Chapter 3
Ava
They were laughing. The bastards were fucking laughing, having a grand ‘ole time under the stars on their hotel balcony.
My body was vibrating with anger and hurt and pure adrenaline from finally seeing their faces after months. I pushed the car door open, just in time to hurl my guts out. My body convulsed, again and again, while I struggled to keep air in my lungs.
“Shit, Ava,” Owen cursed, as he leaned over to keep my hair out of the way. “I shouldn’t have brought you. This is too much.”
I finally straightened and wiped my mouth with the napkin Owen handed to me. “You wouldn’t have found them without me.” I knew how Grayson thought. I knew how he picked his hotels. And I knew what his cold, black little heart desired.
We stared out the front window of the car at the three people laughing and drinking beer two blocks away.
At the people whose laughs I knew so well that they echoed in my head as if they were right beside me.
I was out here trying to constantly remind myself to breathe because it didn't come naturally anymore, because without them I had no reason to, while they were laughing like I never even existed—the memory of me and what they did to me not even tainting their joy.
There were no silent glances at the fourth empty seat.
No acknowledgement that it was ever occupied by someone else.
By me.
Grayson stood from his chair, slowly making his way to the balcony railing.
He looked like a Greek god, watching the people bustle in the street beneath him.
A mysterious, untouchable god. A god whose body I knew better than my own.
I’ve tried to forget what he looked like, but I knew every line of his perfect face, every little fleck of green in his brown eyes.
He tipped his head back, staring up at the full moon.
My chest caved in on itself. Was he thinking of me?
Of the time he told me he wanted to reach inside my chest and rip my heart out to keep for himself while I fucked his hand under the full moon?
Or when I swore my soul to him as he claimed me for the first time against the side of his SUV, under the full moon?
“You don’t want me,” I had thought that night when he’d refused, at first, to let me stay with him.
His voice echoed loudly in my head. “Don’t you ever think that.
I would burn the fucking world to have you, Princess.
” He had said it with such conviction, such emotion, that it never even crossed my mind to question it again.
I had been so certain of his feelings for me.
Now I was sitting in a car watching him from afar, hoping, wishing, he was thinking of me.
Or maybe he did feel that way once. Maybe I had said or did something that made him fall out of love with me.
My chest tightened.
I descended into the memories of us, trying to find the turning point.
Was it because I helped him with Charles when he begged me not to?
He was upset about it, up until the day we took Charles.
I had thought he was finally over it, but maybe not?
Or maybe I was simply too boring, too… normal, for his taste.
Or, if I was completely honest with myself, it was all just a lie from the very beginning. He had taken what he needed and then discarded me as soon as he was able to and never looked back.
They were laughing. How could they be laughing?
“I can’t believe it’s them. I can’t believe I’m finally looking at them.” Agent Becket’s words sliced through my searing thoughts. “After all this time.”
I nodded, swallowing hard against the emotions wanting to escape me. Now was not the time to descend back into madness. I had to focus.
I peered at Owen’s face, forcing my awareness out of my body and the sickness blooming there.
Forcing myself to concentrate on something else, anything else.
Owen’s jaw was set in determination, his unruly, rich-brown curls swept back from his face.
After all these months, I haven’t even noticed that he would be considered conventionally attractive.
His blue eyes were sharp and calculating, framed by thick, dark brows.
He straightened under my scrutiny. It was probably impolite to stare at someone like that, but I was too tired and broken for manners.
Owen had told me the stories of how everyone had ridiculed him for believing that Grayson’s little band of thieves existed. They had nicknamed him the Ghost Hunter, a name that had suddenly gone from mocking to legendary when he’d finally proven the existence of the Apparitions, with me as witness.
“Are you going to let the rest of the FBI know we found them?” I asked as the hatred returned full swing seeing the three on the balcony toast to something.
Owen frowned, his knee bouncing up and down. “If a plane of FBI agents landed in this vicinity, it might tip them off. I’m not taking that chance right now. We’ll have to get help from the local authorities. It might cost me my job, but I’m not losing them because of bullshit bureaucracy.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I cut in, in my broken Spanish.
All the eyes at the table turned to me.
I’ve sat quietly in the briefing room of the police station, watching Agent Becket and the captain, along with his team, plan to catch the Apparitions red-handed. I’ve thought it wise to leave the police work to the police, but this was all wrong.
“They’re going to get away, Becket. You won’t be able to catch him like this.”
The captain narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you think my men are not capable?”
I stood, making my way to their table, lifting my chin as the captain continued to stare at me.
“That’s right, they’re not capable.” A huff of indignation travelled through the men in the room.
“And neither would a full taskforce of the finest trained FBI agents.” I pointed to the map on the table.
“Do you want a demonstration of how Grayson thinks? These roads you want to block off? You’re wasting your time and resources.
If I know him, and I fucking do, he’s not going to even use the roads.
They’ll fall from the sky, get what they want and disappear into this river, never to be seen again.
And don’t think he doesn’t have twenty other escape routes planned out.
Don’t think you have the element of surprise here.
He already saw you coming and planned six ways out of it. ”
The captain scoffed. “Then what do you propose we do?”
I lifted my chin higher as the captain stared down his nose at me. But I saw the brief flicker of doubt creeping in. “Nothing. We wait.”
“Wait?” Agent Becket questioned. The captain shook his head in disbelief.
