Knox had no doubt this was going to be one of the worst nights of his life. Now that he’d found something worth hanging around for, the stakes had skyrocketed. Whereas before, he hadn’t really given a shit about what happened to him, now he had two compelling reasons to keep his hide free of more bullet holes.
Then again, maybe all he was doing was putting Marcus and Kennedy in danger. He might never be able to escape his past or outrun the Vipers. He’d keep bringing this bullshit to their front door over and over unless he did something to change that.
So there he was, driving a box truck full of legit hundred dollar bills toward the rendezvous point the Vipers had been supposed to approach. Meanwhile, Nolan had been deployed to make sure the original couriers never arrived. How exactly he was going to manage that hadn’t been explained to Knox, but he was pretty sure it involved some of the assholes he used to work with becoming unalive.
Knox focused on his role in this mission. He had one task: get the delivery crew to trust him enough that they handed over the drugs and any information they had on the location of the recipe. And if he couldn’t get that out of them, help Marcus and the Shields get them into custody so they could do more investigating while he took their stash off the streets.
Again.
If he wasn’t good for anything else, he considered that his new personal undertaking. Keeping some stupid seventeen-year-old out there from wrecking their life, like he had his own.
If he managed to make it back to Kennedy, and proved to her that he deserved her trust when it came to sharing more than just her body, well…that was almost too much to hope for when he likely wasn’t going to survive this encounter.
Knox looked over to Marcus and said, “Last chance. You want out?”
“Fuck off.” Marcus didn’t even bother to meet his gaze.
“You really do shit like this all the time?” Knox shook his head. “Maybe you’re dumber than I am.”
“Maybe I have a low tolerance for injustice.” Marcus shrugged as if it was no big deal that he was so damn good.
“We’re almost there.” Knox glanced at the GPS and the route James had programmed remotely for him.
Marcus grunted and sat so still Knox knew he was looking in every direction at once. They rolled through a dilapidated chain link fence and into a parking lot behind an abandoned factory. He parked in the spot immediately next to an identical unmarked white vehicle. Knox slid from the driver’s seat, hoping that the Shields were the only people lurking out in the shadows beyond the ring of patchy illumination tossed onto the cracked pavement by the flickering florescent lights above.
“What the fuck?” the driver of the other truck said as he drew his gun. “You’re not Dino.”
“No shit.” Knox shrugged. “You know who I am, though?”
“The guy who bailed on the Vipers. Why the fuck shouldn’t I blow your head off and send your body back to Vex for a bonus?”
“I’ve got about six million reasons right here.” Knox rolled up the back door of the box truck and let them see the cash piled inside. He hoped they didn’t look too closely at a couple of the crates in the corners where Sola and Liam were hidden.
“There’s a new boss in town.” Marcus crossed his arms and angled his head so his diamond studs flashed in the overhead light. He impressed the hell out of Knox, and apparently the manufacturers too.
The two guys looked at each other and then back to Knox, who shrugged. “Let’s be honest, you’re smart enough to understand that if we’re here instead of the Vipers, we’ve already secured the distribution end of this supply chain. No reason why we couldn’t make you two obsolete and keep the delivery if we want. So you might as well do the smart thing and take what we’re offering. There’s more to come if we partner long-term on this new project.”
There was a long pause and then the taller of the two delivery guys shrugged. “Yeah. Okay. As long as you’re going to keep selling what we’re making. Not only for this one shipment. And we need to check the cash.”
“That’s the idea. Go grab some at random to verify. But there isn’t time to go through it all.” Knox thought of their teammate cargo, more precious than money. James had promised the crates were lined with bulletproof panels, but it still made him nervous to have Sola and Liam bundled up like sitting ducks back there. “Besides, how do we know your haul is as quality as people are saying? I guess we’ll both have to take it on faith.”
“Nah. You’re about to sample some while we look at the money. No one’s gonna come back on us saying it’s bullshit stuff.” The driver planted his feet.
