A Nature of Conflict (The Redemption Saga Book 3), page 11
“A pity,” he laughed. “Let me order something for us to eat. Kids won’t be back for another couple of hours.”
She listened as he got them subs from a local joint only two blocks away. They would send a kid to run the food down. She pulled out her wallet and checked for some cash. She still had a little bit left, sitting on it just in case anything came up. She pulled out a twenty for tip, while Jasper pulled out enough cash to pay for the meal.
“I can pay,” Charlie whispered hotly at them.
Sawyer laughed at the hilarity of the comment.
“No, we’re treating you,” Jasper replied sternly. “No worries.”
Charlie just hung up the phone, since he was done making the order, and glared at them. She was still laughing as the food showed up and she told the kid to keep the change from what she and Jasper gave him. The boy must have only been eleven, and he was getting something close to a thirty-dollar tip for twenty dollars in subs. They had made his day.
“It always feels good to do that,” Charlie said through chuckles as the kid tore off to enjoy his prize.
“Right?” Sawyer agreed, grinning like a fool. “Harley was a runner when I found her, remember?”
“I could never forget.”
They ate quickly, laughing over small stories, telling Jasper all about the children Sawyer kept finding.
“She would bring them home like strays, young man. You have no idea. It was like every week she was in the city, she had another one sitting at my table, eating my food, with bruises that needed healing.”
“Thank goodness I never brought home actual animals?” She shrugged as Jasper silently chuckled, his shoulders moving as the only sign.
“I’m sorry we took you away from this,” he told her. “Really. It freaked me all out when we first pulled you out, but you really have done amazing things.”
“She’s a treasure.”
Sawyer just shrugged.
“Why New York, though?” Jasper frowned. “Why, after you tried to escape Axel, did you come up here? You didn’t know Charlie yet.”
“I actually survived them dumping me into the ocean off a cliff.” Sawyer sighed. Her eyes unfocused. She thought back to the hellish, fevered time from Charlotte to New York. “Two bullet holes in me. My chest cut open to the bone. My hip wound was practically a gutting.” She closed her eyes and remembered. Why New York? “I pulled myself out of the water. I stole a car. Dropped it off, stole another car. Robbed a gas station for bandages and whatever I could get my hands on for the injuries.” Why New York? “I was hoping that I could get to New York and try to see if the IMPO, since I made the deal with that team, would protect me. I was out of it. I had no idea what was on the news.” Sawyer opened her eyes again. “I got here, barely alive. I saw the news. Heard what people were saying. Shadow: dead. IMPO team: dead. Axel willing to commit major acts of terrorism to get what he wanted.” She looked down at her hands. “I had nowhere to go. My deal with that team got them killed. I stumbled on the gym, tried to break in. Charlie found me.”
“The rest is history,” Charlie finished for her. “Her wounds were severely infected. I put her into a coma for a week to treat them and keep the fever down. I had the right instincts about not taking her to a hospital. She mumbled in her sleep. Told me things. When she woke up, I learned the full story.”
“I’m sorry for asking,” Jasper whispered. “I didn’t mean for this to take a dark turn.”
“It’s fine,” Sawyer forgave him. “It was years ago. And look at me now. Charlie helped me get healthy. Then he taught me how to fight, not just shove the pointy end of a dagger into someone. He helped me achieve this physique. I changed.” Sawyer smiled at her golden boy. “Then you guys barged in and ruined everything.”
“I would say Axel ruined everything and we fixed it,” Jasper countered.
“Men, you all tend to ruin things,” she retorted.
“I’ll give you that,” he conceded.
Sawyer’s gentle smile turned to a victorious grin. Jasper was much easier to beat in verbal wordplay than Vincent.
“Wow. He’s whipped,” Charlie muttered, looking between them. “They all that bad?”
“Fuck no,” she told him. “I fucking wish.”
That brought more laughter from all of them.
“Charlie!” Liam’s clear young voice rang out.
