I don’t say a word. I’m not about to admit to anything when Vonn has a gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. I’d be hanging myself.
“Do you know how reckless that was?” he snaps, confirming I was right to keep my mouth shut. He glares at me. “Of course you did. You probably got off on it.”
“I—”
He shakes his head as if he’s sick of me. “I looked around. There’s no sign of your shooter. There was a perch up there.” He points up the road. “The only thing there now are tire marks. Whoever it was is long gone.”
“It was Jeremiah or his acolytes,” Byrdie says.
“Maybe,” Vonn says vaguely. “Let’s get back to the house. Nash has been busy.”
“Doing what?” I ask, leading Byrdie to my bike.
Vonn cuts me off and snags Byrdie’s free hand. “She’s coming in my truck. Whoever it was might have gone, but I’m not exposing her to more danger than I have to.”
I’m fast becoming addicted to having Byrdie wrapped around me on my bike. But Vonn is right to be concerned.
I kiss Byrdie. “I’ll see you back at the house. Can you take the spare helmet with you?”
She nods and takes it when I press it into her hand.
Vonn opens the passenger door, she slides in, and as he slams her door shut, I stuff my helmet on my head and pull my keys from my back pocket. I lift the kickstand and direct my bike toward the house.
Scowling, Byrdie rolls down her window when she sees the direction my bike is facing. “You said that wasn’t the right way back.”
If she saw the grin my helmet obscured, she’d climb out of that truck and knee me in the balls. “I did say that, didn’t I?” I say with a cheerful wave.
Grumbling, she snaps her seatbelt on, muttering, “Asshole.”
Vonn, in the driver’s seat, looks briefly surprised by her curse, but it just makes me grin wider as I start the engine and race them back to the house. Vonn won’t see it as a race, but that won’t stop me from crowing when I win.
I brought Byrdie out here to talk. Not just about the worrying habit she has of disappearing into her head, sometimes for hours at a time. About the way I hurt her, and how I can make things right.
None of that happened. We didn’t talk, and even though we had sex and she didn’t regret it, things aren’t close to being resolved between us.
Chapter 22
Byrdie
Vonn isn’t a slow driver, but Makhi definitely treats the ride back to the mansion as a race he didn’t tell Vonn about.
Vonn mutters a curse, smiling apologetically at me when I laugh.
It’s only when we get back that I discover something strange is going on.
No amount of blasting his truck's horn gets the reporters clogging the front of the Gabriel Mansion to move.
I keep wanting to hide my face behind my hands. Already, I’m slumped in my seat, twisting away from the blinding burst of light from too many, too-bright cameras angled our way.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Vonn gives up on blasting his horn and revs his engine.
The reporters scatter.
Vonn presses the fob to open the front gates and leans out of his open window to yell. “Any of you try to follow, I have a gun in my glove compartment and I’m not afraid to use it on anyone stepping on private property.”
Vonn has always looked like an army vet. He has the shaved head, commanding voice, and a hard stare that warns he means what he says.
