Crooked Crows by Elena Lawson

AJ wouldn’t allowus to disarm her, and Diesel didn’t push for it, so we didn’t either. She stood between Rook and Corvus, with me at her back, letting us corral her back the way we’d come. She limped slightly, but she was doing a good job of hiding it.

What the fuck was she doing here?

Did she have a death wish?

My pulse thrummed uncomfortably behind my ribcage, making my stomach twist. This wasn’t good. Already, my mind raced with possibilities, options that might end with her somehow still alive. We had a shadow once. A guy who thought he’d strike it rich blackmailing the Saints. Diesel found him, too.

He never saw daylight again.

Our father might be called Saint, but he was merciless when it came to protecting his found family. His brothers and his sons.

That guy was a threat, and now AJ was, too.

“In the warehouse,” Diesel snarled from up ahead as the yard came back into view through the trees. The spotlight dying with the battery so there was only a diffused glow over the tires and the dead guy lying among them.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Corvus muttered, and I realized he was talking to AJ. I’d picked up on it earlier, how neither of my brothers seemed at all surprised to see her here. I had to wonder if they were in on it. Or had seen her somehow before I had.

“Yup,” AJ replied, popping her lips on the ‘p,’ like she didn’t care at all that she might be chum for the sharks before sunrise. “Saved your ass though. You’re welcome, asshole.”

Corvus visibly stiffened, but said nothing as Diesel slammed a palm against the door to the warehouse, shoving it open, the rusted hinges screeching in protest.

We escorted AJ through, and her shoulders tensed, immediately on edge, the blades in her hands twitching.

I left the door open, squinting into the dark to find Diesel hunting through the place, throwing random bits of scrap into a barrel. He dumped gasoline over the mess and flicked on his lighter, igniting a bit of stray paper before tossing it into the metal drum.

Fire roared as the pile of scrap wood ignited, illuminating enough of the space to see that the warehouse was devoid of anything more than some withering old wooden pallets and a sagging desk in the corner.

“Who are you?” he demanded, coming at AJ with a look in his eyes that made my guts twist.

When she didn’t answer or so much as flinch when he stopped just short of her, he turned his fury on Corvus. “Well?” he pressed. “Who the fuck is she?”

“Ava Jade Mason,” Corvus replied, and only then did AJ betray any discomfort. I wouldn’t like Diesel St. Crow to know my name either if he wasn’t my family. Especially not if he was looking at me the way he was looking at AJ right now.

“Who do you work for?” Diesel asked her, his nostrils flaring. “Who sent you?”

She locked her lips tight.

“I asked you a question.”

“She isn’t with a gang,” Rook replied with ease, leaning back on a stack of pallets like we were at a casual bonfire.

Diesel’s steely gaze moved to Rook, studying his second eldest son before bringing his sights back to AJ. “Check her,” he ordered.

I moved in to do it before Corvus could, unsure of why. “Lift your arms for me, AJ,” I murmured, low enough that Diesel would have a hard time catching it over the roar, pop, and hiss of the flames in the metal drum.

My back warmed from the fire as AJ grudgingly lifted her arms, her knuckles white from her grip on her blades. I patted her down.

“Be thorough,” Diesel commanded, and I re-doubled my efforts, careful to caress every inch of her body. The curve of her breasts. Between her legs.

“No wire,” I announced, but as my fingers dipped into her pockets I found something else and winced. Her phone.

Diesel would’ve seen the shape of it sagging in the pocket of her baggy pullover, so I drew it out. “Phone,” I announced.

“Check it.”

I did, flipping the screen to her first. “Password?”

“Fingerprint,” she replied without a lick of trepidation, but her face betrayed what her voice wouldn’t as it paled when I pressed the digit to the fingerprint reader.

I flicked through the main screen as Diesel waited, his trigger finger twitching.

Bile rose up the back of my throat as I flipped through to videos and found not one, but two.

The dots connected in my mind, seeing Billy Parker trussed up like a pig in his cooler. We’d heard he was found dead, now we knew why.

She’d killed him.

But she’d also saved the video.

I wasn’t sure what that meant.

And the other video was of tonight. I didn’t watch more than a few seconds of either before deleting them, my mouth going dry.

“Well?” Diesel prodded.

“Nothing,” I gritted out, giving AJ a loaded look as I handed her phone back to her. I didn’t let go straight away when her fingers curled around it, making her have to tug it out of my grasp. If she survived tonight, she had some fucking explaining to do.

I wasn’t even sure why I deleted the evidence of her crimes. Why the fuck was I trying to save someone who so clearly was trying to blackmail us?

Were you not blackmailing her first?The traitorous thought echoed back to me, bouncing off the recesses of my skull.

Something told me there was more to it than what it appeared to be.

