“Bad?”
Conrad held his gaze. “The worst.” He let out a shuddery breath and, like always, tucked away the horror in the box inside his mind. “What do you need me to do?”
“Duron hired a petrol wood cutter,” Ajani replied, his teeth white against the dirt covering his skin.
“Hey, I wanted to play with that,” Duron shouted from where he’d walked off to. He wasn’t one for coping with shows of emotion.
“Suck it up, big guy.” Wyatt squeezed his shoulder before heading towards where Ekon was measuring out the cleared ground.
Conrad wasn’t a visionary when it came to seeing what their home would look like, but the others could, and that worked fine for him. He only needed three things. A big ass TV, something he’d discovered was a great way to forget the world around him. An enormous bed to stretch out on. And lastly, a roof that stopped any creepy crawlies from deciding he was good to chomp on. He shuddered at the makeshift campsite they’d set up while they figured their shit out.
Ekon, their brain box, had connected to the electric grid a couple of miles away and rigged a set up so they could have electricity without any of the usual trappings. They wanted to be off grid. Their cell phones were the only way the council could communicate with them for kill orders after Ekon had figured a way to block their internal trackers.
They weren’t stupid and knew their cell phones were tracked, too, so Ekon had done some hokery pokery to make sure their location wasn’t where they actually were. It was neat.
The sound of a saw pulled him from his thoughts, and he scowled at Duron. “I’m supposed to be doing that!”
Duron’s enormous chest puffed up, and he gave Conrad a killer look. “And?”
Conrad jumped the last few feet between them and snatched the buzzing saw out of Duron’s hands. He landed a couple of feet away in the time it took for Duron to blink. “And nothing.” He eyed the enormous trunks with excited anticipation. “Now, let’s see what this thing can do!”
Duron’s laughter was blocked out by the sound of the saw hitting wood. Bits went flying everywhere as Conrad grinned and focused on helping make a place that was theirs.A home.
Chapter One
Conrad
He stared at the blue of the horizon as he checked the compass. The message on his cell phone was where his thoughts were.
Don’t call. It’s not safe to right now. Listen, Wyatt’s gone AWOL. It’s too long a conversation to have via text. I’ll explain when I get back to the Thalassa building. Can you ask the brothers to send their plane? We need it, like now. We have to get out of here.
He reconsidered for the hundredth time what he was missing from the message, even after the meeting he’d had weeks ago with Duron and Beaumont. The promise of information had come in short supply. Duron was being cagy, and it hadn’t initially struck until Conrad had time to processeverything.
It was his way. He had to sit with a problem and figure things out until it all slotted together in his mind. Many thought he was impulsive, and they would be right, he could be. Only for the majority of the time he wasn’t. He was a Dom and learned that patience brought many rewards when he could see the whole picture. See what people didn’t want him to see.
This Devil character everyone was chasing, he was involved with Wyatt, that was what Conrad’s instincts were telling him. How, he’d yet to figure out.
Only questioning Duron away from Beaumont hadn’t been possible, so he’d bided his time and sent Wyatt a message to his burner cell, the one they used for emergencies. It hadn’t delivered. What the fuck had Wyatt gotten himself involved in?
Was his friend in danger? That worry had him renting a speed boat, after he’d traced Wyatt’s tracker, which remained on making things more confusing.
Conrad’s head wasn’t giving him any peace as he recalled what Duron had said to him.
Wyatt’s safe. Last I checked, he has his tracker on.All you have to know, all I can tell you, is that absolutely without question, if anyone, and I mean anyone at all, tells you to go after Wyatt, you say, yes sir, and then leave it alone. You get me? Go through the motions, but you leave that shit alone, and make sure you tell Ekon to do the same thing.
Why would anyone go after Wyatt?
Conrad had done as Duron had asked, only the nagging feeling wouldn’t leave him be. His animals were there under his skin, ready to hunt down their friend to make sure he was safe.
For that split second he’d doubted Wyatt when he’d talked with Duron and Beaumont. To him it was unforgivable after all they’d been through together, so he’d taken some time to let everyone believe he’d let the topic of Wyatt go.
The tracker on the screen of his cell phone sat on the bench beside him—one Ekon had disabled all those years ago—flashed at him as he raced over the waves towards Tristan da Cunha. One of the remotest islands on Earth, it was volcanic and offered little to any visitor. In the South Atlantic Ocean, boat was the only way to get to it. It had taken Conrad three days to get there, while keeping off grid so not to alert anyone to what he was doing.
Todd Thalassa had blocked his cell phone to stop anyone trying to track him. The man didn’t ask questions, which suited Conrad when he didn’t have any answers for him.
The volcanic island rose out of the aquamarine waters. He circled the island, searching for any signs of life. A house sat high up on the side of a rocky outcrop. It was large with huge glass windows giving a perfect view of the sea and the small jetty that led from a small white sanded beach.
Conrad revved the engine and circled once more to alert Wyatt to his approach. His friend wouldn’t take kindly to him not announcing his presence. Something he could easily have done, except Wyatt, was as deadly as any of them, and he had a little less tolerance for anyone overstepping any boundaries he set. What those were on this occasion, Conrad was clueless about, which was a position he’d not been in for many years.
