My silence has him clicking on his keyboard, the sound soothing, just like his presence is.
My mind wanders as I listen to him work, whirring without logic or reason. I couldn’t make a to-do list right now if I were forced to.
“An outlaw therapist could charge an absurd hourly rate,” I mumble against my knees.
RJ’s startled laugh has me opening my eyes again.
“Starting a side hustle?” he asks.
“Me? Hell no. I don’t want to absorb strangers’ issues. I have enough trouble with the ones in this house. But it would be one hell of a gig for the right person.”
“It’s not your job to absorb our issues, Clara. You should have a barrier. Even between us and you.”
I huff out a breath. “It’s a downside of my particular skill set, I think. It’s how I read people. I become them, just a little, and it makes it easier to guess what they’re thinking, what they’ll do, how they’re feeling. And I don’t know how to turn it off. I don’t even know if I’d want to with you guys, even if I could.”
“Makes me glad I don’t have your skill set.”
A small smile twitches in the corner of my mouth. “It’s not all bad.”
“No, it’s not.”
I swallow, my mind turning to more problems, desperate for solutions. “What would you do right now if this were a normal gig? If this weren’t Trips’ dad?”
“I’d be setting up surveillance, doing research on the family, gaining access to key people’s email accounts, phones, and bank accounts.”
“Why aren’t we doing those things?”
“Because they already know we’re coming. You can’t sneak a tiger through the front door. Someone will notice.”
I burrow my nose between my knees, my eyes closed. “We need to find a way to hide again.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Not yet.”
The bed dips, and RJ’s before me, taking my hands in his. “I can give you some bugs to take with you next weekend, but from what Trips says, his dad will probably find them before we get anything useful. And he’d know it’s us.”
“I can’t do nothing, RJ.”
He wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his lap instead of answering, his lips pressing against my temple. “I don’t want to lose this,” he whispers.
“I can’t; I won’t, RJ. That life isn’t what I want. It’s not what any of us want. There has to be a way.”
“Hope and truth are two different things.”
I twist so I’m straddling him. “Then we make it true.”
He sighs, pressing his forehead against mine. “I can dig into them, Clara, but I’ll have to go slow. So slow it will look like nothing. So slow that it might not be enough. Literally too little, too late.”
“Safe first. Solution second.”
“I’m not going to find a solution, Clara. Not by digging through Trip’s family. I can get you information, at least something to work with. But you can’t count on this. Count on me. This problem is too big. It’s not emptying someone’s bank account. It’s extracting all of us from an exceptionally dangerous and connected man. And it’s not like he’s going to forget he has a son. Or that his son has a merry band of thieves behind him.”
“I know. I know that. But we have to do something. Otherwise...” I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
Otherwise, this is the end. Of us. Of the future we were building, all of us, together.
“Yeah,” he says.
