Chapter Twenty-Four
Hayes
My eyes never left the living room window as Ash and Angel came together, kissing each other for a long time, drenched in the warm glow of the small lamp in the corner.
When they broke apart, Ash took Angel’s chin between his fingers and said something.
She smiled. It was small and didn’t meet her eyes.
“I take it we’re not going to bother them tonight.” Dominic’s assumption broke my train of thought, the compassion in his voice morphing it into a plea.
Let him have this.
Let Angel have him.
Just for tonight.
“No,” Grayson muttered. I looked over to him, finding his hands in his coat pockets, shoulder against the large pine tree at the end of Angel’s drive.
“Thank God.” Jake sighed, yanking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not in the mood to ruin his night too.”
The truth, ugly and cold, had revealed itself tonight when Angel, Carrie, and Margo decided to sneak into our offices.
I was fine with Margo going. I was fine with all of it, actually.
After what our little family had been through the last few days, I relished the idea of her having fun with her friends.
I knew they would be safe. When Margo called me in tears, I didn’t know what to think.
By the time she got home, I was seconds away from getting the chopper.
I held her for a long time as she cried, her anger taking over.
And after, I stood, watching her in silence as she took a bat to wooden pallets behind the Buoy, raging over the unnecessary pain Ash, my brother, had suffered through.
I left her in our bed with the intention of heading over to Grayson’s when her body gave out.
I needed an update. My finger on the pulse. Ash’s pulse.
Unsurprisingly, I found myself here, standing in front of Angel’s house, watching two broken souls cling to each other.
Grayson was the next to arrive, a freshly printed copy of Angel’s CSIS file in hand.
Jake and Dominic trickled in, the pain of the past trailing behind them. It loomed over us; a dark storm cloud formed on the promise of destruction.
The light in the window went black, and I dropped my head, squeezing my eyes shut.
All around me, I could hear the shrieking blare of the heart monitor, see the steady flat line glowing before me and a team of doctors and nurses scrambling to get the crash cart, surrounding my best friend.
Broken, bruised, and bleeding on the bed. Dying.
“We’re going to lose him!”
“No! Don’t stop compressions!”
“He’s lost too much blood. Give me two bags of O-neg! Now!”
A hand landed on my shoulder. “Come back here, Hayes,” Dominic murmured. “The past has nothing else to offer you.”
I lifted my head, inhaling a deep breath through my nose as my body began to tremble. My eyes cut over to Gray. “I can’t lose him again.”
“We,” Jake corrected, his voice jagged. “We can’t lose him again.”
“And we won’t,” Grayson promised, his voice firm.
He pushed off the tree and stepped into the street, slapping the file on the hood of my Jeep.
“I’ve been informed by our friends in Canada that the Benson case is closed.
His murder was the final nail in the coffin, no pun intended.
Whoever he pissed off managed to take out all of his associates and contacts. ”
“It was Ash.” The three of them looked at me, my words hanging in the air like a noose.
Dominic’s jaw ticked, and he turned his head, scrubbing a hand down his face. I studied him. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Ash killing Benson doesn’t surprise me,” Jake muttered, folding his arms over his chest. He tipped his head back to the purple sky above us.
We had less than two hours until sunrise, and though I promised myself I would wait to knock on that damn door, all I wanted to do was give Ash more time with Angel.
His soulmate. “Hell, we would’ve done the same thing. ”
“And the others?” Grayson pressed. “Does that surprise you?”
I couldn’t read him tonight. Though I planned on keeping my thoughts on Ash’s violence to myself, I was curious to hear Grayson’s. The last time we’d had to clean up a mess, it was his and it was all over Carrie’s bedroom.
A short laugh came from Jake as he paced back and forth, staring at the ground. “He left Astoria to keep our hands clean.” He shook his head. “That fucker went rogue in order to protect us.” Jake and Dominic shared a long look.
“He didn’t want this touching Red Snake,” I tacked on, looking back at the house.
“But it has,” Grayson clipped.
Dominic tilted his head to the side, studying him. “You sound upset.”
“Of course I am. A man I almost lost in the field went off the script.”
“I wasn’t doing all I could for him.” Jake’s confession was soft, filled with shame. “There was just so much going on. With Carrie, the relocation of Red Snake, and then,” he looked to me, “Margo.”
“None of this is your fault, Murphy,” I assured.
“I let this—Angel—slip through the cracks.”