Sawyer nearly jumped out of her seat. Her heart began to race. For years, she only had two close friends. Two. Charlie and Liam. Liam had learned about her much later; she told him after what happened with Axel in LA, and he’d still wanted to be near her and in her life.
He’d hated her since before Texas. Refused to speak to her - all her news about him came from Charlie. He was twenty now. He hadn’t answered her call for his birthday.
She was terrified of seeing him.
“Does he know I’m here?” Sawyer asked quickly.
“No, I wanted you to be able to surprise them all,” Charlie answered, opening the office door. “Coming down!” he roared back.
Sawyer followed him out of the room with Jasper. She wasn’t used to being nervous like this, but it was becoming more common. Nervous for a date with Jasper. Nervous for a conversation with Elijah about him and Quinn. Nervous about seeing Liam.
Too goddamned nervous.
“I have a guest, as well!” Charlie announced as they walked into the main area of the gym.
Sawyer stepped out from behind them and saw her kids. All of them. She swallowed back her emotions. They were all there. Ages seven to twenty. All going wide-eyed at the sight of her.
“Hey,” she called out softly.
“SAWYER!” It was like all of them had screamed her name at once. The younger ones came running immediately, and she was jumped. She grabbed two, hugging them tightly before getting two more of them.
As the younger ones jumped around, even bothering Jasper since they remembered him, Sawyer looked up to the teenagers. Liam hadn’t moved at all. None of them had. Some looked a bit pissed. She wondered how much Liam had talked to them, how much he’d expressed his own anger at her to them.
“Let me talk to the older kids,” she told the younger ones. “Keep Charlie and Jasper busy for me, please.”
“Yes, Sawyer!” one girl saluted her. Others giggled and laughed. They cleared a way for her to get to Liam and she started it off by glaring at him.
“Workout room. Now,” she snapped, pointing to the room where she would hold her lessons.
The teens smartly listened. She followed them and locked them all in together.
“You said you weren’t coming back,” Trevor started off, angry and glaring at her. “That’s what you told Liam.”
Sawyer closed her eyes and rubbed them gently. When she looked back up, her temper was firing up as well. She was not going to be talked about or chastised by a bunch of teenagers. “Liam knows more about what’s going on than the rest of you. He understands why I’m not going to live in New York anymore and is just angry.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Liam said with a growl.
“Don’t spread rumors,” Sawyer retorted, turning on him. “You know better. I opened up and gave you the full story, Liam, and what do I get in return? Your petulance? Your anger?”
“We needed you here and you decided you weren’t coming back!” Liam yelled.
“You called me a coward!” she roared. “I explained it all to you and you called me a coward!”
“Explained what?” Jessie asked, her arms crossed. “What does Liam know that we don’t?”
“That I’m a retired assassin called Shadow,” Sawyer said it without thinking. The moment the words were out, there was no taking them back. She watched Jessie’s eyes go wide. “Fuck.” She hit the wall with her open palm, pissed that she’d just said it like that.
“Sawyer…” Liam sounded a little guilty. “I didn’t want to expose you.”
“So instead you made them think I was just running?” she hissed at him. “I guess it’s time to tell a story. Gather round, kids. Let me tell you about a girl called Shadow.” She said it sarcastically as she leaned onto the wall. “Because her life and ‘death’ is why I’m in a deal with the WMC for the next five years to stay out of prison. Because my life as her led to me having enemies all over the world. The biggest one, the one I used to work for and the one who thought he’d killed me, found me earlier this year. That’s why I was pulled into protective custody. They found out who I was when I nearly died in August.” She bared her teeth at them, frustrated. “So forgive me if I think I shouldn’t be a constant presence in your life right now.”
“You…” Trevor blinked a couple of times and sank to the mat. Two other young men did as well, looking a bit dazed. “You used to kill people.”
“I still do,” Sawyer whispered. “It’s why I teach self-defense, though. Charlie taught me how to not kill, and I wanted to teach others who find themselves in places like I was once in.”