“Then she’s collateral,” Diesel snarled, raising his gun.

I blocked his shot, lurching into the line of his bullet at the same time Corvus made a move to disarm him.

“Don’t,” Rook growled, and all eyes turned to him, no longer lounging easily against the pallets but standing like a hulking shadow, his arms tense at his sides, shoulders heaving. “No one touches her.”

“Just what the fuck is going on here?” Diesel shouted, his carefully constructed mask crumbling as betrayal flashed across his eyes. It cut deep to see it, making me shudder, but I didn’t budge. I wouldn’t.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Dies,” I managed, able to keep my voice level despite the chaos raging within. “A word?”

Corvus whirled on me, his brows drawn as if to ask what the fuck I was playing at.

If he wouldn’t do it, then I would. AJ was worth at least trying, wasn’t she?

Diesel glanced between the three of us, calculating. Studying.

His upper lip curled, and he dropped his gun, stepping back with a hiss. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he spat at Corvus and Rook as he shouldered through them both and vanished back out into the night.

“What are you doing?” Corvus asked as I turned to follow him, giving AJ’s arm a squeeze, an apology unspoken on my lips.

“What we should have done from the start.”

“What?” Diesel snapped as I walked out of the warehouse, going to where he was pacing near the Rover. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Son, because I’m two seconds shy of—”

“We know her,” I admitted. “She goes to Briar Hall.”

Diesel’s breathing evened out at the level tone of my voice, or maybe it was something in my face. But he softened, running a palm over his beard with a heavy sigh.

“I don’t know why she followed us, but I do know that she’s the only reason Corvus isn’t the one lying dead in the yard.”

Diesel stilled. He didn’t like that.

“And we both know what would’ve happened if that motherfucker killed Corv.”

It would have been anarchy. We’d have been lucky not to lose another. Or all of us...

“What are you saying, Son?” he asked, clearly exasperated as he shuffled, dropping his head to take a long slow breath. “You saying she’s friendly? Hmm? Is that it? That she came here, what? As...as unsanctioned backup?”

I frowned, shook my head. I didn’t know what I was saying exactly, but I needed to drive this point home. “She saved our asses, Dies.”

“You saying you trust this girl? This outsider?”

I flexed my jaw. “Yes.”

“And your brothers?”

“They trust her, too.”

Not any further than they could throw her, but that wasn’t the point right now. The point was saving her life like she’d just saved my brother’s, and possibly all of ours.

“We owe her a debt of life,” I pushed, speaking in terms he would understand. The unwritten code of the life.

Diesel’s lips pressed into a taut line as he considered that. “She’s a liability. She’s seen what went down here tonight. The girl can’t go free.”

“No,” I agreed. “But maybe there’s another option.”

“Speak it, then.”

“We bring her in.” I spoke the words quickly, my stomach dropping at the implication of them. It was what I’d been saying since the beginning, since I looked at her, really looked, and saw someone my soul recognized. That’d only happened three other times in my life. I had to trust it.

“Let her take the trial,” I continued when Diesel looked at me like I might be losing my mind. “If she survives, she’ll be in so deep that she’ll never be able to use anything she’s seen against us without burying herself, too. If she doesn’t...”

I let that hang between us for a second, knowing he might like that option better.

“...then I guess you won’t have anything to worry about.”

“You’re serious.”

I nodded, and he turned pacing away only to return again, rolling my suggestion around behind the dam of his lips. Eyes unfocused.

“She’s a girl,” he argued.

“It’s been done before. Mom was a Saint.”

He bristled, and I realized belatedly it was the wrong thing to say. Comparing AJ to his dead wife.

I waited, unable to take it back now that it was said, but when the silence stretched too long and something inside me felt pulled so tight it was near snapping, I continued.

“You saw how good she is with a blade. She can fight. Sly as a fox, too. She could be useful.”

He looked at me, his stare darting between my eyes as though he might find some truth there I was saying out loud.

“Do you have feelings for this girl?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I clenched my teeth.

“I’ve never asked you for anything,” I said, using the last tool in my arsenal. It was the truth. I’d always done what I was told. Everything I was trained to do. I was a good soldier. A good brother. A good son. I didn’t push for anything, because in my limited experience, when you pushed, sometimes the person would never come back. But I was pushing now. I would push for her.

It was what was owed.

“I am asking for this. For her.”

The hurt in his stare almost broke me, but I hid the pain well. Stood taller instead.

“So be it,” he said, his gaze turning dark as he stalked past me, unable to look me in the eyes anymore.

“She doesn’t leave your sight. Not for a second. Not until the trial begins,” he called back, and I stood there, mute and numb until I heard the sound of his engine roaring to life and his tires peeling away from the warehouse, carrying him home.