“What do you want, Eian?” He’s clearly done with my bullshit.
“Bran’s calling Nan. I need them away from the city.”
“Fuck,” he hisses. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. I think shit’s gonna get real tonight, but I can’t be sure and I...”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know yet. We have to get a plan together, but I’m either going to do something very stupid, or do nothing and a lot of people will suffer.”
“Eian, what aren’t you telling me? Is this about what you told us the other day? About the human trafficking operation?”
“Yes,” I say with a sigh.
“You can’t ask the commissioner for help on this?” He sounds almost desperate, which means that he’s borderline panicking—he’s really good at masking his emotions, especially on the phone.
I debate for a second on what to say, and I decide that I’m sure as shit not telling Harry it’s the mayor, not yet. Mostly because I know he actually has to deal with the mayor on an almost daily basis, and if he knows, he might act differently and could get hurt. Carl Brent could actually do some real damage to Harry, and I’m damned if I’m going to let that happen.
“It’s above his pay grade,” I settle on. Harry’s a very busy man, so I’m hoping that by the time he’s had enough spare seconds to dissect my words, it’ll all probably be over anyway. We have to act quickly, we have to—like Colby said, we have to find proof, and that’s where the really stupid idea comes in. “I don’t want you to worry about this. I’ll find a way to deal with it, but I need you to get Bran and Nan out of here, and then I need you to make sure Bran doesn’t fail any of his classes or gets kicked out of law school because he’ll be away, okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, like making a few calls—and probably a sizable donation to the law department—is just another minor task on his to-do list.
“Thank you,” I breathe out, one hurdle down, about a million to go.
“Check in regularly, okay? I’m going to convince Theo to go watch the Kings’ game in Atlanta this weekend with me, and maybe even have Iris join us.”
That’s not fast enough, since it’s Thursday, but if they make a weekend out of it... and maybe Mike stays with a friend...
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Leave as soon as you can. Tonight if possible, but tomorrow would work too. Tell Theo I’m the one telling him to do that if he says anything about needing to work, okay? He’ll know it’s for the best if you do.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that if I need to.”
“I have to go.”
“Okay, yes, fine. Fuck,” he hisses. “Don’tdo the stupid thing,” he demands before I can end the call. “Just don’t, okay?”
“Have the Altons on standby for me.” They’re the best attorneys in the country, and one of the brothers, Lord, is in charge of criminal law. Their firm is on both our retainers.
“You’re an asshole,” he grumbles. “But I will.”
“Bye,” I say, and hang up. I can’t make any promises, and we’ll both have to find a way to deal with that.
I get out and lock the car, then quickly round the SUV and settle in next to Colby.
“Take it easy on the way home, Blake. We don’t want to attract any attention, and we also need to do three extra security sweeps today.” I don’t think that’s too paranoid... considering.
His shoulders tense, so he knows I’m not fucking around, and he’s bracing for the worst. Let’s hope that’s enough.
“I know what I want to talk about now,” Colby declares once Blake steers us out of the garage and back into Manhattan traffic. He sounds adorably imperious—which isn’t something I thought anyone was capable of pulling off, but he does.
“And what’s that?” I’m grateful we’ve left the Daniel subject on the backburner for now, but Colby’s attitude has me smirking for a whole other reason. I have no clue what the next subject will be, but he lays into me before I can put up the partition between Blake and us.
“You reacted strongly to the Brett thing.” He’s being as vague as humanly possible. He knows we can’t talk about this until we’re absolutely sure no one is going to listen to us, but I have no problem with Blake hearing.
“Brett is my middle name,” I tell him, then reach for his hand and grip it tightly against my leg. He tries to pull back, but my frown makes him settle down, even if he rolls his eyes in the meantime. It takes him longer to focus on that, but when he does, he’s the one frowning.
“You think it could be another thing they’re doing just to incriminate you?”
