Page 10 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

It should have helped. Should have eased the knot under my ribs. Instead, it only sharpened the reminder: Violet was still out there. Every second I sat here was another second wasted.

I wasn’t built for silence. For obedience. But if biting my tongue bought me time, if it kept her alive, I’d choke on it until my teeth cracked.

Nikolai smiled at Maddy, and nodded. “Yes, we are being nice. I was just about to ask Sully to show her up to her room. Perhaps you would like to accompany them?”

Maddy giggled and clapped her hands. “Of course I do! Come on, Stella, let’s go! I’ve made sure everything is ready for you.”

I stood slowly and plastered a smile on my face.

This girl was… a lot. But I couldn’t let my frustration show.

It wasn’t her fault. I was sure she was lovely, but there was just so much coming at me all at once; it was hard to process it all.

“Lead the way, please. A bed sounds great right now.” I hoped my tone came across as relieved, and not annoyed.

Sully and Maddy led me up the stairs and to the bedroom Nikolai had described, Maddy chattering all the way.

Sully opened the door and stepped back, motioning me to enter.

I crossed the threshold slowly, scanning out of instinct before I let myself breathe.

It was simple. Back corner of the house, just how I would’ve chosen it.

Fewer shared walls. Fewer surprises. The window faced the tree line, and my stomach twisted the moment I saw it.

Thirty yards of open ground. Maybe more.

No cover. No slope. Just a sprint to nowhere.

The room itself was clean and clinical. A bed against the far wall with a black quilt folded tight.

White sheets. A plain desk beneath the window.

A dresser I could inventory in thirty seconds flat.

The air smelled faintly of cedar and disinfectant, like someone had wiped the place down to make sure it smelled like nothing at all. Neutral. Erased.

Then I turned and saw the deadbolt—installed from the inside.

Something within me stilled.

I stared at it longer than I should have, trying to decide if it was meant to reassure me… or warn me. They weren’t worried about me getting out.

They were worried about something getting in.

Sully caught my expression and, instead of pointing it out, let out a low whistle like he’d just uncovered a scandal worth gossiping about.

With an exaggerated sweep of his arm, he crossed to the bed and dropped a soft canvas tote on the corner, patting it with the flair of a man presenting a trophy.

“Courtesy of Maddy,” he announced, giving the bag a quick fingertip drumroll before jerking his chin toward the woman behind him.

“She packed this up herself—clothes, toiletries, snacks. Girl practically forced me to raid half of Target to make sure you’d be set.

She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She may be small, but she can be scary when toiletries are involved.

If she could’ve fit a weighted blanket and a therapy dog in here, she would’ve. ”

Maddy laughed, entering the room and giving Sully a light slap. “Oh, stop it, you. Stella, if I forgot anything, or if there is anything you think of that you need, please reach out. I’ll make sure these big dummies pick out the right stuff, okay? Your shopping needs are safe with me.”

I didn’t respond right away. Not out of rudeness, but because the idea of someone I didn’t know packing a bag for me—guessing at what I might need, what I might wear, what I might want when I was alone and scared—touched something in me I wasn’t ready to look at yet.

I moved toward the window instead, redirecting my focus, because survival depended on where I put my attention.

The latch was newer than the frame. Installed recently. Tight and secure, no give when I pressed my fingers against it. The glass was thick, maybe double-paned. I didn’t test it yet. Didn’t need to. I’d already assumed it wouldn’t break easily.

I checked the angles. Sight lines. Whether anyone could see in. Whether I could see out.

Beyond the window, the tree line waited like a dare.

The thirty-yard stretch between the house and the woods felt longer the more I stared at it. No fence. No trip wires. Nothing was visible, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Sully moved toward the door and paused. “You’re free to move around the house,” he said, gentler this time. “Kitchen’s stocked. Bathroom’s yours. You can go where you like, just not outside alone. Not until Niko gives the all-clear.”

I turned toward him, suspicion slipping out sharper than I intended. “Why? What’s waiting out there?”

