My whispers in her ear on the drive to Coins aren’t just to soothe her and keep her calm. My primary agenda is to keep her distracted till we’re closer to Coynston than Boston because, sure enough, despite keeping her focus mostly on me, she suddenly remembers her apartment’s in the city we just left.
“Oh, God. What am I doing? Drop me off at home.”
“Your purse and phone are in the Rover at my apartment. I’ll drive you back to Boston after you get your stuff.”
Laurel’s quiet at first, then shakes her head, speaking low. “I’ll pick them up later. I—I want to go home and lie down in my own bed.”
The last thing I want to do is lose access to her. For many reasons. The FBI might reach out again, and, if she’s sore and angry, she might have regrets that make her change her mind about cooperating with them. Not that I know a hundred percent she’s not now, but I doubt she’s a good enough actress to make faked anger seem so genuine.
“Mr. Stroviak, can you turn back, please?”
Anvil’s brows rise at her calling him Mr. Stroviak and at her suggested change of direction. He doesn’t answer her, looking instead at me.
“Could you do that?” she repeats.
I give him a subtle shake of my head, and he looks back at the road.
“We’re closer to Coynston. And my friends already waited hours to pick us up.” I’m careful to refer to them as my friends rather than my crue. Laurel doesn’t need reminders of what we are. Continuing smoothly, I adopt an innocent expression to match my ‘let’s be reasonable’ tone. “Anvil will drop us off, and I’ll take you back myself. ‘Vil, drop me at my place. I’ll come by C’s later.”
Anvil scowls. “Sure?”
“Yeah, one hundred.”
If I’m not under a direct threat, Anvil couldn’t care less where I go, but he knows C expects me back at the compound and that C will not be thrilled about my keeping Laurel with me or going home to an apartment that the FBI broke into. What if they planted devices? On the other hand, if I get Laurel to come home with me to a bugged apartment, it’ll strengthen my defense if she later says I abducted her.
Anvil says no more on the subject, but Laurel and I are barely out of the truck before he’s on his phone, presumably texting C to let him know about my change of plans. Retrieving my personal cell and her bag from the caged Rover, I keep up a slow stream of conversation with her.
Distracted, she glances at the truck. “I can’t sit in a car again right now. I’ll go upstairs with you for a few minutes, okay?”
I’m happy she’s decided on her own to head up, since that’s where I want her and five minutes ago I thought it might come down to an argument in the cold parking garage.
Opening the gun safe in the Rover, I grab a spare I’ve got there and tuck it into the back of my jeans. I figure the FBI might have taken my firearms to test them. It’s a waste of their time. Once a gun’s been used for something real, I consider it burned and that’s what happens to it. Melted down in one of the makeshift smelting furnaces we’ve built on C Crue-owned land.
When we get upstairs, I find they’ve closed the door they rammed and used some crime scene tape to secure it.Nice.
Laurel stares as I peel away the tape and push the door open. Examining it, I find the metal held. It was the door frame that splintered. Wood and plaster are scattered on the floor. Without a word, I pick her up and carry her over the mess and into my bedroom. She protests, saying she’ll lie on the couch.
“In here, you can take a nap without being disturbed.”
Her eyes soften. She’s exhausted and sore, so talking about letting her rest comfortably scores points.
“What about you? You didn’t sleep much either.”
Setting her on her side carefully, I kiss the top of her head. “I’m good. Rest.”
Once she’s tucked in my bed, I make my sweep. They didn’t take the computers, and when I run diagnostics, it shows they didn’t try to crack my passwords or the encryption. If they had tried to log on, it would’ve wiped the drives. Interesting that they didn’t take the laptops. The warrant must have been limited. No fishing expedition allowed.
My eyes narrow on the computers. Paranoia gets the best of me. I doubt they had time to do anything to the devices, but FBI hands were near my tech and I don’t like it. I enter the kill code and walk away as the hard drives are permanently deleted. The machines are now more food for the coal fires.
I search hard for surveillance equipment and don’t find any. Doesn’t mean they don’t have new tech that I don’t recognize, but it’s unlikely. Still, they’ve violated the space. Within an hour, I decide my place has been burned. I’ll donate the furniture and art and move temporarily into Anvil’s old studio within the C Crue compound until I find a new place.
Grimacing at the thought of staying in Anvil’s concrete block apartment, I shake my head. The place is so small I can’t figure out how the guy turned around without knocking things off the walls. Then I remember there’s nothing on the walls. ‘Vil lived like a destitute hermit before he got involved with Rachel. The build cost of their new six-thousand-square-foot house is something like 2.5 million, so that move isn’t a big change for him or anything.
A couple of hours in, I hit a wall. Sliding a bureau in front of the main door keeps it closed, barricading us in. I decide that’s good enough for the moment. The elevator’s private and the stairwell’s locked. The only reason the FBI got in with such little advance warning is that when the super unlocked the stairs for them, the alert went to my personal phone, which was down in the truck. I’ll have to change the security system’s workflow in my next place. A phone alert doesn’t do me any good when the sim card’s been popped out and the phone’s three stories away from where I’m sleeping.
Yawning, I join Laurel in the bed. I’m on my back for about a minute before I switch to my side, curling around her.
* * *
