“Molly.” This time Jon’s defeat brought him over to sit down heavily on the edge of the tub.
“And what’dya do? Start the party before the package drop?” Rio asked.
Jon nodded. “I stopped at Big Richard’s—a club in Weho—West Hollywood. And I kind of forgot to come back out. Got a ride home with... someone. When I went back the next day to get my car, the back window was broken. Frank’s package was gone. I was fucked.”
So he’d gone into lock-down rehab.
Jon clearly knew what Rio was thinking because he added, “I wanted to be there. Rehab. This time, I wanted... I wanted to stop. I really did.”
“You sober?” Rio asked. “And I mean still, not just right now.”
“Yes.” Jon nodded. “I’ll take a drug test—”
“You don’t need to,” Rio said. “Well, not for me. I believe you. And kudos to you—seriously—for not stopping at a bar after Frank and his buddies released you back into the wild.”
Jon was so fucking starved for even the tiniest crumb of positive reinforcement, he actually smiled. “Thanks.” But then his smile crumbled and he added, “I really wanted to, though.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t,” Rio reminded him. “Okay. So. How much time did old Frank Miller give you to come up with the cash?”
“Seventy-two hours,” Jon said.
Three days. Jesus. “Does Casey, or your parents—”
“No.” Jon cut him off. “I’m not asking them for money. Absolutely not.”
“Then, what’s your plan?” Rio asked. “Cause I don’t have that kind of cash lying around, and I know for a fact that Dave doesn’t either—”
“I’m not going to pay him,” Jon said, shaking his head. “Miller. If I do, he’ll just keep coming back—with more packages to deliver, with... who knows what kind of demands next time. No. I can’t. I won’t.”
“So you’re gonna run, then?” Rio said. “Hide.”
But Jon was still giving him a great big no with his continuous head shake. And then he surprised Rio. Completely. With a full-on what-the-fuck that Rio hadn’t seen coming.
“I’m going to the police,” Jon said, chin held defiantly high. “I’ll tell them everything. I figure I can maybe, I don’t know, wear a wire and help them catch Frank Miller, and his brother, and whoever is working for them. It’s the only way that I can see that this will ever end.”
And then, Jon being Jon, he added the caveat that Rio was now expecting: “Don’t tell anyone—not my parents, and especially not Casey.”
So Rio went over to the door that Jon’s father had so thoughtfully closed for privacy, opened it, and shouted down the hallway, “Hey, Casey, you got a sec?”
Jon was not happy. “For Christ’s sake, I just said—”
“You need help,” Rio told him flatly. “And I’m not fucking lying to her.”
Well, at least not about this.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’ll go check on him as soon as the seat belt sign goes off.”
“You don’t need to. You should sleep,” Casey told Luc, tensing even more as the jet picked up speed down the runway.
She couldn’t hear exactly what Luc said in return over the engines’ roar, but it was clearly another rendition of his frequently repeated don’t worry about me, I’m fine refrain.
Yeah, because she had enough to worry about with her freaking train-wreck of a brother. She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath, searching for some inner serenity that she already knew wasn’t anywhere to be found.
But Luc, bless him, reached over and took her hand from her claw-like grasp of the arm rest and interlaced their fingers as the plane launched them into the sky.
His hand was big and warm—an echo of the words he’d said back in the guest room of her mom and dad’s new house. Let me help. I want to help.
