Micah shook his head. “You know they’ll be looking for both of your credit cards.” He glanced up at the private plane parked a few yards away. “You didn’t rent that with your credit cards, did you? Are they tracking the plane?”
“I used CurieCoin cryptocurrency. It’s supposed to be untraceable. I use a combination of CurieCoin, Bitcoin, and a few others for pretty much everything.”
“Paranoid, much?”
“I’m essentially a hacker, Micah.Hell yeah,I’m paranoid about cybersecurity. I could use crypto to set her up in a safe house.”
“She needs to staywithyou,Tristan. She’ll be a sitting duck in some random apartment in Phoenix. They’ll kill her just to get your attention.”
Colleen said to both of them, “Screw this. I’m leaving.”
She turned and stomped off, her wet hemline slapping her ankles.
Micah called after her, “They’ll kill you, and then they’ll kill him.”
She stopped walking, but she didn’t turn back.
Tristan scuffed the loose gravel of the helipad with his soggy dress shoe. The leather was ruined. Jian was going to have a fit.
Micah continued, “It’s suicide for both of you if you split up. Your only chance is to stay together.”
It was just weird that Micah was arguing so hard for them to stay together. He was usually pragmatic to the point of emotionlessness.
“Why the hell are you arguing so hard for this, Micah?” Tristan demanded. “You don’t knowthey’re going to come after both of us if we go our separate ways. Unless you have inside information?”
“No, butof course, that’s what they’re going to do.That’s what bratvas like the Butorinsalwaysdo, like when Dima went after Dragoljub junior year? His parents hadn’t signed on with Putin’s organization yet, so Dima made sure Drago and his parents knew thatDrago’slife was at stake.”
They both walked toward where Colleen had stopped walking away from them. She stood with her back to them, opening and closing her fists.
“But this isn’t like that,” Tristan argued with him.
“Yeah, it is. And if they take her out, afterward, you’ll bewrecked.I know you, dumbass. Even with therapy, you won’t ever recover from something like that. Like that one time at school when the headmaster thought Arthur was the one who’d inserted malware into the teachers’ grading system and scrambled everybody’s grades, and you went and turned yourself in rather than let him take the fall. You scrubbed toilets for a whole semester for that. If theykillsomeone because of something you got them into, and especially someone you’re as invested in asher,you’ll go offthe deep end.I don’t want you to unalive yourself, asshole. So we have to figure out a way to keep youbothsafe.”
Invested in?He hadn’t invested anything in Colleen beyond a few days’ time and a couple of rolls in the proverbial hay. Her technical coding knowledge was entirely superfluous, if he had wanted to admit it, considering his own. He’d snatched her up because he’d felt sorry that he’d gotten her fired and she was destitute, and he knew how that felt.
But, invested in?
Nah.
Tristan stared at Micah, then looked at Colleen, who’d turned back to them and was still drenched, the ocean breeze dragging her wet dress against her body.
If those assholes hurt or kidnapped or murderedanyoneas a ploy to pressure Tristan, he’d be pissed off beyond measure and would drown himself in guilt, and he would find a way to get back at them to avenge what they’d done.
But Colleen—
Standing out on the nighttime airport tarmac in the glaring floodlights from the hangar, she looked like a half-drowned hamster, angry as hell at being wet and yet freakin’ adorable.
And yeah, if those Butorins hurt Colleen, if theykilledher, he’d go rage-crazed and kill as many of them as he could until they took him out. He’d unleash computer viruses on them that he’d created in his mind but never typed because they were too dangerous to exist, things that would recognize VIN numbers on cars, watch the navigation software for when it was driving near a cliff, and disable the brakes while jamming the accelerator. He would become Death for them and everyone associated with them.
He was a damned mess of wanting to shove her away. Getting tied down and dragging another person around with him was stupid because eventually he would come back to an empty house. And yet, he was desperate to throw himself on top of her when the bullets hailed down.
And the bullets were going to hail down. He’d screwed up and made sure of that.
Knowing that Colleen Frost, his funny accidental admin and hislittlehe should protect, was out in the world somewhere, alone, dodging and hiding while organized crime thugs hunted her to do unspeakable things to her before they let her die, would beunbearable.
And if the Butorins found her—dear God, if they found her—he would not be able to live with himself. After he’d destroyed the world with his revenge, he would follow her into the unknown to try to protect her there because he hadn’t in this world.
Invested inwas a devastating understatement of how he felt about Colleen Frost.
