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I want to say yes, but I’d be a fucking liar.
I shake my head. “Send him home to get some rest, but tell him that come hell or high water, we’re gonna get her tomorrow.”
Dante nods, and when he hangs up with Shae, I manage to convince him that he should get some shut eye too. All three of us can and have gone on little to no sleep when we’ve had to, but this fucking day has taken a toll on each of us and it’s better to stay sharp where we can.
Not thatI’mplanning on calling it a night yet. And not that Riley looks like she has any plans to close her eyes, either.
“Where else does that fucker do business?” she asks, glaring down at the map.
“Here,” Logan says, tapping a few blocks in the heart of West Point’s territory. “We can’t get our people in there to check, but I’m going to go upstairs and hack into the ATM machine cameras in the area to look for that van.”
I nod, and he heads up.
“Riley,” I start, resting a hand on her back as she tries to drill a pair of holes through the map with those gorgeous coffee-colored eyes of hers.
“I’m not quitting.”
“Of course not.”
She’s just strung out and fucking exhausted, and not doing a damn bit of good here. I hold back from saying so though, and keep working through the city with her as she sags against my side, closer and closer to passing out. Long after midnight, her body finally betrays her, and I lower her onto the couch, smoothing out all those vibrant purple and blue waves that frame her face the way I wish I could smooth out the pain that tightens her features, even now that she’s given in to sleep.
I want to take that pain away.
I can’t stand to see her fucking hurting like this.
And I stand there way too fucking long, staring down at her as I battle the rush of unexpected emotions before a thought occurs to me that I instinctively shove away before realizing what a dumb-ass move that is.
It might be a long shot and it’s somewhere I’ve got nothing but shitty memories about, but thereisone place we haven’t checked out yet that I know damn well McKenna has used in the past when he wanted to stay under the radar. Undermyradar, specifically.
He’s got no idea that I followed Sienna to his little fucking love nest back when I first caught on to her cheating ways. Neither of them do. I confronted her about it after I saw them there, but I wasn’t stupid enough to let my emotions cloud one of the most basic rules of survival. I told them what I knew, but I didn’t give away how I knew it.
Neither of them have any reason to believe I know about the safe house they used to fuck in, butIknow it’s still leased in the name of one of the shell companies McKenna runs his legit-on-the-surface businesses through. I also know it’s right on the edge of West Point’s territory, and that if I don’t go check it out right the fuck now, I’ll lose my best chance to stop that asshole from moving on Chloe’s inheritance at the start of banking hours tomorrow.
I stare down at Riley for another two seconds, then toss a blanket over her, grit my teeth, blow out a fast breath, andmove.
The house is in a run-down residential neighborhood with trash in half the front yards and more street lamps dark than lit, and I cut the lights on the Escalade and coast to a stop three blocks down and one block over before cutting the engine. A dog barks from behind a rusted chain link fence when I slip out to cut across a few lawns, and I go still, waiting to see if the sound will bring unwanted attention from the direction of the West Point house.
It doesn’t, and after a minute, the owner yanks a door open and screams at it, finally getting it to shut the fuck up. I curse under my breath when he lingers and do my best to blend into the shadows, waiting again to see if McKenna’s men will react now that there’s a human voice in the mix. But when the dog owner slams his door closed again, returning inside, and no one heads in my direction from the safe house, I finally figure it’s safe to move.
And the minute I peer around someone’s shed to look down the right street, I know I’ve hit pay dirt.
The house isn’t empty. It’s two in the damn morning, and while the shitty little bungalow isn’t the only house on the block that’s not dark, it’s the only one with every single window lit up. The guards McKenna left around the perimeter are basically like a neon sign all on their own, but when I use the cover of another neighbor’s rotting pergola to move a little closer, getting a visual of Chloe right through the back window cinches it.
She’s here, and I’m getting her the fuck out.
I watch for a few more minutes to confirm my first impression. That fucker drugged her, and he’s dumb enough to let it make his security slack, even with the guards he posted. It might be smarter to get some backup, or at least let my brothers know what’s about to go down. Hell, there’s no “might,” it hands down would be. But remembering that pain on Riley’s face, even in her sleep, I just don’t have it in me to wait now that I’m so close to being able to make things right for her.
The weapons I always keep on me aren’t enough if I’m going it alone though, so I turn and stealthily make my way back to the Escalade to better arm myself, justifying the risk I’m taking with the knowledge that there’s no way in hell McKenna will be expecting me here tonight. The bullshit his men are pulling inside the house proved that, and even the guards he’s got on duty are fucking off their responsibilities from what I’ve just seen. They continue to fail to make an appearance when that fucking dog—a Rottweiler, I see this time—starts up at me again.
I ignore it just like McKenna’s guards and the dog’s owners do, but if my Reapers ever act as incompetent as those West Point assholes? They won’tbeReapers anymore.
When I finally make my way back to the West Point safe house, approaching from the back the same way I did all those years ago when I came here and found Sienna riding McKenna’s cock like the faithless whore she turned out to be, I know I’ve made the right decision to get Chloe out on my own. The two weasels that had been in the room with Chloe when I first arrived are now playing a card game in the kitchen, and the lights in what I know to be a couple of front bedrooms have gone dark.
I smile with grim satisfaction. McKenna’s stable of lazy shitheads are all making my job easier. It’s an ideal time to strike, and going in alone is gonna allow me to slip in and right back out with Chloe before McKenna has a fucking clue I’ve taken back what he never had a right to.
I move quietly, double checking positions of all the players I saw on hand to make sure I’m not in for any nasty surprises, then make quick work of the half-ass lock on the back slider and slip into the house.
Chloe is right where I first saw her, hands loosely bound and propped against an entertainment center with a first-person shooter game frozen on the flat screen at its center. The rest of the room is empty.
