As soon as she thought of him, the stairs let out a groan and she smiled. Something was buzzing in the back of her mind, a nervousness of not having him next to her. Yeah, her hormones were definitely still all over the place. The next few weeks, hell, probably even months, were going to require a lot of patience on his part.
Tears welled in her eyes. How the hell had she gotten so lucky? She had the love of her life beside her, and a mini version of him right in her arms.
The door opened, and Jessie smiled as she looked up from Bee’s face.
Only, it wasn’t Hawk standing in the doorway.
“Adrienne?”
Her friend’s eyes were on the baby, a soft smile on her lips, but Jessie couldn’t wrap her mind around why Hawk would let her in at nearly midnight, and why he wouldn’t be up here with her?
“What’s going on?”
“Dolly said you had the baby. How is she? Is everything okay?”
Adrienne stepped closer, and Jessie tightened her hold on Bee.
“Everything’s fine. Where’s Hawk? Did he let you in?”
Hearing Hawk’s name seemed to snap her friend out of her daze. Suddenly, Adrienne’s face filled with concern.
“We need to get you out of here. It’s not safe. That’s why I came. Hawk is downstairs getting everything ready. He asked me to come up and make sure you and the baby made it down to him. I can… I can take the baby for you while you get dressed. I’ll just take her and get her in her car seat.”
Alarm bells rang so loudly in her mind she almost threw up.
Swallowing back bile, Jessie shook her head. “No. I want to keep him with me. But you head back downstairs and I’ll come meet you and Hawk down there. Then you can explain what’s going on and what danger you think I’m in.”
“Him?” Adrienne had lost all the color in her face. “You had a little boy.”
“I… uh…” Oh, no. It felt wrong to share that information. And Jessieknewit was wrong just a second later, when Adrienne moved towards the bed and reached for Bee.
“I have everything ready for a girl…” Adrienne whispered to herself before shaking her head. “I’m taking him so you can get ready to go. We really need to leave. Right now, Jess. I’m trying to keep you safe from Dakota. Please. Let me.”
She was so engrossed in Adrienne trying to pry Bee out ofher hands that she didn’t immediately see a second person walk into the room.
“Don’t you even think about putting a single finger on that baby, Adrienne.”
“God.” Adrienne rolled her eyes. “Fuck all the way off,Dakota.”
“How long?” he asked. “How long have you been working with Mack?”
“Working with him?” she laughed. “We’re fucking married.”
Adrienne laughed and Jessie pinched the skin on her arm, trying to wake herself from what surely had to be an exhaustion-induced nightmare. Because why the hell were two people she’d thought were her friends at the start of the day, standing in her bedroom bickering.
“I didn’t really get why it needed to be done, but once I knew what Mack was into, how far his business went… Well, it’s just smart to not be able to testify against each other. And if you had just done what we said, if you’d just kept running the packages like we needed you to do, kept draining money from Lachlan until we could take over his business and cut out the middle man, this wouldn’t be happening. Now Mack is pissed that everything’s gone sideways and you fucked him over when you stole those files.” Adrienne turned to Jessie. “It really is awful that he chose you to balance Dakota’s debt. I tried to talk him out of it, but he made up his mind about you a long time ago.”
This had to be a dream. It had to be. She needed to wake up. Because where the hell was Hawk? Why was Dakota fighting with Adrienne? And why were they all in her bedroom, trying to kidnap her and Bee?
“I don’t understand! A-are you two working together? To s-steal my baby?”
Dakota’s eyes went wide. “No! Blue Jay, never. I’m tryingtoprotectyou. That’s what I’ve always been trying to do. I knew there was someone in Silver Springs that had to be helping them, but Christ… I had no idea it was Adrienne until it was too late. I should have known… I didn’t understand what the fuck they were doing at first. I honestly thought they really wanted me to work on a custom job for them. But then they’d leave a package for me to hand off to someone else who was passing through town. Fine. That was nothing,” he sighed, taking a step closer to Adrienne, whose eyes hadn’t left Bee. “Then it was more favors. More meetings with their ‘parts suppliers’ and more money out of our accounts ahead of them paying. I fucked up with that. I planned to pay it all back Jess, but they got the bank info and wiped it out. I had no idea until Lachlan got those calls from the bank. I tried to stop. I tried to get away. But they made it clear I had to keep going, or they’d hurt you. I mean, fuck. They tried to run you down in the hospital parking lot! I had to go back. I couldn’t let them hurt you.”
“Dakota…”
“Blue Jay, I knew they would hurt you without a second thought. But I had a plan. I got the files. I should have taken them right to Colt. I should have turned over everything I had. But I fucked up. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe what they did to Lach to try and get it back. What they made me be a part of. I never meant for it to spiral like this. I just wanted to get out of a system I didn’t even know I was a part of.”
Lachlan’s reaction to Jessie’s news earlier now made complete sense.
