Stone

The cops have been sticking close to her. So close it would be impossible to miss them. Do they think I’m blind? Once I let them glimpse me outside a pep rally and took a couple of uniforms for a two-hour chase only to lead them back, finally losing them right outside the school where we started.

Hey, I have to get my amusement somewhere.

Because nothing else about this situation is funny.

I have taken Brooke hostage many times, but none of them like this. None where I know I love her. None where I know I have to break her.

Her fancy private school puts serious limitations on how far the cops can encroach on the property, though.

The school has its own security, of course. Lots of cameras, alarms, and locks. There’s exactly one entrance, and it involves two doors and a watchful woman in an office who decides whether you get buzzed in.

It would’ve been easy enough to grab her using the crew, but I needed to do it myself. She’s mine.

I watched the place for a long time until I found the weak link in the security—the custodian taking out trash after lunch. He’s alone, vulnerable. Easy prey for somebody who might want to tie him up and take his keys and uniform.

I blended in easily enough with a beige janitor’s uniform and a cartful of supplies, pushing slowly through the sea of plaid skirts and starched, button-down shirts. A few of the girls straightened up and touched their hair when they saw my face, their cheeks turning flushed, their bodies alive with hormones I could smell from where I stood.

I kept my head down. Not interested. Never been interested in anyone beyond my crew.

Until Brooke.

I’ve had her schedule and the school layout for some time now, courtesy of Knox’s hacking skills; I knew she was in social studies fifth hour. Room 501. I headed down the corridor with my cart and slipped into the supply closet, the next door down. I texted her from a burner phone, perfectly untraceable.

I knew the cops would be pulling records on everything incoming, but it takes a while to run numbers, separate the horny teenage boys from the dangerous predators.

At first I wasn’t sure if she was going to bite. All I heard was the teacher, droning on. Finally her sweet voice rang out, asking to go to the bathroom.

A male voice. “Take the hall pass.” Harried. Distracted.

I cracked the closet door, listening to her squeaky patent leather shoes broadcast her slow and uncertain progress down the hall. Quick as a flash, I reached out and clapped a hand over her mouth, capturing her sound of surprise in my palm. Looked into her frightened eyes for just a second before dragging her inside.

And now I have her. “Quiet.”

Her breath feels warm against my hand. She nods. Reluctantly I pull away, knowing she won’t scream.

“How did you get in here?” she asks.

“Walked in the door,” I tell her, because no one fucking knows what to look for. I can only imagine what ridiculous description they have circulating. Violent criminal. A maniac. Deranged. No one expects a man with a regular haircut and a polite fucking smile.

“They’re looking for you,” she says, almost breathless with it. “They’ve been following me. Watching from the house next door. You have to be careful.”

So concerned and worried. I almost want to laugh, considering how bad I’ll have to scare her before the day is done. “I’m careful.”

There’s something hanging from her hand. I take it from her, this laminated piece of plastic with a piece of string tied to the end. St. Mary’s Hall Pass, it says. So official-looking. So goddamn adorable. Jesus.

“What’s social studies?” I ask her.

She looks bewildered in the dim light from a single bulb. “What?”

“Social studies. What’s it for? I know about math. Reading.” None of us had a regular education, and definitely not any high school. I don’t remember much beyond adding numbers and writing letters. Grayson went on to get his GED. Knox is a fucking genius, knows more than they could teach in school. Nate graduated from college and now he’s a bona fide vet. All my guys have made themselves smarter, but not me. I’ve just made myself harder.

“Oh,” she says, like it’s a normal question. Like it’s a normal thing not to understand how school works. “It’s about society. A little bit of history, a little bit of geography. But also government.”

That all sounds useless to me, but I guess that’s because I’m not smart like her. I squeeze the little zip pouch around her shoulder, feeling the contents. “Where’s your phone? It’s not in here.”

She shakes her head. “I left it there. I didn’t want them to find you.”

Protecting a guy like me. I suppose she’ll regret it soon enough.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say, tossing the fancy little hall pass into the trash bin.

* * *

She’s quiet most of the way over, aside from updating me on her conversations with the detective. Does she know she’s in trouble? Sometimes people act calm and try to have normal conversations when they know they’re in trouble. I pretend to be interested. Like that’s my main concern in all this and not the fact that she knows the identity of Keeper.

And that I have to get it out of her.

I think she senses something off with me. We’re in tune with each other in a way I never have been with my brothers. In tune in a way I can’t think about too hard.

She stiffens as the modern apartment buildings and boutique shops give way to trashed apartment complexes and payday loan places, and finally the vacant lots and boarded-up buildings deep in South Franklin City.

“Where are we going?” she asks, eyes wide.

“Home.”

“Wow. You take Gedney Drive,” she marvels.

I suppress a smile. She thinks I’m using the notorious Gedney Drive to cross the city, to get to the other side, something her kind would never do, even though it’s the shortest route to the lake suburbs.

