Sawyer glanced at the bed. Rory’s sister was eighteen, but she was so damn pale and looked so fragile lying there sleeping that she seemed much younger. The STAT support team doctor assured them the girl would be okay physically, but Sawyer wasn’t so sure of her mental and emotional health after this.
Looking at the frail girl on the bed and seeing Rory torturing himself for what happened to her, any residual anger and resentment Sawyer might still have felt disappeared in that moment.
“I can,” Sawyer told him. “I don’t want to imagine ever being put in your position, but if I were, I probably would have done the same thing.”
Rory gave him a grateful nod.
“What kind of supernatural is your sister?” Harley asked from beside Sawyer, gazing sadly at the girl in the bed.
“She can start fires with her mind. All she has to do is think about doing it and poof…flames.” Rory’s mouth curved into a small smile. “It freaked the hell out of my parents, brothers, and me when she was little. But we’ve gotten so used to it, we don’t even think about it anymore. And Tilly is much better at controlling it now than she was when she was a kid.”
Harley looked at Rory in surprise. “Your parents and brothers are okay with her being different?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, his smile broadening. “We’re family.”
Harley nodded, but Sawyer knew how much Rory’s answer hurt. Here was another family completely fine with one of its own being different when she’d been cast aside. Sawyer ached for her all over again and if they’d been alone right then, he would have taken her in his arms.
Even though he’d known it would be bad when his teammates finally learned his secret, he’d still been gutted when they’d walked out on him. He’d never be able to forget the way they’d looked at him. He didn’t want to try to equate his pain with Harley’s, but after what happened this morning with Erin and Elliott, he knew what she was feeling. He now knew why she’d hidden herself away from the world for so long, going so far as turning her back on her inner werewolf. If the crap with Erin and Elliott had happened right after his first change, there was a good chance he would have done the exact same thing.
Hell, for a few seconds there, right after his teammates had left the safe house, he’d almost buried his own wolf. He wasn’t sure what had stopped him from walking out until he saw Harley standing there, silently supporting him. He couldn’t leave because this was where Harley was.
He only wondered if Erin knew how close she’d been when she said he trusted his new teammates more than his old ones. In fact, she’d been spot-on. And while the entire STAT team made him feel accepted, Harley made him feel a lot more than that.
“I need to call my mum and dad and tell them about Tilly,” Rory said, pulling out his cell. “As far as they know, she’s at uni right now. I don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this.”
Sawyer didn’t envy the guy. As Rory walked away to have that conversation in private, Sawyer turned to ask Harley if she wanted to find the rest of her teammates when her phone rang. Thumbing the green button, she held it to her ear.
“That was Jake,” she said when she hung up. “They’re about to talk to Brielle and figured we’d want to join in.”
It was a quick ride up in the elevator to the fourth floor, where they found the rest of Harley’s STAT team gathered in the hallway talking to Tessa, the agent from the support staff, who was filling them in on everything that had transpired overnight. There’d been a lot of logistics involved when it came to getting the supernaturals who’d been kidnapped home, as well as finding holding areas for Yegor’s goons and the people who’d attended the auction that they’d taken into custody. STAT was a whole lot better at the behind-the-scenes stuff than MI6, that was for sure. He counted eight armed guards as well as security cameras positioned at various places. Harley’s organization definitely knew what they were doing.
“Getting the low-level trigger pullers into a local jail wasn’t a problem,” Tessa said. “The buyers, on the other hand, are a different matter. McKay has been working with Europol all night to figure out what to do with them, but honestly, with the money these people have, there’s a good chance most of them will walk. They’re too well-known to hide them away in a backwater prison somewhere, and it’s not like we can put the supernaturals they purchased on the witness stand for a trial.”
Sawyer had a sudden vision of lawyers trying to wheel the mermaid’s tank into a courtroom. Yeah, he didn’t see that going over very well.
“So, these rich assholes try to buy a bunch of supernaturals for fun and they’re going to just get away with it?” Caleb said. “Doesn’t that seem kind of fucked up?”
“It is,” Tessa replied. “But unfortunately, there
