Hard to Hold on To (4 page)

“Here, take this.” Sara offered a pill in the cradle of her palm.

And Jenna’s stomach began a slow, sinking descent. Her medicine. Which she really shouldn’t take until she allowed plenty of time for whatever they’d given her to get out of her system. So many regular drugs—hell, even some foods—caused bad interactions with her antiepileptic meds, so she had no doubt that what they’d given her not only had an equal or better chance of doing the same but was also probably why she’d felt so sluggish and been so sick. Her brain went haywire enough without adding recreational drugs into the mix.

Which was why she avoided such things like the plague.

Then again, Bruno and his goons really hadn’t asked for her opinion. More than that, one of them had slapped a big, beefy palm over her mouth and nose to force her to stop expressing it and swallow what they’d given her.

For some reason, it was the memory of that man’s hand across her mouth and against her nose—smothering her until she thought her lungs would explode—that removed every last inch of the distance she’d shoved between her rote description of what had happened and the completely irrational but no less avoidable feeling that it was about to happen again
right this very minute.

Ice-cold terror slammed into her out of nowhere. Her heart raced, her breathing shallowed, white spots played around the edge of her vision, and her fingertips went tingly.

“Jenna?” Sara said. The alarm in her sister’s voice only made her panic worse. “Sweetie?”

Voices that Jenna couldn’t interpret. Motion she couldn’t make sense of. She grasped at her chest, sure her heart wouldn’t be able to beat this hard much longer.

Her throat narrowed. Her chest tightened. Her breathing screamed as it sawed in and out of her windpipe.

Warmth. On her hand. On her face. She turned into it. And found Easy looking into her eyes. Intense. Focused. Determined.

“E . . . E . . . E . . .”

“Don’t talk. Just breathe. But slow it down. Can you do that for me?” As she watched, he inhaled an exaggerated breath and slowly blew it out. Then again. And again. Needing him to ground her, she grabbed his arm as she gulped for breath and tried to pace her inhalations with his, using his steady, deep in and out as a metronome of peace and life. After a few minutes, it worked. Staring into his eyes, Easy talked her through the panic, helped her slow her breathing, and gently pulled her back from the brink. “There you go. You’re just fine. No worries here. I gotchu.”

He has me.
Inhale.
He has me.
Exhale.
He has me
.

Jenna nodded. Suddenly, the need to purge every bit of her experience from her soul flooded through her. It almost felt like if she didn’t get it all out, it might stain her forever. On the next exhale, she unleashed the words she knew she wouldn’t be able to say unless she did it right now. And given what she yet had to admit, it was somehow easier saying it to someone other than Sara.

“I can’t take my meds. They held me down and forced me to swallow something. A drug.” Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t . . . know . . . what it was. I tried to fight. I did. But then it hit me, and it was like a lead blanket, or maybe a magic carpet, because I was flying but so damn relaxed I couldn’t move my limbs. And then the one guy . . . he, um—” She shuddered and gooseflesh sprung up over her skin. God, she wished she could hold this part in. Hadn’t Sara suffered enough? But the words were right there and falling from her tongue. “—t-touched me, just to prove he could and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him.” Just saying the words brought back the remembered feel of big, rough hands groping and squeezing her breasts.

A gasp sounded out from next to her.

Easy’s only reaction was a ticking muscle in his jaw, as if he were clenching his teeth. “Did he—”

“No,” she blurted. Jenna couldn’t bear to hear him ask the question she knew he’d ask. Not in front of Sara. Not given what Sara had gone through. “Bruno made him stop.” She gasped for air. “I didn’t want . . . I didn’t . . .” She shook her head—or maybe that was just her whole body shaking. Tears streamed down her face. “I didn’t,” she said again, Easy’s intense gaze, warm, solid touch, and understanding words like a lifeline.

“ ’Course you didn’t,” he said. “All over now.”

“Over.” She nodded. “Thank you.” Jenna tried to hug herself, but her arms only half obeyed. “I can’t stop shaking. Could you . . . would you . . .”

Strong arms pulled her against a warm, broad chest. And as all those masculine muscles wrapped themselves around her, Jenna could finally draw a full, deep breath for the first time in maybe ten minutes.

