Chapter 34
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Ghost
When the clock hit five minutes, I started to pace.
When it turned to six, I stepped out of the shadows and started across the street. A hand dropped onto my shoulder, pulling me back.
He should have been out by now. “It’s been too long. I’m going in.”
“I’m coming with you.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Kieran, partly surprised.
“Ride or die,” he said simply.
All the streetlights were busted, which was definitely not a coincidence. Even so, I didn’t bother to move in the shadows. They would know I was coming the second I walked in the door anyway. I wanted them to know I was coming. It would give them someone to shoot at that wasn’t Rett.
I expected gunfire the second we breached the building, but everything remained still. I glanced at Kieran and knew the look on his face mirrored my own.
Something was off.
I started running, Kieran right beside me, taking the steps two at a time and going headfirst toward the flickering light at the end of the hall.
The urge to yell out for Pip forced its way up the back of my throat, his name lodging there like a heavy stone.
I burst into the room first, gun drawn, with Kieran at my back.
It was empty except for a lone chair.
“Rett!” I yelled, and I swear it echoed back. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I noted the signal was still jammed. I couldn’t track him without a goddamned signal!
“Where the fuck are they?” I roared.
“Here,” Kieran called, heading toward an open door at the back of the room.
I lunged through without even checking, ignoring the way Kieran cursed behind me and ran down the dark corridor to burst through another door that opened up into some kind of parking garage.
Red taillights were disappearing around a pillar, and I took off after them.
The car was heading toward a ramp that led to the street, a white van in front of it already turning into traffic.
I stopped running and, ignoring my ragged breathing and the thumping of my heart, raised the gun. I leveled my concentration and popped off a shot.
The back tire exploded, and the car fishtailed violently, the driver trying to keep it steady.
I started running again as the car careened to the side and slid into a three-sixty.
Before the car was even stopped, I leaped onto the hood and fired another shot into the windshield. It exploded, and the man behind the wheel yelled.
The car lurched to a stop, the engine still running. The smell of exhaust filled the concrete space. From behind the wheel, a man stared in shock as I rose to my feet on the hood, boots crunching over broken glass.
“Pip!” I yelled, trying to see into the shadowed back seat.
He started to laugh.
I reached through the broken glass and pulled him out by his hair, his body snagging halfway through. He howled in pain, and I jammed my gun in his temple, letting him lie half in and half out of the car.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“Gone,” he rasped and pointed a shaking finger in the direction the white van had gone. “You’re too late.” He started to laugh, the mocking sound echoing through the empty garage. “He’s ours now.”
Fury and fear clashed inside me like opposing storms. This was exactly what I worried would happen. He was exactly who I didn’t want to risk. And now he was taken from right beneath my nose.
The humanity I guarded so closely, the very thing that kept me on this side of brutality, snapped like a worn-thin rope. “What did you just say?”
He stopped laughing and looked up, his face betraying the fear taking over.
Grabbing him by the neck, I hauled him the rest of the way out of the windshield and onto the hood, his pain-filled screams music to my ears. Squatting beside him, I asked again, “What. Did. You. Just. Say?”
He looked like he might not reply, so I shoved the butt of my gun right beside his eye.
“H-he’s ours n-now,” he rasped.
He yelped when I yanked him up, jerking him close so he could feel the aggression in my every breath.
“Absolutely fucking not,” I growled and sent him airborne, tossing his pathetic excuse for a body off the car and watching it slam into the pavement.
Groaning, he got up to run, but Kieran was there, blocking his path with a look of contempt.
I jumped off the car and stalked forward. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
I spun him around and caught his cheek with a right hook. He fell to one knee, and I kicked him while he was down. “Give me the address.”
“They’ll kill me!” he howled.
I grabbed him up by his ugly brown coat. “I’ll kill you.”
“Then I guess I’ll see your boyfriend in hell when I get there.”
I glanced over at Kieran who shook his head. “Can’t fix stupid.”
“You’re going to wish you’d just answered the fucking question,” I intoned and slammed the butt of my gun into his temple.
He landed in a heap on the pavement.
“He gets up, shoot him.”
Kieran pulled out his gun.
I went to the still-running car and glanced inside. The only thing in there was a big silver flask. I grabbed it and stalked back over, pulling him up. “Where’d they take him?”
He groaned like he was only half conscious.
Using my teeth, I yanked the lid off the flask and splashed some of the liquid over his face. By the smell of it, it was vodka.
I’m sure it burned in the cuts and scrapes decorating his face, and he jolted up.