Knox’s heart rate spiked and he nearly stumbled backward, but he bumped into Marcus. He knew then they weren’t getting out of there without one of them testing the drugs. That’s how they always did things during these major transactions. And no way in fucking hell was he going to let Marcus touch that shit.
Over the comms, Kennedy shrieked. He desperately tried to block out her sobs, begging him not to do what needed to be done. When he glanced back at Marcus, he saw a million different things in the other man’s eyes, but in the split second they had it would have been impossible to formulate any sort of alternate plan. In the world Knox was from, taste testing wasn’t a big deal. If they didn’t do it, they were both likely to end up killed.
So Knox agreed. “Yeah, give me some.”
“I have them in my sights. I can take them out instead. Say the word.” Aarav had set up sniper shop on some nearby building.
“Hold.” Jordan’s voice rang through. “We need them alive to find out the location of the factory and info on the recipe. Unless Marcus can get it out of them right now, we’ll have to move forward.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “We’ll take your word for it if you can tell us more about where it’s being made or what’s in that shit.”
“Nah, man. We ain’t dumb. You already trashed a bunch of Vipers, why not us next? What we know about that is the only thing making us useful.” The guy shook his head, glancing over his shoulder as he rummaged through the wads of cash, apparently satisfied with what he saw. “One of you hit that shit, then let’s get the fuck out of here before someone else makes a better offer or decides to be less civilized about it, eh?”
“Son of a bitch,” James hissed.
There was no other option. Knox nodded and stepped forward. He waited for the passenger to unlock their van and withdraw a brick at random. Knox took out his knife, flipped it open, and sliced a line in the plastic wrapping. He dipped just the tip of his blade in the white substance and dropped the granules onto the truck bed, where he smashed them with the handle of his switchblade hard enough to make the delivery guy flinch.
Knox stared at Marcus, bent down, and snorted the drugs off the metal bed.
Immediately, he was reliving that night. The worst night of his life before this one. Chemicals flew straight to his brain and started buzzing around like a swarm of flies on a dead body. Maybe it was his corpse they were hovering over. He had only done a tiny bit, thought it was a small enough hit that it wouldn’t be a danger like it had been last time when he’d been overconfident, but then again, he hadn’t had anything in his system for damn near three months.
“It’s gooood.” Fuck, was he already slurring? It wasn’t a lie either. His heart started beating triple time and he swore he developed night vision.
“Time to go,” Jordan instructed in their ears. “Now, Marcus, so you can get Knox to help as soon as possible.”
“We’ll take it.” Marcus held out his hand and shook with the driver of the other van. It was the break they needed to have the slight advantage required in order to take the delivery guys alive. If only it had come a moment earlier, if the scales had tipped in their favor sooner, maybe the evening could have ended before Knox had sacrificed himself.
As it was, it was going to be dicey.
Marcus used the connection of his hand, clasped in the delivery guy’s, as leverage. He swung the bastard’s smug expression into the corner of the truck. His co-pilot had a gun and whipped it up, aimed at Marcus. Without hesitation, Knox threw himself at the fucker. The problem was, the drugs flooded his veins with fire and overconfidence so he only clipped the asshole instead of tackling him.
It was about then that roars echoed around them. Liam and Sola flew over Knox as they bolted from the back of the money truck and made quick work of disarming and suppressing the second delivery guy. Before Knox could manage to find his feet in the distorted world, they’d captured and bound the two drug traffickers, did something to make them go quiet and still, then locked them in the back of the truck with the money those fuckers would never get to spend.
Greedy bastards.
“We’ll take this into the loading dock and lock it up at home. See you there,” Sola said to Marcus, then climbed into the driver’s side without stopping to make sure Knox was okay. They didn’t have time to screw around, and he didn’t blame them for not wasting precious seconds on him.
He was one man. They could save thousands. Because damn that concoction was incredible. Irresistible. And there was more not far from him. He licked his lips.
“Shit!” Marcus bellowed as he reached up and slammed the rear rolling door of the truck closed, severing Knox’s line of sight with the pile of drugs.
