His eyes met mine directly and he paused for a moment. “This situation and the other one we discussed Ms. Deboise.”
I nodded.
It was nice that he was still treating me as his main point of contact on that situation; usually Beck would have just taken over. But for once, he didn’t flex his alphahole personality, allowing me to remain in control.
His gaze never left Jarred, though, watching as he called his detective friend, waiting for the car and the body to be removed, and all the while, Beck continued to observe everything in his quiet, deadly way.
Then we waited until he got the text. “The guys are here,” he said shortly, standing and lifting me with him before I was dropped gently to my feet. It wasverylate now but Jarred had not made one move to get us to leave. Instead, he’d stayed silently waiting with us.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” I said softly, and he just nodded.
“Take the back stairwell. Even if my friend can smooth over any witnesses, we don’t want word to get back to Delta…”
We really fucking didn’t want that to happen.
Beck and I left via the back stairwell, and as we descended, I realized something. “How did you get here? You clearly don’t have a car nearby if we had to wait for the guys.”
“Friend gave me a lift from the dinner.”
“What friend?” I pushed.
Beck shook his head. “No one you know. Let’s just call it someone who owed me a favor and knows it’s worth more than his life to talk about anything to do with Delta.”
I was really too tired and freaked out to question him further. Loving and trusting someone didn’t mean you had no secrets, it meant that you trusted them to ensure their secrets never came back to hurt you. Beck and I might have finally been at that point.
Or maybe I was just beyond giving a fuck. There was only so much one person could worry about, and I had reached my limit.
A familiar dark SUV was waiting in the shadows outside the stairwell. Beck had somehow found the time to let them know where to pick us up. “Riles,” Dylan said as I climbed in the back. “Are you okay?”
His concern was obvious, and I felt marginally better just being back with them all. “Yeah, not really.”
Beck pushed in on the other side of me, and I was between him and Evan. Jasper was driving with Dylan in shotgun.
“Tell us everything that happened,” Evan said the moment we pulled away. “Beck only gave us the highlights.”
Probably worried about the phones being tapped, even though they apparently had “untappable” phones. Untrusting bastards were starting to make sense. I could finally see just how fucking scary this situation was.
I told them quickly about my meeting with Wells. “He said the evidence from Dante is not enough. He’s apparently been looking for a way to take Delta down for years, and he won’t go after them with anything that circumstantial. We have one shot at this, and he won’t waste it.”
Which had been what Rob said also.
“This Wells kind of seems too good to be true,” Jasper said dryly.
No one disagreed. “I got the vibe that he had some sort of beef with Delta in the past. Maybe we should check him out?” I suggested.
Beck shook his head. “We’ll know soon enough if he’s playing us. Delta will come at us with all of their power.”
“So we just wait and see,” Evan said, sounding relaxed enough.
“Wells is right,” Dylan said darkly, and I wondered why he wasn’t looking back at me. Usually he faced me directly when he spoke. Lots of eye contact. That was Dylan’s thing. But now he was staring out the window. “We all have one shot, and if we fail, they will bury us. Heirs or not.”
It was a heavy feeling, the pressure grinding us down. But I was not giving up.
“I have a plan regarding that,” I said in a quiet voice. “But before I go into that, we should discuss this fucking rose killer asshole.”
Evan snorted. “Rose Killer. Sounds like a pussy-ass bitch with a name like that.”
“Have you guys gotten anything back on the other flowers?” I asked, ignoring Evan.