Which allowed her to remember that Sara and Shane were here, too. And had no doubt just heard what Jenna had revealed. She turned her head to the other side, otherwise remaining tight against Easy’s heat, and found Sara hovering just behind her, an absolutely stricken expression on her pretty face.

Guilt flooded Jenna’s gut for piling on to the load Sara already carried—
had been carrying
for years. No matter what Jenna did, it seemed she just couldn’t stop hurting the one person she loved most in the world. She couldn’t stop being a burden.

Chapter 3

T
OUCHING
J
ENN
A WAS
the only thing holding Easy together. Or, at least, keeping him from tearing the Sheetrock off the wall studs with his bare hands.

They’d fucking hit her, imprisoned her, drugged her, and touched her.

Some of that Easy had known. Some he hadn’t. But hearing the words spill from her lips and watching her struggle to hold her emotions in check had made Easy go a little insane.

It almost made him wish Bruno weren’t dead. Because Easy would’ve loved to be the one who’d actually taken the scumbag out. Of the three members of the team who’d been lying in wait for Bruno to appear, Shane had had the clearest shot. The mission was what had been most important, not whose bullet had exploded the cocksucker’s brains all over his SUV’s passenger seat. But, right now, in the heat of this moment, Easy wouldn’t have minded having the chance to paint his hands in Bruno’s blood as he watched the life drain from the lowlife’s eyes.

Heaving a deep breath, Easy lifted his gaze—and found Sara and Shane staring at him. Or, more precisely, staring at how he was holding Jenna. He suddenly felt uncertain, like maybe he’d inserted himself somewhere he shouldn’t have, like maybe he didn’t belong. All he’d known was that Jenna was in deep distress and needed an anchor before it pulled her under.

And he’d wanted to be that for her.

He’d
needed
to be that for her.

But maybe calming her and helping her and holding her wasn’t his place.

Well, duh. None of that was his place. But maybe Shane and Sara thought so, too.

His muscles screamed in protest, but Easy forced himself to loosen his hold and gently push himself away.

Jenna’s fingers dug into his back, her hold tightening in direct proportion to how much he let go.

I gotchu.
That’s what he’d said.

So was he really going to walk away now?

His gaze cut back to Sara.

The small, sad smile she gave him was all the permission he needed. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Easy pulled Jenna’s weight firmly back against him. Her side against his chest. Her head against the crook of his neck. Her knees resting against his thigh. He wasn’t sure how many minutes passed before Jenna’s scratchy voice broke the silence.

“I’d like to take a shower,” she said.

“Of course,” Sara said with a smile that was just a watt too cheerful. “Probably make you feel a lot better.”

It was one of those things that people said that was as untrue as it was polite.

“Yeah,” Jenna said, easing away from Easy’s chest. And though she gave his hand a squeeze as if to silently express gratitude, she didn’t give him her eyes. Instead, she scooted away and slowly slid her feet off the edge of the bed to the floor. His loss of her heat and touch was nearly as wrenching as an amputation, a horrible analogy given that one of their teammates had actually suffered exactly that.

“Just go slow,” Sara said, taking Jenna’s arm. “Probably gonna be wobbly.”

Jenna nodded, then slowly pushed herself into a standing position. Seeing her on her feet again filled Easy with reassurance and satisfaction. She really would be okay.

And then she won’t need you anymore.

Spiral, spiral, spiral.

“You want to try to eat or drink something when you’re done?” Sara asked, guiding her one step at a time away from where he sat on the bed, his back against the cold, hard wall.

“Maybe,” Jenna said.

And then the sisters stepped through the door and out of the room. Easy stared at the empty doorway and tried to beat back the despair that threatened at the loss of everything he’d found in Jenna’s presence. Stupid, really. He’d known the danger of his dependence when he’d first felt it, and he was feeling the evidence of that danger right now.

Because she wasn’t his to need, to want, to depend upon.

Shane’s gaze was suddenly a physical weight on Easy’s face. The last thing Easy wanted was a too-perceptive intelligence officer putting his skills to work on him, so he got off the bed and rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“You were great with her, E. Thank you,” Shane said.

Dropping his hands, Easy met his teammate’s gaze and shrugged. “Just doing what anyone would do.”

Chuffing out a humorless laugh, Shane shook his head and crossed his arms. “Well, that’s some bullshit.”

