Page 13 of Jax
Classic.
I crossed the threshold in three easy strides, crouched beside the heap of denim near the foot of the rig. The rope above still swayed slightly, echoing what they’d just come down from. The air was thick with sweat and candle smoke and the unmistakable charge of afterglow. My fingers found the phone by touch.
My thumb hesitated a beat before turning the screen.
Sure enough, it was Quinn.
Something in my stomach pulled tight, not panic, but something just south of it. A kind of worry that didn’t arrive with a bang, just settled in behind your ribs and waited.
I swiped to answer and brought the phone to my ear, exhaling hard through my nose as I set my spine straight. Every emotion I’d been drowning in got shoved into a mental drawer and locked, later, maybe. Or not. Right now, I needed the version of me that wore sarcasm like armor and kept a half-loaded factoid in the chamber to ease the tension.
I cleared my throat, rolled my shoulders back, and slipped into the part of myself that knew how to lead, how to deflect, how to sound fine.
“Reapers, Jax speaking. You'd better not need a body buried tonight. I just washed my jeans.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick. Calculating. The kind that meant Quinn was lining up his words like chess pieces, not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he knew exactly how screwed we were once he did.
Then his voice came through, low and rough, like he’d already fought with himself before making the call. “I hate to do this to you guys,” he said, “but I’ve got someone incoming. High-risk. Female. Needs immediate placement. It’s bad.”
The air left my lungs in one long, still stretch—not cold, not panicked. Just... surgical. Focused. The kind of stillness that hits when your brain starts moving faster than your mouth, when five timelines and ten exits snap into place like the click of a trigger.
“How bad?” I asked, already shifting my weight like I needed to be somewhere I didn’t know yet.
His breath filtered through the speaker. Rough, like he hadn’t slept. I could hear movement in the background: a drawer slamming, muffled voices, the shuffle of papers. Then, silence. A door clicked shut. And it was just Quinn. Alone.
“The Dom Krovi kidnapped her, roughed her up for a couple of days, then tucked her safely back in her bed with instructions to sign a deed to some property over to them. An art studio in the Northeast Industrial District, apparently. Thankfully, with some of the intel we got from…” He paused for a moment, and cleared his throat. I understood why. We were all still recovering from Bellamy’s brother’s death, and Quinn had gotten a front-row seat to the entire disaster.
“With some of the intel from that flash drive we recovered, we now know the names of a few of Borovski’s shell companies. The company she was signing her property over to flagged the system, so the Recorder of Deeds office called the station, andI went and picked her up. And now, I need somewhere safe to keep her until we can figure this mess out.”
Down the hallway, the rope in the playroom still swayed, soft against the quiet. I could hear the slow murmur of Niko’s voice, the soothing rhythm of aftercare blooming like a second heartbeat. The house was calm. Still. But that was about to end.
Because a new stranger was coming.
And she wouldn’t come alone, not really. She’d bring her history. Her ghosts. Whatever monsters had chased her this far off the grid. She’d bring all of it, and it would be ours to manage. To contain. To survive.
I straightened. Looked ahead. My thoughts were already running through all the adjustments that would need to be made, and I said the only thing that came to mind.
“Guess I’ll clear the calendar.”
4
Stella
The SUV slowed,swallowed by trees that grew too thick, too close, too deliberate to be natural. This wasn’t a forest. It was a strategy. The kind of foliage that didn’t bloom wild. It was placed, curated, trained to keep secrets. The further we drove, the more the world narrowed, until it was like the land itself was closing ranks behind us.
I didn’t see the gate at first. Just the heavy hush of shadow and green, the blur of trunks standing shoulder to shoulder like sentries. Then the road curved left, and the illusion cracked.
Metal. Black. Brutal.
It didn’t wait to be noticed. It announced itself like a verdict.
Tall and imposing, flanked by twelve-foot fencing strung in taut coils of razor wire, it loomed out of the underbrush with industrial malice. It had hinges thick enough to hold back a tank. The entire thing was set far enough into the woods that no one would ever find it by mistake.
I shifted in my seat, the seatbelt biting into the bruise at my collarbone. My hands stayed folded in my lap—still, flat and practiced, but my pulse throbbed against my thumbs like a warning. I kept my face calm, eyes scanning, checkingthe perimeter like a list I didn’t remember writing but had memorized all the same. Motion sensor on the left tree line. Camouflaged, but not well enough. Reinforced gateposts. Underground wiring terminals, likely power, maybe live surveillance.
Good. Power meant dependency. Dependency meant failure points.
Every system had a weakness.
