Chris (Second Wave Book 4) Read online

  Chris

  By Mikayla Lane

  Editor Beth Braden

  [email protected]

  Cover art by: humblenations.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, affiliations and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Wave and Second Wave Series in Reading Order

  Hunting Cari

  Finding Jess

  Chasing Dare

  Grai’s Game

  Viper

  Taming Jax

  Drago

  Grounding Gracus

  True Traitor

  Mikal

  Manipulating Mikey

  Saving Koda

  Chris

  Niklosi’s Nightmare (Coming in July 2016)

  Find me on Facebook at:

  facebook.com/author.mikaylalane

  Find an encyclopedia of characters at:

  mikaylalane.wikia.com/wiki/Mikayla_Lane_Wikia

  To my Readers:

  Thanks so much for all of the awesome reviews, suggestions and comments.

  As always, feel free to email me.

  [email protected]

  Mikayla Lane

  490 Word Document Pages

  95,798 Words

  Ver. 1.0 4-26-2016

  Chapter One

  Mikal turned the corner into the kitchen in time to see his daughter, Charlie, appear behind his brother, Chris, at the breakfast table. A large butcher knife was in her hand and pressed up against Chris’s lower back.

  His breath caught in his throat and he dissolved into air, trying to reach his brother before his baby girl could harm him. He was halfway to them when Chris, Dread, Declan, and Luca burst into cheers and applause.

  Charlie giggled and lowered the knife as Chris picked her up and swung her around, kissing her cheeks loudly.

  “That was awesome!” Declan said with a grin.

  “You’re doing great, little one! I’ll teach you more about the kill spots later,” Chris said, radiating pride for his niece.

  Mikal stumbled at what he was seeing and reformed with his arms folded across his chest, glaring at his brothers and Dread.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, noting his brothers avoiding his gaze.

  “Daddy! Did you see me? I did it! I did the snuck on them thing!” Charlie said, her face beaming with pride as she launched herself into Mikal’s arms.

  “Hi, baby,” Mikal said, squeezing her tight for a moment before he gingerly removed the large knife from her tiny hand.

  He handed it to a blushing Chris and looked at his little girl.

  “Tell Daddy about this ‘snuck up on them’ game,” he asked with a smile.

  Charlie took a dramatic, deep breath and Mikal knew it was going to be a long explanation from a three-year-old’s perspective.

  “Well . . . Uncle Chris said that I couldn’t keep snucking up on them when I play in the air ‘cause someone could get hurt. Then Uncle Declan said that if I did do it, I had to be pa-pared to fend myself,” Charlie said, trying really hard to remember all the big grown up words.

  “Whoa!” Chris said, holding up his hands and pulling Charlie out of Mikal’s arms just as Mikal was beginning to breathe fire.

  Dread took Charlie from Chris just as Mikal confronted his brother.

  “You’re teaching my three-year-old baby to sneak up on people and kill them?” he asked.

  Chris grimaced and held his hands up, not wanting to fight his seriously angry brother.

  “It sounds worse when you say it like that. See, this kind of started after you taught her to fly. She was sneaking up behind us all the time and scaring the bejesus out of us. If we weren’t so skilled, she could get hurt,” Chris said.

  Declan put a hand between his brothers and looked at Mikal.

  “Seriously, bro, she could get hurt if she did that to someone else, so we told her that if she did do it that she would have to be prepared to defend herself. She must have watched us train or something . . . we couldn’t yell at her for doing something we told her to do,” Declan said, trying to calm Mikal.

  Mikal snorted in disbelief.

  “You’re telling me she learned how to do that by watching us train? That you had no part in a baby getting a butcher knife and holding it against his kidney?” Mikal asked, watching his brothers look away.

  “We started off with her dolls,” Luca offered.

  “And ended with a knife half the size of her?” Mikal thundered.

  “It was hard to make sure she was going to hit the right spot with a head of doll hair in the way. We needed something with a finer point,” Luca said with a sniff, not sure what the big deal was. They’d explained why they’d done it.

  Mikal glared at Chris. Out of everyone in the room, Chris was the one who should have known better.

  “I pray for the day you become a father and realize just how dangerous this game is. She’s little more than a baby!” Mikal chastised.

  Mikal was taken aback when he saw the blood drain from Chris’s face before he looked at the ground.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” Chris said before he quickly left the room.

  Mikal watched him leave with narrowed eyes. Something wasn’t quite right. In fact, something hadn’t been right since the other night when they’d watched the all-hands meeting in Dillon.

  He looked around the room and noticed Declan had also followed Chris’s progress from the room.

  “What is going on with him?” Mikal asked Declan through the shengari’.

  Declan nodded towards the door with his head and Mikal looked at Dread and the others in the room.

  “Can you watch Charlie for a moment without knives, guns, grenades, or other weapons?” he asked.

  Dread snorted and nodded.

  “Of course we can!”

  “No joke, there’s poisons, darts, wait! It’s perfect for her size! A pea shooter!” Luca offered with glee until he saw Mikal’s furious expression. “Or we could let you decide.”

