Axe peered over at me from over his shoulder. “She dropped her phone when she took off. Or maybe it slipped out of her pocket. But it hadn’t been on the ground long enough for her phone to lock itself back up. So, I found a new home for her money.”
“Hell yeah,” Jax said with a broad smile.
“So, does this mean we can finally talk about what the fuck that bitch got out of all this?” Dee asked.
Jax snickered. “Outside of six mil?”
I shook my phone at the guys. “Which we obviously have, so that’s not it. This woman isn’t stupid. She’s never been this sloppy. So, why start now?”
Joules finally opened his mouth. “Maybe all of this revolving around her twin sister threw her off?”
Dee shook his head, though. “Gotta have a soul for something like that.”
Blaze cleared his throat. “She got all the way back here before Dee knew something was up for real. Was she trying to scope the layout of this place?”
Axe shook his head. “She never got past the foyer before she exposed who she was.”
The table fell silent before Dante’s face ignited with angry red.
“Oh, no,” he glowered.
“What?” I asked as I stepped out of the shadows and up to the table. “Spit it out.”
Dee quickly stood. “Protocol. She was sniffing out our protocol.”
Axe furrowed his brow tightly. “That would mean she’s working with those assholes.”
“Do you really think she’d work with Pilot?” Joules asked.
Axe shrugged. “It sure as fuck looked like she was working with them last night.”
“It makes sense,” Dee said as he tilted his head. “I mean, think about it: she sees an opportunity to cash in on our bounty while also scoping out how we respond to immediate hostage situations.”
I shook my head. “To what end, though? What’s the point in knowing our protocol if she knows we’re just going to change it after the fact?”
No one had an answer. Hell, not even a suggestion. Even Dee flopped back down into his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was the best of us in these situations. The profiler. The people-reader. If anyone should have been able to answer that question, it was him.
And he had nothing.
“So,” Wolf said as he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, “you mean to tell me that this bitch is running around out there, free as a damn bird, and we’ve got no clue what she wants, no clue where she is, and no clue what her endgame is?”
“Yep,” Dee said breathlessly.
“The fuck are we supposed to do with that, then?” Jax asked.
I raked my hands through my hair and turned away from the table.
“Take a breath, Mav,” Axe said flatly.
That made me angry, though. “We promised to keep her safe!”
I spun myself around and pointed my finger in Axe’s face.
“We gave her our word, man! And look at what our word got her!”
“You think I don’t know that!?” he roared as he threw his hands into the air. “You think I’m just gonna go about this all willy fucking nilly and not give a damn about what this is doing to her? About what it’s doing to all of us?!”
His voice rang in my ears. It pounded my head as he hovered over me with anger in his voice. I’d never seen him like that before. Scrambling. Fearful. Worried.
