4. Hope
FOUR
HOPE
CONNOR
Bang. Bang. Bang.
It takes a couple of seconds to come out of a sedated sleep.
I hate the feeling of it so much that I wait until the absolute last minute before I rely on the medicine to knock me out.
I feel groggy and stupid, my body weighed down by an extra hundred pounds.
My tongue is thick in my mouth, and as the locked door reverberates, sounding in time to the knocking in my skull, I can’t find the words to tell them to go away.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Who’s out there?” I finally manage to croak out.
I blink once, twice, slowly sitting up. When I see the dark walls around me and the single lamplight in the cramped room, I remember where I am.
Officially known as a panic room, I’d built it with a different purpose just in case I needed it.
I never expected that I’d be the one who would use it at all, and no one is supposed to know about it.
No one except for the handful of guys I trust.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Connor! I know you’re in there! Open this door or I’m going to shoot the lock off and drag your ass out.”
Unless you knew each of us as well as we do each other, you’d never be able to guess who was attempting to break down my door from the other side of the finished basement.
Everyone who looks at Dallas Collins sees the grim-faced enforcer, the lazy almost King, or the playboy who doesn’t play since his heart got broke.
But put him around the rest of our friend group? Yeah… there’s only one of my bros who will threaten to shoot the lock off my door like that.
“Dallas?”
“Thank fucking God. I thought you’d OD’d in there or something. When you didn’t answer… you okay?”
I grab my phone. Ignoring the sixteen missed calls and twenty-nine missed texts on the notification screen, I glance at the time—and then the date. The sedative put me under for nearly fourteen hours.
Am I okay? The same old guilt that I slept for that long while Haven could be anywhere will slam into me in a moment once the last effects of the drug wear out. For now, though, I’m alive, and that’s the best I can hope for.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Just needed a reset. You get it.”
Of the five of us, Dallas is probably the only one who does.
Still grieving his Lucy after she left him three years ago, I know he has his moments where he goes a little…
off himself. I’d never cut my own life short.
Dallas, on the other hand? I was worried about him before Haven vanished, and when I get her back, I’ll probably worry about Dallas again.
For now? I just want to know what the hell he’s doing banging on the door to my panic room.
Lurching myself to my feet, I shake off some of the grogginess. It doesn’t really help, but after forty-two… forty-three days, I can’t spare another minute.
“Stand back. I’m coming out.”
The panic room has a dual locking system.
I’d never have had one built that I couldn’t access at all times.
So while I can keep the world out, I can also use the override key to let myself in.
No one else has one—not even Dallas or Adrian, Bas or Des—so the only way for me to leave the room is to open the door myself.
I’m doing just that when Dallas’s voice reaches me through the wood.
“Hurry, Connor.”
There’s something in his voice that makes my gut twist. My hazy brain can’t distinguish between hope or fear, but after forty-three days, I’d be insane to go with hope.
Which is exactly why I do.
I shove the door out, searching for Dallas.
He’s dressed all in black, from the tight t-shirt stretched over his chest and his black jeans to the black boots on his feet.
There’s some mud on the boots, and dark circles under his pale green Collins eyes.
His hair—sandy brown curls when they’re grown out—is mussed, and I see a smear of dirt near the black spade tattoo on the side of his throat.
I’m sure I look like hell, too, since I haven’t left my house in days, and I sure as fuck haven’t showered or shaved, but when I meet Dallas’s gaze, I don’t see pity. I don’t see sympathy or remorse, either.
I see vindication.
And then he says the three words I’ve been wanting to hear for six weeks, and I’m only hoping I’m not hallucinating them now as Dallas tells me: “We found her.”
The longest six weeks of my life come to a close inside of a rundown warehouse in East Hamilton, a small town about two-and-a-half hours north of Harmony Heights.
I swear, if someone asks me what the shithole looked like, I don’t think I could tell them.
Like, I know there was a gravel parking lot behind it with only a single nondescript white van in the lot.
There were a couple of trees on one side, a couple of bay doors, and a side exit that became our target.
That’s all I got because I wasn’t focusing on the outside of the warehouse.
Hell, no. It was all about what I would find inside.
Haven. Haven was supposed to be in there.
All along, I knew she wasn’t dead. Call me crazy, but if she was… I would’ve felt it. That’s the kind of connection I have with that woman. I would’ve known, and a part of me always suspected that while she might be in trouble, she’d be alive when I found her.
That doesn’t mean that I allowed myself to believe it right away.
Hell, Dallas had to confirm it for me three separate times while I made him explain himself.
Still groggy, I couldn’t understand where Haven was.
She was alive, he assured me—or was the last time anyone set eyes on her.
Since that was just last night, I had to believe she was okay…
even if I wished that, instead of Dallas telling me that ‘we’ found her, he was shoving an alive-and-well Haven at me.
In the end, it was actually Adrian who got the tip.
He’d been using every contact that he’s made over the years as the Order’s de facto money man to get a lead on what happened to Haven Smith.
Not because he changed his mind and decided to Claim her after all.
He would never do that to me, and since he didn’t want to see me suffer, he was determined to bring Haven back.
I don’t know where Haven was kept the past six weeks.
Only that, two days ago, she was seen riding in the front seat of a white van, curled up in the passenger seat, staring like a zombie out the side window.
That was what caught some good samaritan’s attention.
A vacant stare, and a flinch when the other driver rolled down their window, trying to get Haven’s attention, asking if she was okay.
It seemed like Haven jolted, and the guy driving the van cut over two lanes of traffic to get away from the samaritan.
