26. Logan
26
LOGAN
Hospitals smell terrible. Like the combined scent of bleach and antiseptic that you’ll never be able to scrub off your skin, even when you sit in a hot bath covered in all the scented shit that women take showers with.
“You gotta wake up before I get Poppy back,” I whisper into Bax’s hair as I hold his body around the tubes and machines that are currently keeping my baby brother alive. “She’s gonna be so pissed if our baby has to be named Baxter. You know she hates that beer, but if you die, she’s not gonna have any choice in the name. The same way that Remy and Parker named their baby after Cassie, she’s gonna demand that we name our little boy after you. ”
From her seat on the other side of Bax’s hospital bed, my mom snorts. I look up to find her holding his hand, her eyes red and swollen from crying for hours.
Twelve hours. Twelve hours since Ortega shot my little brother and took Poppy from my house. Twelve hours of not knowing if my brother is going to make it. Or if he’s killed Poppy and threw her body on the side of the road. Twelve hours for every single fear that I’ve ever had over the last fourteen years to come roaring back with the fire and determination of my worst nightmares.
“I can’t lose another baby,” my mom finally whispers brokenly. “I can’t do it. It will literally destroy me, Logan.” Her eyes leave Bax to meet mine, with all the fire and pain of a mother who’s lost their child. “Do you know what they call a parent who’s lost their child?”
I shake my head, not trusting myself to say the right thing. It doesn’t matter that I’m a grown-ass man, I won’t be the reason that my mother cries another tear.
“Nothing. There’s no word for it.” Her voice comes out hoarse, devastated. “If I lost your father, I’d be a widow. If your father lost me, he’d be a widower. If we died, leaving our children, you’d be orphans. But the pain of losing a child is something that they haven’t even created a word for.” She lifts Bax’s hand to her mouth and kisses it, more tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’ve already had that title for fifteen years today. I’m not going to do it again. Do you hear me, Bax?”
“What?” The question leaves my lungs like a breath and not the word that has forced itself out.
Mom meets my eyes. “Lettie died fifteen years ago, today.”
A sharp pain wedges itself between my ribs. “It’s her birthday, and I forgot.” I drop to my knees, right there next to the hospital bed that holds my little brother, and cry.
I cry until the door opens and my father stands there with Dean at his side, my best friends standing behind them in the hall.
“Let’s go, boy,” Dad barks. “Gotta check the house with the other officers to see if she left anything behind that can be used.”
I get up, woodenly following the orders of the only man in my life who is capable of making me do exactly what he wants without trying.
I stop right next to him and meet his pain-filled eyes.
“Wait,” Mom commands .
We turn as a unit to face her.
“You’re not a cop today, Logan.” The matter-of-fact tone sends a shiver down my spine. “And if any one of you has a problem with that, you walk away and let Dean and Lucas handle it. Because if he doesn’t come back with a bullet between his eyes, I’m going to use a butcher knife and chop pieces off him until he dies from blood loss. And then I’m going to keep going until there’s nothing left. I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in prison.” She looks back to Bax, brushing an imaginary strand of hair out of his face. Then her eyes meet mine again before sliding to my father and his best friend. “Do you understand? One child is enough, Lucas.”
Dad, even though his eyes are red from crying the same tears that I know my mother has, doesn’t say a word. All he does is nod, and that is that.
I follow suit.
“Don’t worry about Logan or Lucas.” Dean’s low voice breaks through the tension that my mother’s words brought down around the room. “Someone thought they could hurt my girl. Not only does she have your boys, but I’ve got an entire brotherhood at my back. He’s going to pay, Maria. And if it weren’t for you, he would have paid all those years ago, matching your loss. ”
Mom looks away from Bax, her eyes brimming with tears. “I take it back. I don’t want him to live with what he did anymore. I want him to pay. I want him to bleed. Bring her home.” Just like that, my mother dismisses all of us.
No one says a word until we walk out of the hospital.