Her lips part as I take a turn around the hulking behemoth that is the Bradford, as I pass its windows, long since covered over with graffiti-sprayed boards.

“Where are we…” The question dies on her lips as I nose the car through the slit in the chain-link fence, as the yawning gap appears in front of us.

I flip on the headlights and navigate down into the basement garage.

“What is this place?”

“Never seen a garage before?” I get this twinge of guilt, giving her a surly answer.

But I need to stay remote. I need it for me. And she needs to understand that things are different now. Serious.

“I never saw a place like this. I mean, down here…I never imagined…” She can’t understand how there could be such expensive rides down below an abandoned hotel—way nicer than even what her daddy can afford. “Are these…”

“Stolen?” I pull in next to Calder’s vintage Mustang, supplying the word she’s too polite to voice. Knox isn’t the only one with nice-ass cars. “Nah. They’re bought. Cash. Don’t let anybody tell you crime doesn’t pay, little bird.”

I let her open her own door and get out on her own, but I stay nice and near in case she tries to run. Not that she’d have anywhere to go.

“Come on.” I lead her past the row of vehicles and into the stairwell. Up we go. I feel her behind me as I hit the code on the door up top, resisting the urge to take her hand, to touch her back, to let her know I give a shit.

I push into the ruined lobby. Leaves and rubble litter the broken tile floor. Sunlight streams through the shattered dome-shaped roof, once a grand atrium.

“This is where you live?” she asks, voice full of dread and wonder.

I find myself wishing I had something nicer to show her. But that’s not what this little jaunt is about. “You like it?” I ask. “I could give you the name of our designer if you want.”

“Don’t,” she says.

I kick a broken crate, feeling like everything’s gone to shit. Dust flies up as the thing knocks into a scrub tree. A few pigeons flap up from a corner, all the way up through a jagged hole and into the blue sky beyond.

She puts a hand over her chest. The pigeons startled her. Fuck.

“You’re okay.” I sling an arm around her. Just an arm. It means nothing. I punch in a code on the far door, and we’re in the cavernous main room, the place where we actually do live.

Knox and Grayson are playing a video game in the corner seating area, but she doesn’t see them right off.

She’s gawking at how fucking tricked out it is.

The floor and walls may be rough old brick and concrete, but the rugs and couches are total uptown shit. The bar area opposite us was imported from Ireland—the wooden contents of an entire old pub they were tearing down. Calder made it happen. He likes the old things.

She may be oblivious to Knox and Grayson kicked back on the couch in front of a massive screen, but they’re not oblivious to her, standing there in her little schoolgirl uniform—the short plaid skirt. The white shirt with some logo that looks like it was designed by the fucking queen of England. And don’t get me started on the knee socks and shiny black shoes. Or the question of what kind of panties she has underneath there.

Yeah, they stopped playing the moment we walked in. They rise as a unit. The game rolls on without them. Fake shit exploding. The world ending because of this one girl.

She still doesn’t see them, even as they stalk around the long group table, past the nook where Calder likes to read.

Knox’s brows knit in confusion. Grayson looks pissed.

I pull her closer. I don’t like them looking at her in her uniform. It’s too fucking sexy. The only women they’ve ever seen in schoolgirl clothes like this have been strippers.

Never the real thing.

She is the most real thing.

I can feel when she sees them, because she squeezes in closer to me, like she thinks I’ll protect her from them. Yeah, right.

It’s me she needs protection from.

Still she squeezes closer. I try to not let it make me feel good. I tell myself she’d cower into the side of Godzilla himself if that’s who was beside her, because Grayson and Knox, they’re definitely a scary pair.

It’s not true, though. She loves me. She fucking loves me, and I love her.

But that can’t matter.

I try to imagine them through her eyes. The way Grayson looks like a goddamn avenging angel. No woman can resist him, but they’re afraid of him too. The violence in him runs too deep not to feel it. And Knox, wearing an emerald-green button-down today. So sharp. Like a goddamn blade.

I can’t put this girl above my guys. I’ve struggled too long for vengeance. And now there are those kids to think about. I need her to give me the answers. Will she understand that?

Grayson’s huge. Seriously built—prison’ll do that to a guy. He’s a looker for sure, but he radiates threat, and that’s the first thing you ever notice. Yeah, time inside definitely hardened him.

Knox has blond hair and blue eyes, but he looks the opposite of wholesome, somehow. He’s sharp as a razor. Bright, cold edges like the tech he loves so much.

“Who’s this?” Grayson asks tightly.

“This is Brooke,” I say, though that’s not at all what the fuck he’s asking.

“Hey there,” Knox says to her in that smooth way of his.

“Brooke, this here’s Knox.” I don’t have to tell her who they are to me. Brothers from the basement. I see in her eyes that she gets it.

She steels her spine, chest rising and falling. “How do you do?” she says, holding out her hand.

They both kind of stare. Because, how do you do? Who the fuck says that?

Knox takes her hand and shakes it. “You two on a date here or something?” he asks gruffly. Neither of them will directly challenge me.

