Page 78 of Slashes in the Snow
“We will find her,” Hawk tries to reassure me.
“How?”
“I’m working on that.”
“The question is, what does he want?” Tempest voices his thoughts. “He messed with her, took her, but why? What’s his endgame?”
I am not at all surprised at this train of thought from him. He’s a paranoid motherfucker who questions everything. He’s a lethal mix of scary as shit and smart as a whip.
“Money?” Vet throws out a suggestion. “I mean, she’s got loads of it. Maybe he’s going to hold her for ransom?”
“Fuck.” I nearly bust a blood vessel in my brain knowing Kira is alone and helpless and most definitely terrified.
This is all my fucking fault, I fall down into a black pit of despair. If anything happens—
“Hello?” There’s a knock at my front door, and I pop out of my kitchen chair. “Ky?”
I recognize the voice immediately.
“Dad?” I rip the cotton balls off my eyes and squint through my blurry vision.
“What the fuck happened?” He strides through the house, the egotistical asshole he is, until he’s right in front of me. I’m already a shitstorm of emotions, and him randomly appearing out of thin air sends me into a tailspin.
“This is your fucking fault!” I attack him. A blind fucking fury possesses me. A burst of aggression I can’t control commands me, and chaos ensues. “You did this! All of it!” I throw sightless punch after sightless punch, a brawl breaking out right in the middle of my kitchen.
“Chill the fuck out, man,” someone barks as I’m ripped away from my father.
I feel him slip through my fingers as Bone pulls me down into a submission hold.
“What the fuck has come over you, boy?”
My only response to his question is heaving breaths and mental middle finger while I’m subdued like a wild animal on the kitchen floor.
“Where is Kira? What happened?” my father demands answers.
“That fuckface Deacon took her!” I detonate with my cheek squished to the hardwood.
“Deacon?” I hear my father’s blatant surprise. Yeah, I sounded the same way when she figured out who was messing with her.
“Um, not that it’s not great to see you, Gambit,” Breaker addresses him. “But what are you doing here? We thought you were in Paris?”
“I was, but I got a message from Ky saying Kira was in trouble. So I booked a private flight as quickly as I could and got my ass back here.”
“Of course you did,” I complain. “Can you let me up now? I’m fucking calm.”
“Yeah, you sound it,” my Pops patronizes me.
Bone scoops me up off the floor like I’m a ragdoll. The six-foot-five beast can toss all of us around at once like stuffed playthings if he wanted.
“Jesus, kid, what the fuck happened to your face?”
I touch my eyelids gently. They must look as red and swollen as they feel.
“Pepper bomb to the kisser,” Fender explains. “Leave these on.” He presses the cold cotton balls back in place. “Everyone’s safer when you’re blind.”
“Except, Kira,” I bite. “And I never left you a message. It was Deacon. He must have spliced my voice somehow. He plotted all of this. He’s been spying on Kira for over a month. Been lurking around your house, too. Kira knew something was up, so she came to me.”
“You? How did she even know where to find you?”
