He sighed. “We were looking into Rhino and Boscoe’s deaths. Finally figured out who was responsible after they attacked us at the hardware store. Couple of the employees ID’d them.” He looked over at me. “Started looking into them and then I saw you at their clubhouse.”
“This is because of me?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders, a sullen look on his face. “It’s not right to ask a guy to kidnap his own sister.”
“So they jumped you? Made you help them?”
“They coulda done it without me, but it’s more fun for them this way.” He stared down at the ground. “Besides, Carrick knew I wasn’t about to let them go after you and not try to stop it. So they ensured I couldn’t help.”
“Thanks,” I said, staring at his face until he looked up at me.
He let out a heavy sigh. “You’re my sister, Rue. I fucking love you. I wasn’t about to let those assholes hurt you. Or worse.”
My heart all but melted in my chest. “I love you, Ry.”
“Knock it off,” he muttered, red creeping over his cheeks.
I didn’t point out the fact that he’d told me he loved me first and I was just responding in kind. Teenage boys didn’t care about that. “So… Do you know where we are?”
“Carrick has a couple of businesses that let him work out of their buildings. Harder to track him that way. This one’s a carwash. We’re out back.”
“Any getting out of this?” I asked him.
“Alive?”
“I mean…preferably.”
He shrugged. “Not like this. Even if we do, we’re so damn outnumbered. Though there’s probably only about ten guys here with Carrick right now. The rest…” He trailed.
“The rest what?”
“They’re taking care of your new friends.”
If contemplating our own deaths hadn’t killed the warm glow in my chest from hearing that my brother loved me, that definitely did. “How many men?”
He shrugged. “Fifteen or so?”
I watched as a kid, maybe about ten, crept up to one of the guys who was sitting at the side of the building, guarding us, whispered something, then scampered away. “How many kids?”
“Here? Right now? Maybe six. Most are out on the streets,” Ryan said, his eyes tracking the kid as he slunk off into the shadows.
“They need help.”
He looked over at me. “You’re not wrong. But Rue?”
“Yeah?”
“Not sure if you noticed, but so do we.”
“My…friends…will be here soon,” I told him.
“Those guys are already in body bags,” he muttered.
I snorted out a laugh. “Sorry,” I said when he looked at me with surprise. “What kind of training doyourfriends have?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No clue. They’re mostly just big fuckers who like to hit you when you don’t move fast enough.”
“But you stayed?” I asked. I tried to keep the accusation out of my words.
