Legend’s rope went taut in his hand. Bones lifted his chin slowly. Voodoo’s eyes went cold enough to frost steel. So, it didn’t surprise me that he’d lied.
“I am so tired of being lied to,” I said, and blew out a breath as I turned away from Sinclair, away from Ignacio, away from all of it.
Bones was right there, his gray eyes fierce as he met my gaze. I saw the question right there, what did I want? How could they fix this for me? They all wanted to do it. It was there in Voodoo’s questioning, in Legend collecting Sinclair and torturing him, in AB tearing it all apart.
“Can you handle getting the rest of what they know out of them?”
I was just tired. So tired.
Soft fingers cupping my chin. “Don’t leave the house?” It was a quiet request from Bones. I nodded once.
“Just going up to sit with Goblin.” We’d made him stay upstairs for all of this. He’d let us know if a threat was coming, and he also didn’t need to be down here in this mess.
“You want one of us with you?” The fact he even asked made me smile.
I wanted all of them with me, but… “I need a few,” I admitted. I needed to get the smell of burnt hair out of my nose, the memory of groping fingers, and the filthy lies perpetuated by Sinclair.
A soft stroke of his fingers down my cheek. “Alphabet will come up as soon as we have the last data point.” It was a decision and Bones was making it. I’d handed the control back to him and he picked up the baton easily. He brushed a kiss to my lips, soft like a butterfly's wings branding itself to my soul.
“Sounds like a plan. If you need me…”
He nodded, not dismissing my offer in the slightest. One by one, I passed the guys, a brush of my fingers to Voodoo’s arm, a pat of Legend’s ass—that earned me a swift grin—and a squeeze of AB’s hand.
Mouthing, “I’ll be there in a few,” AB returned my grip, and then I headed up the stairs.
“Wait!” A shock cry came from Ignacio and another from Sinclair. My leaving seemed to have jolted something in them. Maybe they realized that without me there, the guys would not keep anything resembling gloves on. They’d been holding back, letting me make the decisions.
As I stepped out of the basement and into the light, their shrieks followed me before the door closed and cut them off. Goblin glanced up from where he waited, tail thumping and I went straight over to sink on the floor next to him. When he wiggled into my arms, I hugged him, careful not to squeeze too tight.
“We’re going to find her,” I whispered against him. “We have to.”
We hadn’t come this far to lose now.
Chapter
Ten
BONES
The moment Grace’s footsteps faded up the stairs and the door closed at the top, the shift in the room was instant and sharp. A sensation of your ears popping as you adjusted to the new pressure, only this was more intense.
Both Sinclair and Ignacio felt it too.
They’d been watching her the whole time, clinging to her presence like she was some kind of shield. And maybe she had been. Not because she was soft, Grace had steel in her blood, but becausewewere softer with her in the room.
The second the basement door clicked shut overhead, Ignacio let out a high, strangled noise. Sinclair wasn’t any better; he jerked so hard the chair scraped across the concrete.
Legend let out a low whistle. “Well. They finally figured it out.”
“They finally figuredherout,” I corrected.
Voodoo met my gaze, the corner of his mouth ticking up just enough to acknowledge the truth. “She trusts us to do what we need to do.” She also didn’t want to watch the rest.
She didn’t need to.
Possessing all the poise her name implied, she had stood up to the task brilliantly. But her heart hurt so damn much andlistening to the lies these men kept trying to feed us in lieu of what she wanted to know had to hurt. So yes, she was trusting us to finish the mission by any means necessary.
Unfortunately for this pair of selfish assholes, we still possessed a great many “means.”
