Chapter 2
Chapter Two
DREW
Itore through the streets of Babylon, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights, and not giving a fuck about the consequences of my actions. The world had sped up around me, and I had to get to wherever I was going fast. Faster. I was never fast enough. I couldn’t outrun the ghosts anymore.
My tires kicked up a spray of stones and dust where I half-spun into a parking spot right outside the hospital, hidden away where all the trash compartments were stored.
“So much for being discreet,” Sutton said with a smirk on his face.
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip before I raised my brows in acknowledgment and threw my leg over the bike.
Howard Sutton was leaning against his cruiser, his arms folded over his chest as he watched me approach.
“Discreet isn’t exactly my way of life,” I told him.
“No shit.”
I reached out to accept the hand he offered to me, my palm slapping against it before I pulled him towards me and tapped his back with my free hand—an embrace that had come to tell him more than I could verbalize with actual words these days.
“You look like hell,” he said when he pulled back and searched my bloodshot eyes. “Smell like it, too.”
“That’ll be the blood.”
“Blood?” Sutton raised a brow before he let his gaze fall to my cut, and then the sleeves of my hoodie. “Jesus Christ, Tucker, I’m wearing the badge. I don’t want to know. Don’t fucking tell me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Sutton blew out a breath, shook his head and stepped around me. I spun on my heels to watch him as he ran a worried hand over his forehead.
“You know, you damn near killed me earlier this year for teaching Ayda to shoot behind your back. You squeezed your fingers against my throat, and you were ready to make both her and me pay for lying to you.” He placed his hands on his hips and looked up at me through heavy, creased brows.
“Tell me how this is different. How is what you’re doing now any different to what the girl did then? ”
I blinked, staring at him like I was bored. “If Ayda asks me any questions, I won’t tell her a single lie. She doesn’t ask because, deep down in her heart, she already knows. She knows she won’t like the answers I have to give.”
“Omissions of truth you’re okay with?”
I sighed heavily, glancing to one side before I rolled my eyes and looked at him again. “You’re either helping me, or you’re in my way, Sutton. I don’t have time for any counseling. I don’t want it.”
“And if Ayda asks me if I know what’s going on with you?”
“She won’t.”
“If she does?”
“Tell her whatever the hell you want.”
“You don’t sound too concerned about her feelings.”
“I have a job to do. That’s my main concern at the moment.”
Sutton’s eyes turned down at the corners, his sadness mixed with his frustrations at my apparent lack of feelings.
I knew that look. I saw it in all my men every day.
I saw it in Ayda every minute I was with her.
I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand to see pity staring back at me when I looked into the eyes of the people I loved.
It made me feel weak, and that wasn’t something I’d ever been comfortable with.
“Don’t lose yourself so much, Tucker that there’s no bringing you back.”
“Thanks, Pops, but I can take care of myself.”
“Yourself is the one person you can’t take care of. That’s why you’re spiraling out of control like a fucking idiot.”
I took a step closer, and Howard was smart enough to tense and ease a tentative step back.
“Chief?”
“What?” He swallowed lightly.
“You’re giving me a fucking headache.”
The corners of his mouth twitched as a sardonic grin threatened to take over, but the sound of an old Harley turning the corner had the two of us looking up and assessing our new arrival.
“Right on cue. Your latest partner in crime has arrived,” Sutton whispered.
“Yep.” I sighed again, releasing all the weight from my chest as I watched my dad slow his bike until he came to a complete stop next to us.
Eric Tucker had an air about him that made the world sit up and take notice. He wore his arrogance like a badge of honor. Since his return, I hadn’t decided if I respected him or loathed him. If people thought I kept my cards close to my chest, I had nothing on this man.
I watched as he swung his leg from the bike, much the same way I always did, before he removed his helmet and hooked it on the back of his seat.
“Drew. Howard.” Eric nodded in our direction, pushing up the sleeves of his flannel shirt until they rested above his elbows, revealing the faded ink on his forearms. For an old man, he was in pretty decent shape.
I could definitely take him if I had to, though.
