Blue Fire

Chapter Nineteen - The Moves We Make

CATCHER

What I'd seen that night couldn't be unseen. I knew those vivid images would stay with me forever. I wouldn't forget seeing the image of my kid and having a woman tell me it was my boy. Another boy. Jack's brother was healthy and had a heartbeat I couldn't get out of my head after I heard it.

I wouldn't forget her face as I got out of there to get my head straight, have a few hours to process that. She was shocked and yet a look of disappointment fell over her as I stood before I left. Like she knew I'd bail. She just didn't know why.

The next picture I wouldn't forget was the one I found in my bed, in the apartment I'd bought for Emma and I.

I would have bet every dollar I had ever earned I would never have seen her there again, but I would have lost. She was there, only she wasn't what she had been.

Her face was untouched, an alarmingly skinny that told me what she'd been up to for the past decade. Track marks on her arms that proved me right. But the rest of her wasn't what it had been.

She was placed on my bed, arms and legs splayed wide, covering the entire thing, but the middle of her was the part I'd never forget. Her insides, her liver, her kidneys, her uterus, her lungs... All of it was ripped out of her and splayed around her dead body. It was staggering, the number of organs they'd ripped out of her considering that the amount of blood wasn't too bad. But there she was, ripped apart and posed in my bed.

The biggest mistake I'd made so far and the mother of my first child.

Her face was serene in death, but the rest of her was almost difficult to handle as my phone rang.

"I have a situation." That was how I answered and even I could hear the difference to my voice. He had gone to extreme lengths to do this. He'd sought her out from whatever hole she'd been buried in and brought her here just to give me a show.

"We all do, found Mallory gutted like a fish in my bed at home after an anonymous call."

"I'm lookin' at Emma in the same position."

Silence stretched because this was Harts stepping it up and stepping over the line. He'd sought out the ex-wife of the Wilder president and the ex-fiancée of the Wilder VP. He'd broken in somehow and displayed it like this, orchestrated it all for us.

"Motherfucking shit," Stark spat and I just stared at the lifeless body of a woman I'd once loved, her organs all over the place, her sad life right before my eyes.

"Focus," I called and heard him suck in a deep breath. "We need to collect our women, at least make sure they're safe. Then we need to talk to Farley, he needs to get shots of this, get it on file."

"Catcher, are you not getting' that this fucker maimed and killed our own?" Stark barked at me and I felt a jolt of emotion go through me since I'd walked into this place a dead being.

"Yeah... you're right. Sona, the kids?"

"Fine, at Layla's."

"Okay. The brothers?"

"Far's I know this is it. He hit us because we made the decision and he wants us to rethink."

My mind spun and I couldn't grip any one thing to hold on to.

"What do we do?"

"Are your people safe?"

My body stilled and ice fell through me as I realized what had happened. I'd left Sara there to go drive around, get my head in a place it needed to be. I'd left her there. Her and my boy.