“Your mom scares me more than anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Remy admits awkwardly while we are loading into the vehicles. “I thought Parker was scary. Or my mom. But yours, man. I swear I felt her soul leave her body with those words.”
“Your mom would say the same,” I tell him honestly. “Ask her what she’d do to the jackass who killed Cassie. Or yours.” I spear Linc with a hard stare. “Ask your mother what she’d give to have Danny back.” I clear my throat before getting into the driver’s seat of my truck. “My mother’s just more honest about it. And she doesn’t give a shit if her revenge consumes her. None of us do.”
A flash of Lettie’s dead body, lying on my parents’ lawn, fills my mind.
“Actually.” I let go of the steering wheel. “Someone else needs to drive. I have some calls to make. ”
“Holy shit,” Ian murmurs. “You’re calling in your debts.”
“Every single one of them.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and open my door, getting out so someone else can take over. “I don’t care if I have to go through my entire contact list and the entire chain of command until I get to the top of the pecking order.”
“Wait, what?” Dom is standing next to his truck, having missed what I said at first.
Ian slaps him on the shoulder. “Logan’s going full-out psycho.”
“Get in the truck,” I snap. “Gotta find her so I can bring her home and beg forgiveness. Then I gotta put my ring on her finger before anything else fuckin’ happens.”
“You’re gonna need her grandmother’s ring.” Dean stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “But you need to take a moment, Logan. Just one moment, to breathe.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.” His hand tightens on my shoulder. “You don’t understand this right now, but we can’t make a mistake. He might be a fuckin’ idiot. But he was smart enough to get the jump on two of my men. Men who trained in the military, who have eyes in the back of their heads, who are used to creeping in the shadows. He killed them both.Even if he didn’t have my daughter, he’s on borrowed time.”
I nod, not knowing what else to do right then. I’m not going to stop or pause or do anything except go after him.
“Do they know where he’s at?” I walk around the back of the truck, and he follows me.
“No,” Dean admits. “He’s not using a smartphone or a car with tracking.”
“I know what to do.” I open the passenger door. “I’ll see you at my house. Hopefully I’ll have an answer by then.”
I get in, buckling my seat belt, and hit the green button next to the first person on my list and wait for the call to connect.
It goes to voicemail, like I expect.
After a five-second window of silence, I hear the beep and know he’ll be listening to my message.
“Callin’ in the big one, Niles.” I use his name, knowing it will piss him off. “The man who killed Lettie shot Bax and has my woman. My pregnant woman,” I add, then I lower my voice, even though I know he’ll hear it just as clearly. “He’s not on the radar. But he was at my house when he took her twelve hours ago. I know you’ve got satellites with the capability. I need to know where he’s got her. And I need you here, too. Make the trip. It’s an hour.”
Having lost his sister when she was pregnant, Niles and I bonded during a few clandestine missions. Now, he runs one of the most classified security firms in the entire country. Or the world, depending on which government you ask.
When I disconnect the call, Remy whistles from the back seat. “I can’t believe you called Niles. That guy’s scarier than you are.”
“No,” Ian counters with a glance over at me. “He’s not. He’s just more committed.”
I ignore them, pulling up the next contact, and hit the green button.
“Angelo,” I say when he answers with a bark. “Drop the tools and finish whatever job you’re on. I need you to make the trip from Mass.”
“Pierce.” His heavy Boston accent, mixed with the Irish lilt that he picked up from his family, filters through the speaker. “What’s the pahty fa?”
We both know he isn’t coming for a party. But Angelo Doyle is on more watchlists than most even know exist.
“Poppy. And Lettie,” I add .
Again and again, I make the same call.
Military connections, men whom I met when I was on mission, anyone who can get to Maine in less than six hours.
Until every favor on the eastern seaboard has been called in, and we are sitting in front of my house. The front door is just gone , and it is covered with yellow tape. There are bloodstains on the grass, on the path that leads to the stairs, and even on the porch.