The black hole in the center of Easy’s chest was making itself known again. To distract himself from the pain and Shane’s inquisitiveness, he tore off his shirt, dropped it to the floor, and grabbed a new one from his duffel. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as he tugged an old, soft gray hoodie over his head.

“Just what I said. Calling things how I see ’em, and what I’ve seen since the moment you took Jenna out of my arms last night was a man feeling all kinds of protective over a woman—”

“Again. Like
anyone
would be.”

Shane threw up his hands. “Okay, E. Whatever you say. You want to play it like that, I won’t push. But since you don’t have any special interest here, how ’bout we let Beckett take the next shift with Jenna.”

Heat roared through Easy’s brain, and he spun on his heel.

The barely suppressed smirk and arched eyebrow told Easy he’d walked right into that one.

“Fuck you,” Easy bit out, moving to push by the guy.

Shane grabbed his shoulder and blocked his exit. “Aw, don’t be like that, man. I came clean to you about Sara.”

“That was different,” Easy said, muscling back the anger but feeling it clawing at him from the inside out. He didn’t want to take Shane’s head off. He really didn’t. After all, it wasn’t Shane’s fault that Easy’s emotional bank was so empty that he couldn’t stand being teased about wanting something he could never have.

The guy’s gray eyes narrowed and drilled into Easy’s. “What’s going on?”

A quick shake of his head. “
Nada.
”

His brows cranked down. “Easy, it’s
me.
” Shane studied him for a long minute, then came out with, “Most of my life, I’ve felt responsible for the abduction of my eight-year-old sister.”

The admission was like a sucker punch to the gut because Easy knew what Shane was trying to get him to do. Easy respected the hell out of Shane McCallan—for his ability to say what he’d said and a whole lot more—but there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that Easy was pulling up a chair to circle time and sharing his boo-boos.

He let that shit out, and he might never get it back in its box.

Not that it was too well secured as it was, but whatever.

“Wasn’t your fault,” Easy finally managed to say. “Now I gotta ask you to back off.”

Shane gave a nod and a slap on his teammate’s shoulder. “All right. I’m here, though. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. Now, why don’t we give the women some privacy and clear out of here?” Last thing he wanted to do, really.

“Roger that.” They made their way through the apartment and down the industrial stairs. “You up for a debrief?” Shane asked.

“Always,” Easy said, glad for something operational to think about, something outside his head. Outside himself.

At the door across from the Rixeys’ apartment, Shane entered a code into a keypad. The cavernous space on the other side of the door still looked like an old warehouse but had become their war room, their mess hall, and the space where everyone tended to congregate in general. Gym equipment filled the whole front half of the room, and Easy eyeballed a treadmill that had his name all over it. Nothing like a good, hard, long run to level him out and take the edge off.

In the front far corner sat a long, makeshift table made of plywood and sawhorses, and in the rear sat their operations center, which consisted of a row of computers and monitors and several big bulletin boards and whiteboards covered with maps and mug shots and lists and unanswered questions.

Per usual, Marz, the team’s techy guru, sat at the center of it all, stacks of files and papers that made sense only to him all over the top of the makeshift desk. Standing around him drinking coffee and shooting the shit were Charlie, Nick, and Beckett Murda, the last of his surviving SF teammates.

Easy hadn’t seen Nick and Beckett since before last night’s op. He approached Nick first, exchanging a hand clasp and a shoulder bump with the guy responsible for hauling his ass down from Philly. “Good work last night,” Easy said. “Sounded like a big take.”

The guy’s pale green eyes were a striking contrast with his dark brown hair. “Right back atcha. Took some balls to take out Confessions the way you did, but it was the right damn call.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Beckett said, as they repeated the greeting. Linebacker big, always serious-faced, and scarred all around his right eye from a grenade explosion, Beckett was their gadget man. A mechanical device didn’t exist that he couldn’t build, rebuild, or improve upon.

Weapons and explosives? Now that was Easy’s gig. When his team had gone to Confessions the night before to rescue Jenna from where they’d learned she was being held, E had brought along some C-4 in case the shit went south. As shit was wont to do. And south it had gone.

