Ivy beams, jumping in before Celeste can. “That’s the plan. I’ve got it on the schedule for this morning at ten thirty. I’m getting in on this too.”
Wells takes over the pancake flipping, nudging his wife to the side. The man always needs to be in charge. “That doesn’t mean you girls aren’t training with me later.”
While Wells is always adamant about Ivy training—specifically in shooting, stamina, and self-defense tactics—he’s been insisting that Celeste join them too. We’ve all been harboring a lot of guilt about how things unfolded with the Skulls. Celeste wasn’t properly prepared to handle herself in that attack. That’s only one of the areas we dropped the ball, but one we can remedy for the future.
“All right, we don’t want to intrude on your morning any more than we have,” Ryker says. “But other than catching up, there was another reason for the early call. I was wondering if you’d heard the latest development.”
By development, he means Mercy—his best friend, whom he’s clearly in love with—and the monster who beat her, Dalton Montgomery, who went down for the murder of another girl. There were a lot of holdups in the case. Delays in the trial and sentencing. Deep pockets will do that.
He’s been in prison for about six weeks now—the January sentencing date we were originally given got moved to late February. He was injured severely in his first week there and moved to the infirmary. Last I heard, his father was working on getting him moved to protective custody.
This all matters because Mercy and her baby are in hiding. And until we’re certain Dalton Montgomery can’t pull strings to retaliate against her, she has to stay hidden—a situation that’s killing Ryker.
“We haven’t,” Ivy answers, scrolling through her phone. “Oh, I see it now.”
She holds the screen up to me and Wells. Dalton was killed last night.
“So, how long?” Ryker asks in reference to when he can go get Mercy.
“We need to conduct a thorough follow-up,” I explain while bouncing Felicity and stroking her thick black hair. “Don’t jump the gun. I need to do prep work with the client.”
Since Ryker is without a doubt responsible for arranging Dalton’s murder, we can’t risk using any telling language on a phone line. We take extensive measures to be certain we aren’t bugged, but there’s always a chance. Even greater on his end since few people know who we are.
“I’m happy to prep the client for you.” His voice is stern and commanding. This may get ugly. “Provide the location, and I’ll get right on it.”
“Hey, guys,” Rena croons. “I’m heading out. Have fun with this discussion.”
We all chirp our goodbyes as Ryker starts grilling her in the background. “Where are you going today?”
“Jax is taking me shopping. He owes me one,” she says with a bratty edge.
“Fine,” he growls. “Will you be back by dinner?”
Rena is twenty-three, so the third degree about her whereabouts might seem to be overkill. But the Noires deal in some shady shit. They have enemies still lingering from their father’s corrupt practices. And from what I understand, they have even more extensive reasons for needing to keep her safe.
That’s aside from the people who simply want to use her because she’s an heiress to a fortune. One of the reasons her brothers haven’t settled down either—very few people are interested in knowing who they are beyond the prosperity they offer.
Rena hums. “I’m not sure where I’ll land for dinner.” Her singsong reply has me wishing I could see her and know that whatever plagued her the other day has truly passed.
“I’ll check in with you later then.” Ryker clears his throat, returning to us with a clipped, “So, you’ll send me the client’s location?”
This case has been difficult from the beginning. Mercy struck a sensitive chord with me. All the abuse victims I hide do. But her bruises were so fresh when Ryker reached out to us. She was recovering but broken in every way imaginable. Desperate to do whatever necessary to protect her baby boy.
Ryker expected to be privy to every detail of her erasing—something we never do because crumbs left behind mean the client is eventually found. I’d already been on the fence about it. Despite our hard line, he was a friend and financially backing her escape.
But then she called me into her hospital room and begged me to take her on pro bono. Her reasoning was sound. She loved Ryker, trusted him, but her baby had to come first, and while the Noires could keep her safe, their life could also endanger her further.
I saw my sisters in her face that day. A silent petition, begging me to kill the man who was secretly raping them. A petition I ignored, deciding on a different route, which cost them and my mother their lives. Forever altering mine.
Crunch. Squeak. Blood. One wrong choice.
Ryker has never really forgiven me—or any of us—for how we handled Mercy. It’s not as though I didn’t know it was a no-turning-back crossroads. But after everything Mercy had been through, if something happened to her or her son because of her Noire association, I knew I’d never be able to live with myself. So, we erased her and refused to give Ryker any details.
She’s still terrified to return, even though she’s confessed to us that she misses Ryker terribly. It’s one of the messiest situations we’ve fielded. One that weighs on me a lot. I feel for them both.
Ivy must notice the heaviness cloaking me because she takes over. “Ryker, the client isn’t ready. She’s still fragile, and she’ll probably be quite shaken by recent developments. Let me dig into it and see if I can gently encourage an intervention. It will be a more favorable reunion that way.”
While Ryker acknowledges that all of us have moved mountains to help Mercy, Ivy is the only one in this room he trusts completely with her. That’s because Ivy uncovered the information that got Dalton arrested and risked a lot to relay it to Ryker.
