FRACTURED (28 page)

“Well, he sure as hell didn't let you talk because you were helping matters, Ruby,” Cooper quipped. “You practically invited him over to start a war.”

“He'd lose,” I said unconvincingly.

“Hopefully he won't live long enough for us to find out.”

Beckett eyed me curiously for a moment until I snapped under the weight of his gaze.

“
What
? Why are you staring at me?”

“You were angry,” he said plainly, as if detached from my response.

He was so bizarre at times. “Why?”

“
Why
? Because I may not fully get you guys just yet, but I know one thing. You are
so
not being handed over to that twatwaffle. Not on my watch.” I was fuming and wasn't certain as to why. The boys were odd and still somewhat unfamiliar, but they belonged to Cooper and me. If we wanted to kill them, fine, but nobody else was going to do it. Not without an epic battle. I may not have had Scarlet's ass-kicking powers, but I could still run my mouth like the best of them. I'd worry about getting Sean to cash that check for me later.

Without another word, Beckett walked over to me cautiously and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. He hugged me―tightly. Then slowly, the others came and did the same. I was in a group lovefest, UK

werewolf style.

“Enough,” Cooper sighed. “We have things to do. The four of us need to get back and make like things are relatively normal. Ruby, you stay here.”

“Be careful,” I told him, walking over to wrap my arms around his waist. “I'd be lost without your cooking, your sarcasm...”

“My incredible good looks,” he added with flair.

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn't see them.

“Yes, those too.”

He pulled away to look me in the eyes with a fierceness I'd not seen for a while.

“You be careful too, Ruby. I don't like not having you near me. Not when trouble is lurking.”

“When is it not?” I replied sarcastically. In fairness, I wasn't exactly off base with my question. When he didn't see the humor in my response, I put my serious face on and gave him what he wanted. “I know you don't, but you know that Sean would never let anything happen to me. If you can trust anyone to keep me safe, it's him.” His eyes narrowed briefly before he nodded in agreement. He wasn't going to acknowledge that out loud.

After planting a quick kiss on the top of my head, he rounded the boys up and headed out. I walked with them to the doorway and watched as they disappeared down the winding flights of stairs, their footfalls fading before they vanished entirely. It left an eerie feeling in my stomach. Something felt wrong about being away from them―ominous―as if somehow, without my presence, danger was more likely to find them. I was so used to it looking for me that I never realized how terrifying it was to be on the sideline, a spectator of the ultimate game.

Death knew no rules, no timeouts―no substitutions. He kept the score, ran the clock, and called the plays.

The teams were on the field.

The whistle had blown.

Unless Sean could stop Tobias first, all hell was about to rain down on the pitch.

And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

27

But death never came.

Not the first night. Or the second. Or the third. In fact, an entire week went by without contact from Tobias, or even the slightest hint of danger, and we started to wonder if our threats had kept him at bay. Could it really have been that simple?

On the night Tobias had promised us a war, Sean had ordered Jay and the boys to converge upon the location of the traced phone call. They found a newly abandoned warehouse with an underground facility, which was fully equipped with cages―the kind that could house a human. They found no evidence of what had been done there, only stainless steel tables and shelves. Jay described it as an abandoned autopsy room.

Behind the building, they found a mass grave. Fresh body parts had been recently disposed of in it. They'd been crudely dismembered and thrown away like garbage.

They appeared to be human, but the PC boys knew better.

Tobias was still at large, and though Sean should have gone over to assist with the situation, he refused to leave me. He was torn between love and duty―a more than familiar predicament for him. In retrospect, it was a good decision.

Just as we started to think we were in the clear, Tobias showed up in force, an army of werewolves accompanying him. I watched from the relative safety of Sean's apartment as they converged upon my home, attacking in the dead of night. An alarm had sounded, startling Sean and me out of our slumber. He sprang into action with blistering speed―my vision blurred trying to watch him.

