Torch (Unbreakable Bonds 3)

Marching over to where Snow, Lucas, and Andrei stood, Rowe clenched his teeth to see the dead stare in Lucas’s eyes. This was bad. He’d never seen Lucas shut down like this.

“Snow, Andrei, get Lucas home now!” Rowe snapped. No point in keeping with the code names now. Everything had gone to hell. “Ian, Noah, and I will escort Jude and Eric back to Gidget.”

He started to look around for Noah, but his gaze once again caught on the lifeless bodies of Kyle and Hanna. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. They were supposed to go home, get some help, and try to live happy, as normal as possible lives surrounded by people who loved them. They weren’t supposed to be dead outside an abandoned factory in the middle of nowhere Kentucky for some clueless cops to find.

Were all the kids that had been touched by Jagger headed for this same horrible end?

Except for Ian. They’d saved Ian. But was it enough? No, it hadn’t been.

“Rowe!”

His head snapped up to find Noah standing in front of him. Cold but gentle hands came up and cupped his cheeks, wiping away tears he didn’t even realize were there.

“Andrei and the others are heading to the car. We need to get out of here,” Noah said, but Rowe still couldn’t get himself to move. It wasn’t just the death of the Fogle kids fucking up his brain. Everything had started right here just over a year ago. If they done something different…

“What happened, Rowe? Tell me what happened that night with Green.”

“Green kidnapped Andrei, nearly killed him. We rescued him right here,” Rowe said, waving one hand at the factory. “Green attacked Lucas and Lucas knocked him out. But we knew it wasn’t enough. We should have taken it to the cops, but we were afraid that he’d get off and then strike again. He was a murderer. Didn’t want to take the risk that he’d actually kill Andrei or Snow or me. I…I didn’t want him to kill Lucas. So Lucas shot him and we incinerated the body.”

“Rowe…do you blame Lucas? For Mel?”

Rowe stepped out of Noah’s touch and rubbed a hand roughly over his face to try to get his brain functioning again. “I can’t…because I was there with him. He might have pulled the trigger, but I didn’t try to talk him out of it. I just kept thinking that if it had been Mel who’d been kidnapped, I wouldn’t have stopped with a bullet to the brainpan. And we…we didn’t know.”

“But if he hadn’t, Mel would be here.”

Rowe stepped forward, getting in Noah’s face. “And you wouldn’t be. Mel’s gone. I will never stop loving her, but she’s gone. Wasting time on what ifs will just drive you crazy. Trust me, I spent the better part of a year playing that game. I’ve got you now and I am not letting you go. You got that?”

A smile lifted one corner of Noah’s mouth. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Now let’s get out of here. I’ve got some friends who are a fucking mess right now. Including an employee who should never have had to pick between her son and me. We’ve got to make some plans. The shit is definitely not done hitting the fan.”Chapter 26“Ian, please, tell me there’s something I can do. Something I can help with,” Noah pleaded for the third time in the past hour. The handsome man with the wide blue eyes flashed his most charming smile and Ian could only shake his head. He was struggling to deal with allowing someone to take care of him…at least when it came to food. Ian had trained the others that when it came to cooking, he was best left alone in the kitchen. It centered him like nothing could. Noah was hovering and Ian was struggling to not let it annoy him when the man was only trying to be useful. Of course, he could still hear Rowe snickering from the next room as if he were waiting for Ian to start beating Noah back with an oven mitt.

Glancing around him, Ian frowned. The rolls had just come out of the oven and he was about to carve the turkey. Everything was settled. Outwardly anyway. More than a week had passed since the nightmare that had occurred in Kentucky. He still felt horrible about leaving the bodies of the twins like that and knew his friends suffered the same guilt—despite the fact that they’d tried to kill them and had destroyed so much. They’d been victims and Ian kept seeing them and the others he’d left behind every time he closed his eyes at night.

So, he’d worked hard on this holiday. Worked hard to make everything feel as normal as possible. The only thing still off was that they were still waiting for Lucas and Andrei. Last year, Andrei had brought his parents, which had been an amazing amount of fun, but Andrei had called two days ago saying that his mother was recovering from the flu and wouldn’t be coming this year.