He punched himself, irate that he could be enjoying and coveting the very thing that had ruined any last hope of building a future for himself that didn’t involve madness, addiction, and destroying the hopes of who-knew-how-many people.
Knox tried to extract the truck keys from his pocket but couldn’t get his fingers to function correctly.
“Buddy, you can’t drive like that.” Marcus levered him up. Besides, that’s not even the right truck. I have the keys for the one they brought.” He was kind, speaking slowly and quietly, even though Knox could see the strain at the corners of his eyes.
Kennedy’s anguished cries reverberated in Knox’s mind, either because they were real or because he was imagining how disappointed she was going to be in him, he wasn’t sure. Knox swiped at his ear until his comm popped off. But that didn’t stop the wailing. Maybe it was his own, echoing through his mind.
Or was it Riggs’s ghost? Or a flashback to the sounds Knox himself had made when he’d woken up and realized his boyfriend was gone?
“Fuck! Fuck!” He yanked on his hair. “Make it stop! Marcus. Please. Make it stop.”
“Kennedy will do her best. We need to get to her as quick as possible.” Marcus reached for Knox, but he batted the other man’s hands away.
“No! She can’t see me like this. She’ll hate me.”
“She won’t.” Marcus practically mummified Knox as he pinned his arms to his sides with a bear hug so he couldn’t land a swing. “She loves you.”
That was all he could take. Knox broke. A primal sound—part rage, part grief, part agony—ripped from him and echoed through the night.
“I’ve got you.” Marcus lifted Knox over his shoulder and all Knox could do was flop there as Marcus carried him to the passenger seat of the truck. His whole body buzzed and freaked out, as if it were a grotesque pinball game, the drugs bouncing around his brain lighting it up. He wanted to run the entire way back to Shields and promise Kennedy it would never happen again. But he couldn’t stand the thought of facing her. Of seeing revulsion in her beautiful blue eyes.
“I fucked up. I couldn’t think of another way.” Knox was shaking too hard to wipe the frothy drool from the corner of his mouth. He clung to Marcus. “Why do I like this? Why do I need it? She’s going to hate me. I’m fucking disgusting.”
“Nah, she’s terrified. Would she be so scared if she despised you?” Marcus settled him into the passenger seat and put the seatbelt around him as if he were a child. He did it with fast, efficient motions far different from a dad out for a leisurely drive, though. “She’s on the comms still. She’s waiting for us at home. She’s got some Narcan, and you didn’t do that much. Hopefully, that’s going to help neutralize the worst of this shit, okay?”
As he rushed around the other side of the truck, Knox thought he heard Marcus shout, “Why the fuck didn’t we bring some with us?”
It was hard to tell through the mush his brains were turning into.
Marcus climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door, his breathing ragged.
“Let it kill me. ’Cause she’s never going to trust me again.” Knox’s head hit the window as it lolled. His heart felt like it might burst at any second. “And I don’t fucking blame her. Who would want a person like this when she’s already got you? You’re perfect. I can’t do anything right.”
Marcus didn’t seem to disagree since he quit arguing. Instead he revved the engine, then squealed the tires as he raced out of the lot.
Knox wasn’t sure if he was going to cry, be sick, or pass out. He stared up at the moon, wobbling in his double vision, before letting the drugs obscure the nightmare he was living through. For the first time in his life, he didn’t enjoy being high. He hated every second of the necessary evil. Whatever he’d done, he’d done it to keep Kennedy and as many other people, even ones he’d never know, safe.
If he survived, that would be cold comfort because the woman he’d always loved would look at him with the disgust he’d earned. And the man who obviously adored her, would let Knox go to keep her. Knox wouldn’t blame Marcus. He obviously desired Kennedy as badly as Knox had craved this twisted rush once.
Knox closed his eyes and prayed for an easy out—a painless end to his insurmountable problems. How much could one heart take before it broke completely and shuddered to a stop?