I jolt. “You don’t have to?—”
“I don’t have to do shit. I know. But you need someone to watch your back. I’ll be there. And you better tag Bas. You know he’ll be pissed if you try to leave him out of this.”
Look who’s talking. When Adrian and I went to rescue Loni from being sex-trafficked in the basement of the Fortress, Adrian tried to keep Bas out of it since Jack hated me, but heloathedBas and his brother. Bas insisted and he risked his ass for us, distracting Jack while we got past one of my old man’s enforcers—fuck you, Luke—and Adrian’s still trying to make it up to him.
Not me. Whenever I needed an extra hand for the dirty work that came with my old job, I always reached out to Bas—and, telling Adrian to hold on for a second, that’s exactly what I do know.
We found him
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Sebastien is probably down at the garage. Annaliese works from home, running her event planning business, while Bas works from open to close at the garage, either fixing engines or working on whatever bike he’s currently building.
I wait to see if he’s stuck under a hood or if he’ll answer me?—
SEBASTIEN
Got it. You need a shovel?
I fucking love my brothers.
Probably. Some extra hands, too.
Meet at the Fortress in fifteen?
If you can
I’ll make it ten
I put the phone back to my ear. “Bas is on his way.”
“That’s good. I already called Loni. She’s going to meet up with Annaliese, the two of them going out to the movies while we take care of business. Said if I tried to sic a bodyguard on them, she’s filing for divorce.”
There’s an edge to Adrian’s voice that I recognize. Yeah… if he thought he could get away with it, he would so take a new member of the Order and make him keep an eye on Loni while he was out of town. Hell, he’d lock her up with their cats, and after how Eric Ward went after Annaliese in her own home while Sebastien was busy with me, he might toss his wife in after her.
Then again, Annaliese proved that she can take care of herself. Besides, it’s just the movies… but what am I going to do about Lucy?
It’s bad enough that she bolted yesterday after she got the wrong idea about Heather and me. If I take off tonight to deal with Fairchild—and who knows how longthatwill take—she might do a runner again. She’s too fragile to be left alone, and as I curse under my breath, I admit that to Adrian.
Between Bas and Adrian, they can handle Fairchild for me. But Iwantto be the one who makes him pay for not being able to protect Lucy. And what if he pushed her? I need to know, and I need to deal out the appropriate punishment.
But who will watch my sweet Lucy?
And then Adrian tells me he has a plan, and I suddenly feel a lot better about leaving Harmony Heights while Lucy stays behind.
THIRTEEN
HAVEN
LUCY
Connor Heyward’s house looks like it was built to disappear. A normal two-story home, it sits back from the road with a curtain of trees behind it like it wants to swallow it whole.
The tires of Dallas’s truck crunches over gravel as he pulls into the drive. My nervous stomach flip-flops, and I curl into the seat, searching for the words to tell him that, wherever he’s going, I want to go with him.
I can’t, though. He says it’s a work thing, and though I’m still feeling fragile after I met Heather yesterday and Dallas insisted that there was a whole miscommunication about who she was and why she appeared at the penthouse, I want to believe him. He’s my lifeline to survival now, and if he says that he has to go out, he has to go.
I offered to stay at the penthouse, but he’s worried about me. He wants to make sure I’m safe and protected, and that means he decided to bring me to the home of one of his close friends that I should remember, but I… I don’t.
I wish I did, but when he told me Connor’s name, there wasn’t even the slightest twinge of recognition. Same thing with the house. I’ve never seen it before, and I really, really don’t want to go inside there.