Concerned, they tried to follow the van, losing them when the van took a quick exit off the highway.
They did get a license plate, though, and enough of a description that it flagged one of the parameters in a search Adrian had set.
It was her eyes. Not many people have stormy grey eyes like my Haven, and when that popped, followed by the license plate belonging to Snowfall, Inc. and its CEO and proprietor, James Winter, Adrian had the first lead in weeks.
On the surface, Winter seems like a respectable businessman. Adrian did a little digging, and he discovered that Snowfall, Inc. is a sham corporation that manufactures and runs illicit drugs, sells weapons, and is into counterfeiting. Winter is a crook.
He’s also, apparently, a dead man.
His body was found months ago in an abandoned store in the city of Springfield, about three hours away from Harmony Heights in a northeastern direction.
Riddled with bullets, it was considered a suicide; seems like, in a town like Springfield where two opposing mafias rule the scene, getting mixed up with them is nothing short of killing yourself whether you pulled the trigger or not.
And, yet, there are reports of him still running his business as of a few days ago that had Adrian and Dallas real curious.
Turns out that James ‘Jimmy’ Winter is dead.
His twin, Johnathan ‘Johnny’ Winter, isn’t.
He’s taken over the organization, and I guess he decided to add kidnapping to his repertoire because it’s definitely a Snowfall van—and a Snowfall employee known as Cameron Andino—that was caught on a traffic camera with a dazed Haven slouched in the front seat.
The samaritan noted the exit that the van got off at. Adding that to the traffic cam photo Adrian tapped into, he narrowed it down to a single Snowfall property in East Hamilton before sending Dallas to rouse my ass so we could plan a rescue mission.
The cousins pointedly agreed that telling the King what we were up to was useless.
He couldn’t stop us—couldn’t stop me—though Dallas scowled and said that he wouldn’t put it past his old man to try.
Instead, we rounded up the only fellas in Harmony Heights we could trust to pull this off, and were on the road within the hour.
Dallas drove the Order-owned SUV with Adrian riding shotgun, taking drag after drag off of his cigarette, ashing it out the open window.
Sebastien and Desmond were crammed in the back with me, none of us having anything to say.
It’s been ages since Des poked his head out of his lawyer office long enough to remember he has bros, but when I needed him, he showed up.
And, fuck, did I need all of them.
There’s a third row in the SUV that is empty save for the first aid kit, blanket, and other supplies that Adrian and Dallas got together for us.
Adrian has his Tomcat, Dallas has his Ruger, me and Bas have our knives, with Des carrying a heavy gold-topped walking stick that will bash in a skull with one good swing.
We’re ready to do anything to retrieve Haven. That’s what we’re here for, and the SUV was quiet almost the entire ride. A sense of urgency is another passenger, and the other guys all know better than to say the wrong thing to set me off when I’m already so close to the fucking edge.
Even as we pull onto the gravel road, turning into the parking lot, no one says a damn word. Nobody needs to. The five of us are all thinking the same thing: please let this tip be legitimate.
Please let Haven be here…
She has to be. And, no matter what, I’m going to save her.
The second Dallas stops the car, I’m shoving Des out of the SUV so I can follow after him.
I grab my knife from my pocket, squeezing it tightly as I glare at the rundown warehouse.
According to the internet, Winter owns it, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long, long time.
Only the fact that there’s a white van parked in the lot gives me hope—and a reason to jog toward the side exit so that I can see if it’s locked or if we have to force our way in.
The late night air has a bite to it, but I barely notice.
Every nerve in my body feels stretched too tight.
I’m humming, hurrying forward, wondering where the hell they could’ve hidden Haven in there.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll find her. I’ll go through anyone who might be inside those walls to get to her.
Nothing is going to stop me.
On a burst of nervous energy, I race forward, reaching the side exit ahead of the others. A quick turn of the handle and I’m cursing under my breath. It’s locked, and when I try to kick it, I have to admit it’s in better condition than I would’ve thought since it holds.
My boys catch up to me. Adrian nods at Dallas. The King’s enforcer pulls out his Ruger, braces his boots in the gravel, and aims at the lock. One shot, two… Dallas kicks it in, and the door swings open.
It’s just as dark as the outside, and, squinting, I don’t see anyone straight away.
It stinks of mildew and something rotten, with a faint yellow light seeping from a room at the far end of the warehouse.
Since it’s the only one with any sign of possible life, we start for it, ignoring the closed doors along the hall.
When we reach one that’s open, either Dallas or Adrian clears it. Desmond hangs back while Bas stays at my side, watching my back while I keep my eyes on that yellow light.
I can’t help but be drawn to it, almost as though I sense Haven calling me to her.
That doesn’t mean I’m distracted, though.
Quite the opposite, actually. I’m strung so tight that, when a man a couple of inches taller than me jumps out from one of the open doors while Adrian and Dallas are occupied, I see him coming at me before Bas can shout a warning.
Bas reaches into his leather jacket for his knife, but I’m never without mine for long.
I opened the blade the second Dallas kicked in the door, holding it out in front of me as I ran.
The goon attacking me obviously didn’t see it because he jumps forward as I swing, the blade sliding between two ribs as easily as a warm knife through butter.
He stops short, gasping as the shock of the pain hits him.
Taking advantage of that, I yank out my knife, kick him in the knee so that it buckles, knocking him to the dirty cement floor, and grab him by his head of dark hair so that I have my bloody knife to his neck before it really even occurs to him that he’s been stabbed—or that I’m in the perfect position to slit his throat.