I had no idea how much time had passed. As I sat there, staring at the wall in a dining room that never fucking got used, I twirled my lukewarm beer bottle in my fingertips. The scraping of the glass against the finished wood battered around inside of my head. Sleep was hard to come by, with cat naps turning into twenty-minute intervals of peace before something else fell apart. Four days. We were five fucking days out from the charity ball, and Dante still hadn’t asked Brielle a damn thing about it.
And we were no closer to figuring out who the fuck Rachel really was.
Dante peeked his head around the corner. “Axe, you got a second?”
“No,” I said plainly.
He thumbed over his shoulder. “I just need you to come look at—.”
“No,” I said, whipping my gaze toward him.
He patted the wall with his hand. “All right. Well, come find me when you’re ready to do something productive. Yeah?”
I could’ve strangled him for that snarky remark. But I let him live as I watched him disappear around the corner and out of sight.
I didn’t even get resituated back in my chair before Mav came in, though.
“Hey, you got the schematics for the ballroom, yet?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “That’s a Dante question, not a me question.”
“He said to come ask you.”
I drew in a deep breath through my nose. “Let me guess: the schematics are what he’s wanting me to look at?”
“What?” Mav asked.
I waved my hand at him. “Nothing. Give me some time and I’ll come view everything.”
“Uh, I’m still not following.”
“Mav?” I asked as I panned my gaze toward him.
He nodded. “Get lost? Got it.”
“Thanks,” I said flatly.
But I barely got my focus and train of thought back before the dam burst.
“Hey Axe, we’re out of spices in the pantry.”
“Axe, I found something on our patrols last night.”
“Axe, can you take a look at this?”
“Axe, can you come and—”
“Leave me alone,” I said flatly.
“But, Axe, we need t—.”
I shot to my feet and balled my fists up at my sides. “Leave me the fuck alone! I’m trying to fucking think!”
Between the bitch and the ball, we were all much too distracted. And the longer we floundered, the more convinced I became of Rachel’s involvement in all of this. If she was going for us being distracted, then she had achieved what she wanted. We were distracted. We were focusing on things that didn’t mean shit. We had completely stopped our hunt for her in exchange for a paying job to get the guys off our backs about how long it had taken to track this bitch down, and if I were a betting man, then somewhere, Rachel was celebrating her victory over us.
We had to keep our heads in the game.
Which meant I had to provide an example.