With black eyes blazing, he fled his apartment to aid Cooper and the boys. When I went to yell down the stairwell to him, wanting to tell him I loved him, I couldn't get out. Something was different about the door. I'd been sealed in, either for protection from the attackers or from myself.

He knew I'd try to escape. He really did plan for everything.

So there I stood, breathless, clinging to the partially drawn curtains beside me for strength. I never once feared for myself. I didn't have time to. Instead, I stared out into the moonlit night and prayed that they would survive the attack. It was all I could do. Losing any of them was unacceptable, and I did my best to impress that fact upon the powers that be.

Occasionally I would see a flash of light through the bay window of my bedroom, but that was all; I never saw the actual battle. Maybe that was for the best. Some things are impossible to un-see.

What seemed like hours later, Sean reappeared in his living room completely unscathed. I couldn't bring myself to ask verbally, so I let my expressions, which he could so easily read, speak for me. With only a momentary pause, he filled me in.

“They are dead,” he said flatly, his eyes as dark as the shadows surrounding him.

My heart sank.

“Dead...?” I whispered as a tear sprang from my eye. My legs disappeared from below me, and I crashed to the floor.

“Ruby, no,” he said as he ran to my side. “Not your boys. The others.
They
are dead.”

“My guys are all right?” I asked with the hopefulness of a child.

“Cooper? Ali? They're all okay?”

“Yes,” he said softly, wiping the rogue tears from my face. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I should have worded that better.”

I laughed a slightly unstable laugh.

“Yes, well, you are in report mode, so...I guess it's understandable.

Frankly, I don't give a shit. I'm just glad they're all intact and breathing,”

I said, wrapping my arms around him. “Thank you. Thank you for helping them.”

“We need to get the PC over there to clean up a bit. Cooper is in your studio bandaging Alistair up, but the others have only minor wounds. Your apartment on the other hand...” he said, trailing off.

“Needless to say, it was tight quarters for a battle of that magnitude.”

“Aw, man,” I sighed, pulling away to see his expression. “Couldn't you guys have taken the battle upstairs to the loft? It already looked like a war zone,” I lamented, thinking that it would have been nice for just once not to have my apartment become a battleground.

“Cooper and the boys ambushed them. It was a tactical move that paid off in spades.”

“How bad is my place?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“Decimated might be an understatement.”

“Is it something your boys can take care of or am I starting over with a contractor?”

He smiled a devilish grin.

“I've got the
Specialist
coming. It'll be picture-perfect by the time he's through.”

“Can I get his number? Maybe I should put him on speed dial.”

He laughed.

“I think not. I'm trying to get you out of needing his services, not in need of more. If I have any say in it, this will be the last dramatic event in your lifetime.”

“I wouldn't wager much on the bet.”

He frowned.

“No, I don't think I will either. You and I don't live in an ideal world, Ruby. This is our reality.”

Don't I know it...

I stood up slowly and looked back out the window to my apartment.

“Can I see them?” I asked, looking to Sean, who was leaning against the window beside me.

“Soon.”

“So does this mean Tobias is dead? That we don't have to worry about him anymore?”

“He is dead,” he replied with a tight expression. “As to whether or not we should still worry, I'm not so certain. I don't like what Jay found over there. Something is off. The boys were telling the truth about pack members disappearing, but we don't know why.” He collected my hand in his and pulled me tight against his body. “I need to go over there with Trey. Until we sort out what he was up to, I'm not sure that you or your refugees will be safe.” Brushing a curl off of my face, he pulled me up toward him and kissed me softly. “I may not care about their safety, Ruby, but yours is paramount to me. Without Scarlet to protect you...”

“I'm cannon fodder,” I lamented. “I know.”

He gave me a loving squeeze to acknowledge my frustration. I didn't want to be helpless, but against a werewolf, that's exactly what I was. Even with an Uzi full of silver, I'd likely be mowed down before I could even get a shot off. I needed to hit the firing range. Unfortunately for me, Ronnie was too busy being Veronica to accompany me on that venture.

