I jerked my head toward him, my angry retort stuck to my tongue as I spotted the lethal gleam of a knife. My mind blanked, and all the fight whooshed from me. This wasn't a piece of paper or a rock disguised as a knife. This was an actual implement of pain that he would use to hurt me. And apparently, I was a big fucking baby because my tongue twisted in to a hundred knots, and my spine felt like the consistency of foam.
All my gusto, all my bravery, it all leaked from me like air from a tire. I sank down to the sidewalk, though I was already on the ground. I made a squeaking noise, wishing I could make my hands stop shaking long enough to do something. It was just my luck to run from the frying pan and into a fire. Who else could possibly run from a kidnapper straight into the arms of a mugger?
The man jerked at my elbow in an attempt to get me to stand, but I was dead weight. The knife jostled in his other hand, slipping forward to cut my forearm. Blinding white pain made me scream, but the man didn't care. He tugged at my injured arm, sending more pain up my arm as I bled all over the sidewalk.
"Your father—"
I never found out what this person had to say about my father. He yelped first and slumped to his knees. I couldn't even manage to slide back on the sidewalk. My muscles were too frozen with fear. He yelped again, and that time I heard a whistle, the force of impact. Blood blossomed on the man's shirt from both his shoulders.
Knox towered over the fallen man, a throwing dagger in his hand with three more glinting at his belt. I cradled my head in my hands, rocking as my arm bled, staining my shirt.
When Knox leaned over to touch me, I screamed. He ignored it and pulled me to my feet, stretching my arm out slowly to assess the damage. "He hurt you," Knox growled, turning away long enough to kick the man groaning on the ground.
I didn't understand what was going on. I understood the fear; I was a baby. I ran not because I was good at it, but because I had to. I wouldn't last a second in a fight, and when the chips were down, I didn't rise to the occasion either. I folded.
"I have you. You're safe." Knox offered me warmth in his arms. I leaned into it, letting his strength seep into me. "You're safe," he soothed, rubbing my back.
I heard a click the moment before I felt cool metal at my wrist. My head jerked down to the handcuffs Knox had put me in.
"Please, don't—" Had I thought he would do anything else? Hold me? Comfort me? Tell me everything would be okay? Why? He only wanted the money. He needed to turn me in to get the money. I knew that. And yet, my heart still broke when he pulled out a syringe and a small vial filled with clear liquid.
The safety I'd felt vanished. Knox loomed over me like a beast, his face transformed into something I'd see in my nightmares. "You're a monster," I mumbled, my bottom lip shaking.
Knox said nothing as he filled the syringe.
"I'll do anything," I begged. "I'll double what he's paying you. Knox!" I meant to scream, but I didn't have the air left in me.
Nothing would change Knox's mind anyway. He pressed the needle to my skin and pushed down.
As my sight went dark, a tear slid down my face.
Knox wiped it away, holding me as the drug took hold. "I'm sorry, kid."
Chapter Four
Knox
Jazz slept on his back, though the number of times he'd tried to roll, I assumed he preferred sleeping on his side. He would look cute like that, snuggled up with his arms drawn close.
His arms were up above his head now, cuffed to either side of the headboard with his fingers wrapped together on each hand with an elastic bandage. I'd bandaged the cut on his arm—not so deep it needed stitches. The sedative should've been completely out of his system. I hadn't liked administering it while he'd been so upset. He'd cried in my arms, and I could do nothing to fix it because I was the asshole who'd made him cry.
Now, I had four other assholes shouting at me about how I hadn't taken Jazz immediately to the drop-off site.
That hadn't been a random mugger Jazz had run into. They were too close to Jazz's hotel. The man had acted too quickly. I wasn't more than a few blocks behind Jazz, but by the time I'd gotten to him, he'd already been on the ground bleeding.
My blades should've gone through the fucker's throat instead of only wounding him and cuffing him to an exposed pipe.
He'd known Jazz was staying there. He'd known, waited, and would've done much worse to my boy had I not gotten there.
I frowned at my choice of phrasing. Jazz couldn't be my boy. Not only was he our ticket to being able to concentrate fully on investigation and research, but my heart had hardened about the time I'd buried the last of the bodies of our old pack.
What little consideration left in me was spent on my team. I didn't have any more room to care.
But room or not, the pretty man sleeping peacefully was a mystery. How could he do what he did? His abilities reminded me of those mates, the ones who lived with Faust's friend—Nash.
I'd ask Faust to contact him, but not until Jazz woke up. He'd been so afraid, so heartbroken. I needed to see his face. And ask him a few questions.
His father was a fucking liar. I knew that much already. He'd painted Jazz out to be a troublemaker who didn't care who he hurt. But Jazz had frozen with real fear at that knife. That reaction hadn't been the reaction of man steeped in violence.
The redheaded angel sleeping in my bed wasn't a hardened criminal. He was wild, but in a way that needed to be cared for and guided. I'd started chasing Jazz for the money, but something wasn't adding up, and I was beginning to feel like a pawn.
I loathed that feeling.
Jazz turned his head, trying again to roll to his side. The movement brought a wave of curls against his forehead, and I reached forward as if by instinct to brush them aside.
Jazz's eyes opened—not slowly as he carefully woke, but suddenly. He gasped, the air sounding painful as he dragged it down his throat. His hands were fists, and he pulled at his restraints like he didn't care how the metal links dug into his wrists. He kicked his legs out, slamming his heel against the side of my head before I wrangled his limbs down.
"Get off me! Don't fucking touch me!" he snarled, his breaths coming in panicked heaves.
"Jazz, breathe, Jazz. You're safe—"
"Knox?" Jazz blinked repeatedly, looking around the room like he was seeing it for the first time. "I thought…the last thing I remembered was you taking me back to my father."
And thinking he was waking up in his father's home had made Jazz react that way? I couldn't say I loved that tidbit of knowledge.
"You're not. You're with me still."
Jazz's eyes narrowed with suspicion and distrust. In all the time I'd spent chasing after him, he'd never looked at me like that. "Why?" he spat.
I deserved that ire. He'd been afraid and crying, and I'd shot him up. The least I could do now was tell him the truth. "Because your father lied to me, and I need to know why."
Jazz rolled his eyes, and I squeezed my fists to keep from cupping his face and kissing away every ounce of disrespect. "He lied because he's a liar. There, your questions are answered."
I cocked my head to the side. My boy was trying to look brave despite his position. Only Jazz could be tied up but still haughty. "Why? Why lie about that stuff? Especially when a single conversation reveals his deception?"