“We wait,” I insisted. “We let them steal the watch. We let them think they got away with it. We give Grayson the chance to drop his guard because there is no way you’ll be able to catch him while it’s still up. You will never catch him in the act.”
“This is insanity,” the captain laughed. But Owen held my gaze, his icy blue eyes calculating. He knew I was right. He knew this was our only way, our only real shot.
“I suggest you take her seriously, Captain. This woman is the only person who’s gotten close to these people and lived to tell their sins.
She’s the only reason I’ve been able to prove their existence in the first place.
And she’s the only one who’s been able to track them down.
” Owen stared the captain down. “If she says we can’t catch them this way, then we can’t catch them this way. "
The captain turned his gaze on me, appraising me with new eyes. “Then let me hear your plan, girl. How can we catch them?”
A week later, I sat in an unmarked van with Owen, watching the monitors, feeling like my heart was about to bust out of my ribs. Owen was just as nervous, his knee rapidly bouncing up and down.
“They better not fuck this up,” Owen whispered to himself.
We were sitting outside another one of the Apparitions’ houses.
A remote farmhouse, with only a shabby barn in the middle of nowhere Mexico.
The house sat atop a hill, completely surrounded by the Mexican Police Force, but it was unnervingly quiet, except for the whispered responses of the officers on the comms. The captain had let me and Agent Becket plan the takedown, but we weren’t allowed to participate, banished to the control van, forced to watch it unfold on the bodycams of the officers.
“Shit!” One of the officers whispered, panicked over the comms, “There’s a perimeter alarm. We triggered it!”
Before the ice could shoot all the way through my body, the captain responded, “Move in! Now! Now! Now!”
It was now or never. We couldn’t give them a chance to think or act. Owen and I held our breath as we watched the officers reach the house. They busted through the front door but were unable to get through the back kitchen door. It was somehow reinforced.
That was a bad sign.
I gasped as I watched an officer chase Gemma through the living room.
The moment he laid hands on her he went down.
But the officer wasn’t alone. I flinched as they swarmed her.
Another officer went down. Then another.
But there were too many. A sob escaped me as I watched them tackle her to the ground with too much force.
“Gemma!” Hunter’s gut-piercing scream echoed over multiple comms.
I searched through the screens for him, finally finding him. He roared his defiance as he fought to get to Gem. But it was no use. It took five officers to finally get him on the ground.
“Where is he?” Owen whispered, scanning the screens.
I knew who he was searching for. Where the hell was Grayson?
A loud bang had me jumping up from my seat. I searched the body cams. It was a truck, crashing through a garage door. It roared loudly as it leaped away from the house, racing across the open fields.
“Varon’s in the truck!” Owen screamed over the comms for the officers.
Police officers started darting out of the house and into the field, after the truck.
There was utter chaos as everyone screamed over the comms. Vehicles and officers ploughing over the fields, shooting at the truck, trying to stop it.
“He’s going to get away!” Owen screamed, frustrated.
I watched in frozen horror as the truck took bullet after bullet.
Gods, Grayson.
No. My breathing picked up again. No, something wasn’t right. “He won’t leave them,” I whispered.
Owen’s head snapped to me. Then back at the screens. The body cams of the remaining officers in the house, started going dark. I saw a flash of Grayson’s hand before another went dark.
“Fuck!” Owen cursed as my stomach turned.
“It’s a diversion! He’s still in the house!” Owen screamed over the comms, but all we heard was static. There were no more shouting voices, just static.
“The hell?” Owen stared down at the radio in his hand. “Jesus, they jammed the fucking signal. Fuck it,” he huffed as he kicked the doors open, making a beeline for the house.
I darted after him. No way was I letting Grayson get away. Just as we made it to the porch, both of us stopped in our tracks.
“You hear that?” I half whispered to Owen.
“That’s a fucking helicopter. We don’t have helicopters.”
“Then where’s it coming from?” I asked, panicked.
Officers started running back from the field, realising there was no one in the crashed truck. They pointed at the barn, screaming something we couldn’t hear.
We looked to where they pointed, just in time to see the decrepit barn’s roof silently sliding open, the noise of the helicopter getting louder.
We watched, horrified and utterly defeated, as a helicopter lifted out of the barn, large spotlight on its front end turning on.
Gemma was in the pilot’s seat with Hunter next to her.
Grayson was standing by the open door, rifle in hand.
The spotlight swept across the area as the helicopter lifted higher and higher.
As the light swept closer to me, I stepped off the porch right under the beam. Owen stepped up beside me.
The light paused on us. Gemma’s hand came up over her mouth as she saw me. But there was nothing more euphoric than the complete and utter shock on Grayson’s face as he noticed me. I locked eyes with him and grinned.
Who’s the one laughing now?
The elusive devil who could predict and plan his way out of anything was taken by surprise. He hadn’t seen me coming.
I kept his stare as the helicopter lifted, sparks flying as the bullets hit their mark.
But Grayson didn’t move from the door, staring at me, not even flinching as sparks scattered just above his head, his shock turning into brutal anger.
But it only fuelled the sick pleasure pulsing through my body.
The sound of gunshots died down as the helicopter became smaller and smaller, the officers accepting defeat.
But I fucking beamed. Grayson might have gotten away, but I’d fucking won this battle. For the first time, he was running.
From me.
“I think you just started a war,” Owen said from beside me.
I laughed coldly, wind whipping my hair around me. “I’m ready.”