His expression softened, but the honesty cut sharper than any warning. “That’s the problem,” he said quietly. “We don’t know who’s watching. Could be nobody. Could be the wrong somebody. Until we’re sure, you stay inside.”

The words landed harder than I expected. Not a comfort, not a lie. Just unvarnished truth.

Maddy followed Sully towards the door, but gave me a big grin. “Hey, I know that the reason all of us are here is really scary, but I’m really happy to meet you. I think we’re going to get along really well. Now, you get some rest, okay? If you need anything, my bedroom is just down the hall.”

I thanked her quietly, and Sully pulled the door mostly closed behind him, leaving me in the center of a room that wasn’t mine, with a stranger’s bag on the bed and a lock on the inside I hadn’t asked for but already knew I’d use.

I wasn’t here by choice. But I wasn’t entirely trapped either. Not yet.

The quiet wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t comforting. It pressed in—constructed, deliberate. Like air in a place that watched back. It clung to my skin like humidity, trailing down my spine like it had opinions about me being here.

I stayed still a beat too long, caught in a moment of strange hesitation.

It wasn’t the quiet that got to me. It was the effort they’d obviously made to make me feel comfortable.

The neatly folded blanket. The unopened water bottle, placed just within reach.

A space arranged with care by someone who hadn’t asked what I needed.

Kindness like that never landed right. It didn’t sink in.

It hovered, soft and weightless, like a label I hadn’t earned.

I didn’t trust comfort that came uninvited.

So I moved. Not because I had to, but because something under my skin insisted I couldn’t stay still.

Unease hummed through me, subtle but constant, driving each step with a little too much control.

My breath caught high in my chest. My palms itched.

I didn’t know what I was searching for, only that I couldn’t sit there pretending comfort didn’t feel like surveillance dressed in civility.

At the door, I pressed my ear to the wood and closed my eyes like it might sharpen the rest of my senses.

I wasn’t listening for danger, exactly. I was listening for life, for the creak of a chair, the sigh of a floorboard, a cough, a laugh, something to prove the house wasn’t just a shell built to observe.

But there was nothing.

No voices. No movement. Just stillness. The kind that didn’t soothe but studied, like the house was holding its breath, waiting to see what I’d do next. I cracked the door an inch and scanned the hall. Everything was quiet and still.

But it was the wrong kind of stillness. Not rest. Restraint. Like someone had hit pause and stepped just out of frame, waiting to see which version of me would show up now.

I leaned out farther, holding my breath like I was on a wiretap, straining for the world below. There—a laugh. Low. Too short to be real. A boot on tile. The soft clink of metal. Someone was washing a glass.

That’s when I heard it. Footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Even. A rhythm too controlled to be careless.

Then a low mutter, almost under their breath. Too quiet to make out the words, but the voice was unmistakable. Jax.

The recognition hit deeper than instinct and sharper than logic. My body had registered him long before my mind caught up. The cadence of his steps, the measured air around him, the quiet calculation in everything he did. It all fit. He did not need to raise his voice to be heard.

Of course it was him. The one who had not spoken all day was the one pulling strings now. Silent, exacting, unsettlingly in control. His presence did not announce itself. It seeped through the air, deliberate enough to make me wonder if this was a test, and if I had already failed.

No retreat. No footsteps now. Just his presence, heavy on the other side of the door, daring me to open it.

I stood there feeling hollow, caught between instinct and silence, facing a man who was nothing to me, yet already in the way. A man I didn’t know, and, more dangerously, one I didn’t yet know how to stop if he blocked me from my sister.

I could scream. I could open the door and demand answers. I could throw the bolt and pretend that made me safe.

I did none of those things.

I waited, like prey, like a girl in a horror movie who knows better but can’t make her legs move.

After what felt like a full minute, though it was probably less than fifteen seconds, the breath outside the door vanished.

I heard him walking away. Calm. Unhurried.

Like the whole thing had gone exactly the way he intended.

And maybe it had.

