My body howls in outrage.
I have lost all control of it.
Still try to get some back as I swallow hard. “Don’t feel guilty for taking care of yourself.”
She snips again and drops a chunk of my hair into a small wastebasket. The chunk with the fucking pine cone that the damn raccoon launched at me.
Giselle’s outside setting traps.
That’s what she said she was doing anyway.
I didn’t ask if she means traps to relocate them, or traps to fling flaming pine cones at them if they try to come close to the camper again.
We’re in their territory.
So I don’t want to know how she’s handling this.
Or how I’m going to break it to Levi that I broke his favorite security agent.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
More hair on the floor.
My hair.
The hair that helped hide me for years. My disguise, even when people figured out it was my disguise.
Sloane inhales softly. “I’ll tell Nigel that I’m not interested and to go home.”
Nigel’s a fucknugget, and when I’m done with Patrick Dixon, I’d like to have a quiet, private discussion with Nigel too. “Will he listen?”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll call Cooper and tell him I need help. He has resources. And friends.”
My blood pressure creeps higher.
She can’t leave.
I can’t let her leave.
But I don’t want to be one more person manipulating her either.
“I’m not saying that as a threat,” she adds. “And yes, I realize that saying that I don’t mean that as a threat can be interpreted to mean that I mean that as a threat. But I really don’t. Cooper’s my friend. He can help me handle a problem.”
He would.
His methods would probably make the news, and with him married to Waverly now, it would make every gossip site, get inflated on social media, and probably end up getting him a book deal or something.
I have to tell her.
I have to give hersomething.
Something to prove she can trust me.
“We saved an elephant once.”
Her hand stills in my hair.
I point to my left shoulder while my heart ramps up its staccato drumbeat of terror.
