“What’s disgusting?” Stryker asks, cracking his neck and stretching, finally waking up, but at the worst possible moment.
“You’re not going to like it,” I warn, but pass it over nonetheless.
Not like I’m trying to protect the asshole; the only reason I was in favor of doing things the way we have been, was to make sure we could stay in town as long as possible. We’ve been trying to draw my parents out for weeks now, though, to no avail. We were hoping to avoid going on the run and starting over, but over the last few days, I’ve accepted that this plan just isn’t working out like we hoped it would.
Stryker’s face becomes a cold mask as he withdraws the photos from the envelope. They’re from enough places that it’s clear he’s been stalking us since the day after Mason threatened him, all zoomed in on me, cropping the guys out of the pictures or scribbling them out. The nail in the coffin, though?
The dried cum stains.
Mason walks into the room and snatches one of the pictures from Stryker’s hand. There’s a heavy beat of silence before he tosses it back at him, grabs the keys to the truck off of the end table, and slams the door behind him without a single word.
Stryker palms the back of my neck, kissing my forehead before quickly chasing after him. “Stay with Bane, pack a bag.”
“Yeah, no.” Hollering over my shoulder for Bane, I follow Stryker out the door, climbing into the truck with them. “I’m not going to try and stop you, but at least make sure you think this through.”
Bane slides into the truck beside me a second before Mason pulls out of the driveway, hair still dripping from the shower and clothes clinging to his damp body. “What the fuck is going on?”
In lieu of answering, Stryker tosses the envelope at him. The confusion disappears in a puff of smoke, his jaw clenching as he sifts through the pictures. I hastily buckle my seatbelt as we pull onto the road, unable to catch Mason’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“You know it’s a trap. He wouldn’t have tossed an insult like that in your faces without being confident you wouldn’t be able to kill him for it. Whether it’s a hidden camera or he’s going to try and shoot you in the face when you bust into his apartment and claim self-defense.”
When none of them respond, I sigh. “I’m not asking you not to do anything, I’m asking you to not be stupid about it. Rushing in pissed off isn’t going to end well.” Though it’s a low blow, I add, “What if something happened to you guys, if you wound up dead or arrested? I’d be left alone with that psycho on the loose, let alone everyone else.”
The truck slows down a bit, Mason easing his foot off of the gas. We carry on another few minutes before he slams a hand on the dashboard, cursing, and pulls over to the curb. After throwing it in park, he turns around in his seat to face me. “Call your cop buddies and tell them to meet us there. Either they do something, or I will, but I’m not dropping this, consequences be damned.”
Thatcher picks up on the third ring and I rattle off the situation quickly, hanging up as soon as he starts in with the speech about going home and letting them handle it. I don’t want to hear it any more than the guys do, especially since I’m starting to get through to them a bit.
“This isn’t working,” Bane finally states, staring stoically out his window, watching the people meandering on the sidewalk. “If her parents were going to show, they would have by now; it’s been weeks. Hell, she’s drawing every other shifter in the vicinity her way. Now that bastard is not only still alive, but he’s fucking stalking her, and we didn’t even know it?”
Jaw clenched and finger tapping against the doorframe, he looks... like he’s starting to break under the pressure. And it’s my fault. I wreck everything that I touch.
“I hate the city; I can’t pick up jack shit with all of this chaos. And when I try, it’s so overwhelming that I shut down. I’m constantly pissed off, consciously trying not to let that spill over to you guys.” Bane sighs, Mason and Stryker slumping a bit in their seats like they’re in full agreement. “I want to go home.”
Mason pulls back onto the street, keeping within the speed limit this time. “Where would we go, B? We haven’t found somewhere to settle down after we managed to pull this off, let alone where to go if we failed.”
Stryker clucks his tongue. “I would suggest a deserted island, but unless one of you can figure out a way to run an ethernet cable that far, I’m pretty sure we’d kill each other within six months. Seclusion is great if you have shit to keep you entertained; not so much when you’re stuck doodling in the sand.”
As Blake’s apartment building draws near, my stomach twists with nerves, not sure how to keep everything from falling apart. “If we dip out now, our only other lead to finding my parents is the agency, and I can’t imagine that any address they have on file is valid.”
Stryker braces an elbow against his door, propping up his cheek. “Or that they’ll even give out employee info in the first place.”
“Especially since we can’t tell them why since we don’t want people knowing about me. Causing a scene at a place as important as that in the shifter world is a stupid idea if we’re trying to disappear. We’ll just have to move around instead of picking one place to settle; for now, at least.”
Parking across the street from the building, the guys tense up, wanting to work out all of their frustrations by beating the living hell out of Blake. With countless problems thrown our way, this is one they could actually solve, erase him from existence and feel like we’re making progress. A police cruiser pulls up behind us shortly after, Ryker and Thatcher climbing out looking pissed off; at us or Blake, I’m not even sure.
Mason and Stryker get out to fill them in, slamming the truck doors behind them and leaving me trapped in awkward silence next to Bane. I watch their lips move in a silent fight, Ryker and Thatcher taking a look in the envelope and saying something placating to the guys, which results in muffled shouting. I strengthen the block that I have up to keep the onslaught at bay, knowing full well that I’m being a coward.
As the officers head across the street into the building to confront Blake, Bane and I climb out to wait with the guys when they don’t make any move to come back to the truck. They simply stand on the sidewalk, glaring at the building like they’re trying to melt the brick with their minds. Watching their strained faces, it’s clear they’ve dropped their mental shields, eavesdropping as best as they can. It’d be damn near impossible for me to focus on something that far away, especially with the heavy crowd on the sidewalk and cars flying by between us and the building.
Bane ends up following their lead, leaving me the odd man out, because I have no interest in hearing lie after lie, if I can even zero in on the distant conversation. It’s not like I expect the cops to actually do anything, but I didn’t want the guys walking right into a trap; and there’s no fucking way that Blake didn’t have something up his sleeve after tossing the gauntlet down like that. It’s the same reason I never bothered to go to the police for help before. All it would have been is a series of ‘there’s nothing we can do,’ or ‘all of that evidence is circumstantial at best.’
There’s no winning, even when you follow all of the rules. Everyone just acts shocked when people turn up dead and tell themselves that they would have prevented it if they’d only known, like they didn’t sabotage or gaslight you every goddamn step of the way to your grave.
The guys shout, hands clamped over their ears as they double over with a litany of curses a split second before a section of the apartment building explodes, like a bomb went off. My ears are ringing as I clutch my head, but by the blood trickling down the sides of their faces, keeping my sensory block up saved me from the worst of it.
Half of the building is smoking, brick and debris strewn across the surrounding area and street, sending cars careening into oncoming traffic to get out of the way. I watch in frozen horror at the ensuing head on collision, but the sickening crash that I should hear at the impact is only a high-pitched ring. Not ten seconds pass by before another car slams into that one, beginning a pileup. Faces wail with silent screams and cries from those that were within the blast zone, clutching bloody limbs as they lie on the sidewalk or were knocked into the street.
People start stampeding around us, both trying to get a closer look, and others getting the hell out of dodge. Shoulders slam into mine, knocking me back a step as absolute chaos erupts around us, yet I can’t hear so much as a footstep. The only thing that I can pick up is the pounding of my thundering heartbeat, and even that’s muffled as if I were plunged underwater. Smoke and chemicals assault my nose, even from this distance, and no matter how much I cough, I can’t clear the acrid taste from my lungs.