So much blood.
“She’s alive,” I tell the men in my truck.
Dom stands next to my door, with Dean and my dad at his side.
I open the door. “Boys are on the way.”
“Mine too,” Dean says with a nod. “Be here in less than six.”
“Same,” I agree. “Told them to go to the club. Hope that’s okay.”
He nods and then leans against his black rig, crossing his arms. “We’ll leave this to the cops. Take Dom with you. Get rid of anyone not ready for what has to happen, Logan. I meant it, what I told your mother.” He lowers his voice so that none of the other men can hear him. “I’m not bringing him back alive. There’s no hole deep enough to bury him in, as far as I’m concerned.”
I glance over at the men I trust with my life and know they won’t walk away. Not when it comes to Poppy. But I nod all the same.
Officer Carter Malone stands just inside the taped-off perimeter, eyeing me with pity and determination, and I nod.
Barely keeping the impatience out of my voice, I clear my throat and ignore the men at my back. “I gotta check the house.” I wait for his nod, not wanting to break protocol. I’ll be doing enough of that.
“Only cops.” He looks over at the older men. “You know I’d let them in.”
I wave him off. “I know.”
When I cross the tape and take the first step toward my house, I’m not expecting to shake with nerves.
There is absolutely no telling what I’ll find on the other side of the walls. From the state of the door, Ortega used something explosive to get it open.
Poppy didn’t let him in.
Good woman.
I step over the pool of blood on my porch. The pool of blood that I know belongs to my brother. I silently promise to make him bleed.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that she just got up and left with him. Except I see the trail of blood. The one that looks like it comes from the kitchen.
“She fought back,” Remy murmurs from my side.
I look over my shoulder to find all of them there, each staring at a different part of my living room, doing what cops do.
“She did.” I step over another splatter of blood. “This can’t have come from her.”
“Him,” Dom surmises as he nods toward a filet knife on the floor next to him. “She got a cut in, at least.”
“That knife cost three hundred bucks,” I tell them with a snort. “It’s sharper than anything I’ve ever seen in my entire life. She got more than just a cut. She probably took off half his face.”
The bloodthirsty and revenge-filled part of my brain jumps with joy, but the rest of me cringes.
Poppy knows better. She’ll do whatever she has to in order to stay safe.
“Her phone was here. What about the watch?” I ask blindly .
Linc is there. “No. I already had Kennedy and Parker try and pull up her location. The watch must be dead, ’cause it’s not showing a location.”
“Her purse is emptied out,” I note idly. “But I don’t see anything else. There’s not a note.”
“Didn’t think there would be, honestly,” Remy adds quietly. “But I think it’s important you saw that she fought. She didn’t go with him without a fight.”
Standing in my kitchen, all of us away from the blood, I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
“You don’t have to go.” I give them an out. “I’m not going to arrest him.” I pull the badge off my hip, along with my service weapon, and I put them on the table. “I’ve given everything, literally every single piece of myself, to my country and the community. I’m not going to let him take her.”
Silence, thick and heavy, fills the air around us.
One by one, they each leave their badge on my table. All of them except for Ian.
“If I walked away, Parker would kill me. But worse than that, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” Remy touches his badge with one finger, tapping it lightly.
“Wearing the badge, we live up to a higher expectation,” Linc adds grimly, closing his eyes .
Dom clears his throat. “I’ve got a sugar momma if I lose my job.” He laughs darkly. “But I’d never be able to look my wife in the eyes again. I’d never be able to live with the shame.”
I look at Ian, trying not to show the hurt.
“What?” He looks around the table at the others. “You guys know I don’t carry my badge around with me, right? I only work part-time at the police station. I’m a fuckin’ psychiatrist. Of course I’m in.” He shakes his head and leads the way out. “Fuckin’ pussies. Every single one of you. Thinkin’ I’m not in. I’m telling Chloe on you assholes.”