“You used to get hit,” Jessie realized. “You were once one of us.”
“In a way,” Sawyer mumbled. “I was in a relationship. He taught me to be a thief. Then he taught me how to kill. Then he forced me to kill. Blackmailed me into it, using the lives of others. I’ll never let another person unable to defend themselves be put on the line because of me.” She took a deep breath. “I won’t let you end up like the people I’ve failed before. So I won’t come back to New York. Not permanently. I’ll visit. As often as I think I can. But, between old enemies and my political trouble, I can’t stay here.”
“Coward,” Liam whispered. “You are scared of us getting hurt and don’t trust us to protect ourselves like you trained us to.”
No one else said anything. Sawyer began to think only Liam really thought that way. Maybe it was because he’d known her the longest and had been the closest to her. The first. She’d killed his father to save him from the beatdown she’d witnessed.
“Don’t,” she warned. “Don’t say that to me.” She was not a coward. She would not be talked to like that. That boy had no idea what kind of things he was claiming he could protect himself from.
“Seriously, Sawyer!” He was angry again.
Sawyer narrowed her eyes. Was she going to need to prove it to him that this was out of his depths? “Mat,” she ordered. “Get there.”
“Yeah, let me prove it to you,” he huffed. “You don’t need to worry about us.”
She grinned as he pulled off his shirt and threw it. The kid was turning into a man. She hated it a little, even though she was also proud of him. She just needed to remind him of the difference between a Magi and non-Magi. She had fucking magic.
She blinked directly in front of him and captured his arm and twisted it behind his back. She hadn’t even given him a chance to react to her suddenly appearing across the room. Others gasped. They had never seen her magic. She had never shown off in front of her students. She kept it to Fight Night, which they were banned from attending as minors.
Liam tried to toss her over his shoulder and she rode it, sublimating before she hit the floor. He was still hunched over from the toss when she solidified and grabbed him. She tossed him instead, though she could have kneed him in the face too. She didn’t want to injure him.
He stayed on the floor, staring at the ceiling in shock.
“I used two of my abilities,” she whispered. “I have five, four that matter. I can move through solid objects, phasing, and cloak as well. The last isn’t something you need to worry about. I used to have an animal bond. She’s dead.” Sawyer’s voice went cold towards the end of that statement. “Now, here I am, one of the most infamous assassins that walked this earth. I’m telling you that there’s a possibility that you can be used to hurt me, by people with different and possibly more powerful abilities than me. If you can’t trust my judgement, Liam, then you are a fool.”
“Shit,” Jessie whispered. “Sawyer…what did he do to you?”
“The scar on my lip. The scar on my chest. The scar over my hip. My left ring finger,” Sawyer answered, not looking away from Liam. “He dropped me for dead in the ocean. I should be dead. You don’t need all the details.”
“We tell you all of ours…because we trust you with them,” Jessie reminded her.
“Get up, Liam,” Sawyer told him, ignoring Jessie’s comment for a moment. As Liam stood up, she turned to the younger girl. “He took my animal bond and used it to keep me in line. Did you know a Magi can feel the pain their animal does? She was a little black house cat.” She sank to the mat and stretched out her legs. “He killed her later on. Some of you understand what it means to take the beating so someone else doesn’t have to. That was my life. For years. He said kill this person and I did. So he couldn’t hurt a young boy the way he had killed my cat.” Sawyer waved a hand at all of them, her left, to remind them of the missing finger. “That’s why I did this. Made this. Taught you all. To stop you from being me. Forgotten by a broken system, ignored by those around you. I wouldn’t watch others go through what I did. And I won’t let more children die for me. And that’s what you are. Children.” She looked up at Liam, who was brushing himself off. “You understand now? I won’t let you, or them, be another Henry. I won’t. I trained you to protect yourselves, yes, but not to get dragged into my life. Not to get dragged into the criminal underbelly of the Magi world.”
