Page 64 of Ruin Me Knot
It looks like no one has been here for a long time, but this is the hour when nothing should move, and that’s the best time to see if something does.
I cut my headlights two blocks out and drive the rest of the way with the engine barely idling. I park behind a rotted boxcar, the vehicle hidden in its shadow. I kill the engine, wait one minute, then another. Nothing. No lights flicker from the building, no hint of a watcher in the windows. The only movement is the wind, and an empty can skips across broken concrete.
I step out, and the cold air sharpens my senses, the taste of iron and diesel on the back of my tongue. I keep my posture loose, one hand resting on my sidearm, the other trailing a light along the seams of my jacket. I slip around the edges of the boxcar and cross the lot, my breath trailing silver.
The station is even more desolate up close. I scope out the entrance, stepping over glass and a nest of tangled wires. My footsteps echo in the cavernous main hall. Rat droppings. Scraps of paper. Old vending machines gutted for copper. I move carefully, scanning for any sign of recent entry, fresh footprints, cigarette butts, the glint of a camera lens half-buried behind grime.
Nothing.
I work my way from one platform to the next, eyes in every shadow, ears tuned for the scuff of a boot or a whisper of movement. The space is empty. No heat signatures, no food wrappers newer than months, no disturbance to the dust on the benches. Just a lot of old echoes and the slow, steady hum of my own breathing.
I turn back toward the SUV, heart racing, the old station folding up behind me as I call this a dead lead and head out. I tell myself I can push a little farther. If I don’t, sleep will be useless anyway. I glance at my watch: four a.m. The city is beginning to stir, the first commuters building into a trickle of headlights along the arterial roads, but the weight in my chest refuses to lift.
The next target is smaller. Nothing but a low roofline, the kind of squat, nondescript building you could pass a thousand times and never notice. Pale brick stained with rain, one security light buzzing above a steel door, windows blocked out with spray paint and cardboard. The kind of place meant to be invisible. There’s a chain-link fence, half-collapsed, trash pressed into the gaps where the wind herds it like shame.
I park a street over. The weight of the gun at my hip feels heavier now, and I’m so keyed up I flinch at the snap of my own glove as I tighten it. Every sense is jacked, the city’s ordinary morning static overlaying my paranoia: the rattle of a bus down the block, the scrape of branches, the hollow echo of my boots on concrete.
I slip in the side gate, surveying my surroundings. The building screams neglect. Puddles of stagnant water pool at the entrance, and the stink of old piss and mold creeps straight into my nose. Paint peels from the doorframe. I sweep my flashlight in quick, shallow arcs, the beam slicing through broken shelving, crumpled newspaper, a nest of cables twisting out from the wall like veins.
I pause, head cocked, heart rabbiting in my chest. A soft sound followed by a wet cough, a shuffle, the whisper of cardboard dragging over rough concrete spikes through my nerves. I round a corner, adrenaline pounding in my temples, and find a makeshift shelter crouched against the far wall. Several flattened boxes, a child’s pink blanket, the faint slosh of a bottle rolling as its owner stirs. Hunched inside, a bundled figure, clutching their knees, blinks at me with the animal wariness of someone who’s spent too long being seen by the wrong kind of people.
It’s not Hardwick or her dogs. Just another casualty the city spat out. I holster my gun, hands up, showing empty palms as I approach. He squints up at me, jaw working as if he’s deciding whether to bolt or to attack. His eyes are glazed and bloodshot. I’m not sure what type of conversation the man is capable of. "You ain’t the cops," he croaks. "Those fuckers like to come and kick me out of my home. How would they like it?"
"I guess they wouldn’t like it a whole lot." I crouch down. "I’m just checking the building. You see anyone around here?"
He rubs at his face, the dirt ground in deep, and settles back into his cardboard shelter. "Don’t see much ‘cept shadows. Sometimes guys come run the fence, but not tonight. Just me and the rats." He draws his knees up tighter. "Might’ve heard a car around midnight but could be the street over. Wind carries everything strange in this place."
I study him, scanning for lies, but the only scent that comes to me is old sweat, city rot, and a faint thread of somethingsweet. For a moment, my heart jumps. I stand, nostrils flaring as I drag in the air.
He catches my sniff and grins, toothless. "Smell the sweet on the breeze, don’t you? Sometimes they throw out a batch they can’t sell, and I go and get it out. Nothing wrong with it either."
"They?" I ask.
The man flicks his chin in the direction of an industrial building. "The cookie factory. Belmonts." A sly look cuts across his face, eyes glimmering in the gloom. "Don’t you think about goin’ there. That’s my secret. And it don’t happen all the time. Sometimes they cook but don’t throw it out. There’s nothin’ in their trash when I go look." He taps the side of his nose. "That’s when they pack it up and sell it. Against the law, but they do it anyways."
Belmonts. I know the place. Half the city does. Hope drains away, leaving behind only grit and fatigue. This is nothing but another dead end.
I thank the man, pressing some bills from my wallet into his dirt-caked palm. He clutches them tight, shoving them deep into an inner pocket, his eyes wary but grateful. "You stay safe, Alpha," he rasps, retreating into the sagging cardboard, already half-vanishing back into the world’s uncaring margins. I stare at the tips of his beaten boots, thinking how strange it is that a Beta calls me Alpha, before I lift my attention to the gray at the edge of the horizon.
I head back to the SUV, disheartened that I didn’t find any trace of Hardwick. We only have three more locations, and I’m fighting the growing, gnawing dread that she’s already gone, never to be found again.
Chapter Thirty
Leah
Heat. Weight. The low, steady roll of a chest beneath my cheek. My world is slivered between sleep and waking, soft edges and syrupy warmth, the weight of a familiar arm and the velvet slip of a thigh against my own.
Jax’s scent is the whole air flowing into me. It’s under my tongue and behind my eyes. I’m folded so tight to his side, my nose pressed directly to the hollow of his gland that the rest of the world doesn’t matter. I’ve bled into him, or perhaps he’s bled into me. I float in the shallow end of a dream, too sated and slow to care if Isurface or drown.
The soft vibration of his purr seeps through me. The sound nestles into my bones, melting my marrow. My palm is splayed over his belly, ribs rising and falling under my hand. I’m so loose I could drift away, but I don’t. I’m anchored; I’m tethered; I’m… safe.
Safe.
Jax’s heart drums the word in time with his breaths. The sweetness in his scent curls thick and addictive, until my every inhale is an ache for more. The Omega in my head leaves gouges inside my skull.Alpha. Want.
The nest shifts behind me and another big presence encases my back, as Ronan slides closer to me in my nest. His arm cinches tight around my waist, pinning me seamlessly between him and Jax, his hand spreading wide enough to cover most of my belly. He nudges my cheek with his, the brush of his stubble dragging shivering lines along my skin.
Alpha.
