“HALF OF A SOUL.”
Creed freezes in place, his entire body locking up over what he was just told. His wide eyes are trained on mine, searching for the truth in what my boss said. I give him a small nod to confirm. When Callan called me earlier to tell me his men had finally gotten the information they needed, I knew what it meant.
There are things about the world I’m now a part of that I cannot and will not reveal to those on the outside, including Creed. He was already manic, his sanity slipping by the minute, so there was no way I was telling him that we’d captured the man who took my sister and Riley two weeks ago.
We held him in isolation and let him go mad with hunger in solitary confinement before we began questioning and torturing the answers out of him. His name was Dane Paulson. When I was sent to do a check-in earlier, there wasn’t much left of him. Camdan had seen to that.
Camdan McTavish is not a man to be trifled with. He’s fiercely protective of his family, and may God have mercy on any person who becomes an enemy. Dane had information Camdan wanted, and he was able to get every fucking detail we needed to from him before he met a painful end.
“Where are they?” Creed grits, spinning on his heel to face Callan. He takes an aggressive step forward, and in an instant, he’s got three guns pointed in his face. Garrick doesn’t hesitate. He grabs Creed by the back of his shirt and yanks him back until he’s standing protectively in front of his son. I step in front of them and hold up my hands.
“Stand down and let them through,” Callan orders, and the guards holster their weapons, then return to their posts. Callan, ever unphased, gestures for us to follow.
Creed shrugs out of his father’s hold and stalks down the hall after Callan, throwing a vicious glare at each of the guards. Garrick doesn’t seem surprised, but follows apprehensively. I bring up the rear as we all file into the space that’s been set up as a makeshift situation room with computers, monitors, and laptops set up all over the place.
Shutting the door behind me, I note that Lachlan and Camdan are already here, the former pacing behind a desk that houses the wall of monitors while the latter stands quietly in a corner of the room, his large arms crossed over his chest. Confusion takes over for a moment when I see that their wives, Genevieve, Cori, and Millie are also here, despite their husbands’ protests. Bear, Blair, and Ayla are all being guarded in a safe house about an hour south of St. Louis.
The men were pissed, but it’s risky enough allowing Creed and his father to join the manhunt; I won’t allow anyone else to get hurt on my watch.
Genevieve, Callan’s wife, is currently writing something down in a notebook behind another desk in the corner of the room. Cori, Lachlan’s wife and Genevieve’s best friend, is sitting on the edge of the desk, watching her husband pace. And Millie belongs to Camdan. She’s two years older than Collins and is forever known as Cori’s ‘baby sister’. Right now, she’s curled up in an armchair sleeping while Camdan watches her like a hawk.
“There’s no way in hell we were leaving them halfway across the country alone.” Callan drawls, walking up to me. I shake his hand before he turns to a very manic-looking Creed. “And…they wanted to be here. Forher.”
“Where are they?” Creed asks again, his focus entirely homed in on getting to Collins and Riley. He approaches the TV screen that is currently serving as a monitor with a map pulled up.
“Is this it? Is this where they are?” He points to the screen, the location is about a hundred miles south of here and the halfway point between St. Louis and our hometown of Stutton. There’s a warehouse tucked deep within a heavily wooded area, with a two-lane road off the highway as its only access point.
Creed’s hands begin to shake. Right now, he’s so out of his mind with the knowledge that we have their location that I can’t tell if the wobble in his hands is from adrenaline or emotion.
Probably both.
Lachlan pauses his pacing, looks to Creed, and nods. “We just received confirmation after sending our foot soldiers and drones out to scope the area.” He approaches Creed, unphased by his jittery posture, and uses a small remote to zoom in on the drone footage.
“Our men discovered that Guy has seven men stationed around the exterior of the premises at all times. The thermal detection in our drones calculated eight bodies in the building; five who moved in a rotating pattern around the interior of the warehouse, likely patrolling. One was noted moving back and forth between two precise locations within the building.” Lachlan pauses, eyeing me, then Creed, and it has my spine stiffening. I keep my face schooled as I approach the two of them, grabbing Creed by the back of his neck. I’m not sure if it’s to ground myself or to keep him from attacking my boss, but I can sense that whatever it is he has to say, it’s not good.
“And the remaining two?” I ask, tightening my grip on Creed.
“The other two are stationary. Have been for the entire time we’ve been monitoring them. We assume that these two are Collins and Riley, and from the looks of it, they’re being kept in the same room. But…” Lachlan trails off, rubbing a hand back and forth across his jaw. Cori approaches him and lays a gentle hand on his arm.
Noting the shift in Lachlan’s demeanor, Creed tries to step forward, but I hold him back. I can feel the fear and anger pouring from his tightly coiled body. He’s ready to strike when he asks, “What is it?”
“It was noted that the heat signatures on their body temperatures were lower than the others, but you two should be aware that one of those signatures was uncharacteristically and dangerously lower than what a person’s heat signature should be.”
If the room was silent before, it’s deafening now. All of the blood drains from my face, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
“What does that mean?” Creed’s voice sounds foreign, a lethality lacing his words.
Callan steps up next to his brother, speaking the words that Lachlan cannot. “It means when we go in, we need to prepare for not only a rescue, but the possibility of a recovery as well.”
Creed staggers at Callan’s words, and I shift my arm around his waist to keep him upright. I understand that being blunt and honest is part of who Callan is as the leader of the Scottish mafia, butfuck.
Creed’s boisterous laughter fills the room, earning a lot of concerned looks.
“No.” He jerks out of my hold and circles around the room, waiting for someone to correct Callan. When he looks to me and I remain silent, he shakes his head, his eyes wild with mania. “Good one,” he huffs, walking over to a photo of Collins and Riley that’s been pinned to the wall. “I didn’t know the mafiamade jokes,” he says humorlessly as he pulls the image from the wall.
“Creed—“ Garrick starts from across the room but Creed cuts him off.
“Do you know what it feels like to live with only half of a soul, Lachlan?” He looks up from the picture in his hands and locks his gaze on the second McTavish brother. Lachlan swallows thickly but says nothing, and Cori grips him a little tighter. “How about you? Or you?” he grits, shifting his focus from Camdan, whose eyes still haven’t strayed from watching a sleeping Millie, to Callan, who stares right back at him.
