“How?”
I had no idea. Locke had sacrificed so much for Logan, their sacred bond deeper than even Cam and Rubi’s. How did I protect that? How did I protecteverythingthat made Locke the man he was while he wasn’t here to do it himself?
Figure it out.
Wise words from my subconscious. Empty words without a plan, but as I turned it over in my head, a new determination stole over me.
Cam believed Locke was alive, and beneath the terror strangling my heart in a wicked vice, so did I. I believed that whatever happened, he was coming home to us and that when he did, it would be to a world where this could never happen again.
My brother had returned to his pot on the stove, his face obscured by shadow again.
“Cam?”
“Hmm?”
“Can you promise me something?”
He turned his head, his eyes finding mine in the dark. “What?”
“When you find him.Priest. Take him alive and bring him to me.”
5
LOCKE
I was still annoyed about my boots. And the eyes? They belonged to Viktor, the Russian mobster who’d been missing since the beginning of summer.
Cloaked in patchy darkness, I crawled across the space we’d been dumped in until the next mystery journey. An industrial storage unit that felt familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe hostage nostalgia was getting the better of me. Either way, if the last few days—weeks, maybe—were anything to go by, wherever we were, we wouldn’t be here long before we were treated to another violent van ride. A walk in the woods. A beating in a room that smelled of blood and death. And sometimes guitars and marshmallows, cos that’s how reliable my brain was right now. At this point, I had no fuckin’ clue about anything, save the fact that my shoulder throbbed like a bitch.
I reached out with my good arm, pressing my fist to Viktor’s sternum, hard, even though I knew it hurt him. “Still with me?”
Viktor groaned.
Good enough.
Then his eyes flickered open.
Better.
I waited for him to focus, checking his vitals as much as I could in the dark. Helping him drink. Sharing the scraps of food we got tossed every now and again. The injuries I’d catalogued since whenever I’d first wriggled my giant self into his space weren’t life-threatening, but he was tired. If I didn’t pour the water into his mouth, there was a chance he wouldn’t bother. And then he’d die, and I’d be alone.
Fuck that. I’d spent enough time in holes like this to know there was nothing worse. Besides, keeping him alive gave me something to focus on that wasn’t my own fuckin’ fate, and maybe today was the day I’d get a coherent sentence out of him.
Conversation.
I missed it.
You miss them more.
Nash and Orla.
My kids.
Logan.
Hell, at this point, I missed Kara too, though thinking about the bollocking she was going to give me if I ever got out of this pit was enough to make me shiver.
Viktor was done drinking.