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“Janie,” he corrected.
“Janie?” I repeated. “Why?”
“Because she's the best at this. She can find anyone's trail online. She's some kind of internet prodigy. It's incredible.”
I didn't even bother to respond or say goodbye. I shoved the phone in my pocket and drove off toward Wolf's. It was about damn time I found a way to contribute. I had felt like a useless bystander all day.
“Not now,” Wolf growled at me, blocking the door.
It wasn't even a conscious thought that had me reaching behind my back, grabbing the gun, and raising it at him, at my brother, at a man I trusted my life to, a man who I loved as much as my own blood.
“Seriously?” Wolf asked, not even flinching. His brow rose slowly as he watched me with those freaky honey-colored eyes of his.
“I need Janie's help.”
“No.”
I pulled off the safety. “This is not a discussion. Lo is in the hands of some fucking psychopath and no one, not even those freaks at that camp of hers can find her. So I need Janie's fucking help.”
Before Wolf could open his mouth to object again, for whatever the fuck reason he had to do such a thing, the door behind him was wrenched fully open to reveal Janie standing there, yet again in one of Wolf's tees.
“Who has her?”
“Damian Crane,” I answered immediately. “Her husband.”
“Ex,” Janie answered automatically.
“What?”
“Ex-husband. She had a contested divorce that finalized a decade ago. He's her ex-husband.”
“How do you know this shit?”
Janie looked away over my shoulder for a minute, biting into her bottom lip, looking almost... guilty. “When I can't sleep, which is often,” she started, “I go online. I look into stuff. When I was first at Hailstorm, I looked into the people. So... I know her name is Willow Swift. When she was eighteen, she married Damian Crane. They were married until she was twenty-seven though, obviously, she was not with him that whole time because she was building up Hailstorm at the time and no one there had ever so much as heard his name. I don't know why she wasn't...”
“He beat her,” I supplied and Janie's whole body jerked backward as if I had struck her. Her blue eyes, already big, got rounder and her mouth fell open.
“What?” she asked on a horrified whisper.
“I found a picture. There were bruises on her arm. That, coupled with the article that said he was stabbed twelve times in his apartment...”
“Oh my god...”
“Enough,” Wolf said, giving me a hard look before turning his focus on Janie, his entire face softening.
“He has her, Janie...” I said, my voice of plea.
“I need a computer,” she said, her head jerking up. “Right now,” she said, her voice more firm, but still shaking slightly as she focused her attention on Wolf.
“'Kay,” he said on a shrug and moved inside.
Janie and I both followed. “How long?”
“Hours. I don't know. I was at Hailstorm trying to get their help in locating him before he found her again.”
“Again?”
“That's why she was begging asylum at my place, kid. He got to her and he busted her up. Her face... her ribs... it was bad. He did a number. She went to The Henchmen. I just so happened to be there so I took her home. I took care of her. And then...”
Janie was watching me with an odd look on her face, her eyes sharp, like she could see right through me. “And then?” she prompted as we heard Wolf rustling around in a closet.
“And then when I got home, my place was trashed. Her blood was on the walls. My neighbor gave me a make and plate of his truck. I called Malcolm and got him on it.”
“They got nothing?” she asked, looking almost... offended at that.
“Nothing useful. He said every other case is closed until you guys find her.”
“Well... duh,” Janie said, straightening as Wolf walked back toward us, a laptop box in his hands. As in... he had never taken it out of said box. A smile teased up the sides of Janie's lips. “You're ridiculous,” she said to him, but it was almost... warm. She took the box and made short work of getting the unused laptop up and running.
“She's your woman,” Wolf said, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, pinning me with his eyes.
It was then that it finally hit me, with the kind of clarity that made me feel dumb as hell for not realizing it earlier. He was right. She was. It didn't matter that it didn't make sense, that I spent so much time disliking her and her practices, that she didn't always show me her full self. She never showed Malcolm and Janie and the rest of her people her full self either, and she was still theirs, they still loved her.
Loved?
What the fuck?
I didn't love her.
That wasn't me. I didn't do that shit. I didn't fall in love.
But that didn't change the fact that he was right, that she was mine. She had been mine since the second I walked into Reign's house and caught sight of her again. She was mine every time she pushed me away, every time she showed me glimpses of what was underneath, every time she laughed and smiled at me, every time she moaned out my name. She was fucking mine. And I was going to kill the mother fucker who dared think he could put his hands on what belonged to me.
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.
Wolf nodded back. “I get that.”
My brows drew together as I turned to look at him and found his gaze fixed on Janie. So that was the way it was. She was his. Damn. How the fuck did something like that happen?
“You'll get him,” Wolf said, clamping a hand down on my shoulder and squeezing.
“Yeah,” I agreed, a little spirit returning to my voice.
“Carpet store?” Janie called out and I almost laughed because it had taken Malcolm hours to find that information out and Janie/Jstorm had managed it in minutes.
“Been there. Nothing.”
