Sting’s Catch (The Rothwell Masked Hunt #2)

Chapter 1

VI

I know the voice before I know the name.

It comes through the door like something barely pulled alive from a wreck—all but destroyed, barely hanging on, its ass kicked beyond recognition.

Vi. I know you’re in there.

My body jolts before my brain can catch up.

Not from fear. Not the roiling, nauseous stomach I’ve learned to associate with threat. Something older, something embedded in my nervous system years before the Rot existed. A reaction that whispers safe. Something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Mara.

The guys react before I can even finish the thought.

From his chair by the window, Sting crosses the room in two strides, laying his palm flat against the doorframe, his body a wall between us and whatever’s on the other side.

Armen, next to me in the bed, touches my shoulder, firm, holding me in place.

And Rogue sits up from his spot on the floor, alert seconds after waking.

Three men. Three positions. No discussion.

I’d be impressed if my brain wasn’t short-circuiting.

The voice comes again. Smaller this time. Like it’s running out of air. “Vi. It’s me. Please.”

Please.

That word stops me cold. Because Mara doesn’t beg.

She argues. She digs in. She once screamed at a parking enforcement officer for twelve straight minutes because he put a boot on her car and she decided, on principle, that she’d rather lose her voice than lose the fight.

The girl I grew up with does not say please like that, like she’s been practicing, trying to get it right even if it feels strange in her mouth, knowing it might be the only word that makes the door between us open.

Which means whatever broke her down after the fall of Rothwell must have been worse than anything I can imagine. And I can imagine a lot these days.

“Open the door,” I say.

Sting doesn’t move. His hand stays flat on the frame, fingers spread, every line of him locked in the intense stillness I’ve come to recognize as him at his most dangerous. Not because he’s angry but because he’s thinking, calculating, and planning for the worst.

“Open the door, Sting,” I repeat. “It’s my friend.”

“You don’t know what’s out there with her.”

I gulp. “Neither do you. But it’s Mara. I’d know her voice in a room full of screaming.”

He side-eyes me and I watch his calculation in real time in the way he moves, scanning threats I can’t see, including how much of a problem I’m about to become versus how much of one is standing on the other side of that door.

It’s not my fault I have to be a pain in the ass from time to time

Next to me, Armen’s hand on my arm gets heavier, more serious, like a reminder. You’re not running this show. Back off.

Yeah, yeah.

I look at him next to me. His expression is flat, which means he’s pretty much decided how this is going to go and is waiting for everyone else to figure it out.

“Armen.”

“No,” he says.

“I didn’t ask you a question.”

“You were about to.”

He’s right. I was going to ask him to overrule Sting.

To pull rank or whatever the hell the hierarchy is when they disagree.

But the look on his face tells me that’s not happening.

Not because he doesn’t hear me. Because the door is a security decision, and security decisions belong to Sting, and Armen doesn’t override Sting on security. Not even for me.

I turn back to the door.

Mara’s voice comes again, muffled now, like she’s pressed her forehead against the wood. “Vi, I know you’re in there. I can hear you. I’ve been—” Her voice cracks. “I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”

Something inside me snaps.

Not breaks. Snaps. Like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far, too long, and just… lets go.

I move before I actually make the decision to do so.

Armen’s fingers graze my arm but don’t close.

Either he’s a fraction too slow, or he makes the choice to let me go.

I don’t know. I don’t care. I reach the door and shove Sting’s arm aside with both hands.

He’s stronger than me by a significant margin but he lets me do it anyway, which is curious but which is something I’ll have to figure out later.

I wrench the door open.

There she is.

Mara.

She’s thinner than I’ve ever seen her. Not diet thin or stress thin but thin that comes from eating whatever you can rummage no matter how unhealthy it is.

Her clothes are filthy, layered wrong, mismatched in a way that says she dressed from whatever she found rather than whatever she owned.

Her hair is matted against one side of her skull and her lips are cracked deep enough to bleed and her eyes—

Her eyes are red-rimmed, raw, wrecked.

But they’re also fierce. Even now. Even standing on a strange doorstep in the middle of the night looking like the last few months chewed her up and spit her out, she’s still fierce. Still Mara. My Mara.

She says my name.

Not how she said it through the door. This time it’s different. She can see me now. She can confirm that I’m real, that I’m standing, that I’m alive. And my name crosses her lips like she’s been holding it clenched between her teeth, afraid to let go in case she ended up being wrong.

It’s relief, doubt, sadness, and happiness all rolled into one.

“Vi,” she whispers.

I grab her.

Not gently or politely, not the way you hug someone at an airport or a reunion or a funeral.

I grab her the way you grab something that you’re terrified is about to disappear, with both arms, full force, pulling her against me so hard we both stagger.

Her body hits mine, and I feel how much of her is gone.

I can practically count the ribs through her jacket.

Her collarbone presses sharp and painful against my shoulder.

Her arms come up around my back, bony and shaking. Her fists grab my shirt and hold on like I’m the lifeline she’s been looking for and now can’t let go.

We don’t speak.

There’s nothing to say. Nothing that won’t break whatever this is, this ten or twenty seconds, this little pocket of time where the only thing that matters is that we’re both alive and are holding each other with tears in our eyes.

Her heartbeat against mine is fast and hard, slamming through layers of dirty fabric. Can she feel mine?

She makes a sound against my shoulder. Not quite crying. More like the kind sound someone makes just before crying, when your body is getting ready to purge its emotions, preparing for an explosion you can no longer hold in.

I press my face into her hair. It stinks, unwashed and smoky. But underneath that, buried deep, there’s something I recognize. I’m sure it’s just a memory, but it’s of the apartment we briefly shared, like her laundry detergent and the smelly seasonal candles she loved to burn.

I hated those candles and can’t believe we ever argued over pumpkin spice. So long ago. And so fucking stupid.

My eyes sting but I blink back the tears.

Then I sense it. Sting’s gaze. On my back.

Not a touch or a sound. Just the weight of his attention, steady and unblinking.

The awareness hits me like cold water, bringing me back to the room and what this girl represents to three men who account for every variable, vulnerability, and new thing that enters their orbit.

The three man who look out for me, care about me, and keep me alive.

Mara isn’t a reunion to them. She’s a security breach. A threat. I almost laugh at the absurdity of it, but realize she’s nothing to them, where she’s everything to me. That’s not a good thing.

Actually, she’s less than nothing to them, if that’s possible.

A big negative in their carefully structured, guarded existence.

Hell, she’s seen the safe house. She’s seen the club.

She knows I’m with three men from the Rot.

Every piece of that is information that didn’t exist outside this room five minutes ago, and now, it’s standing in the doorway with her arms around me, shaking.

I don’t let go of Mara, but I open my eyes. I need to see what comes next.