“No,” Grayson said. “You did all you could with the information you had, which wasn’t much. You may be one of the best hackers in the country, Jake, but you’re still human.”
Jake put his hands on his hips and stared at the ground. “Could’ve done more. I should’ve done more.”
“He stole your laptop,” Dominic reminded him.
He lifted his head, a sad smile on his lips.
“No,” he murmured, “I let him take it. I have a detonation code embedded in all of our devices. It would’ve taken me two seconds to ping his location and kill the laptop, but I didn’t.
” He paused and looked at the house. “I wasn’t in Rossy’s when she walked in, but one look at your face, Gray, and I knew this had fucked him up.
” He paused. “I don’t blame him for doing what he did to protect her, to avenge her. But fuck, I shouldn’t have let him go.”
“No one here is blaming you, Jake,” Dominic said.
“I let him go,” Jake barked, a finger to his chest. “I let him go because I thought, after how badly I dropped the ball, he needed time.” He turned to Grayson. “This is my fault and I will deal with the repercussions.”
Dominic dropped his head.
“Ash’s decision to go rogue was his and his alone,” Grayson replied, turning his head to the house, giving us a full view of his scar. “At the end of the day, he’s his own man.”
“Yes, but—”
“I killed a man in cold blood in front of Carrie, and when I put out code Red Snake, none of you asked questions. Whatever judgments you placed on me, you kept to yourself, and right now, we owe Doss the same.”
“Carrie was in danger,” I drawled. “Seconds away from being raped.”
“And Benson kept Angel chained to a bed,” he said, running a hand over his beard. “Do you really think if Margo hadn’t asked you to not kill Gordon, you would’ve let him live?” His gaze was steady, his eyes scanning my face, anticipating me to crack.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Out of your respect and love for Margo,” Dominic added, putting his hands in his pockets. “Men like us,” he clicked his tongue, “will do whatever it takes to protect the ones we love.”
I nodded.
“But had Margo not set that boundary, Mitchell, you would have, yeah?” Jake pressed.
My jaw jumped. “Yes.”
“Life isn’t black and white, gentlemen. We know this,” Grayson sighed, “and there’s a lot of gray surrounding those two.”
I lifted my chin. “Benson and his associates are dead. There’s nothing we can do to change that, and quite fucking frankly, I don’t want to. Those fuckers are where they belong. We had to focus on the issue at hand.”
Dominic’s voice was smooth once more. “Agreed.”
Grayson flipped open the file and tapped the pages with his thumb. “This is for Ash and Angel. That’s all. Agreed.”
The three of us nodded.
Gray pulled out a piece of paper, holding it in the air. Felix Kolby’s photo was in the dead center. “Kolby’s murderer is our threat. Eliminating this threat is our main objective.”
“I take it we’re not looping in Sheriff Humbly in on this?” I asked.
His eyes cut to me. “No. We end this for Ash and Angel. As of right now, Red Snake is halting all cases and closing up shop. Understood?”
“I’ll email all current clients,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.
Gray looked at Jake and Dominic. “Hayes and I are in this. Ash isn’t only a friend but an employee. You two have a choice to walk away from this.”
A huffed laugh came from Jake, a wild glint in his eye. “Not a chance in hell.”
We all looked at Dominic. He smirked. “It’s been a minute since we’ve gone off the books. Sounds like fun.”
The man stood at the end of the road, hidden in a shallow ditch, his binoculars pointed at the group standing in front of the large white house.
The earpiece in his ear was starting to bother him.
Truthfully, he couldn’t wait to finish this job and move the fuck on.
He’d been in town far longer than he liked.
It smelled like rain and fish all year round. He dreaded it.
“Are they still there?” a deep voice asked through the earpiece.
“Yes,” the man sighed, annoyed.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?”
The man dropped the binoculars. “Look, I understand you’re the kind of client who needs a fucking update almost daily, but I’m not about to risk my life so you can hear what Red Snake Investigations is gossiping about.”
“You said Joseph Grayson had a file.”
The man rolled his eyes, his body sore from being in this position for the last hour. “Yes, but it’s not regarding the target.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Trust me.”
“I don’t.”
The man huffed and took another look at the group. Hayes Mitchell was standing behind his Jeep now, his arms folded over his chest, staring at his boots. “Mitchell is clearly done with the conversation.”
“Mitchell isn’t who I’m worried about.”
“Grayson is still talking to the redhead lumberjack-looking fuck,” the man whispered.
“And Edwards? Where is he?”