“Yer gun,” he said.
“Oh!”
Conall snickered as I took the gun out of my holster and passed it to Rowen. I’d been carrying it for so long, I almost felt naked.
“I’ll be back,” Rowen murmured.
Glancing around, I walked over to stand next to Conall as we watched the mountain of boxes keep growing. “Where’s Vail?”
Conall groaned and used two fingers to rub his temples. “Upstairs with Lor, but I’m warning you now, he’s tired and cranky. He didn’t sleep well last night. I love him, but his mouth has been running nonstop, and he’s even irritating himself at this point.”
Wincing, I glanced toward the stairs. “He always apologizes when this happens. He hates it.”
Conall nodded. “I know.”
“Did you get any shut eye?”
“Not yet. Go find Vail,” he said, shoving my shoulder.
I snagged the sleeve of his shirt and gave it a tug.
Rowen snuck back to my side and tucked a new gun into my holster. I stared at the Glock for a second. “Why don’t you come nap with us?”
Conall shook his head and pursed his lips. “Later.”
“Maher,” Ronan said as he came back with another armful of boxes. He gave me the shittiest look I’d seen recently, and that was saying something after the way Mom had been acting. “Help out instead of standing around.”
Conall smirked. “Should’ve run off to Vail while you had the chance.”
Shrugging, I picked up boxes and followed Ronan outside to the greenhouse. When I got inside the main part of the iron-and-glass building, potted orchids that weren’t usually there sat in one of the aisles between the worktables. I went through the interior door at the far end, which was propped open with a brick, into a small room where the more expensive, finicky plants were kept, and I had trouble breathing the humid air.
In the center of the room, where the orchids were normally displayed, there was a hole. I blinked at the empty space, but when I went over, there were steps leading down into a bright room, and I followed Ronan inside. Someone had already been hard at work because boxes were stacked against a white-painted block wall at the end. If I had to guess, the space was probably about the size of the living room at our house.
“Wow, this is cool,” I said to Ronan.
He huffed. “Be a lot cooler if we didn’t have to carry all the boxes out to the greenhouse.”
Laughing, I nodded, then powered through helping him with the rest of the mess. Conall found ledgers and a laptop in Sloan’s office that needed to be hidden, and we took those out, too. As I worked, I spotted Rowen going around switching out people’s guns for them.
After a while I started to feel like a dumpster that had been lit on fire, and I leaned against the side of the greenhouse while I stared at the blue sky and puffy white clouds overhead. It was chilly and I shivered as I stood there with my hands in my pockets.
Warm arms wrapped around me, and I startled, grinning when I took a deep whiff of apple-scented goodness. I buried my nose in Vail’s hair.
“Come inside,” he murmured. When he leaned back, I wanted to groan. He looked like he was keeping his pretty brown eyes open out of spite, and by the way he stared at me, I probably wasn’t much better.
“I’m helping,” I said, gesturing awkwardly at the greenhouse.
“Please?” he whispered.
“I can’t tell you no,” I grumped.
He grinned. “Good. I don’t want you to. I like it when you listen to me.”
Laughing, I let him drag me inside.
Conall waved at me as I passed him, standing in the empty spot that used to contain the boxes. He went back to staring at the floor, like maybe he was trying to think of other things that needed to be hidden before the police got their shit together to try to search the house.
Vail took me up the left side of the split staircase to the suite I thought of as ours, even if I shouldn’t, and we went through the small seating area to the room with the huge bed. Lor was already passed out like the dead on the gray comforter, taking up a sliver of space on the left side. He looked like he was ready to roll off, and I felt bad for him.
