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“Stryker, hey, hello,” Jonah said, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
Blinking rapidly, I looked at Jonah.
“You sure you want to do this? We can turn around and head back to the hospital.”
I grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed lightly. It had been three days since we’d found my Firecracker. Three days of nothing but watching her lay there. Watching as her bruises got darker, the swelling more prominent, and hearing nothing but the sound of the fucking monitors. And the smell. Everything was so sterile; disinfectant lingered in the air. It was a constant reminder that we had failed her, and I was itching to dish out some payback. “Yeah, J’, I’m sure. I need to do this for her.”
Out of everyone, Jonah had been the quietest. You couldn’t tell if he was angry, worried, or scared. He processed everything, right down to the minute detail, and unlike Logan and I, he came from a relatively clean-cut family. “That son of a bitch had her drugged up. She’s been out for almost three days already.”
“I know, J’. I’m just as worried. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to drive over there and take the asshole out.” It was too many to count. I just didn’t want to be away from our girl for too long.
Entering the surveillance office, I checked the monitors. The asshole was doing sit-ups in his damn cage. If I didn’t know what his fate held, I’d be thinking he was under the impression that he was going to walk away from this. It was laughable, really, cause if Phee didn’t take him out, then I most certainly would.
“I guess exercising does pass the time,” Jonah stated, standing beside me. He leaned into the monitor; he pointed to a tattoo on the asshole’s left shoulder blade. “Do you see that? What the hell does that mean?”
Taking a closer look, I instantly recognized the symbol. I knew it well. Bile rose up into my throat, burning as I swallowed it down. My family knew it all too well. One snake, one hand, entwined around a heart and strangling it in a chokehold, with the Latin inscription, Ut dominus servi illius in sempiternum— Slave to her master forever. It was the same tattoo that my cousin had described her attacker as having a few years before, but the person she had described was older, closer to my father’s age.
This discovery made me more determined to bring Paige into the fold. It also made the whole situation a shit-ton more personal. It meant there would be two people getting closure out of this .
“It means we need to find out exactly who else is involved, before we start thinking about revenge.” Even as I said the words, I knew it was a lie. As soon as my family found this out, they would want in on the whole plan.
Pulling one of the office chairs up to the desk under the monitors, Jonah sat down and opened one of the laptops, plugging in one of the many USBs that Damon had found. “For a guy that went to all the trouble of hiding his fucking tracks, he wasn’t that concerned with security. These files aren’t even encrypted.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me much,” I stated the obvious, shaking my head as I joined him. From everything we had learned in the last three days about Kyle Ducane, the fact that he was a cocky fucker didn’t come as a big shock. “He hasn’t had any problem bragging about what he did to her. I mean, the asshole never thought he would be caught.”
“True that.” Looking up from the monitor, Jonah turned to me. “Where do you want to start? There are thousands of files on this thing. Mostly images and videos.”
“What are the timestamps on them all?” I knew we should be looking at the ones from the week he’d held her captive, but I wanted to know how far his reach on her went. We knew he had followed her on and off for years, but he’d started to escalate when Jonah and I became more permanent fixtures in her life.
As I leaned in, one of the time stamps stuck out. It was from around the time Jonah and I had gone to Damon’s to talk about the stalker, and I’d hung back to apologize for the way I had reacted when she’d told us about Kyle.
“That one. I want to know what is on that one.” I said, pointing to a file that was date stamped around the time we had learned Phee had moved in with Damon.
Jonah clicked on it. As it opened, a picture of Phee and I up against the wall in her room took up the screen. If she ever saw these, it would crush her. He’d taken something so intimate, and turned it into something that would be forever tainted with the knowledge that we were being watched.
“When was this?” Jonah asked, a little bemused. I knew we had been open with what Phee and I had done together, but I guess actually seeing it had to be a little confronting.
“The night we all spoke about the stalker. You know how I stayed back to talk to her, and we told you what happened after that.” It was a happy memory, one that had now been ruined with this newfound knowledge. “She can never find out about all these.”
“I know, Stry. I’m not stupid.” He rolled his eyes at me, closing the file down; he clicked on another one, dated from just the week before. “This one’s more recent.”
The screen went dark, then lit up. It appeared to be a meeting room, a glass table in the middle with eight or so chairs around it. The white walls were lined with hooks and chains. What the actual fuck happened in that room? I guessed we were about to find out, as voices could be heard off-screen.
“You need to convince him to sell me the girl.” one male voice demanded. One that I instantly recognized. Logan’s father had his hands dirty. Making a mental note to bring this up later, I focused back on the scene unfolding in front of me.
“I’ve told you before, Max. It’s up to Kyle if he wants to sell her off,” the second voice replied.
“I’m not selling her to you, Uncle Max. I’ve waited for four years for a second chance to get my hands on her.” Kyle walked into view, sitting in one of the chairs, as the other two men followed behind. Logan’s dad appeared, sitting opposite Kyle, and the third guy looked like an older version of Kyle. The only difference I spotted was the salt and pepper hair as he took a seat at the head. “She is finally where I want her. I won’t give that up for any amount of money. No, when I’m through with her, she will put both your wives to shame.”
“Doubt that, boy,” Logan’s father clenched his fists as he leaned over the table, getting into Kyle’s face. “You couldn’t close the deal all those years ago, boy. What makes you think you will be able to now?”
“Because now I have experience. Now I have all the time in the world.”
There was barely any space between the two of them; Kyle nose to nose with Logan’s dad. Pausing it, I had to get up. Just watching it made me antsy, and just down the hall was the perfect punching bag to unload on.
“I have to ask, man. What the fuck is your family, and Ducane’s, mixed up in?” The question I had waited the last three days for had finally come up. I knew that once Jonah had processed everything, he would want answers.
“I can’t answer, not unless you want to be involved.” It wasn’t a lie. There were strict rules in my family about who we told and what happened after. Usually, we would tell people if we were going to kill them, or induct them, but for Jonah, I didn’t want to do either of those things. The guy didn’t have the stomach for it; he was one of the good guys. I couldn’t do that to him. It was bad enough that I’d eventually have to bring my Firecracker into the fold. Someone needed to be our anchor to humanity, and Jonah was that person.
