“Tempting.” Drew narrowed his eyes. “Very fucking tempting. I should kill you for disrespecting your son alone, but we’ll discuss the particulars of your fate later.”
Drew spun back to face the steering wheel, his hand curling around it with force. “You okay?” he whispered, reaching out to take my hand.
“That little bastard ain’t no son of mine,” Walsh spat before I could respond. He coughed out a bitter laugh and shifted in the back seat.
If he was stalling for time, it was a pointless gesture. Drew was already gunning the engine, his free hand squeezing mine as I tried to ignore the barb on Rubin’s behalf. The moment we saw the flashing lights of official vehicles heading closer, Drew pulled into a drive of a home and killed the engine, waiting as line after line of official vehicles sped past, not so much as glancing at the BMW on their way.
My heart was beating so loudly in my chest, it was a wonder the two men couldn’t hear it. All it would take would be one of those cops to glance up the drive and see the plate, and they would know who the car belonged to. They probably knew everything about him as they were heading to his home toarrest him. As much as that was on Walsh, the fact that he had a fresh hole in him, and he was currently being forced to ride in the back of his expensive car was problematic.
Whether it was divine intervention or pure luck, the last of the cars sped past without so much as a pause, and I pulled in as much air as I could, bracing myself as Drew checked all the mirrors and backed from the drive like it was completely normal. We hit the road again and pulled from the subdivision like the Devil himself was on our heels, thankful to see that not one cop was sitting, waiting for an attempted escape.
“Where are we going?” I asked, wriggling to sit up in the soft leather.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, his eyes flying in all directions. “I was thinking we could—”
His phone rang in his jeans pocket, cutting him off from whatever he was going to say.
Drew glanced at me and raised his ass, gesturing for me to retrieve it for him as he navigated the roads at high speed. When I pulled it out, Eric’s name lit up the screen.
“Thank fuck. Put it on speaker,” Drew told me, his relief obvious.
I kept my eyes locked on him as he stared down at the screen, and I accepted the call, lifting it between us both.
“Eric! Where the fuck are you? I need you!” Drew barked.
Silence lingered, the tension created in a second before a familiar, sadistic voice filtered through the speaker. “Well, well, well. The big, bad Drew Tucker needs his daddy.”
My eyes lifted from the small handset in my grip where Eric’s name was steady on the screen, and I met them with Drew’s. My blood felt like it had been filtered through ice. The voice made my thumb twitch. I’d never wanted to end a call so much in my life. I was scared but Drew held my gaze before flickering a glance to the road and back to the phone.
“Trigger?” he said in question, his voice low and rough.
“The one and only,” Travis ‘Trigger’ Gatlin answered smugly.
Drew’s hand tensed around the wheel, his eyes glazing over with fire and anger. “Where the fuck is my father?”
“He’s... hanging around.”
Drew glanced at me, his frown deep and filled with worry. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Now, now, Drew. You sound like you’re getting frustrated. Pull the car over. Take a breath. Think things through. I wouldn’t want you crashing that beautiful car you’re in when you have cargo in there that belongs to me.”
I wanted to spin around and look behind us. I wanted to see if Walsh was in the back seat with a phone, or if there were bikes that would have the Nav’s Reaper and Rifles painted onto the tank. Not that it mattered. Trigger knew where we were and what vehicle we were in, and that wasn’t a coincidence. We were in trouble.
Unexpected trouble.
My eyes flicked to meet Drew’s, pretty sure I knew what I would see there. He was going to regret having me in this car and regret that he’d taken me with him to begin with. Regrets and more regrets. I just had to make sure that I didn’t show him how scared I was and give more power to those thoughts. We were in this, here and now, and we were in it together. Nothing could be done to help that.
Drew gritted his teeth, his control slipping as his foot seemed to gain weight on the accelerator. “Where’s my father, Gatlin?”
“About ten feet away from me.”
“You bastard,” Drew ground out, knuckles turning white on the wheel as he threw his body back into the leather seat and tore down the road. He suddenly had a direction, and he was heading there without thought, taking a tight right turn at once toward The Nav’s border. “If you’ve touched him, hurt him, somuch as whispered too close to his face, I’ll—”
Trigger laughed, the tone dripping with sarcasm. “What? What areyougoing to do, Tucker? Fuck things up like usual? Lead with the fists and escape death by the skin of your teeth like usual? Kill that stupid motherfucking mayor who’s bleeding all over those beautiful, cream leather seats, and then deal with the wreckage later… as usual? Get one of your other innocent brothers to take the fall because you’re too loved up to suffer the consequences of your actions like fucking usual?” He blew out a breath, chuckling on the end of it. “God, it must be real damn tiring having you as their king.”
Drew’s jaw worked back and forth, the red mist taking over. “Keep talking, Trigger. Keep talking.”
“How about we talk face to face? Deal with this like real men?”
I was staring at the screen, but the moment Trigger said it, I looked up and stared at Drew’s murderous face, already knowing the answer.