“Or something.” I pull her away and up the stairs that lead to the rooms—luxury suites back before this place went to hell.

There are still a few broken chandeliers hanging in the hallway. Weathered carpet still in parts, but it’s clean and dry. The Bradford catered to the elite of the elite before Franklin City went from land of the wealthy to rust-belt hellhole.

Grayson catches up. “Something?”

I give him a look over her head, like, what do you think? “Yeah, something,” I growl.

I see when he gets it. There’s only one thing I care about right now, as far as he’s concerned, and that’s finding and freeing those boys. This is about Keeper.

She’s the lead.

“Okay, then,” he says, still walking alongside of us.

“Got any more questions?” I ask.

“Yeah, you gonna introduce me? I’m Grayson,” he says to her. “Pleased to meet you.”

She smiles up at him, even gives him her hand as we walk. “Hi,” she says, voice hushed. Is she getting that she’s in trouble right about now? Could be. And God, the schoolgirl uniform.

I force my gaze to Grayson. “Later,” I say.

Grayson stops. I guide her onward. Even from this light touch, I can feel the tension in Brooke’s body. Every instinct inside me is screaming to soothe her, to pull her up into my arms and carry her, to whisper that she’s okay. To kiss her soft cheek and let her know I love her. Fucking love her.

Yeah, things couldn’t be more messed up right about now.

“They don’t like guests,” she observes.

“We don’t do guests much.”

We come to my door. You can still see the faint outline of the number five on the polished wood, even though the brass plate is long gone.

I push it open and guide her in, touching the small of her back. She doesn’t need me to show her the way in. But her shirt is soft as heaven under my fingers.

And also, she’s mine.

I remove my hand and let her get her fill of the place, even though it feels wrong not to be touching her when she’s feeling uncertain like she is now. To reassure her.

My suite is simple like the cottage. Things are sturdy and wooden.

The other guys’ rooms, not so much.

Knox has his suite decked out with massive screens and shiny tech. Cruz has a collection of vintage rock guitars and oil paintings that don’t look too different than the graffiti outside if you ask me.

Grayson’s suite is comfortable and welcoming, thanks to Abby. The nicest to be in, though maybe a little girly. We all teased her when she hung bright curtains over the windows, which are covered with double-thick sheet metal. All the windows here are. No good if people on the street see light coming from the Bradford.

Me, I don’t need much. I flip on the bedside lamp, a little wood and metal thing. “Not much of a view, I’m afraid.”

She moves around the space. “It’s…nice.”

I grunt like my heart isn’t jackhammering out of my chest. Like I don’t give a shit whether she likes it. This is a girl raised in a goddamn palace, and here she is in my half-empty room.

“How do you get electricity in here?”

I close the door. “Is that what you really want to ask?”

She turns around, uncertain. What happens now? That’s what she wants to know. The mood isn’t romantic like it was at the cottage, much as I want to flip up that skirt and devour her sweet pussy. Much as I want to make her moan and scream in ecstasy. We have a darker purpose here.

It probably would’ve been better to bring her to the cottage, but I don’t know how this turns out. If it’s anything like everything else in my life, it’ll go to hell, and I want one place to go where all the memories are good. Like a time capsule of something I can never have. That time in the cottage when Brooke looked at me like I was worth something.

She’s wary. “What do I want to ask?”

I go to the bureau and grab a bottle of Macallan. The good shit—older than she is. I pour two glasses. I hand one to her. “Drink.”

“What is it?”

“Scotch.”

“It’s…kind of early.” The sentence tilts up at the end. Almost a question.

I lower my voice. “Drink it.”

She takes a tiny sip. Miserably, I throw mine back. I need it more than she ever will. I pour another. There’s no amount of liquor that can make me hurt her.

“They’re going to be wondering what happened to me,” she says. “They’ll be looking for me.”

“No doubt.” I tip my head at her glass. “Finish it.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“You should,” I say softly.

Wariness shines in her eyes. Finally.

I should feel relieved that she’s starting to get what’s happening, but I just feel a deep, nauseating dread. I’ve had to do a lot of bad things in my life, but I’ve never felt this level of reluctance. Anytime we needed to kill someone, torture someone for information, I would do it. Even when you know that the guy’s a scumbag, it chips off a piece of your soul. I did it so the other guys in my crew wouldn’t have to, because I don’t really have a soul. At least I thought I didn’t. Now there’s Brooke standing in front of me, looking so strong and so vulnerable that I want to kneel at her feet.

“Why do I have to drink it?” she asks.

“Because that’s how this is going to go.”

She peers into the glass. “What if I don’t want to?”

“You want to.”

She raises her gaze to me. The trust still there kills me. “Okay,” she says. God, that trust. I’d take a haughty sneer a million times before this last dying glimmer of trust. Keeping her eyes on me, she swallows it down, then gives me back the glass.

“Good girl.” I pour another.

“I think you should take me back,” she says.

“I will. As soon as you tell me who Keeper is.”