“With a grenade launcher,” Marcus huffs a forced chuckle.
“But she’s right.”
I look at Charles. He’s warring with himself. Being the head that carries the crown is hard, I know that. I know he’s trying to find a balance, and I know he’s trying. He’s angry, hurt, and guilty all at once.
“You’re right,” Charles finally says. “About all of it. I did treat Aria like furniture. I did fail to see what she was capable of. And Silas has taken every hard order he’s ever been given without question.” He takes a breath. “We’re getting him back. Whatever it takes.”
The other team leads nod. Rodriguez. Chen. Williams.
“We’re with you,” Rodriguez says to me. “Whatever you need. We get him back.”
I look around the room. At the men who’ve committed to this. Who’ve committed to rescuing Silas. Who see me how Aria wanted to be seen, and I want to feel sorry for her, I do, but I can’t. It’s impossible because the last memory I have of Silas is him on the floor, bleeding out, watching him turn himself to stone, just to keep our family alive.
53
JACE
The garage smells like gun oil and cold metal. I’ve been down here for two hours loading gear into the SUVs. Weapons. Ammunition. Medical supplies. Everything we’ll need the moment Aria triggers Parker’s trap.
Everything we’ll need to get Silas back.
My hands move on autopilot. Check the magazine. Load the weapon. Secure it in the tactical bag. Repeat. It’s meditative in a way. Gives my brain something to focus on besides the thousand scenarios running through my head.
Most of them end badly.
I force those thoughts down. Lock them away in the same place I’ve been locking everything since I was a snot-nosed kid being molded into a soldier before I knew what a soldier was. Silas’s parents taught him violence by throwing him in a pit to fight other kids for money. Cal’s parents taught him how to deal with violence by teaching him how to fight with his hands and with binary. Mine taught me discipline and how to shut off emotion because emotion gets people killed.
When that wasn’t enough, they had me enlist with Dominic’s blessing, and I learned that it wasn’t just home that was brutal. The world was fucked up as a whole. Better to shut it off than to let it blind you on a mission.
The last rifle goes in the bag. I zip it closed, check my watch. Three AM. We’ve been at the safe house for six hours. Parker coded for two of those. The rest of us have been preparing and waiting for Aria to make her move.
I wasn’t kidding or appeasing our woman when I said she was right. She was.
She is.
I just hate that I can’t protect her from this. Our sons could have lost her tonight. Having a father figure is fine, but a mother’s love? As the saying goes, a mother is the face of God to children. I’m not religious, but I know if they lost her, their whole world would shatter, and I can’t let that happen.
I know that’s why Silas did what he did. I wish he hadn’t, the twisted fuck, but I know why, and I know why he told me to pull her off of him. If anyone would understand why he did what he did, it’s me.
Still pissed he did it, though.
I head upstairs. The door from the garage opens into a mudroom near the base of the stairs. When I step into the main cabin, I can see our people scattered throughout the living room. Rodriguez is on the couch, fully dressed, weapon within reach. Chen’s in the armchair by the window, head back, snoring softly. Williams and Petrov claimed the floor, sleeping bags laid out in tactical formation even in rest.
Marcus is awake, sitting against the wall near the front door, cleaning his sidearm. He nods at me. I nod back.
I’m not going to tell him he needs rest most out of all of the team. The shit head stole a damn jet just to get here because of his clusterfuck ideal of duty. But he’s not alone. I’ve spent nights without sleep, maybe three or four days just waiting on a curtain to move for that split second of sight to take my shot. Someone else can tell him to get some shut-eye. I don’t have the energy.
The second floor overlooks the main living area. High ceilings, exposed beams, open concept that lets me see down into the kitchen from the landing. Cal’s asleep at the kitchen table, his head on his arms, laptop still open beside him. He crashed hard about an hour ago, finally gave in to exhaustion after running diagnostics on Parker’s code for the third time.
I move quietly down the hall. Charles is in the master bedroom. I can hear him snoring through the door. Heavy, exhausted sleep. He’ll be useless until morning, but he needed it.
Guest room one: Marcus’s second team. Three guys packed in like sardines, all of them out cold.
Guest room two: Empty. Reserved for me, Cal, and Parker. Well, me and Parker, since Cal posted himself at the monitors.
I open the door carefully. The room is dark, bed made, untouched.
Parker’s not here.
