Page 20 of Wrecked

“Damn it,” he muttered and got dressed before starting a cup of coffee in the maker. He needed caffeine to shake off his foggy brain.

Maybe the dose in the syringe had been too much?

When he’d asked the medic for the syringe, he only said he wanted to knock out a guy for several hours. Obviously, the guy had given him a dose for his size.

Crow couldn’t imagine what Rebel would have gone through if this much sedative had been plunged into his slender frame.

Taking a swallow of coffee, Crow called Real.

The conversation wasn’t pretty.

“You fucking lost him?” Real snarled into the phone.

“He got the drop on me,” Crow admitted with some bitterness, but also admiration. There were very few people who had ever gotten the drop on him.

“You outweigh him by a hundred pounds,” Real said, his tone suggesting the idea was ludicrous.

Crow squeezed the phone. “We had an altercation.”

No way was he going to tell Real he’d been too distracted by the beautiful dark-haired man and as a result of that distraction, he’d gotten kicked in the nuts.

“He got the syringe from me.”

Real gave a heavy sigh. “Say no more. Do I need to send someone else to get the job done? Winter is available.”

“No,” Crow said with a low growl.

No way in hell was anyone going after Rebel, he would bring the young man in come hell or high water.

Two weeks later…

Down the sidewalk on the streets of Los Angeles, Crow was hot on Rebel’s ass.

The mistake the kid made was going back to his old stomping grounds. It was there that Crow found the kid, scrounging for food.

It was probably by chance, because Rebel was fucking fast, but Crow managed to grab onto the back of the man’s shirt and hang on.

“Let go!” Rebel snarled and dropped low to the ground.

The move had been unexpected, and Crow hung on, but in the blink of a fucking eye, Rebel slipped out of the shirt and left the material hanging in his grasp.

Lightning fast, Rebel sprinted toward a concrete wall. Spider climbing up the face, the teenager balanced on the top and then dipped over the other side.

Hot on Rebel’s ass, Crow grinned. Scaling walls was his specialty. He was up the concrete in a few seconds, leaving Rebel gaping at him.

Over the top, they jumped and then Rebel was off again. Crow was used to running with a hundred-pound pack on his back, so this was child’s play to him.

Crow’s blood hummed at the chase, his gaze stayed razor focused on that fleeing form.

Damn, the man was fast, hella fast, but Rebel was going all out and Crow had miles more stamina than the younger man.

On the outskirts of Los Angeles, they flew across an abandoned field with Crow on Rebel’s heels. Something had been torn down years ago, leaving pipes and chunks of concrete behind.

Rebel scaled a heavy block of concrete with rebar sticking out and Crow just about lost his breath. The dark spikes had come close to piercing the man.

Rebel ran in the direction of an industrial park, but the flood control stood between them and those buildings, and Crow hoped that he could catch the man before that.

Scaling the flood control fence, Rebel dropped to the other side and ran toward one of the tunnels.