Something pricked at my spine telling me that one day, I might have to.
“Eric,” Sutton acknowledged, giving him a curt nod.
Dad’s eyes drifted to mine and creased together, studying me like the lab rat experiment of a son I’d always been for him.
“You ready?” he asked me sharply.
“Have been since I was born into this fucked up way of life,” I answered stiffly.
“Good to know.”
Howard paced suddenly, walking in a circle as we waited for his contact to appear. It was a middle-aged woman who turned up wearing her nursing scrubs and a look of panic on her face as she appeared out of nowhere.
“Howard,” she greeted, waving her arm for us to go to her.
“Gilly, you take care of my men,” Sutton told her.
Gilly eyed Eric and me with suspicion, but she gave Sutton the confirmation he needed with a quick nod and glassy eyes that told all of us she didn’t like this any more than Sutton did.
I didn’t need them to approve. I just needed their help.
We saluted the chief and followed our rat into the back corridors of the building.
I fucking hated hospitals. Hated them. They always made death smell clinical.
Bleached. Death wasn’t clean. The real stench of death contained dirt and spit and screams of denial that bubbled like a hot festering pit of fear.
Death was dirty and angry, no matter how much they tried to make it clean and peaceful.
Gilly barely acknowledged us as she led the way, but I could see the subtle trembling of her limbs.
When we arrived at where we needed to be, she glanced down at her feet and pointed down the small, unmanned corridor.
“First door on your left. Howard gave me your number, so I’ll text your phone when you have to leave.
The cameras are out for the next five minutes only.
The security guards will pick it up when their feed flickers. Do not waste time.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, my hand resting on her shoulder and causing her to flinch. “I appreciate this.”
“Don’t tell me what happens in there.”
“Then don’t ask.”
Eric took the lead, and I sauntered behind him, the adrenaline making my blood tear through my body. When we got to the door, Eric glanced over his shoulder one last time. “Remember not to kill him the second you see him.”
“If you’re just here to spoil my fun…”
“You know that’s not why I’m here.”
“Right.” I groaned.
“I mean it, Drew.”
“I’ll believe your promise the day you fulfill it.”
“So stubborn.” Eric shook his head, exhaled slowly and pushed inside the room.
Jon Taylor lay paralyzed in the middle of a plush hospital bed with so many wires and tubes coming out of his body and mouth that he looked like the latest experiment in town.
“Clint got him good,” I said without thought.
“Hurry up,” Eric ordered, his voice so calm it could barely be heard, but his command was still noted. I looked up at him in warning as I stalked closer to the bed.
News on the street at one point had been that Jon might not make it.
The latest update had told us he was making a better recovery than anyone expected.
I couldn’t be having that. I wanted this fucker to serve a lifetime trapped inside his own mind, not being able to take a piss for himself.
“Fucker’s come to visit you, brother,” I whispered, leaning in close to his ear. “Rise and shine.”
Jon didn’t move because he couldn’t do much of anything but let his eyes open and shut. The bastard couldn’t even take proper breaths for himself.
“Rumor has it that you can hear every damn thing I say to you, so here goes. I’m here to offer you a way out.
Your life is never going to be the same again.
You’re never going to walk. You’re barely going to be able to even talk.
And that once loving wife you had is gone now, Jon.
She’s on the other side, resting with your maker beyond the pearly gates of Heaven.
A place you definitely won’t be allowed into after all the cruel, vindictive, nasty ass shit you put me and a thousand other prisoners through at Huntsville.
” I pressed a finger to his neck and then let my others tiptoe over his skin, watching as his eyelashes began to flicker wildly.
“Every time you took a weapon to my knees in those showers for no good reason, every time you let those bastards corner me and gang-beat the living shit out of me, every meal you made me skip, every week you put me in solitary, every time you laughed when I had a blade stuck in my skin… it’s all come back to you as this, Jonny.
This is your penance. Your payment. And call me a sick and twisted bastard, but I’ve never been so happy for karma to do her thing. ”
I glanced up at Eric who was watching with a small smirk of satisfaction on his face.