  Mikal picked up his precious daughter and handed her to Dread.

  “You have her until Chance comes in. She will be here shortly. Real shortly,” Mikal said as he left the room with Declan.

  “Here’s what I know,” Declan began the moment they were alone. “When we were watching that meeting, Chris got sick or something. Went white as a ghost, and I followed him when he sneaked out of the room.”

  “Where did he go?” Mikal asked.

  “He went to his room. Now normally I wouldn’t have messed with him, but something isn’t right, so I turned on the vid in his room and saw him pull out a couple of human phones from a storage box in the back of his closet. He went through them both. Then he kind of broke down,” Declan admitted.

  Mikal felt a shiver run through him at the news and trusted his instincts.

  “Let’s go to the comm room; I want to see the vids,” Mikal said as he headed in that direction.

  “Why don’t we just ask him?” Declan offered, not real keen on spying on his brother.

  Mikal turned to him, stopping Declan in his tracks.

  “Why didn’t you ask him after you saw the vid and knew something was wrong?”

  Declan ran a hand over his buzz cut hair and nodded. He didn’t want to admit he’d not confronted Chris because he didn’t want to explain why he’d invaded his brother’s privacy.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  Both men entered the comm room and Declan entered his code, bringing up the vid he’d spoken of. They watched it in silence, and Mikal started it again, playing with
the view until he could see what was on the phone screens.

  “Oh hell!” Declan whispered.

  “This . . . this we confront him about,” Mikal growled and disappeared.

  Declan turned to see Mikal was gone and ran for the door, hoping to catch his brothers before it blew up. He ran down the hallways, pushing in the locator on his comm that would allow him to track Chris’s comm, to see where he was. He slid into Chris’s room just as Mikal turned to him with a comm in his hand, anger radiating from him.

  “He’s gone,” Mikal confirmed.

  “Oh, this isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. We need to find the human phones,” Declan muttered as he went to Chris’s closet and began tearing it apart.

  “I doubt he left without them,” Mikal added, looking around his brother’s room. “But there may be something else in here that can help us find her.”

  Declan threw the last box pulled from the closet onto the bed, dumping the contents out and spilling them onto the floor in anger.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t he tell us?”

  Mikal turned at Declan’s question, having already considered it himself.

  “I’m assuming he thought it was a lie until it was recently confirmed it was possible. He probably reacted very badly to her and wants to fix things with her before dealing with us,” he guessed.

  “That makes sense . . . but damn. This is big!” Declan uttered, shaken by the news himself.

  “All the more reason for him to panic and want to fix it quickly,” Mikal added, studying the desk in the corner of the room. “I am assuming he is attempting to reconnect with her. He may have left his comm so that he could do so in private.”

  “You think we should wait until he returns and confront him?” Declan asked as he started putting Chris’s things back in the box on the bed.

  Mikal knelt down in front of the desk and felt underneath it. Finding nothing, he moved to his hands and knees to look more closely.

  “What are you doing?”

  Mikal ignored Declan as he peered at the air vent behind the desk. Moments later, he had the vent cover in one hand as he pulled out a small, intricately carved, wooden box from the vent.

  “Damn, he’s a sneaky bastard,” Declan said with a grin.

  “It looks like her name is Quinn Williams, and he’s heading to a dive bar in D.C.,” Mikal said, handing a book of matches to Declan.

  “You got all that from a book of matches?” Declan asked in disbelief.

  “Her name is written on the inside, and what other reason do you think he’d have to hide a matchbook in the vent?” Mikal replied, seeing the comprehension on his brother’s face as he opened the matchbook.

  “Sounds like we need surveillance. Who should we pick? Because I am not—and let me repeat this so I make myself as clear as possible—I am not telling those heavily pregnant hell demons that Chris may have screwed up like this,” Declan argued, his determination absolute.

  Mikal visibly winced and nodded his head.

  “Yeah, we’re not doing that. I’m sure we can handle this without the tears . . . and drama. We’ll grab a few of our less talkative brothers and work in shifts until Chris figures this out,” Mikal agreed as he mentally chose amongst his brothers who would help back up their oldest brother.

  *****

  Chris eased onto the highway without looking back. It’d been a spur of the moment decision to leave, but Quinn hadn’t given him a choice when she continued to refuse his calls and texts.

  He looked over at the cell phone on the seat next to him, and before he knew it, the phone was in his hand, and he was looking at the last email he’d gotten from her.

  I’m so scared. I need you now more than ever, and you’ve walked away from me. From us. But maybe it’s for the best because you’ve never trusted me. Not like I used to trust you. I miss the man I thought you were. Goodbye, Chris.

  His hand shook as he tried to watch the road and stare at the picture of her beautiful face. Her blue eyes were filled with tears, and she looked so sad and defeated that his heart stuttered in his chest.

  I put that look on her face and that pain in her eyes, Chris thought in anger at himself.

