Page 29

TWENTY

Killian

I hadn’t slept all night, and I was now hunched over my laptop, working on one of my mainstream cases that didn’t—so far—include murder, mayhem, or men trading in flesh.

I managed a shower when I knew Jamie was more unconscious than asleep, but I hadn’t shifted from the counter in the kitchen since then.

I was close enough to the coffee to keep going and had a full view of the door.

The city beyond the window buzzed, a mix of neon and horn-blare static, but none of it reached me in my apartment. Not really.

The building Jamie had gone to had been empty.

There had been no fire. Not yet. But I knew he’d gone there to burn something down.

Thank fuck Caleb had planted a tracker on him—the same one he used for all of us, apparently.

I barely remembered parking next to Caleb’s bike in the shadows at the back of the building.

He’d been waiting for me, and we had smelled it.

Smoke. I had forced my way through the gap in the door.

Flames had been blooming in the hallway, dancing up drywall, chasing shadows. And somewhere through it?—

A violent crash and a shout.

“Jamie!” I’d roared, diving through the smoke, ignoring the sting in my eyes, the way heat had clawed at my skin.

I hadn’t been able to see him. I’d only been able to hear him.

The heat had been choking, visibility near zero, smoke clawing at my throat.

I had seen a gap ahead—not much of one, but just enough.

Caleb had grabbed my arm, shouting something I couldn’t make out over the roar.

I had shaken him off hard, lungs screaming, heart pounding.

And then, I’d jumped through the gap.

The fire had curled around the edges of the hallway, as if it wanted to swallow me whole, but I’d pushed forward, my jacket pulled over my mouth, my eyes burning.

A beam had groaned and crashed behind me.

I’d ducked and stumbled, but kept going.

My ears had rung. The air had been a furnace.

My body had reacted on instinct, driven by one thought: Jamie.

Then—there. Blood on his shirt, soot streaking his jaw. He’d looked up as if he hadn’t believed I was real, and laughed. He’d goddamned laughed!

“She’s fucking beautiful!” he’d said as if it was some religious experience, as I’d reached him and scooped him up into my arms. The gap in the flames I’d used was gone, blocked by a fresh wave of fire licking up the walls like it had been waiting for us.

I turned in a circle, coughing, my eyes burning, searching for another way out.

Jamie sagged against me, only half-conscious, and I could feel how hot his skin was through my shirt.

Then, a beam above us groaned—loud, warping, screaming with heat—and crashed to the floor behind us, punching a hole through what looked like a storage room wall. Dust and smoke burst out, and we had a path for a brief second.

I saw Caleb’s silhouette in the haze.

“Caleb!” I shouted, and he’d reached through the space, yanked me, and we staggered through the gap, Jamie in my arms, the broken wall giving way to clear air.

Caleb met us at the threshold, pulled open what was left of a service door, and we stumbled into the alley together.

As soon as we crossed the line into the open air, Jamie collapsed in my grip, and I dropped to my knees with him.

We’d made it. Barely. But we had.

And we’d left before the sirens or anyone saw us, but still…

I’d lost one of my nine lives, more because Jamie had nearly died as well, plus now Caleb was pissed at me, as well he should be. I’d jeopardized everything by being there. All the names on our board would stay there for Caleb, Sonya, and Levi to deal with.

And now I was sitting in my kitchen and, even though the adrenaline had worn off hours ago, I was still wired.

I wiped the counter for the fourth time and stared at the empty cup in front of me.

Jamie was asleep, if you could call it that—out cold in the bedroom, half-mummified in bandages, breathing shallow but steady.

When the knock came, I walked to the door and opened it.

Caleb stepped inside without a word. He was a big guy, taller than me by a hair, broader in the chest, and he walked in with a tightness I recognized.

Watching him was like staring at a lit fuse—tense, humming, seconds from detonation—but somehow, he kept it all locked down, and that made me feel more guilty than if he’d yelled .

He was holding himself together by a thread.

He dropped onto the stool at the counter, elbows braced on the surface, and ran a hand through his hair but didn’t say a word.

I turned to the coffee machine and started grinding beans.

The hum filled the silence. The click of the scoop, the hiss of the kettle.

