Page 127 of Cruel Games

Nostalgia washed through me, deep and emotional, as I realized that even as much as I hated her for the menace she’d become, She was more than just a girl we had to protect, a girl whose father was our target, a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, now, she was more. She was a smiling face in the morning at the coffee pot as we discussed the week’s jobs and divvied up household chores. She was a comforting scent in my bathroom that I denied enjoying, breathing her in after I closed my door so that others couldn’t know my shame, my weakness, had become the thing Iresented most.

The girl who’d invaded my life and made me want things I had never wanted before.

I lifted my hand and stared at her picture again, wishing I’d taken more when she wasn’t looking. If I never found her again, all I’d have was this photo off the security cameras in the entryway that caught her as she marched out of our lives and into the night while we slept unawares.

Some things you really didn’t miss until they were gone. And by then, it was too late.

And you were just left with regrets.

FORTY-SEVEN

DINGO

I snappedmy phone shut and kicked the starter on Coyote’s bike, racing across town like a bat straight out of hell. One of the Commandos had spotted her in the South End, of all places, and as much as I didn’t want to go into that territory, I had to, for Ivy.

Coyote hadn’t slept in days, too anxious about our missing link to close his eyes, but when he nearly wiped out on Main St in broad daylight because he fell asleep at the handlebars, so to speak, I sent him home and took over his shift for the day.

I could call him, but he needed this rest. And it wouldn’t do any good to rouse him just to chase one more empty lead. By the time we got to the location, she was already gone, a ghost in the wind, leaving behind a body and our moniker etched into the dead flesh of the poor asshole who’d managed to offend her or catch her eye at the wrong time.

We started looking into the people she killed when the second body turned up. Turned out, she was working her way through a group of men the Porty Wylde police had been watching for a very long time. Each one was higher up than the last, all suspected to be involved in a human trafficking ring.

She was killing off the men who would have been her jailers, had her father been left alive.

I didn’t have the heart to catch up to her, to stop her. Obviously she needed this, needed the catharsis that it brought. But Lilly wouldn’t put up with it for long. And neither would the cops.

We had to stop her, or find her, make her see reason. We couldn’t take down a whole ring of traffickers like some vigilante heroes. The Guild hadrules,not that we gave a shit about them most of the time.

Just like before, when I pulled into the parking lot where someone had sworn she’d been just minutes before, there was no sign of her, and the witness was long gone. It was almost as if she knew she was leading us on a wild goose chase.Maybe she was the one creating her own sightings, encouraging us to find her, putting us to some sort of test to see if we gave a shit, or if, when given our freedom, we’d abandon anything to do with her and return to our old lives.

As if forgetting Ivy Cullough was a possibility.

She might not be the kind of woman you took home to your mother, but she was ours, as much as Jackal fought it, as much chaos as I knew it would bring to our lives, as much as it drove Coyote mad with a need for validation that we were herchoiceand not heronly option.

She’d been ours from the moment we took that job, the moment we heard her father agree to sell his own daughter off. We branded her with our moniker, intentionally or not, and she’d been seeking us out ever since. Burned our emblem in her brain, studied us for years, working behind our backs to learn our habits and jobs so she could taunt us with our own work.

Jackal was obsessed. I was curious. Coyote was enamored.

That was as close to love as any of us could get. We were all broken, her included. But together, we were whole and functional; without her, it was like a piece of us was missing now.

If we didn’t find her soon, I might lose my partners, either to their sorrow or their spiraling mental health. I didn’t want to see my family crumble before me. So with a steely spine and a determination I’d never possessed before, I marched into the convenience store and started asking the teller questions, hoping this one, at least, would have answers.

That was all I had left.

FORTY-EIGHT

COYOTE

Dingo putme in a cab and sent me on my way, but he’d never know that instead of going home like he’d intended, I had the cabbie let me out at the edge of the Guild.

I would find her if it killed me. I needed to bring her home before Jackal started breaking things. Dingo was already obsessively cleaning things to keep from worrying. Jackal had bitten his own fucking lip so many times this week that it was a miracle his mouth was still intact.

I was giving myself scars to keep me awake, convinced if I closed my eyes for even a second, that she’d disappear for good, and we’d never find her. I was sick with the need for her to be back beside me, even if it meant I had to chain her up and keep her hooked to the couch.

Even if it meant turningherintomydog.

When I finally found her—and I would—I wasn’t letting her go for a very long time.

Possibly never.

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