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11
Kaige
I tooka long swig from my energy drink and grimaced at the bright kitchen lights. It’d been another long night with barely any sleep. My typical insomnia was only harder to overcome with the adrenaline that kept buzzing through my veins.
We’d pulled off so much in the past couple of days… but it didn’t feel like anywhere near enough. And I had no idea what more we could be doing.
The other guys were pulling together a hasty breakfast, the smell of butter and burnt crumbs filling the air. Gideon chugged his precious coffee with one hand while he tapped on his tablet with the other. Wylder smacked a plate of toast on the island.
“Five more days,” he said. “And Xavier’s going as far as coming right up to Mercy’s home. We can’t let him get away with a move that bold.”
My hand tightened around the energy drink can to the point that the metal started to crackle. I wanted to plant my fist in that motherfucker’s face, and that was all there was to it… if I hadn’t known he’d put a bullet in my brain before I got close enough. Asshole.
Rowan put on a calm front, but I could tell he was shaken by the danger our woman had been in too. “Whatever our next move is, we need to do significant damage. Maybe we should focus directly on Xavier. From what Beckett said, the Storm has pretty much given him free reign here. He’s making the decisions.”
“The rest of the troops will have trouble staying focused if he’s out of the picture,” Gideon said with a nod.
“Right,” Wylder said. “We’ve wanted to bury that prick from the moment we found out he existed. So far, we haven’t had any opportunities that panned out. It didn’t sound like the kid has any inside line to info on Xavier’s psychotic plans, so he won’t be much help there. If we could just—”
Before he could finish that thought, two Noble lackeys rushed into the kitchen. “Mr. Noble,” one of them said in an urgent tone. “There’s—there’s a problem.”
I could see Wylder suppress a groan. “This early in the morning? Fine, what the hell is it?”
The men exchanged a worried glance. “We’re not totally sure what’s going on—or why, anyway. But a bunch of people are going around on the streets along the border between the city and the Bend smashing up stores and other buildings.”
I frowned, and Rowan drew himself up straighter. “Is it the Storm’s men?”
The other lackey shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. They seem to just be regular people—not trained at all, no weapons. Our guy down there reported that a few of them have been muttering something about Glory, so maybe they’re druggies on a bender?”
Every nerve in my body jangled onto the alert. I hurled the near-empty can into the sink with a clatter. “Is that fucking crap making even more of a mess?”
The lackey who’d spoken flinched. “I’m not sure what they’re talking about. But they also cracked the windshield of the Noble guy who spotted them while he was driving by. We just thought you’d want to know.”
Wylder nodded with a jerk of his head, pushing aside his plate. “And it’s good that you did, because we need to deal with this—whatever it is—fast.” And we couldn’t count on Ezra to handle it well, he didn’t have to say.
I wondered if the lackeys had come to Wylder rather than his father on purpose. The lower Nobles had to be picking up on what an asshat Ezra was being these days, right?
But none of that mattered if Xavier and his toxic drug were destroying the county even more than they already had. I flexed the muscles in my shoulders. “We have to go.” Find out how bad the damage was. Beat whoever was responsible into a pulp. The Storm’s people couldn’t keep using Glory to manipulate the regular people of Paradise Bend—we couldn’t let them all turn into junkies like my parents.
Wylder motioned to the men. “Gather a couple of cars of back-up, and we’ll head down there to deal with it. And be quick about it!”
The two guys scurried off. Wylder adjusted the gun tucked in the back of his jeans and motioned us to follow him. As he strode down the hall and into the foyer, he called out to a few of the men we passed, ordering them to join us out front. He was already enough of a leader to know who he wanted supporting us out there.
The landing overhead creaked, and I glanced up to see Anthea and Ezra standing by the top of the stairs. Anthea’s eyebrows had drawn together. “What’s going on, Wylder?”
“We’re going out to check on a disturbance,” Wylder said. “Seems like a bunch of people are riled up—probably the Storm’s involved somehow.”
Ezra remained silent. He was watching Wylder with his mouth pursed. A fresh flare of anger rose up inside me. For as long as I’d been here, I’d seen Ezra push Wylder harder and harder to become the leader he wanted. He’d never seemed satisfied. I’d used to think he always wanted more because he was trying to hone Wylder’s capabilities as much as possible.
But now that Wylder had finally stepped up to his role as heir and the men were responding well, something had shifted in Ezra. He didn’t seem so happy about the turn of events. What the hell did the guy want?
All I knew for sure was that I didn’t trust that asshole much more than I trusted Xavier, which was not at all.
We marched out to the garage, and I made a beeline for my favorite of the trucks in common use. It’d go faster than Gideon’s surveillance van. As I jumped into the driver’s seat, the other guys got in around me. Doors slammed as the other Noble men Wylder had called on got ready to follow.
I tore out of the garage and onto the street with a roar of the engine. “Whoa, there,” Rowan said as we raced down the hill so fast my stomach lurched. “We’ll get there faster if we don’t crash on the way.”
“I know how to handle a car,” I growled, gripping the steering wheel harder, but I did slow down just a little so it was less likely some idiot cop would chase after me.