My hands worked on autopilot, and I followed muscle memory, placing a mug in front of him without asking.

Black, strong, bitter. Within five minutes Sonya and Levi had arrived, and I made sure the doors between the kitchen and Jamie were shut tight.

He might still be comatose, but what if he woke up right now when I knew I was about to have my ass handed to me.

Levi leaned on the counter, Sonya sank to a stool, both were quiet. Caleb picked up his coffee, staring into it as if the answers might be swirling somewhere in the steam. For a second, I thought maybe no one would say anything. That maybe, miraculously, I’d get a free pass.

Then Caleb began: “What the hell was that last night?”

What could I say? I’d seen the fire, heard the crash, and the scream, and I’d gone in. That wasn’t a strategy. That wasn’t the job. That was me—raw, reckless, desperate .

Caleb didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His restraint was louder than a scream, and it made my chest ache. That calm, measured fury of his—it was worse than shouting.

“You don’t do that. You know the rules,” he added.

I nodded, knowing I deserved this. If things were changing, if Jamie being in our lives meant that I was reckless, then Caleb was right to call me on it.

“The deal is that you keep your front-facing persona,” Levi interjected. “You stay the clean one. The lawyer. The guy who plays by the rules while the rest of us work in the shadows. That’s the whole point of you .”

Still, I said nothing.

Caleb set the mug down. “You threw yourself into a fucking fire. What would’ve happened if you’d gotten hurt? If Jamie had died after lighting his own goddamn funeral pyre, and you ended up front and center on every news report? You think our secrets would’ve stayed buried then?”

I didn’t flinch, but his sharp words hit their mark.

“Do you get it, Killian? If you go down like that—reckless, visible—it all unravels. Me. Sonya. Levi. Everything. ”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. My voice felt like gravel. “He was going to die.”

Caleb stared at me for a long moment, tension tightening his jaw.

“Then, next time you leave it to me, you send someone who isn’t the fucking linchpin.

A security cam or a medic with a camera phone, and you’re headline news.

They start digging into you, and we don’t just lose the team—we lose everything we’ve done so far. ”

He gestured toward the closed bedroom door. “So tell me something, and don’t lie. Did you cross the line for a civilian in danger… or something more? Because we deserve to know, Killian.”

I looked down at my hands, which were curled around the edge of the counter. I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t want to, but because, maybe, I didn’t know myself.

Caleb’s expression didn’t change, but his tone shifted—low, grave, final.

“You don’t get to be reckless.” He waited a beat, then leaned forward, voice even quieter now, every word deliberate.

“You’re attracted to an ex-con, Killian.

Worse—someone who’s clearly out of control. What the fuck are you thinking?”

My throat was dry. I tried to speak, failed, and tried again. “I didn’t plan this. ”

“No, but you didn’t stop it either.”

He wasn’t wrong. And that made it worse. Silence settled between us again. He picked up the coffee. Took a long sip.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and he rolled his eyes.

Levi huffed in exasperation. “‘Sorry’ implies you won’t do it again, and we get Redcars means something to you, but this Jamie thing…”

“Jamie is… he… fuck, I don’t know.” I slumped onto the stool on the other side of the counter.

Then, it was back to Caleb. “If this is more than fucking, if this is enough to have you walking into a fire that he set, then you’ll never be able to keep him a secret part of your life. He’s compromising your control and your disguise because he’s uncontrolled and a threat to all of us.”

“What are you saying?”

“Ditch Redcars, ditch Jamie, do your thing the right way.”

“And what if I can’t?”

“You mean what if you won’t?”

“Maybe I do mean that. Tudor and Redcars gave me a second chance, made me see myself as something better than I was. I owe them for that.”

“As a lawyer who can help out every so often, not fucking one of the ex-cons with their dubious pasts and ties to gangs and sealed fucking juvenile records!”

“I’ll control Jamie?—”

Caleb snorted. How will you control him?”

“He listens to me?—”

“You gonna take away his matches?”

“Fuck you, Caleb!”

“No, fuck you for messing this up by not thinking. Are you stupid?” Caleb rounded on me as he spoke, his hands in fists, but Levi stopped him with a firm grip, and Caleb backed off.