“I'm going to figure out what's happening to you,” he said convincingly. “Scarlet can't be truly gone. It's impossible.”

I wasn't so sure.

“How are you going to sort it out?”

His chest rumbled against me.

“There are those who deal in things of this nature. I will have to contact them.”

“Who?” I asked, not sure that I wanted the answer. It proved to be a non-issue. He wasn't going to tell me anyway.

“That's unimportant now. First I have to sort out this London situation. After that, we find Scarlet, though I can't say I entirely miss her.” Again, his wicked smile stretched wide across his face. “She's a massive pain in my ass.”

That logic was hard to argue, though her absence made my ass vulnerable. I greatly preferred having reinforcements.

*

When we walked into my building, I was immediately struck by a strange vibration, which stopped me dead in my tracks.

“That's the
Specialist
,” Sean said, encouraging me up the stairs.

“You can relax, but we can't go in there. Not yet.”

“Sounds fantastic to me,” I replied, walking directly past my apartment door to the third floor. Cooper stepped out onto the landing and looked over the railing at us as we approached.

“I want you to know that I'm not entirely to blame for what happened to your apartment.” His grin was wide and warm, and I ran up the final steps, tackling him when I reached the top. He stumbled back against the wall as a result of my flying squirrel attack. I clung to him like falling off meant my death. “Does this mean you're happy to see me?” he asked playfully.

“You could take it that way,” I replied, my voice muffled by the chest I'd buried my face in. “Coop...”

“I know, Ruby. I know.” He gave me a reassuring squeeze and delicately peeled me off of him. “You should go see the boys―they were worried about you. Ali's banged up pretty badly, but nothing that won't heal up by the end of the night.”

Sean lingered behind me not saying a word. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that he was becoming more comfortable with the dynamic amongst the three of us. But I did know better, and the second that Cooper leaned down to kiss my cheek, I heard confirmation of it. Sean was not a fan of sharing.

Cooper's grin twisted slightly, making it far more mischievous in nature. He loved getting under Sean's skin. I couldn't blame him; it was really the only weapon he had against him.

“Ruby!” a voice called from my studio. Shortly afterward, Alistair stood in the doorway, bandaged and carrying more weight on one leg than the other. “They didn't come after you then?” he asked, a look of relief washing over his face.

“No, Ali. Nobody got to me.”

“We're pleased to hear it,” Janner said from behind Alistair. “It was an...
uneasy
feeling, knowing you were left alone.”

“They could not have gotten to her,” Sean declared from behind me.

“I made sure of that.”

By the looks of confusion on everyone's faces, it seemed that none of us had any clue what he meant. None of us were about to ask for clarification either. I figured it had something to do with whatever he'd done to the door. Maybe it was werewolf-proof, if there even was such a thing.

I needed him to hook my building up with the same treatment.

As the awkwardness settled in around us, the sound of my apartment door opening echoed through the stairwell. Whoever the Specialist was, he was apparently finished. When I tried to peek over the edge to see the silent wonder who was taking his leave, Sean caught my arm.

“He's shy,” he informed me with a wry smile. “If you don't mind...”

He pulled me back away from the rail and gently held my arm until he heard the exterior door close. “You may see your home now.”

Without pause, I made my way down to the second floor. Sean had described my abode as “decimated.” I needed to see just what I was left with.

I should have been shocked to find everything as it was when I'd last been there, but I wasn't. There was more to the PC boys than met the eye, and I was starting to learn that they all seemed to hold special qualities that came in handy. My apartment was a case in point. Not a single detail was out of place.

“How?” I asked, knowing full well Sean was right behind me.

He said nothing in response.

When I turned to look at him, he gave me his most noncommittal shrug that meant both everything and nothing.

“Ruby, I have to leave. Now. Jay needs my help on this one. Trey too.”

“I know. It's fine,” I said, not really wanting to see him go. On the flip side, it did give me some time with the guys. Time I hadn't had in a week. I needed the normalcy that an evening of popcorn and a movie could provide, even if it was with a few extra bodies.