathe, you sorry son of a bitch. You guaranteed our safety, or was that another lie?”
“He’s safe. No one is running in here to kill either one of you.”
“Nate can’t fucking walk out of here,” I growled.
“That’s not my problem.” There was strain under Hamilton’s tone.
I stared at him until the silence became pressure.
I bent, reached down to my calf, and pulled the knife from the sheath. The blade caught the light, clean and simple.
Hamilton glanced at it, and for the first time I saw something real move in him.
With one clean slice through the zip ties, Nate’s arms dropped.
His eyelids fluttered. He didn’t wake, not fully. “Sloane,” he rasped. The name hit me square in the chest because it sounded like her name had been the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
“Yeah. I’ve got you.”
He smelled like sweat and blood and that clean scent again, the one that didn’t belong.
My gut twisted. He was drugged. He was hurt. Nate had been kept alive just long enough to be used.
I wanted to fucking kill Hamilton right there. I wanted to end him so hard it would be a warning to anyone that worked with him. But I didn’t, because Nate was in my hands, and Sloane was waiting somewhere out there, and I had exactly one job.
Get him to her.
I checked Nate’s ribs quickly, hands moving over bone and bruises. No obvious breaks that would puncture anything that I could tell, but I wasn’t a doctor. His breathing was shallow but present. His pulse was there, fluttering under my fingers.
Still alive.
“Hamilton,” I said without looking up, “if he dies because of what you did, you won’t have enough time to pray before I send you straight to hell.”
Hamilton didn’t flinch. He stood back and watched me work, and that made my skin crawl. He didn’t look guilty, he looked interested. “Threats aren’t necessary.”
“I’m not threatening,” I answered. “I come with a goddamn warning label.”
I slid an arm under Nate’s shoulders and hauled him to a standing position. He made a sound that was more pain than breath. His body sagged immediately, heavy and wrong, and I adjusted fast, so his weight didn’t send us both to the ground.
He couldn’t stand on his own. Before I tossed him over my shoulder, I leaned close.
“Nate,” I said. “Listen to me. You’re leaving. You’re going to see your sister. Hang in there, man.”
His eyelids fluttered again. Nothing else. But his mouth moved, like he was trying to speak and couldn’t.
Something sharp twisted in my chest. It was too familiar. I knew what it felt like to have your body betrayed by someone else’s choices.
I hoisted him up. His weight hit my shoulder, heavy and dead against me, and I locked my arm around his legs so he wouldn’t slide. His arm swung limp across my back while I walked toward the door.
Hamilton didn’t follow right away. He let me take a few steps first, like he wanted to remind me that he could have stopped me earlier.
“Ryker,” he called.
I didn’t turn.
“I said I’d guarantee your safety,” he added.
I stopped and looked back. “You don’t have that power, do you?”
His smile tried to return. It didn’t land. “I have more power than you think.”
“We’ll see about that,” I spat.
He stepped closer, and the light caught his face better. “You think this is too easy.”
I stared at him.
“That alone should terrify you,” he continued, almost reasonable. “Just remember one thing. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”
My jaw tightened. “Then why am I still standing?”
Hamilton’s eyes held mine. “Because you’re useful.”
Useful. That word slid under my goddamn skin. It was the word men used when they didn’t see you as a person. My grip tightened on Nate. “We’re done here.”
He measured me, looking for the moment I’d snap. All of this was too easy. I didn’t like it one fucking bit, but I also had a surprise waiting outside for him.
I walked, keeping my pace steady as I hung onto Nate. The exit was right there. Still, something in my gut kept tightening. Hamilton was letting me leave. He wanted me to leave. That meant it was part of the plan.
Outside, cold night air hit my face and felt cleaner than the inside of that building. Two shapes detached from the dark near the tree line, moving toward me fast. Kip first. Death beside him. Their attention went straight to Nate.
“What the fuck?” Kip muttered, voice tight.
Death’s gaze landed on me. “Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
Kip stepped closer, hands half raised, ready to take weight. I shook my head once.
“I’ve got him.”
Death scanned the road, the trees, the warehouse door, all in a smooth sweep. “We need to move. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“Yeah.”
Kip swallowed. “Does Sloane know you have him?”
“I texted her. She confirmed it’s her brother.”
Saying it out loud made my chest tighten again. Because now it wasn’t only a mission. It was a man on my shoulder and a woman waiting for her life to come back. And I was the one holding the fragile part.
Hamilton was still inside.
Watching.
Waiting.
Death moved closer. “The ladies are out here. It might be risky, but we’re heading that way. Kip and I will protect you and Nate.” He gestured toward the trees.
My pulse fucking detonated. “What?”
He held up his phone briefly, Ella’s messages on the screen, then pocketed it. “She’s been keeping me updated. Looks like some men tried to grab Sloane. Ella and Holland eliminated the problem.”
My jaw locked so hard my back teeth ached. Sloane. Out here. In this. I’d told her to stay put and Hamilton had made sure that didn’t matter.
Fuck, this wasn’t only my trap. Hamilton wasn’t just trying to control me. He was trying to control the entire board. Everyone who mattered. Everyone who could hurt him.
Kip’s attention turned to the warehouse as we started to walk into the woods.
Hamilton had timed it. He’d split us. Distracted us. Made sure no one could fully protect anyone else.
Death’s eyes held mine, and I saw it. The same choice I was making. Survival first.
Revenge later. He checked his screen for Ella’s location.
I shifted Nate’s legs higher, tightening my hold. Nate made a faint sound against my back, and my grip locked even harder.
“Hold on,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. “Just fucking hold on.”
My chest burned. I could already picture Sloane’s face when she saw him.
That split second where she wouldn’t believe it. The moment when the hope would hurt more than the fear. Then the moment it hit her that he was real and in front of her, and she’d have to keep her knees from giving out.
I’d seen Sloane strong, and I’d seen her furious. I’d seen her steady in ways that made other people lean on her without realizing it. But I hadn’t seen her get her brother back. I didn’t know what it would do to her.
I only knew I wanted to be the one standing close enough to catch her if she broke.
The warehouse door creaked behind us. I didn’t turn right away. I kept walking, slow and deliberate, because turning would give Hamilton the satisfaction of knowing he’d stopped me.
Hamilton stepped into the doorway and the exterior light framed him. “Before you walk away,” he called, “there’s one more thing.”
My steps slowed without my permission. Nate had shifted on my shoulder, and released a faint, broken exhale. The air carried that clean, wrong scent up again. It threaded through blood and sweat and warehouse rot and still cut straight to the back of my damn throat.
My skull tightened. A pressure banded across my temples, sharp and sudden, the same way it did when I tried to remember those four days and hit the wall.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to keep moving.
Don’t fuck with me. Not now. Not here.
Nate’s weight sagged, and my arm cinched tighter around his legs.
Death saw the shift. He didn’t speak, but his posture changed, ready to strike.
Kip took one step closer, angling his body between me and the warehouse.
Hamilton stayed in the doorway, hands loose at his sides, expression calm enough to be insulting. He looked satisfied, and that was the part that set every instinct in me on edge.
Satisfaction meant the move had already been made.
I kept my voice flat. “Say it.”
“Oh, I will,” Hamilton said. “You’re going to want to hear this, but alone.”
I slid Nate off my shoulder and Kip held him up while I reached for my knife before I walked closer to Hamilton. I could kill him with one move if I had to. I drew closer, my heart pounding in my chest.
“What?”
Hamilton sneered as he spoke in a hushed tone.
And for the first time since I walked into that warehouse, I knew it with brutal clarity.
He’d let me have Nate.
Because Nate had never been the end.