McGuire narrowed his stare. “I can’t believe you.” He pointed his finger at his sister. “And here I thought it might have been him who came up with this idea, but now I’m thinking it was you? Have you both lost your marbles?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” Savvy planted her hands on her hips and shook her head. “You’re being an idiot if you don’t see why it’s better for me to stay here. It’s ridiculous that I even have to point it out.”
Patch chuckled. He stopped cold, clearing his throat the second McGuire glared, shooting deadly daggers. The same ones he’d sent the day he’d shown up at Patch’s place all those years ago and found his baby sister in Patch’s arms. That had been awkward—for everyone.
Savvy took a slow breath. “If people think I’m alive, then I’ve got a target on my back. What concerns me is that we’re no longer squelching rumors about you being alive. People might come looking for me at your place. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”
McGuire’s jaw clenched. “No one knows where I am. Besides, I have security?—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Patch interjected. “You’re blood. You’re the first place people would look.” He held up his hand. “I’m the ex-boyfriend.”
“Which makes you obvious,” McGuire said. “And if I’m not dead, then neither are you.”
“Okay, but right now, I’m a little harder to find and I don’t have a significant other to consider.” Patch cocked his head. “I understand it’s not like we’ve come out of the woodwork. We’ve all been quiet.” He pointed to himself. “Me the most. Not to mention I have no family. No friends. No one to come looking for me. I live in the middle of the flipping swamp. I can take careof your sister while the rest of you take care of both of us.” Patch stared down her brother with determination and fire in his eyes.
She’d seen this standoff so many times. She’d loved it when she could sit back and watch Patch have it out with her brother—the silent way—and win. Because he’d always won when it came to her and oddly, she’d gotten some pleasure in that.
“I’d rather be out here in the middle of nowhere with someone who knows how to disappear,” she said. “We both know how to do that.”
McGuire looked between them, brow furrowed, clearly biting back more than he was saying. Finally, he exhaled, muttering, “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
Savvy smiled faintly, then turned back toward the kitchen table. She snagged the mug and walked to the window, eyes scanning the mist-shrouded bayou just outside. “Yeah,” she said. “I get that from you.” Behind her, silence settled like a weight pressing down on the room. The kind that always came right before a fight—or right after a moment someone wasn’t ready to name.
Patch joined her at the window, leaning against the sill. “If you’re done with the lecture, McGuire, maybe you can tell us the plan.”
Savvy didn’t have to look to know her brother was bristling.
“You want the plan,” McGuire said, his voice low and clipped. “The plan was to lie low. Keep her off the radar. Make it to one of our safe houses, maybe talk to West, get intel on who else in her chain might be compromised. It wasn’t to hole up in the middle of nowhere with the one guy who makes her forget she’s in danger.”
Savvy turned now, slow and deliberate. “Excuse me?”
McGuire looked at her with a tight jaw, but there was a hint of something playful in his eyes—that same stare he used to give her when they were kids and he was messing with her and hertwin, only this wasn’t a game, and they all knew it. McGuire was dead serious about this one. The difference was he’d never really been upset about her and Patch—not really—except maybe how they ended up breaking each other’s hearts.
“You don’t see it? Hell, maybe you do. But if someone’s watching either of you and they spot the two of you together?—”
“They won’t,” Patch cut in, stepping forward, voice even but hard. “Because I haven’t spoken to anyone outside the bayou in months. You think I don’t know how to or would be willing to disappear? That I’d bring her here if I didn’t?”
“Thing is, I don’t want my little sister to have to do what we did. It’s no way to live. Not long term.” McGuire stepped closer. “But the bigger issue is you don’t know how to let her go. Not completely anyway. And she’s never let you go, that’s for damn sure.”
That hung in the air like a slap.
Savvy’s breath hitched. Patch didn’t move.
“Say that again,” Patch said, quieter now.
McGuire’s eyes narrowed. “You heard me. You think I don’t remember how you looked at her back then? I saw how much you both mattered to each other before everything went sideways. You think I didn’t notice how fast you left when you realized you couldn’t stay, she wouldn’t stay, and I had an opinion.”
“Back then,” Patch said slowly, voice cutting low, “I was a soldier who had no desire to leave my post. She was working her way up the ranks and I wasn’t about to stand in the way of that. Not to mention our lives were very different.” He wiggled a crooked finger. “She was your sister. You were my team leader. That mattered too.”
“She’s still my sister,” McGuire snapped. “And the only thing that’s changed is you’ve gone from living for the mission to living on the fringe.” He waved his hand.
Patch shook his head. “A lot more has changed than that, but right now, the mission is keeping your sister safe while figuring out what the hell happened to her team. She should stay with me.”
Savvy stepped between them.
“Okay,” she said firmly. “This was fun for the first five minutes. Not it’s just sad and pathetic.”
The men glared at each other a moment longer before McGuire turned away, running a hand through his hair. He muttered something under his breath she didn’t catch.
