My first order of business was figuring out how the fuck Ryker had been tracking us so easily. I always did my due diligence in checking our vehicles for trackers, and I had both of our phones locked down. It would be impossible for Damian to put tracking software on either of our devices without me knowing about it.
But still, maybe I missed something?
As soon as I left Damian’s office, I went straight for the garage and spent the next two hours dismantling the dashboard in Cal’s G-Wagon, looking for any signs that Damian had tampered with it.
Coming up empty, I gave up on the G-Wagon and went back to my room to grab one of my handheld metal detectors. (Don’t ask; they come in handy more often than you would think.)
I crossed the hall and picked the lock to Cal’s room, kicking the door shut behind me as I walked in. There were cameras in all our rooms, and I gave Cal’s the finger as I made my way to the steel rack that he used as a closet.
I didn’t give a fuck if Damian knew what I was doing. If he came in here to try and stop me, I would blow his fucking head off.
My Beretta was burning a hole in my jeans as I passed Cal’s desk and PC set up. He didn’t have much in this room. Unlike me, he hadn’t bothered putting anything on the walls or making it more homey.
This wasn’t his real home; he just slept here so his nightmares didn’t wake Naomi up. I heard them, though. He woke me up almost every night with his screams, not that I would ever communicate that to him. I was scared hewould start sleeping in his car or something if he knew. He was annoyingly selfless like that. If he ever learned he was inconveniencing me in any way, he would immediately take action and do whatever was in his power to keep it from happening again.
He wouldn’t understand that I just wanted him to be safe and close to me. I would take a thousand sleepless nights over Cal suffering a moment longer than necessary. He had been through fucking enough.
All of us had.
The one thing Caldidkeep on his desk was a mason jar full of teeth that he collected from his child abuser kills. He didn’t collect teeth from Damian’s assignments. They only came from marks he picked for his hobby, so there weren’t many. Maybe, like, ten of them.
I smirked at the jar as I passed it, resisting the urge to pick it up and shake it like some sort of macabre maraca.
I was annoyed at first when he picked up this hobby. It was enough of a pain in the ass trying to keep him alive and out of prison on Damian’s assignments. As his partner, it was easier for me to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t get too out of control.
But when he started going out on his own and murdering these ass fucks, it had stressed me the fuck out. Cal was an act first, think later kind of dude, and it was a full-time job keeping him from getting into trouble.
A job that I was more than happy to take on if it meant keeping him safe.
Cal was… everything for me. He was the closest thing I had to a family. He’d never cared that I didn’t speak. He always made up what he thought I was saying, and he was… freakishly on point. It was like he could read my damn mind.
Outside of Gavin, he was the only person I had ever met whogotme. I didn’t have much. But I had Cal. And if I had to die in a blazing streak of glory protecting him, I would… because my life had no joy without him in it.
Since he’d found Ryan, he hadn’t seemed as interested in hishobby, and I was grateful for that, but now everything was all fucked up.
I had a feeling Damian wasn’t going to let Cal get away with keeping the small piece of happiness he clearly had found with Ryan.
It was only a matter of time before the bastard took Ryan away from Cal. That was why I had been so against visiting him while on the mission. IknewDamian would use it as an excuse to punish Cal and make a move to eliminate Ryan from Cal’s life.
See, Damian was smart. He knew killing Ryan would just push Cal away.
Using him as a means to control Cal made much more sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time Cal came out ofrecalibration,Damian would have convinced him it would be safer for Ryan if Cal didn’t see him anymore.
I knew how this fucker worked.
After all, that was how he controlled me.
‘What would Callum do without you, Mr. Moretti? Surely, he wouldn’t make it a day. If you left, it would be a shame, wouldn’t it, if Mr. Walker needed to suffer through recalibration that was meant for you?’
God, I fuckinghated him.
I reached for one of Cal’s hoodies and yanked it off the hanger, clicking on my metal detector. Waving the wand over the black fabric, I grit my teeth in anger as the thing lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.
Mother fucker!
I threw the hoodie on Cal’s bed and pulled out my switchblade, flicking it open and feeling along the hemline of the sweater where my wand had detected a piece of metal.
Sure enough, there was a tiny, hard lump sewn into the hemline. I cut open the stitching and fished out a tiny Bluetooth tracker.
