Page 33 of Cruel Revenge (Jacky Leon #12)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I stood in my living room as people found places to sit, unsure of what to do.

Dirk had created a full, second-by-second timeline video of everything that had happened only hours ago.

His work laptop was sitting on the coffee table, a cable reaching between it and the television.

There hadn’t been enough room in the security building for this, not for everyone to see everything.

“Let me know when you want me to begin,” Dirk said, looking over his shoulder at everyone. “There’re multiple angles, and they will come and go as they are relevant, with labels of which camera it is. There is audio, as well…” Dirk trailed off. “It’s not an easy watch.”

“It’s a necessary watch,” Subira said simply, patting Dirk’s shoulder. “Does anyone want to do anything before we watch this?”

No one spoke up, so Subira gestured for Dirk to hit play.

Since the beginning of things going wrong, I had been tunnel visioned on Carey and Courtney, mostly Carey.

They had hidden the smell of the magic from me and the werewolves, but Dirk had gone back in the footage far enough to catch when they cast it.

At three in the morning, well before we would be there.

“I have this footage because the restaurant keeps twenty-four hours of all the recordings, and from there, they would save snippets if they needed it for legal reasons to trespass someone or anything like that,” Dirk explained as the witches worked.

“I hate how they cover their faces,” Subira muttered, shaking her head, the scent of her fury overpowering everyone else’s. “Cowards.”

The time of day quickly changed to when Carey and I arrived, the werewolves right behind us.

I saw Stacy and swallowed, knowing her fate.

I still hadn’t seen Shamus. I was scared of that moment.

There was no apology I could ever give him that would ease his pain.

There was nothing I could do to bring Stacy back.

Carey and I went inside, and while it rolled on us at double speed, the werewolves were in position. I remembered getting at least one of the check-ins over the earpiece, but when Courtney showed up, I didn’t remember any. Minutes after Courtney showed up, though, I saw why.

They went after Benjamin first. They had him at gunpoint the moment they yanked opened the door to grab him.

He was so shocked that anyone had come for him that he barely said anything.

A moment later, a witch pulled up the bottom half of their mask and successfully blew some sort of powder in his face.

From there, it looked like he was struggling to remain conscious as they bound his hands and gagged his mouth.

“Right there…” Dirk pointed at another one of the assailants.

“Watch what he’s doing. He disabled the coms at the same moment.

He had to have. When I got the truck, it had been fully unplugged from the internal battery.

Simple and easy way to cut everything off.

” Dirk’s words sounded hollow, and he looked exhausted.

He needs a break. He’s seen this too many times.

In tandem with grabbing Benjamin, other witches went for those farther away, quickly getting Arlo and Kody with the same powder.

These weren’t wearing masks and wore more casual clothing, easily looking like they belonged in that parking lot like anyone else.

One asked Kody why the restaurant was closed and what they were doing.

He, the polite young man his father had asked him to be, had tried to answer the seemingly confused middle-aged woman.

Arlo was more suspicious, but he leaned in to get a sniff and was met with a face full of powder.

The moment each of them began to go under, other witches started getting closer to secure them.

All the while, the audio played. The witches had been smart to dance around, fully lying about anything to give the boys any reason to believe something was wrong. To this point, it had only been two minutes since Courtney entered the restaurant.

Finally, it was Stacy. She didn’t like seeing someone approach her and started moving toward the truck, finding it suspicious.

She tried the coms once, and when she got no immediate reply, she knew there was a problem.

Stacy took off for the truck, but didn’t see Arlo or Kody since they weren’t on the path.

She saw the black masked witches with Benjamin, struggling to stay conscious, his mouth gagged.

“Fuck. She was the most experienced, and she paid for it…” Landon’s words reminded me that what I was seeing had already happened.

Stacy pulled her sidearm and was able to hit two of them. One was a clean hit, sending a body to the ground. The next hit was an arm.

“She also had to be careful not to hit Benjamin,” Heath said, sighing heavily.

