Page 118 of Wicked Devotion
“We’ll meet you back on base in around–”
“No,” Cady says, and I raise my eyebrows. “Charlie’s gonna send you guys my address. Call him when you arrive, my doorbell doesn’t work.”
She ends the call before I can ask any more questions, and after getting up, Logan holds his hand out to me. We join Sam in the hallway, mostly to make sure he doesn’t take half of the wall out together with the terminal.
His hands are covered in a mix of blood and plaster, and it’s only when I take a closer look that I see how shaky they are. Logan gently takes the terminal from Sam to make sure it’s still in one piece when it reaches Cady.
“Can you call Dom?” Sam asks, leaning against the kitchen counter, running his hands over his face. “He needs to take care of Mochi while we settle this. Tell him to meet us somewhere, or maybe he can come here, pick Mochi up, I don’t know. I can’t fucking think–”
“It’s okay. I’ll call him,” I say, patting Sam’s arm before I walk out on the terrace, trying to reach Dom.
When Dom shows up thirty minutes later, his face is full of worry. Even more so when he sees the huge mass of rage that had been Sam at some point. Sam gets himself together just long enough to get Mochi’s stuff ready and give her some more head scratches before we send her off with Dom.
By the time he leaves the driveway, we’re already in Ruby’s garage. Throughout the drive to Cady, I repeatedly have to remind Sam that we won’t be able to help our girls when we’re all fucking dead in a ditch just because he chooses to ignore every single traffic rule known to mankind.
Charlie is nervously walking up and down the street as we arrive in front of the apartment complex Cady lives in. We don’t bother to waste any more time, practically bolting up the stairs until we enter Cady’s apartment.
Wordlessly, she takes the terminal from Logan, and we follow her into her tiny office, the room almost bursting at the seams as all six of us struggle to find a place to sit or stand.
No one wants to speak up while Cady examines the terminal. The silence is only broken up by the occasional sigh and Sam nervously tapping his foot.
The moment the recording from the security cameras pops up on Cady’s screens, we all scramble to stand up, crowding the poor woman until she can barely move her arm enough to reach for the computer mouse.
Clearing her throat, she nudges both Sam and Logan in the stomach with her elbows until they take a step back.
Logan’s grip on the back of Cady’s chair tightens as the video shows four men entering the house through the patio doors. Sam holds his breath while we watch how two of them lead Mochi to the master bedroom. Sam always complains that Mochi isn’t the tiniest bit territorial, but I think it’s the only reason nothing happened to her.
Cady speeds up the video, only slowing it back down when our girls arrive at the house. The taste of blood spreadsin my mouth, but I barely notice the stinging pain shooting through the inside of my cheek. My eyes are glued to the screen, forcing me to watch how some fucking disgusting bastard puts his hand on our girl, sliding Lily’s hair to the side while she shakes like a leaf.
I could never understand where Logan’s need not to just kill but to eradicate stemmed from. Now I do, because as I watch him smile while he shoves Lily back inside the house, all I want to do is rip the skin off of his bones until he’s nothing more than a useless mass of sinew and blood.
“Logan, no,” Cady tsks when he starts stalking through the room, ready to smash something to pieces.
“I need a fucking cigarette,” Sam says, so angry he almost crushes the cigarette package in his hand while Cady points at the window.
Rockwell, Charlie, and I decide not to direct Sam’s attention back to the screen as we witness how one of the men pushes Ruby so hard she falls. After she broke his nose, but I don’t think this would have made a difference for Sam.
One cigarette turns into four as both Logan and Sam lean out of the window, their conversation consisting of curse words and groans. My entire body is so tense I’m sure I’ll feel every goddamn muscle tomorrow, bile rising in my throat as the video ends with our girls being thrown into the back of a gray sedan.
Leaning against Cady’s desk, Rockwell somehow looks as if the past few days have turned him into a shell of his former self. I have never seen him like this. We could be in a life or death situation–actually, have been in one quite a few times already–but one look at our captain was always enough to know everything would be okay. And now, as I watch the strongest people I know crumble down, anything resembling hope runs through my fingers like sand.
Turning her chair around, Cady speaks up. “Iwas able to follow them through traffic surveillance cameras, but I lost track of them once they left the city. Plates are stolen, like I said, and the car is too old to hack into any form of GPS. I tried locating some phones of known 203 members that were already in the system, but–”
“We need to talk to Brady,” Logan interrupts her, rejoining the conversation together with Sam, who closes the window a bit too aggressively for Cady’s liking.
“I almost had him last night,” Rockwell says, knocking over a figurine as he stands up straight. “He just needs a little push.”
“Oh, and what a fucking push this is going to be,” Logan snarls, pulling me after him and out of Cady’s apartment.
Rockwell doesn’t protest. I wish he would because the absence of a discussion means he doesn’t have a better plan than letting us smash answers out of Brady like he’s a fucking punching bag.
The short drive back to base is overshadowed by Logan, who starts listing how exactly he plans to get information out of Brady. Even as we reach the garage of our building, he still isn’t done, but my thoughts are so loud I can barely hear his voice.
“Max?” Logan calls out for me as we make our way down to the cell block, and I shake my head as if it would help to get the chaos inside of it under control.
“You said something.”
“No?”
