Page 14 of Stryker
Stryker
“We know they kidnapped her. I have no idea how they found her or why we can’t.” Draco’s anger rippled through his voice. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I sidestepped that question. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because the fewer people that knew the better and I didn’t want my house of cards to come crashing down just yet. “Do you think they’re going to hurt her?” The rich woman he’d been tasked with finding and protecting had proved to be a slippery individual.
All evidence pointed to her going into hiding. But it sounded like he’d found something new that instead pointed to her being snatched off the street before we could find her.
And I’d been so sure we’d find her. Fuck. I hated this, hated the stress crushing my brother. I’d give anything to help him out, but what the fuck could I do?
He sighed. “No. They’re not that stupid. Hurting her would bring the whole organization into the light.”
He had a point. But there was an easy way around that little detail.
“Unless no one ever found her body. That would send a hell of a message, though, if she just disappeared from under our noses like that.”
I hated to think it, but I had to wonder if one of our own was a turncoat. Fucking heaven help the traitor if they existed or were found out, though. I had no love in my heart for treasonous bastards. But I also had no pleasure in the knowledge that if there was such a person in our group, they’d be torn limb from limb for their transgressions.
Rule one of the brotherhood: you put the group above your own wants, needs, and desires. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of any individual.
“Fuck you for even putting that out there.”
Draco wasn’t the superstitious type, but I’d learned he didn’t like letting the universe have access to the worst ideas. If he didn’t want it to happen, he had a strict rule about not saying it out loud. He’d told me once that as a young man he thought he’d been afflicted by Murphy’s Law and ever since, he’d been paranoid to let out the thoughts that fed into that.
In the years since, he’d realized that it wasn’t a real thing, but he’d taken to the philosophy that voicing things makes a person more likely to make that thing happen. He said you could make things happen based on either conscious or subconscious actions. So, to be safe, he played things close to the vest.
“We’ll find her, brother.” I didn’t doubt it for a second.We would find her.
“I feel like time is fucking running out.” I’d never heard him sound so defeated before. “I’m not anygoddamnedcloser. She just fucking dropped off the face of the planet.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stayed quiet and let him vent.
“If they hurt a damned hair on her head, I’ll kill every one of them.”
I knew he’d do it, too. The bastards were human traffickers. They dealt in anything that would turn a profit; kids, young people, virgins, human organs cut from healthy people that were then left to bleed to death in back alleyways after surgeries performed without pain medication or basic decency.
They were monsters. So we treated them as such. And if that meant bringing out the worst in ourselves when dealing with them, so be it. “You’re not alone.”
“Thanks. So when you coming home?” The home he was referring to was metaphorical, of course. We never stayed in one place long. It was too dangerous. Our headquarters cycled on no particular pattern to help keep us out of the public eye. As for his actual home, he had a place on the outskirts of the city, just like I did.
“When we’ve found her.” That would hopefully give me enough time to get Kat somewhere safer for the long term.
“Okay. Talk to you later, then.” The line went dead in my ear and I turned off the screen and headed back into the cabin toward Kat.
Before I got within the tree line, I decided to make another call. One that she didn’t need to know about. I dialed quickly and waited for my friend to pick up.
“Hey, I need you to do me a favor.” I described what I needed, gave him all the info he needed, and hung up, feeling like at least some things were looking up.
I jogged up the steps into the house and found her in the living room, tears in her eyes and gritty determination in the set of her jaw.
Damn. I didn’t know the first thing to say to a crying woman. First, human dragon relationships are somewhat rare. Sure, we’ll find relief in the arms of a beautiful woman, but the actual emotional wellbeing of a human is beyond the scope of my knowledge. Still, I couldn’t just ignore her suffering. So I walked in and sat next to her on the couch.
She’d curled herself into a little ball with her knees almost to her chest and her arms around her legs as she sat upright, staring out the window. I watched her rest her chin on her knees and tried to figure out what to say.
“You know,” I said, noticing how carefully she was avoiding looking my direction. “It’s not over until it’s over.”
She exhaled and curled a little tighter into herself.
“You know, I had a cat once.” I thought about my beloved pet. “She was the cutest little white ball of fluff and love. I’d let her chase string and tease her with feathers and those tall, weed grass things.”