The possibility was slim that they would ever be in danger, but Sawyer wasn’t willing to risk any of them, for any reason. Non-Magi children, all of them. They wouldn’t stand a chance if someone glanced their way, trying to find her.
“I’m sorry,” Liam whispered. “I just miss you.”
“I know,” she whispered back, standing up. “I’m just not sure how to fix it.”
“I’m not sure how to do all of this without you.” He waved to everyone else in the room. “I’m barely older than them. I’m only-”
“Only twenty?” Sawyer’s heart broke. “So was I when I met you. I have faith in you, Liam. I do. You can make this even better. Help kids by doing the right things. I’ve got it all set up for you.”
“Will you come back?” he asked, and she hugged him. They held on to each other for a long time.
“I’ll always come back,” she promised. “I just won’t stay.”
“That’s enough.”
“It needs to be.” She laid her head on his shoulder. Gods, why was he so tall now? “You’ll always be my little brother.” She wondered if she ever told him that she considered him the younger sibling she never had. Now she would, every chance she got.
“All right, big sis,” Liam replied with an embarrassed chuckle.
She felt a flood of pride and happiness at his words. “Let’s get the kids in here for a lesson,” she decided. “Go on, tell them to get in here. I’ve learned some new things from my team while I’ve been gone, and I’ll teach them to you all. Hurry. I can stay until dinner, then I have plans.”
“Sweet!” Trevor jumped up and ran for the door.
Sawyer looped an arm around Liam’s shoulders and leaned on him. “You can do this, Liam. I believe in you. You don’t need me.”
“I’m sorry for being so angry,” he repeated.
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t let your emotions rule you like that.” She chuckled. “Still something I need to work on. It’s an ongoing thing, believe me.”
“We’re all just works in progress. I think that’s the saying I heard in Philosophy class.” He grinned, and she nodded.
“Yes, we are,” Sawyer agreed. “Who we are, what we do. Everything about us. Like your self-defense training.” She scooped up a younger boy running to her as Trevor let them in. “Hey, little man. Have you been good?”
“I have, Miss Matthews!” he answered. “Have you?”
“I’ve been trying.” She laughed and watched as everyone got into place. “I’ve been trying, little man.”
9
Vincent
Vincent knocked on Sawyer’s door bright and early Monday morning. He needed to make sure she was ready to go, and he hadn’t heard from her yet. He would have used his telepathy, but the enchantments in the wall prevented him from doing so.
“What?” Sawyer called out, sounding groggy and unready.
“We need to leave in twenty minutes. Everyone else is down at breakfast.” He said it loud enough that someone down the hall looked at him with a frown and put a finger over their lips. Chastised by a stranger. He leaned on the wall next to her door, wondering why she was taking so long. She was normally up before anyone else, since she could never sleep through a night unless she was exhausted.
The door swung open and her head poked out. He crossed his arms and smiled at the tangle of near-black hair that she had falling over her face. She had bags under her eyes, and Vincent hazarded a guess that she had only gotten to sleep right as they needed to get up. Or she tossed and turned all night. It sent a bolt of worry through him, but he wasn’t sure asking would get him answers.
“Fuck. Why didn’t you try earlier?” She glared at him.
“I did,” he answered. Three times in the last two hours. “I got no answer and don’t have a key to your room.”
“Shit.” Sawyer slammed her door closed, and he could hear her rustling around. Five minutes later, she stumbled out of her room.
Vincent sighed as she closed her door. “You could have gone for something more formal,” he teased, smiling as he said it. She’d gotten her hair back into a ponytail, looking more managed than it had. It didn’t have knots in it, at least, but it was still curly and voluminous. From there, she went standard uniform. Black cargo pants, black t-shirt, work boots.
“Sorry, I don’t own a suit,” she retorted, looking over him with a sneer. Vincent raised an eyebrow and began walking to the elevator. She was in a bad mood today, that was certain. He just decided to ignore the comment and sneer. Zander, Elijah, and Quinn were also in regular uniform. It wasn’t a big deal.
