I pace up and down the aisle of the Saint James private jet. I’m not good at being stuck in confined spaces at the best of times, but right now, it’s like I’m climbing out of my skin.
She’s been gone for too fucking long, and each minute that ticks away without her in my arms brings more panic. The bugs beneath my skin are running rampant, and the only thing I can do to settle them is drag my favorite knife up and down my arm, relishing in the feel of the blade against my skin.
But even this isn’t bringing me the calm it normally does. Probably because it’s the same knife I used to cut Clara last week. The one that made her bleed so prettily for me.
“Tommy?” Ace says from his spot in the corner. He has two laptops open, and up until now, he’s been typing furiously on one or the other since we took off. “You need to sit down. I can’t focus with all the pacing.”
I roll my eyes and collapse in the seat across from him. It’s strange, him being here, like my two lives are clashing for the first time, but he insisted on coming with us. The guilt he harbors is too much for him to allow me to do this on my own, the same way I always swore I wouldn’t let him go alone when he eventually found our foster sister. But he never did. Like she disappeared off the face of the planet, there was never a trace of her after her sixteenth birthday.
We promised we would go back for her once we had our lives set up. But it took longer than we would have liked and by the time we could, she was gone. We were too late.
“Have you found us a way into the compound yet?”
He shakes his head. “Their security system is next level. Everett thinks he’s getting close, but we won’t know until we try to take it down, and even then, it will only be down for a minute at most.”
The look on Everett’s face when Storm told him he was being left behind was priceless, and normally I would have got great joy out of one of my best friends looking so irritated, but he seemed to be relieved Ace was coming. The two of them have some kind of unspoken hacker bond, and although they are likely on different sides most of the time, in this, they trust one another.
I drop my knife onto the tray beside me, droplets of my own blood clinging to the blade. I’m trying not to think about the fact that someone else may be making my woman bleed, that her blood may be enjoyed by another. Because those are the thoughts that will make me blow this entire mission.
The pilot announces that we’re a few minutes from landing and everyone takes their seats.
I’m coming for you, fawn.
