But he’d reached out, squeezed my shoulder, unable to say anything, only giving me that silent show of gratitude before he’d turned and disappeared into Bailey’s room.
If only I could have done more. Ended it this afternoon. Helplessness spun through the space, and I tried to blink away the blinding torment and vengeance possessing me.
Mack had shown up looking every bit the deviant I felt. His anger as deep as mine. The venomous tattoos that screamed death and destruction on his arms coming alive beneath the bristle of his straining muscles.
All my screaming was on the inside. Spirit exploding with fury. Soul shaking with the wrath it pumped into my veins.
I gritted my teeth, doing my best not to lose it right there in the quiet hall. “They fucking rammed us twice, man. It was no accident. Wasn’t even close to being a simple hit and run. It was them. I know it.”
“No shit.” He gripped the longer pieces of his blond hair between both hands. If he tugged any harder, he would have yanked it free.
He dropped his attention to the white-and-gray speckled linoleum floor, like he was reading some hidden message written in the design. “It has to be . . . some kind of fucked-up warning. Otherwise, they would have stayed and finished it.”
Finished it.
His words cut through me.
Daggers and knives.
My back hit the wall, and my head rocked back hard in my frustration. A fresh round of pain splintered through my head when it knocked against the plaster.
I welcomed it.
Let it stoke the fire.
“They could have been hurt. Killed.” Grit and hate. They seethed from my tongue.
Mack swung his attention back up to me. “You sure you didn’t get a good look at them? Anything that I can go on?”
I gave a harsh shake of my head. “Could barely make out two guys. Nothing of their faces. Didn’t get the license, either, but the front of the car was smashed to shit. Not sure how they even drove away.”
Frustrated, he pushed out a sigh, warily looking up at me in his own sort of desperation. “They found it abandoned about a mile outside of town. Wiped clean. It had been reported stolen this morning from Raleigh. Wouldn’t have mattered if you caught the license, anyway.”
“Shit,” I cursed at the floor.
His voice was a harsh murmur, “These guys aren’t fucking immortal. They can’t just disappear. There has to be something. Something I’m missing.”
Didn’t help that the only name I had been able to give Mack had come up as a dead end.
Steven in the ground a few months before Joseph had been killed. Not that I was mourning that piece of shit.
The monster who’d started the entire chain of events.
Forcing me into running that poison for him.
Nothing but a slave.
Shackled.
Every bit as real as the bars I’d found myself behind.
Mack angled his head so he could meet my eye. “I’m going to find these assholes, Jace. I will. I promise you.”
I lifted my chin. “I sure has hell hope so, Mack . . . because you aren’t going to like it if I find them first.”
I wound around him, and he snatched me by the wrist. “Jace, didn’t confide all of this to you to get you hurt.”
Yanking my arm out of his hold, I backed away. “You should know me better than to think I wouldn’t gladly die for them.”
Spinning on my heel, I started down the hall, faltering to a stop when Mack’s grated words hit me from behind. “They killed Joseph, man. Put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
His voice was jagged. Cracked and bleeding. His own regret filling the narrow hall. A plea for me to think twice. “I couldn’t stand it if I let that happen to you.”
I swung back around, my brow twisting so tight I could barely see.
Couldn’t see through the hate.
The devotion.
The protectiveness that wound inside me.
“You, Mack? You didn’t let that happen. I did. Don’t think for a second I’m going to stand aside and let it happen to Faith and Bailey.”
My heart thrashed in my chest. Like it had teeth and claws. Looking for a way out to avenge.
His attention dropped to his boots. “No, I don’t. It’s just . . .” He lifted his gaze. “You have to tell her everything. What he did. What he had himself into.”
“I know.” I took another step back, drawn to the door Bailey was behind. I gulped for the nonexistent air. “I will . . . I promise.”
The selfish part of me wasn’t ready for this. Because I could feel it coming—everything I’d been a fool to think I might be able to keep slipping through my fingers.
My hands fisted.
Tightly.
Because I refused to let go.
Thirty-Two
Jace
Eighteen Years Old
Jace did his best to ignore the way Joseph and Ian had stopped talking the second he’d come out into the living room.