This wasn’t who we were. We were a team—united, focused, built on trust. We had each other’s backs, worked toward the same goal.

We didn’t fall apart like this. We didn’t turn on each other.

Everyone fell quiet, but it was Caleb, with his brutal honesty, who laid everything on the table.

“If you get in trouble, it’s the end of our team and the list. Using what we found, taking people down the legal way needs you out there clean as a fucking whistle, not getting your rocks off with some random ex con. ”

“Caleb—”

“We don’t take the bad people out by killing; we do it the right way!”

“I never signed up for murder,” Sonya interjected.

“You say that, Son, but we all agreed to give what we knew to Redcars so they could take out John Mitchell,” I said.

She blanched and shook her head, “That’s not fair, Killian.”

“Life isn’t fair, Sonya,” I said.

Caleb shrugged off Levi’s hold and stood between us. “Don’t you fucking dare turn on us, asshole!”

“We’re accessories to murder, already. You don’t think some of what we’ve found and leaked hasn’t led to some of the perpetrators committing suicide? Aren’t we complicit in their deaths?” I was on a roll, but I knew in my heart none of it made sense. What the fuck was I saying?

Sonya crossed her arms and fixed me with a look that could melt steel.

“You want to play both sides, Killian? Then own it. Don’t come at us with half-baked moral outrage, then justify dragging an unstable man out of a fire you knew he started.

You act like you’re the only one with skin in this game, but we all bleed for this team. You fuck up, and we all burn with you.”

I opened my mouth, but she wasn’t finished.

“You think you’re the only one who’s been tempted to cross lines? The rest of us didn’t just magically grow a conscience. We make choices. Every damn day. And yes there is a side of me that feels guilt, but you know that Jamie would have found John Mitchell if he’s as good as you say he is.”

“I’m sorry?—”

“Don’t interrupt me!” she snapped. “If you want the team to survive, you better start remembering that your actions don’t just affect you.”

Regret flooded me. “I know. Shit, I didn’t mean that, Son, I’m sorry. I don’t know where my head’s at.” I peered past Caleb to see her expression.

She closed her eyes briefly and nodded. “It’s okay,” she said.

But it wasn’t okay.

What would my life be like without the team? I was the vigilante dressed in three thousand-dollar suits to fool everyone; I had my place with the team. We did good things, but Jamie…

“I couldn’t let anyone burn,” I defended one last time.

Caleb sighed. “Not even if they were the one who started the fire?”

“There’s something there, a connection, to the old me.

” The one who’d thrived on chaos and fire, who hadn’t just hurt people, but had killed a man and never looked back until the guilt had finally found its teeth.

That raw, violent part of me that used to claw its way to the surface when I felt cornered, helpless, or angry.

I saw it in Jamie—in the way he chased destruction because it was the only thing that made sense in a senseless world.

I recognized the need to prove something.

To punish. To be the one in control of the pain.

And Caleb saw it too. “You promised us you could lock those parts of you down,” he said, the weight in his voice impossible to ignore. “The whole point of the team is to find legitimate ways to take the bad guys down.”

I nodded once, throat tight. “I know.”

And for the first time, Caleb didn’t argue. He drank his coffee and kept watch, as if daring me to figure it out before the next storm hit.

Sonya exhaled sharply, her voice lower now. “I don’t even get why it has to be him,” she muttered.

“Jamie?” I asked, and she nodded. “There’s something about him, and it scares the shit out of me because I can’t explain why.”

Caleb let out a breath, and Levi stared hard at the floor, as if he didn’t want to admit he had an opinion. But the silence was confirmation enough. No one could quite understand why Jamie got under my skin. He just did.

Sonya shook her head and stood, brushing her palms on her jeans as if she was ridding herself of something she couldn’t name. “I need air.”

Caleb followed her out without another word.

Levi hesitated at the threshold. Then turned back to me, his voice low. “You want to be with him, that’s your business, unless it takes down the team with you. Don’t be stupid, Killian.”

“I would never endanger any of you?—”

“But that is what you’re doing.”

He pulled the door shut, and I stared at the wood, hurt, worried, and stressed.

Now what?

Well, fuck, that would be Rio turning up in reception and demanding to see me. I buzzed him up.

This wasn’t going to go well.