Page 29 of Raven Blackwood
Raven
It took less than ten minutes to reach the location, a sprawling old house that must have once belonged to a mine owner. The place had seen better days, but it was sturdy and well-defended—exactly where I’d hole up if I were a coward like Jenkins.
I dismounted, blasters in hand, nanites surging through me with the urgency of a predator unleashed.
The front entrance was locked, but that didn’t matter. I blasted it apart and stormed inside. The first two guards didn’t even havetime to reach for their weapons before I dropped them with stun blasts.
I swept through the house with lethal precision, led by the beacon of Hannah’s nanites. A few of Jenkins’s men tried to slow me down, but none succeeded.
When I reached the parlor on the second floor, I found her.
Hannah.
Tied up, bruised, but alive. My chest squeezed. I crossed the room and cut the bindings with my blade.
“You’re safe now.”
Her eyes were wide, but relief flickered across her face. “Raven. I knew you’d find me.”
“I always will.”
We moved through the house, my weapons drawn. I kept her close, shielding her with my body. We reached the grand dining room and found Jenkins waiting.
He had two thugs with him, but they barely mattered. His smirk faltered the moment he saw us.
“Come to play hero?” he sneered.
“Your game’s over,” I said, voice low and lethal. “Surrender now, andmaybe you’ll live to see a prison cell.”
His laugh was a sharp, ugly thing. “Prison? No, I don’t think so. Not when I can kill you—”
He raised a gun, but I was faster. A single shot from my blaster left his weapon sparking and useless. His eyes widened with shock, then fury.
“You won’t get away with this,” Jenkins spat. “I own Brislow. Everything and everyone in it.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “And you’re out of time.”
My blaster hovered inches from his chest, and I gripped his throat with the other hand. Every instinct screamed at me to snap his neck and end him. Or simply squeeze until he couldn’t get air and slowly suffocated. He had hurt so many people, including my precious Hannah. I wanted him to suffer.
But something held me back. Hannah’s presence. She had faith in me to do the right thing.
I lowered the weapon and loosened my grip, but my gaze remained cold. “You’re going to Penta Prison, Jenkins. We send the worst of the worst there to fight for their own survival. Maybe you’ll last a week. Maybe a day. But you’re done here.”
Jenkins’s expression twisted with fury, but there was fear there, too. Real fear. Good. That was enough. I released him and bound his hands behind his back with a zip tie. I set him in a chair and warned him not to move. I took Hanna with me to secure the other men I had downed.
Strangely, someone had already bound them with rawhide laces. Koha’vek. Sometime in the future, I’d stop by and thank him.
Meanwhile, my focus was on Hannah.
As I wrapped her in my arms, I felt something shift, as if the last piece of me had clicked into place.
“It’s over. Let’s go home.”
Hannah looked up at me, eyes still flicking to the window where she’d seen something. “I… I thought I saw—never mind.” She shook her head and smiled. “Now we can resume our life together.”
I figured she must have seen Koha’vek. She’d never seen a ‘Saark, so she probably thought she was seeing things. Someday, when the time was right, when it wouldn’t endanger Koha’vek and Ava, I would tell her the truth.
Chapter Eighteen