The footsteps faded down the hall, and I let out a breath that felt jagged. My hands stung from how hard I had pressed my nails into my palms, half-moon grooves stamped into skin. My chest burned from holding still too long, like I had welded myself in place and forgotten how to move.

I hated that. Hated the way my body betrayed me, freezing while some stranger walked by. Jax hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t done a thing beyond being there. And still, I’d come apart in the silence, fear pulling at me seam by seam until I barely recognized myself.

That wasn’t me. I could shape steel, bend fire, twist metal into something solid and whole. But right now I was brittle, fragile, and already splintering in a house where I could not afford to crack. Because if I broke, my sister broke with me.

The second I was alone again, the room changed.

It wasn’t the lighting, and it wasn’t the temperature.

Whatever had shifted settled deeper than that.

Subtle as breath, but more intimate. The air pressed against my skin with a familiarity that felt sentient, like it had memorized the shape of me, the rhythm of my thoughts, the tension in my spine.

The door stayed closed, the bolt untouched, yet something stirred beneath it all; a pull that curled under my ribs, old and restless, like a song I couldn’t forget no matter how long I’d tried.

I moved. Not fast, but with purpose. Standing still made me feel like prey.

Motion helped. Cataloging helped. Breaking things into tasks helped.

The closet was shallow. Just a few hangers and a folded blanket above.

No clutter. No missed details. I didn’t touch anything.

Not out of fear, but because I didn’t trust it.

I crossed the room slowly, counting steps, re-orienting. If the walls were going to close in, I needed to know which direction to run. I wasn’t planning a midnight escape. Not yet. But I’d survived too much to ignore the instinct to prepare.

I approached the window again, not to check it, but because sometimes control means rechecking the lock you already know won’t budge. The alternative was admitting nothing about this place would.

I scanned the view—thirty yards of open ground before the tree line.

A single camera, angled too perfectly to be coincidence.

No cover. No freedom. Just a flawless kill-box if someone decided I wasn’t worth protecting anymore.

I didn’t need to touch the glass to know it was reinforced, sealed tight to trap the quiet in and the world out.

It was never an exit. Just another boundary pretending to be one.

I stepped back slowly. No false hope. No soft edges. If I wanted out, it wouldn’t be clean. I’d have to go through someone. Or with someone. And somehow, that scared me more than the glass.

I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I didn’t know what lay beyond the trees or how far this compound stretched. I didn’t just need escape, I needed access. A phone. A car. A signal.

And I needed Violet.

The second her name crossed my mind, the ache sharpened.

If I could make it to a road, I could find help.

If I could find help, I could get her out.

That was always the plan. The thought that kept me alive when everything else gave out: keep moving, don’t pause, don’t let hesitation sink its teeth in.

But now, I had. Not because I was afraid.

Not because I couldn’t. Because some dark, traitorous part of me didn’t want to.

Not yet. Not before I understood what I’d be walking away from.

What these men were really capable of. Who Jax was, and why being near him felt like standing under a spotlight I hadn’t agreed to step into.

I turned from the window and sat on the edge of the bed, pulse thudding at the base of my throat. My hands twitched in my lap. The window was latched, but it had never been an exit, just a barrier dressed like one, polished and see-through, pretending not to be a wall.

I needed a plan, and I didn’t have one.

The darkness outside sank deeper, filling the room with a heavy kind of quiet. The house seemed to change with it, breathing in a slower rhythm, as though night gave it permission to stir.

I didn’t turn on the lamp. Darkness settled in, slow and steady, climbing the walls like it belonged there. I stayed upright, spine locked, body rigid in the posture of control, but inside something shifted. Not strategy. Not survival. Something older. Instinct.

My eyes flicked back to the window before I could stop them, and I froze, breath catching.

He was there. Jax. A faint glow from some sort of screen marked his place at the tree line, a steady glow in the dark. He wasn’t pacing. Wasn’t fidgeting. Just still, like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. He didn’t look like a guard on duty, but he didn’t look casual either.

Not a threat. Not a welcome. Just a reminder.

I hadn’t left the perimeter. I’d been folded into it, a cage disguised as shelter.