I winced as one more shot rang out and sent Stacy to the ground. I didn’t stop watching.

“And thanks to their spell, no one in the building heard any of that,” Zuri growled softly. “Damn.”

“How did no one call the police over the gunshots at all?” Niko demanded.

“A second layer of sound spells,” Subira explained.

“Yeah, farther out from the building, encompassing most of the surrounding area that wasn’t caught on film.

They had thought this through. They knew they would have to deal with werewolf security at the least. They were prepared to do that and with deadly force.

With how much trouble their codes give us, with how they’ve been so elusive, this level of operation would be done to near perfection.

They’re not here to make easy mistakes.” Heath was trying to remain professional and objective as he explained. It wasn't easy.

“Yet Jacky is alive,” Landon pointed out. “That’s a mistake.”

“My magic made sure that was possible, and no one knows all of what I can do. They can’t plan for my distant influence over events.

” Subira didn’t look away from the television as witches surrounded the building, all the while Carey and I were completely out of the loop, focused on Courtney and her bullshit.

“Jacky survived, and it caused them problems, but they had been so efficient with the werewolves that some missteps, thanks to Jacky and Subira, were nothing they couldn’t account for,” Hasan explained.

“Jabari would say the same thing. This is militant. They planned this for a long time. There were probably more witches ready to mobilize if they needed more numbers.”

“It was all a trap from the beginning, then.” Heath’s silent fuming had everyone standing farther away from him than they ever would have before.

Even Landon had given his father a wide berth, five feet between them, and his son was the closest to him.

While no one could smell his emotions most of the time, I had noticed one thing when he came out of the restaurant earlier, and our eyes had met.

His control wasn’t perfect. I never knew his control over his Talent to falter like it had at that moment.

And the whiff I got was enough to let the pain of his distance become secondary to the necessity of it.

It was magnitudes worse than anything I had smelled from him before.

In my car driving home, I had confirmed with my family if they had also caught it.

When they had said yes, it was with respect and caution.

The man I loved was keeping himself in a pressure cooker of emotion, all so he didn’t do anything that could make the situation worse.

How much of it was directed at me, I didn’t know.

The answer to that question terrified me.

What I also knew was that the answer would come after everything else. That was my comfort.

Dirk had paused when Heath spoke, leaving us all with the cliffhanger of what would keep happening.

When he hit play again, I really listened—Carey’s speech to her biological mother, about me, about our relationship.

“ Jacky is my mom, and when Dad marries her, it’ll finally be official.”

Words that hit too hard, as I choked on things I never got to say to Carey now that she was gone.

Things I had hoped she would know by this time.

That she meant everything to me. She was my whole world, the whole reason I fought for peace that sometimes seemed impossible.

The beginning and end of everything for me.

She wasn’t the daughter of my blood, not the one I brought into the world, but she was my daughter in every way that really mattered.

She owned my heart and soul in a way that would put me against Heath if I had to be.

Hearing those words from her again, I didn’t regret biting her.

Not a single bit. The tears that welled in my eyes had nothing to do with regret or feeling bad for Heath about making the choice.

They were from the fact that I wasn’t with her to know if she survived or not.

I wasn’t there to welcome her to immortality.

It was Subira who reached out to hit the space bar and pause the playback.

“From this day forth, she is not only Carey Everson. She is also Carey, daughter of Jacky, daughter of Subira,” Subira declared softly. “From this day forth, she is as much a member of my family as she is the one she was born to.”

“She would like that,” Landon said softly, turning to his father, clearly directing that at him. “Right, Pa?”

I looked at Heath, his blank face not revealing anything, but he blinked at Landon’s comment, his eyes turning the ice blue of his werewolf form.

“She would,” he finally said, everyone waiting on him. “Let’s finish this. We need to stop dragging this out.”

“It gets worse from here,” Dirk warned.

I knew that all too well.

Now was the moment when I had been certain there was something wrong.

“I should have… smelled her lying better,” I mumbled. “Because she didn’t mean anything she said to Carey about needing a mother or anything.”