Page 108 of Hold Me Before You Go

“I wouldn’t be doing anything to Red Snake. I’d part ways with this,” I explained, gesturing around the room, “and I would go to Vegas on my own.”

“Like fucking hell we would let you do that,” Ash clipped, crossing his arms over his chest, leveling me with a glare.

“Tell me what you want, Carrie, and I’ll make it happen,” I vowed, referring to our conversation from last night. I wanted to be the one to kill Brandon, but I wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do.

“I don’t want you leaving Red Snake behind,” she replied calmly, standing her ground. She looked at Dominic, then Jake, and finally up to Ash before looking back at me. “The sooner Brandon is taken care of, the sooner I can go home. So let Jack or whoever have him.”

That was that.

Thirty minutes later, Hayes sent us the proof we needed: a video of Brandon pacing back and forth in a dirty, cramped cell with nothing but a small bucket in the corner to piss in. If Ihad to guess, he was being held in the basement of Jack’s home. Once the proof was in my hands, and Jake made sure the video was, in fact, real, Carrie came to me, placing her hands on my chest and looking up at me with her stunning eyes.

“Take me home, Grayson,” she rasped, her voice shaking. “Take me back to Astoria.”

“Okay,” I told her, grabbing her face. “We’ll leave as soon as I get something else from Hayes, okay?”

“Promise me,” she demanded.

“You have my word.”

“Thank you.” With that, she rose up on her toes, pressing her lips to mine before leaving me in the office, our cat following her. I couldn’t give her the world, but I could give her this.

I could give her a few more memories in her blue house with me before the truth came out.

“Hayes, I need—”

“I know what you need, Gray,” he said, interrupting me on the other end of the line.

I put my free hand into my pocket as I stood in front of my office windows, watching the sun poke through the overcast sky for the first time today. My eyes followed the golden rays all the way down, and I wasn’t surprised to find them landing on my sunshine girl as she walked across the street with Jake to my condo. She was getting ready to head home, packing what little she had here. My jaw tightened. “Are you okay with that?” I asked my friend.

“Job’s not done, Gray. You shouldn’t have to ask me that,” he returned shortly. He was on edge.

“Know that, but there’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m not dropping this until that son of a bitch is in my hands or I receive proof of death from Black Mist,” he quipped.

“As I’ve said before, I don’t want you playing with fire, Hayes. You push your luck, and you’ll get burned,” I warned.

“Once I have what I need, I’ll leave. Until then, I’m staying in Vegas.”

I looked away from the ground below, Carrie now safe in the building, and turned to walk back to my desk. “Carrie wants me to take her back to Astoria.”

“Do it,” Hayes rumbled. “Jake and the guys will have things handled there.”

I said nothing as I pulled out Carrie’s original file, feeling the weight of it in my hands, the smoothness of the folder, knowing all the horrors lingering inside it. “This might be it for us, Mitchell,” I murmured.

He was quiet for a moment. “We had a good run, didn’t we?”

Jesus.

I set the file back onto the desk and took a seat, my chest deflating. “I’m going to say something now, and I want you to keep your mouth shut until I’m done, yeah?”

“No promises.”

Fucking figures.

“I never intended for this to happen,” I admitted. “When Carrie—when I got assigned to find her, I never thought I’d be here, right now, having this conversation with you.”

“It’s not really a conversation if I can’t speak,” he deadpanned.

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