“Give me the address.”
“Fuck you,” he wheezed.
I tossed him into the side of his wrecked car. He dropped onto the broken glass and then had the audacity to get up like he was going to run, so I shot him in the knee.
He screamed and wailed when his kneecap blew out, then dropped onto the ground to roll around and bleed.
“Fucking dramatic,” I spat. “The address.”
“You’re going to die for this!” he roared.
The clock ticking inside me was loud, making me impatient. I didn’t have time for this. I needed an address, and he was going to give it to me.
Overturning the flask, I poured the vodka all over his legs and feet, then moved up to his chest.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
The metal banged when I threw down the container and stood back. Not good enough, I decided and went to check his trunk. If he was any good kind of outlaw, he’d have—Ah!
“Guess it’s my lucky day,” I hollered, lifting the jug of gasoline from the trunk and spinning off the cap.
“Wh-what are you doing?” the man on the ground asked, trying to avoid the splashes of gas I sprinkled everywhere. Once everything was good and drenched, I tossed the half-empty jug into his car, watching it spill all over the back seat.
When that was done, I reached into my jacket for a match.
You know, it seems to me that a lot of men say they’ll burn the city for the one they love, but who actually does it?
The match dragged over the flint on my ring, the flame sparking before igniting to life.
I stepped forward. “I asked you a question.”
“I—I—wait!” he wailed as I slammed my booted foot into his chest and pinned him down so I could hold the flickering flame to the hem of his vodka-and-gasoline-soaked jeans. The fire caught immediately, and he began to scream.
I pulled out another match and struck it too. “Where is he?” I asked, the smell of gas and smoke already polluting the air.
He fired off an address as he writhed and screamed, smacking the flames growing on his legs with his fist. “I told you!” he wailed.
“You lying?”
“I swear to God I’m not,” he sobbed.
Reaching into my jacket again, I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “I haven’t touched one of these in two years,” I told him. “But now seems like a good time.”
I lit it with the match still burning in my fingers before tossing it into the puddle the man was sitting in.
Another blaze ignited, and I watched, emotionless, as he tried to scramble from the flames, only to have them follow and climb onto his jacket.
He screamed in agony as I inhaled the sharp, acrid smoke, letting it invade my lungs the way the memory of the last cigarette I’d smoked invaded my brain. It was the night I’d left Rett.
I blew out a stream of smoke while the man begged for help.
“We need to go,” Kieran said.
The man on the ground collapsed at my feet and began twitching. The scent of burned flesh was unpleasant, and I took a step back.
“See you in hell, motherfucker,” I said and tossed the half-smoked cig onto his already burning body.
“Wait!” he screamed as we walked away.
I paused and turned back, lifted my gun, and fired.
His screams went silent, but the fire continued to rage, the flames following a stream of gasoline to where the jug lay inside the car.
Boom.
“The address he gave is about ten miles from here,” I said.
“You think it’s legit?” Kieran asked as we jogged toward his SUV.
Once inside, I pulled out my phone as he sped from the curb. “Come on, come on,” I said as I refreshed the app.
“What is that?” Kieran asked.
The data reset, and I glanced down at the little red blinking dot. “It’s the right place. He’s already there. Hurry.”
“His busted watch was back there,” Kieran said as the SUV accelerated. “How are you tracking him? They obviously searched him.”
“Some things should be kept private,” I said, eyes glued to that red dot like it was my entire life.
Because it is.
“Maxfield!” Kieran barked.
“It’s in the plug I put in him before he left.”
Kieran’s face screwed up. “Jesus Christ! Why would you tell me that?”
“Don’t ask twice if you don’t want to know.”
He groaned. “How the fuck did you get a tracker in—you know what? Never mind.” He shook his head. “Why the fuck did you set that asshole on fire back there if you had the address?”
“They had a signal jammer. The tracker wasn’t working at first. Must have reconnected when they got far enough away from the building.”
The phone in my hand started ringing. “Instead of giving him the address, they took him.”
“Did you get the address another way?” Enzo Salvatore calmly asked in my ear.
“How’s Hazard?” Kieran asked.
I rattled off the address.
“Hazard,” Kieran barked.
“My nephew is fine,” Enzo said, and I relayed the message before turning my attention back to Enzo. “You’d better go get your product before I burn it to the ground with everything else in my way.”
Enzo started issuing orders to his men, and I disconnected the call to check the tracker again.
“If you drive any slower, I’m going to get out and run,” I spat.
Kieran’s foot smashed on the gas.