Perceive by K E Osborn

 

 

AXEL

 

I’ve never felt so tied up in knots as I do right now. Knowing Brandon sent us on a wild goose chase is making me angrier than I’ve ever felt before. My emotions are all over the fucking place. I need to get back to Kenzi and make sure she’s okay. The thought of losing her again, of anything happening to her nearly fucking kills me.

The five of us are in the one SUV, Luca is driving like a madman. Normally, we’d all be joking about how crazy he’s driving, but right now, I welcome it. He pulls onto our street, and my adrenaline surges immediately. I sit forward trying to get a closer look as Kace pulls out his radio. “We have a man down out the front, I repeat, man down. Will give you more on approach.”

“Copy that. Calling for med team now. We’re on our way with backup, Kace. Keep your eyes open,” Jack relays down the line.

“Drive faster, Luca!” I grunt out just needing to get to Kenzi.

Luca doesn’t say anything. Instead, he plants his foot, sliding the car with precision into the side of the curb. I burst the door open, racing toward Noah. Blair and Tanner follow behind me as Kace and Luca jump out, slowly closing the doors, and pull their weapons, scoping the area.

Blair, Tanner, and I cautiously run over to Noah.

The sight shocking me to my core.

He’s on his back.

Pale as fuck.

Blood pooling on the pavement from his head.

“Jesus, Noah,” I murmur as Tanner bends down pressing a finger to his neck and placing her ear over his mouth. She lets out a heavy breath, clenching her eyes tight. “I have a pulse. Very light and shallow breaths. But it’s there.”

“Moving inside,” I tell Tanner, and she nods as Blair stands beside me at my flank.

Kace and Luca move with us. Our guns are drawn as we peer through the broken-down door. If Noah is down, I don’t even want to think about what we’re going to find inside of Eli’s home.

As we enter, the house is a fucking mess. There are broken tables, splintered wood everywhere, pasta is spilling out from the kitchen floor and into the living room.

Then I see it.

A glimpse of a foot on the floor.

I tap Kace, gesturing to the living room, and we round the sofa. My eyes widen seeing Eli spread out on his back, four bullet holes in his chest and side.

Blood.

So.

Much.

Blood.

I let out a gasp as I rush to his side. My men at my back as I crouch down to him. My finger instantly finding his neck to feel for a pulse.

None.

His body is cold, his eyes vacant as they stare into nothingness.

He’s not breathing.

There’s nothing.

A shudder racks my body, visibly moving through me from head to toe. I glance up at Kace, shaking my head, his face turning red in anger.

Luca lets out a heavy breath, his eyes glistening. “Oh, big guy.”

Blair runs his hands through his hair in frustration as I grit my teeth.

Eli is gone.

One of us is dead, and Brandon is behind everything.

I stand, anger swarming through me like never before as I turn to keep looking. I need to find Kenzi. So, I take off for the kitchen. I know something happened in there because of the pasta on the floor, and I need to find out. No matter what I might find, I simply need to know.

“Axel!” Kace calls out.

“I need to find her,” I yell as I race off for the kitchen. As I approach, a gasping sound echoes and I tense, drawing my gun. I’m not sure what I’m about to find but the sound isn’t one I think I want to see. 

“Jesus Christ,” I curse, my hand going to my mouth. I take a step back, my eyes widening in horror at the state of the deformed body lying on the kitchen tiles. He’s dressed head to toe in black clothing, an outfit that I recognize given I have one of my own—Agency issue. “Brandon…”

Kace steps up beside me. “What the fuck happened?”

I quickly survey the scene.

The pasta.

The large pot.

The layer of water across the floor.

That, plus the fact that it looks like Brandon’s missing many layers of skin off his face.

“I’m going to go with, someone dumped a pot of boiling water over the top of the asshole,” I announce, my entire body shuddering before I straighten my back and grit my teeth. It’s a sight that will haunt me for months, though I have seen worse. Something else draws my attention away from his melting skin, just for a second, and I pause.

His torso—it’s moving.

Rising.

Falling.

Barely.

“That bastard is still alive.”

Kace is about to turn away, but his body freezes, looking back over his shoulder. “No fucking way. Most people would have gone into shock by now.”

My hand is already reaching for my gun, my fingertips stroking the cool metal.

“Tanner! Call for another bus, we got a live one!”

My head jerks up at Kace’s announcement, my hand shooting out and grabbing his vest. “No.”

He glances down first to where his tactical vest is fisted in my hand, before his narrowed gaze rises to mine. We may be friends, but he’s still my superior, and I can tell he isn’t impressed with the way I have a hold of him.

“No, what?” he growls, shoving my hand away.

“He doesn’t deserve to make it through this,” I protest, refusing to back down. I’ve already pulled my gun from its holster, the weapon hanging loosely by my side.

“That’s not our choice to make,” Kace argues through gritted teeth.

