Page 18 of Freeing Souls

Harley gasps, and before any of us have a chance to speak, Cade is lifting her from his lap and booking it out the door at a sprint. “Show your face, you fucker,” Harley seethes, still standing and glaring at the screen.

The guy never faces the house across the street, so the most we get is his side profile. I still stop at the clearest view as he is walking away and zoom in closer to take a screenshot. Luckily, Nerds taught me how to search for someone a long time ago, so I use the screenshot to run a search. Because it’s only a side profile, though, it doesn’t give me enough to track down the person.

Someone comes running back into the room, and we all glance up as Cade stops in the doorway, a thunderous look on his face. “Harley, let’s go. Lincoln drove his bike to the hospital, and he isn’t answering his phone. Grayson, stay here with Ryker. Noah and Stone are going with us,” he barks as he turns on his heel and Harley runs out right after him.

Ryker stares at the open doorway, a deep frown set on his face as he narrows his eyes in frustration. Placing a hand on his shoulder, I say, “You’ll be back at it in no time. But if you tried to race out of here to help, you would make yourself worse and then need even more time to recover.”

Ry snaps his narrowed gaze towards me. “I fucking know that.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he takes a breath and then looks at me again. His eyes are softer, but based on his tense posture, he is still frustrated. “I’m sorry I snapped. I know I can’t do anything right now, but it’s hard. I feel useless.”

“Well, I can give you a distraction while we wait for them to get to the hospital.”

I tell Ryker, not even thinking twice about how I worded it until his eyebrows slowly rise and then a smirk comes over his stupidly handsome face. “Oh yeah? What might thatdistractionbe?” he purrs.

Rolling my eyes, I huff even as I feel my cheeks heat. “Not that kind of distraction, you perv. I need to tell you something.”

Growing serious, he nods. “Okay. What’s up?”

“When you were in the hospital, I talked to Nerds. I know he is dealing with his own stuff right now, and Rage doesn’t want him anywhere near work, but I needed advice.”

“Okay…” Ryker drawls when I don’t continue right away.

“He gave me advice, and I took it.” Snagging a pen off the desk, I twirl it between my fingers to give myself something to focus on. “I called Vance Brooks’ tech guy. His name is Sebastian, buthe goes by Bas. Rage doesn’t want the Brooks Family involved in more—”

“Yeah, they have a working relationship, but Rage will never fully trust them,” Ryker adds.

I nod. “Nerds can’t keep teaching me right now, and even he was struggling with figuring out more about the Black Night, so I got in contact with Bas, and he has been helping me.”

“Okay. Rage may not love that, but I don’t think he is going to be really pissed. What’s the problem here, Gray?”

“I told him everything, Ry. When I first talked with him on the phone, he said he could teach me, but in order to fully help me, he needs to know everything. At first, I said no way. It felt like he was just wanting to know what we know. But the more we talked, the more sense he made. Then, I had a video call with the Kings of Hearts. It’s a team Vance runs outside of being the leader of his family. It’s him, his brother, Bas, and one other.

“They explained more about themselves and my gut was telling me to trust it. I know Rage is our person, and we should always go based on what he says, but after everything that he has been through and dealt with I feel like he will never truly trust other people again. Especially after Harley came into his life and everything that has happened since. He is overprotective. So I made the choice to trust them. I listened to everything they said, I asked questions, and I thought about it while you were in the hospital.”

“Okay, Gray, breathe for me,” Ryker says as he leans forward and places his good hand on my cheek. I take a breath, and he nods. “Good. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I trust your instinct. I trustyou.It’s going to be hell if Rage finds out, but we will face it together. I think the other ranking officers could come to understand as well and talk Rage down. You're right about him being overprotective, but let's not cross that bridge until we get there, alright?”

“Okay,” I breathe.

“Okay, so you shared everything with them?”

“Yeah, I told them about the Wilsons and how we are trying to track them down. I told them about the offshore accounts, the Black Night, anything I knew. Vance said they are all staying out of it unless Rage asks for their assistance, but he is willing to allow Bas to take a step back over and help teach me. We’ve already started searching for Tammy. And tonight, he is going to help me work on finding a way onto the Black Night site. We’ve been talking at night, since that’s when he isn’t busy and I can be alone, either when I was at the hospital with you or here some nights.”

“Okay. Keep doing it. I can help field off any questions from Rage or anyone else if they start asking shit, but it’ll be fine. We will figure it all out together.”

I nod and pull away from his hand to glance at the computer screens. “As soon as we find the Wilsons and get them dealt with, we can put the plan for the offshore accounts in motion. Bas knows exactly how to change the names on all the accounts and get Rage and the others' names away from them. So, as soon as we find the Wilsons, we can take down the other big players.”

Ryker’s phone buzzes, and he quickly answers while switching it to speaker, setting it on the desk. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“Everyone is okay,” Harley explains, breathless. “We got here and found his bike. There was a bomb on it. It’s now been destroyed but—shit.”She exhales heavily. “It malfunctioned. Who knows when it was supposed to go off? It could’ve gone off while he was driving. We got really fucking lucky.”

“Holy shit,” Ryker says. “Are we able to look at the explosive? Is there anything on it that could be useful?”

“Stone says no. He checked it over; apparently, it’s some super easy bomb to make. There’s nothing special about it,” Harley grumbles.

I stare at the image on the screen of the guy who placed the bombs, wishing there was another way to identify him. More than likely, he was hired, but still. We could try to get the information about him if we knew who he was. Maybe Bas will be able to help me when I talk with him tonight.

“What the—” I mumble as a blinking red box pops up on the screen. Then, slowly, each screen does the same, a large red box blinking in the middle of the screens. “Ryker?”

“What is that?” he asks while Harley asks what’s happening over the phone.

---