As if. Rubi was no fucking fool, and there was zero reason I could think of for him and Alexei to be tag-teaming me unless something awful had happened.
His presence in the bed suddenly terrified me.
I scrambled to get out. “Where are they?”
Rubi caught my arm. “Chill. They’re safe at the yard. Decoy has eyes on them.”
“Them?”
“Your concern was plural, bro.”
Them. Not her. I ignored the subtext and let Rubi haul me back into bed before I fought to wrench my arm free of his strong grip. “I need real talk. I can’t handle all this clever shit.”
A fleeting flash of empathy swam through Alexei’s cast-iron gaze. Then his steely blankness returned. “All right, zolotoy mal’chik. Then let me tell you this: I do not believe our queen is the target.”
I stopped fighting Rubi, letting Alexei’s words sink in. “Why do you think that?”
“Logic. She has not been there every time there has been a recent attack.”
“But it’s always her car.”
“It is not.” Alexei shook his head. “The night you were followed from the meet with Detective Moyes, there were no cars on the road.”
Damn. He was right. But any relief I felt at shifting Orla from the crosshairs was swallowed by the reality that all it did was leave room for someone else. Unless... “You think it’s random then?”
“No, Nash. I think they are trying to hurt Locke.”
My heart thudded to a stop. Restarted with the same clench of fear I’d woken up with. Locke. It made sense. Every drama we’d dealt with over the past few months, big or small, he’d been there fighting it off. Protecting Orla.
Protectingme.
Except the last time, with the fuckingguns, when it had just been him and Embry.
Jesus Christ. Embry wasn’t known for being a weak link, but every Crow still alive knew he was the smallest King. That he’d been injured so badly he’d almost died. If it was me trying to take Locke out...
Fuck.
I felt sick, the coffee I’d drunk curdling in my stomach. “Why him? And why now? You think they’ll come for Folk too? And Ranger?”
Rubi shifted onto his side. “Wouldyoucome for Folksie? Dude’s the fucking terminator.”
“They don’t know that. He never showed them his mad skills, remember? They thought he was just Rocco’s dopey best mate.”
Dopey and Folk didn’t belong on the same planet, and the sheer depths of the Crows’ collective stupidity should’ve calmed the fast-rising anxiety in my gut, but another look at Alexei chilled me to the bone. “This isn’t about rounding up deserters, is it? They want their fucking prisoner back.”
Alexei gave me a grim nod at the same moment Rubi’s frown carved soul-deep lines in his face. “Theirwhat?”
I got out of bed, uncaring that I was treating Alexei to another full-frontal view of my dick, and snatched some clothes from the floor, yanking them on before I paced the room. “That’s why he was with them so long, Rubes. He was a hostage, not a brother. Locke doesn’t know it, but Rocco told me years ago.”
Rubi’s face crumpled, real distress hazing his kind hazel eyes.
Alexei remained unmoved, perhaps because he had to be. “If they see him as nothing more than a toy, it would make sense that they believe we would not fight all that hard to protect him.”
“That would explain why him,” Rubi gruffed out. “But not whynow, or why they came for him while Orla was there. Any Crow with half a brain would know Cam would kill them on sight for that.”
“He would kill them on sight for attacking Locke too,” Alexei countered. “And you answered your own question before you asked it. There are no Crows with half a brain now Rocco is dead, and Locke, Folk, and Ranger ride with us.”
Rubi conceded with a slow nod. “Then we need to figure out which brainless Crows are still alive then. Can’t speak for Lord Nashie, but I kinda lost track somewhere between gas leaks and boat bombs.”
