“So how did you get…here?” He waved his hand at Peyton. “And with Jake?”
Peyton quickly summed up the events, and Ken was certain he was missing details, both from his own exhaustion and from Peyton greatly abridging the retelling because of Ken’s exhaustion.
Ken was aware of Peyton bringing him one of the burners Ken had last seen in Idaho, and he stumbled his way through helping Peyton set it up. “Can I just give you my Pack credit card and phone PIN number, and you take my phone?” Ken asked. “If you read through sexy messages between me and Dewi, that’s all on you.”
Peyton grinned. “Yeah, your secrets are safe. Just show me what I need and I’ll take it from there so you can go get horizontal.”
“Greatly appreciated.”
Five minutes later, Ken was upstairs in a guest room, where he stripped and face-planted into a very comfortable bed and quickly crashed into a deep sleep.
Probably the best sleep he’d known since this latest clusterfuck started.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Dewi
She wasn’t sure she might not pace a groove in the cabin’s floor, but she’d stay right there and wait since she now knew Peyton was alive and well—and so was Ken. She’d even grabbed one of the battery packs Ken left behind, plugged her phone into it, and carried it so her phone wouldn’t die and she’d be tethered to the wall by a charger cord.
If it wasn’t for the baby, she’d be pacing outside, but this would have to do.
It was 56 minutes later when her phone rang. She didn’t even look at the screen before thumbing into the call. “This better be a damned good story for scaring years off our lives, Peyton.”
She nearly wept at the sound of his chuckle. “So you did miss me, huh, Dewster? Good to know.”
“It’s not funny, asshole. Gillian’s a wreck. And yes, you scared me.”
His tone turned serious. “Okay, for starters, I’m sorry. Believe me, it wasn’t my intent to get captured. I didn’t know what happened to the Haugen family, or I never would have gone out alone. And yes, you can chew me a new one when I get home for not following protocols.”
“Can I go tell Gillian now?”
“Not yet. We’ll handle that shortly. Let me update you….”
Her relief quickly tipped into rage as he spun the full story. She even managed not to interrupt him as she settled on the cabin’s sofa to let him tell it. It took him a full hour before he reached the part about boarding an airplane in Finland.
“Are you going to make me play ‘Where in the Everloving Fuck is My Big Brother,’ or will you just fucking tell me already?”
“Dewi, I’m serious that you can’t tell anyone I don’t clear first.”
She nearly broke. “Please, Peyton. Just tell me so I can stop worrying about Ken and focus on choking down the next shit sandwich I know you’re about to feed me.”
He sighed again. “We’re in London. We’re safe at Trevor’s home.”
She wiped her tears away, the relief nearly as painful as her worry had been. “Thank you,” she said, sniffling. “Seriously, I needed to know.”
“Ken’s safe, I’m safe. I need him here, though. Maybe a week or two. Possibly longer.”
“You’re not sending him anywhere dangerous, are you?”
“No, honey. I need his geek skills.”
“And you promise he’ll be safe?”
Another of those big-brother sighs. “I will ask Trevor to have one of his men stay with Ken, armed, anytime Ken leaves the house. Is that good enough?”
“I don’t know, is it? That fucker’s guys managed to kill Maisie and Rupert, didn’t they? And they were at a secret safe house with armed guards.”
Peyton
