Page 65 of Fire Bound

We’ve been through too much and lost too much because of that man. It has to end.

I know if Gage were here, he’d have been riling up and motivating the enforcers, getting them primed and ready to fight. He was many things, but he was good at his job. It’s a shame he won’t be here fighting with the rest of us.

“Where’d that mind of yours go?” Winslow’s voice brings me out of my thoughts.

I look at Winslow, a question I never thought to ask her until now on my tongue.

“What is it?”

Clearing my throat, I tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear nervously. “I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to ask anymore because I’m with Jax and I’m ecstatic to be with him.”

“But?”

“But I want to know that Gage is okay,” I admit. It’s probably totally selfish of me to want this, but I need to know. “I mean, I know he’s not okay, he’s dead, but do you know if Gage is at peace?”

Winslow closes the container of fruit, prompting the large raven to fly off to a nearby tree. She watches him for a second before turning back to me. “Spirits that linger after death are the ones that have unfinished business. They don’t move on until they find closure,” she explains. “I know what you’re trying to ask me, but you’re afraid to say the words aloud. You want to know if Gage is upset that you’re with Jax now. You want to make sure that he’s not angry at you for choosing Jax.” Winnie doesn’t know that I have and always will choose Jax over everyone. “In the months that Gage has been dead, I haven’t seen or even felt his presence lingering around. Not even when I’m at the cemetery or around you. If Gage was upset and not at peace with your choice, he would be here, but he’s not.” Winnie reaches out and places her hand over my arm. “You can move forward without worrying about him.”

Whatever I was about to tell her is cut off when the front door violently swings open and Whisper stumbles outside like a man emerging from a dark cave. His pale hands cover his eyes, and he groans. “Oh my God,the sun. I think I’m blind. I’ve been staring at a computer screen in a dark room for fifteen hours straight, my eyes don’t know what to do with all thislight.”

“You act more like a vampire than the actual vampire we know,” I comment, watching him push his glasses up into his mess of hair so he can rub his sensitive eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t walk into the sunlight and burst into flames immediately.”

“Joke’s on you, bitch, I only do that when I walk into a church.”

Winslow laughs before telling us, “There was this guy at the hospital when I was locked up who tried to light himself on fire because he thought he needed to repent for his sins. He ate a cheeseburger or something when he wasn’t supposed I guess. He got fully naked in the middle of aBig Lotsand doused himself in gasoline. Luckily he forgot his matches.”

Whisper stops rubbing his eyes long enough to look at Winnie with a flabbergasted expression. “I really do love your stories and I definitely want to hear more about that guy because I’m sure there’s a whole backstory you’re not telling us, but I need to borrow the new bride for a second.”

He reaches for me and ushers me toward the door. “The new bride? I’m not a bride.”

“And what a shame that is because I really am a joy to have at a bachelorette party.”

Whisper has turnedWinslow’s other spare bedroom into a hacker-like cave. The curtains are drawn tight, keeping any light from entering the room. A dark sweater is thrown over the bedside table lamp, hindering the amount of light it produces. The dresser is littered with different computer equipment. Each time I’m around him, he has more. I don’t know where he’s magically getting them all because I know for a fact he didn’t travel here with them.

Papers are littered across the bed and taped to various places on the wall. Knowing Whisper, there’s a method to the madness, but to the untrained eyes, it looks like a mess.

“Don’t mind the chaos,” he tells me over his shoulder as I follow him to the desk he has set up across the room. “I’m looking for a thousand different things, so shit is just kinda everywhere right now,” Whisper explains as he picks up a few pieces of paper so he can sit down in the desk chair.

“Everything is a mess right now, so this is just par for the course.” I point to the end of the unmade bed. “If I sit here, I’m not going to accidentally sit on a forgotten frozen burrito or something, am I?”

“What? No. I don’t bring food in here.”

I glance around the wrecked room. “It’s good to draw the line somewhere, I suppose.”

He spins in his chair and faces me. “Okay, smart-ass, do you want to keep criticizing or do you want me to tell you what I found on Pruitt’s mom’s family?”

“I’m fairly good at multitasking,” I joke, but when he gives me an impatient look, I sigh and relent. “Fine. Show me what you found.”

He grabs a blue folder off the desk and hands it to me. “The only member of the family that I can still find records on is William Axton, Genevieve’s brother.” He taps a couple of times on the keyboard in front of him until William’s DMV picture appears. He looks just like he did two years ago when we kidnapped him from his penthouse in Vancouver after we discovered he’d been the one working with Nicolai to help abduct Pruitt. “As we already know, he worked for Nicolai’s medical company. Which was a legit business and very lucrative.” That’s why Sterling teamed up with Nicolai. Nicolai wanted to breed a pack of powerful wolves he could be the alpha of, and Sterling wanted a financial benefactor with access to the medical equipment he’d need to run his breeding facilities. A true match made in hell. It helped that Nicolai was just as twisted as the rest of them. “Or it was until Nicolai mysteriously vanished.” Pruitt ripped out his throat and he’s now buried in a shallow grave in the middle of the Canadian woods. “William was in charge of finances and when Nicolai died, what was left of the crumpling company went to him. After he takes every dime he can get from the company, he shuts it down and disappears. Goes completely off the grid. All the bank accounts in his name have been closed and all his property and assets have been sold. Which I would think was odd if I didn’t discover it was a common occurrence in this family.”

“What do you mean?”

“Around thirty years ago, Genevieve’s father, John, did the same thing. One day he just ceased to exist.”

“So, there’s nothing I can give to Pru?” I ask, feeling disappointed. Pru already knows her uncle has played a small role in the dangers we’re facing. That’s information she’s not going to want to pass along to her child. “What about Gen’s mom? What happened with her?”

He taps the folder in my hand. “That’s where this comes in.”

Opening the blue folder, I find a few printed-out pieces of paper. On the very top is a scanned page of a newspaper dated over thirty years ago. Reading the first headline, I frown at Whisper. “What does a random animal attack have to do with Gen’s mom?” Abrutalanimal attack is more correct. It says five hunters were mauled to death by something.

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