Jenna wasn’t where their intel had said she should be. Instead, they found an informant who’d helped them dead from multiple stab wounds to the chest. And then they’d learned that Bruno had taken her with him to the gun deal.

Easy’s rage had gone nuclear, and the deep need to take Confessions
out
so the Church Gang could never again use it to hurt Jenna, Sara, or any other woman had been all-consuming.

The thought made Easy antsy to know if what he’d done had worked. He ticked off his thoughts on his fingers. “Way I see it, we need a status update on the Church Gang. Whether the explosion leveled Confessions. What the impact of your raid on the gun deal is for them. What Church is doing and where he is.” One by one he met each of the other men’s eyes. “You know we gotta take him out before all this is said and done, right? He’s gotta be plotting some hard-core revenge, which means he’ll be looking for us. We need to find him first.”

“I agree across the board,” Nick said, surveying the group and finding them unanimous. There wasn’t any official hierarchy or structure among them, yet they’d still fallen into their old pattern of looking to him since he’d once been their second-in-command. And why not? The guy was sharp, clearheaded, and had killer instincts. And Easy sure as hell didn’t want the mantle of leadership.

Marz spun his chair toward them, a sheaf of papers in hand. “Way ahead of you. Miguel’s already working on a damage assessment of Confessions,” he said, referring to Nick’s retired BPD friend who’d been assisting them with manpower and intelligence wherever he could. Miguel Olivero’s assistance was even more important since they’d dug up more than one piece of evidence over the past week that the Church Gang had the authorities in their pocket, which took the police off the table as potential allies as long as Church remained an important player. “Ike and the Ravens are going to put out feelers to see what they can learn about Church and the gang’s reputation, but they’re also feeling the need to lie low while the dust settles, so they don’t get hit with too much blowback.”

“Don’t blame ’em for that,” Easy said. Even though Nick and Jeremy had known Ike Young for years, it had taken Easy a while to trust the tattooist/biker and come around to the idea that an outlaw motorcycle club could be useful to them. But when he next saw Ike, he was gonna owe the guy a serious apology. Without Ike’s hooking them up with the Ravens, the team’s wins from last night wouldn’t have been possible.

Damn if the lines between the good guys and the bad guys weren’t blurred by every part of this clusterfuck.

“Agreed,” Nick said. “I think we should do the same. At least for the next day or two.”

Easy was down with that. At the pace they’d been going the last week, a little R&R would ensure that people’s heads were clear and their bodies ready to meet the next challenge that came their way.

Charlie cleared his throat. Easy wasn’t sure if the guy was just shy or reserved or more comfortable with computers than with people, but he never said much. When he did? It was always worth listening to. “My landlord’s son works with the city’s gang commission. He might be able to help.”

“The Jacksons,” Beckett said, placing his empty coffee cup on a folding chair. “We met them while we were looking for you.”

“Yeah,” Marz said, holding up a thick booklet in one hand and kneading his right thigh with the other. Easy frowned. Marz had lost everything below that knee to the same grenade that had fucked up Beckett’s eye, but the guy never complained and seemed to have adjusted well to the prosthetic, so it was almost easy to forget he wore it. Damn, if they all weren’t experts at keeping their shit bottled up and battened down. “That’s where we got this dossier on the Church Gang.”

“It’s a good idea, Charlie, but Easy’s right,” Nick said. “Church is very likely going to be putting his own feelers out, specifically looking for people asking around about his organization. Which means we’d need to be very careful about utilizing civilian resources any more than we have to.”

Beckett nodded and crossed his thick arms. “I’ll stock up on burn phones. We use a clean one every time we contact them. But Louis Jackson was a wealth of knowledge that night. I think Charlie’s onto something there. And it’s Jackson’s
job
to be nosy about gangs, so that ought to provide him at least some cover.”

The blond shifted his position against the desk and ducked his head, as if uncomfortable with everyone’s talking about him.

“What else?” Nick asked.

“I have a whole list of research queries to work on,” Marz said. “Charlie’s gonna help me, then Jeremy will jump in around his clients. Keep you posted if and when we find our next big leads.”

Murmurings of agreement and offers to help rose from all around the room.

“I have something I’d like to say,” Shane said, stepping forward and tapping his fingers against the desk. “I know protecting Sara and rescuing Jenna were tangential to our main mission here—”