“I can fucking make it right now,” I counter, taking a step back and directing my aim at Brandon’s head. “I do this, I know for sure this bastard isn’t going to hurt another person. Think of everything he has fucking done, the people he’s hurt, the people he possibly got killed because of his choices. He went after Everly. He went after Reid and Zeb. He went after Kenzi. He was ready to lay his life down so your mother could destroy us all.”

Kace pushes his shoulders back, his eyes shifting between me and the body on the floor. More often than not, Kace plays by the rules. But the one thing he has in him that overrides that instinct is his drive to always do what is right.

Fuck the rules or the consequences. 

I think we all felt it.

It’s one of the reasons we’re in this business, putting our lives on the line.

We want to fight the Brandons and the Camillas and the Hendrixes because we know we have the chance to make the world to be a better place.

To make it a good place.

And as cliché as it fucking sounds, the only way to do that is to remove the evil, even if it means we have to live with that stain on our souls and our hands.

Because we know in the end, it’s the right thing to do.

I know right now, not letting Brandon leave this house breathing is the right thing to do.

Kace knows it too.

“Cancel that bus, Tanner,” he announces loudly, his eyes still glued to Brandon’s body. “Turns out, I was wrong. He’s dead.” Kace looks up, his eyes meeting mine. “We’re all gonna walk out the front. You have three minutes. Make it look real.”

Kace backs away, holding my gaze for a second before he ushers Tanner out the front door and pulls it closed behind him.

Make it look real.

Meaning, make the injury match the scene.

He wants me to make it look like he died when he fell. And I have a million ideas running through my brain about how I could cause this fucker more pain. Slam his head into the tile so it looks like he hit it on the way down.

Smother him with a fucking washcloth, make it seem like he couldn’t breathe. Like he got water in his lungs and drowned.

But that shit is too good for him.

That is the easy way out, and the bastard deserves slow.

Painful.

Life draining.

I step over him, my gun aimed at his thigh, positioned close to where I know the main artery runs through. Bang. His body jerks, his eyes rolling back into his head as his body bows off the floor. An agonized gurgle bubbling from deep in his throat while the crimson liquid twists and swirls, slowly taking over the water puddled around him.

The patterns are almost mesmerizing.

I adjust my aim, lungs next.

Bang.

His body jerks with the shot, but this time, the response is little.

His tiny breaths becoming more uneven and stilted.

His lungs filling with blood.

“That’s enough,” Kace calls from the door, pulling my attention over my shoulder. “Let’s go.” My trigger finger itches to just put one more bullet in him. Just a little more pain. A little more agony. But at this point, I know he’s gone. The life slowly draining from him as he lay there in my friend’s kitchen—my dead fucking friend’s kitchen.

Blood trails from the side of his mouth as I back away, my boots disturbing the swirling blood, mixing it with the water, slowly turning the color of the kitchen floor a rosy pink.

“Now, Axel.”

The bloody water splashes up onto my pants as I stomp away, my own blood feeling like it’s boiling beneath the surface of my skin. Kace holds the door, waiting for me to step outside before slamming it shut behind me, the loud bang vibrating through my body.

“The fuck didn’t you understand when I said make it look real?”

I turn slowly, tucking my gun away. “It’s real. Right now, he’s really fucking dead.”

Kace grabs my vest in his hands, spinning me around and slamming my body back against the door. “Wake your fucking shit up, Axel. I just lost one man. I have another who I’m not sure is going to make it. You wanna fuck around and not listen to orders, I swear I will send you back to The Agency right now and you can sit and watch while I try and sort through this shit-storm and save the woman you fucking love.”

“You wouldn—”

“Wouldn’t I?” he snaps, shoving me back again. “I’m not going to lose another person to this asshole. And I’m also not going to risk you going off on your own and getting us all killed because your head is fucked up and full of revenge. Pull. It. Together. Asshole.”

He steps back, the both of us left huffing.

Him angry at me because I’m not thinking straight.

And me angry at him because he’s fucking right.

I open my mouth to tell him I hear him loud and clear. I need these people. I need them to have my back just like they always have, but I’m too slow. Kace’s fist clocks me in the side of the jaw, the pain radiating through my skull. My back hits the door with a thump, and I slowly sink to the ground, pressing my hand to my face. “The fuck was that for?” I groan, trying to shake off the reverberation in my brain.

“That was for giving me more paperwork to do.” He hesitates, then holds out his hand to me. I grit my teeth as I place mine in his and let him help me back to my feet. “Now, we’re gonna make a plan to get Kenzi back.”

A strange wave of emotion washes over me, tears clogging my throat and making it hard to breathe for a second. “After all this, I can’t lose her now.”

“You’re not gonna.”

I scoff, swallowing the lump. “How do you know?”

“Because when we find Hendrix, we won’t be worried about making it look real,” he answers, his face growing hard. “We’re just gonna make him dead.”