  He checked the road and looked back at the picture. This time his eyes traveled down to the noticeable bump where her usually trim stomach would be.

  A horn blew, and Chris swerved back into his lane as he clutched the phone tightly in his hand before he pounded his other fist into the steering wheel several times and roared in rage.

  I should have known better. I did know better, Chris ranted at himself in his mind.

  “Even I did not know,” Chris’s beast Tag said.

  The admission didn’t make Chris feel any better. He knew Quinn’s character and the type of person that she was, and he knew she wouldn’t lie to him—especially not about something like this. Yet he still pushed her away.

  Oh gods, Chris thought as he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead to try and keep out the memories of the horrible things he’d said to her and the accusations he’d made.

  “No wonder she won’t talk to me. I don’t even want to talk to myself,” Chris muttered as he gunned the engine and switched lanes.

  He looked at the clock and tried to figure out where she would be and realized that she should be home, most likely sleeping if she worked the night before.

  That’s if she’s still working, he thought, sick to his stomach over wondering about her.

  Phone in hand, he hit her number on his speed dial and listened intently as it rang and rang until her message came on.

  This is Quinn. I can’t take your call right now, but if you leave the pertinent stuff, I’ll do my part!

  Chris closed his eyes and hit the end button on the phone. Even though he hadn’t expected her to answer, he was still a little hurt that she didn’t. He could understand why she didn’t. If he was in her shoes, he wouldn’t talk to him either.

  “You lying bitch! What did you do? Wait until the one time I was stupid and vulnerable to start your con on me? If you think I’m going to fall for your fucking lies, you’re fucking crazy! I don’t know who knocked you the hell up, but you aren’t blaming that bastard on me! Don’t you ever, ever, contact me again! I want nothing to do with a scheming little whore like you!”

  Chris squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the memories of the last words he’d said to her and the way she’d looked like he’d punched her.

  I should have known better, Chris thought angrily as he slammed his fist on the steering wheel again.

  Chris pulled up in front of a dilapidated apartment building and sighed when he saw the condition of the place. It looked no better than the first day he’d seen it five years ago.

  “Come on, you big baby! It’s not as dangerous as it looks around here and I’ll protect you. The people may be poor, but they’re really nice!” Quinn had said with a bright smile as she dragged him to the front of the building.

  He’d hated that she moved there and refused his offer to help her afford a nicer place until she could finish night school. In the 10 years he’d known her, she’d never allowed him to help her in any way financially. Even when they’d gone out, Quinn had kept a precise count of whose turn it was to pay and refused to be deterred when it was her turn.

  That should have been my second damn clue she wasn’t lying, Chris thought with disgust as he headed towards her front door.

  He hit the landing of her second floor apartment and knocked rapidly on the door, not willing to delay their conversation a second longer. As the minutes ticked by, he became more nervous and shifted his feet, putting his trembling hands in his jacket pockets.

  When several more minutes passed, he knocked again, assuming she might be napping. Sleeping and eating appeared to be Dree and Angel’s favorite past time lately, and he assumed Quinn would be just as tired since she would be a little farther along in her pregnancy.

  When five minutes had passed and she still
didn’t answer, Chris reached into his back pocket and pulled out a single key. He rubbed it between his fingers for a moment as he looked at it blankly.

  “Here’s your key! You know, just in case. You never know when you might need a swanky place like this to bring a chick back too,” Quinn had teased as she proudly held up a key to him.

  “More like have a way inside when you’re too beat up to open the door. I swear if you try and break up one more bar fight, I’m going to lock you away somewhere for your own safety,” he’d threatened yet again.

  “Oh please! He got in a cheap shot because I took him to the ground. You should be proud; you taught me how to do that,” Quinn retorted, not the least bit worried about his threats.

  Chris shook himself from his thoughts and put the key in the door, slowly turning the lock so he wouldn’t scare her to death and get hit in the face with something. He slowly opened the door a crack and peered around the corner. Seeing nothing, he opened it wider and stepped inside.

  His eyes were again assaulted by the bright yellow paint Quinn had insisted on getting for the combo living room/dining room/kitchen. The color was an eye watering shade that he’d hated the moment he’d seen the first brush of it on the wall.

  “It’s not that bad! Seriously, look at the wall now and look at it with the yellow, it’s a major improvement, and it’ll always be cheerful in here,” Quinn had argued, her smile almost as bright as the atrocious paint on the walls.

  Everything in the small apartment looked exactly as he remembered it. Quinn didn’t have many belongings, but what she did have was well taken care of and proudly displayed. He sucked in a breath when he noticed what was missing—everything he’d ever given her.

  On a small corner cabinet, Quinn had kept small mementos that he’d gotten her over the years, and everything was gone—the stuffed toad he’d won her at a carnival, the books of her favorite poetry he’d gotten her one Christmas, all the small, inexpensive things she’d always loved.

  Chris drew in a shuddering breath and steeled himself for a tough road ahead to win her trust back, and he headed to the bedroom door, assuming she was in there.