The urge to be of use tightened my belly.
Tyler described how Convict had brought Mila to him for help. She’d been trying to hunt down a man who she thought was influencing her grandmother, following her grandfather’s funeral.
I cocked my head. “Rhys Jacobs?”
“Ye recognise the name?”
It was a blast from the past. A boy my age, showing up for a meeting with my grandfather. One I wasn’t admitted to, which was the sole reason I recalled him. And asked him questions the next time he visited. He’d been a dick to me, I remembered. Made some kind of crude comment, the jerk.
I shrugged. Tyler continued.
“Another person sought Jacobs, a gangster named Salter. A trafficker. We caged him a while ago. It was the first connection between Marchant Haulage and trafficking. Far from the last.”
“Because they found bodies on the ship,” I filled in from what I’d read in the articles.
“Ye probably know more than I do.”
He was testing me now. Pushing for intelligence.
But trust went both ways.
I lifted my chin. “I didn’t know you were working through my list.” He’d called Sullivan the first.
His look said of course he was. Same as how Convict had been insulted at my question over Mila’s protection. “It would be easier if you told me more about each of them.”
I gestured from him to me. “You talk first.”
We were back to our standoff. He’d stolen me away for a reason I still wasn’t certain of. I didn’t want to guess.
Tyler’s phone rang, saving us. He heaved a sigh and swiped to answer, raising it to his ear.
I took my mug to the sink and washed up, not listening but also unable to avoid hearing him saying the name Kane.
He was talking to my brother.
For a girl used to being on her own, suddenly I had family everywhere. Had to stop thinking of that one as the enemy, though. Lovelyn liked him. She wasn’t scared of the huge, intimidating hulk, and she wouldn’t fall for someone mean.
God, I missed her, too.
When he was done, Tyler came to me. “Kane and Lovelyn dropped off your bags to the warehouse after chasing ye to Edinburgh. Want me to go fetch them? Or ye can come with me. Even if just for the drive.”
The city. The daylight. “I’m good here, thanks.”
In hiding away, voluntarily now, I was turning into a regular cave dweller. Though Mila’s question burned in me with the want to be useful to her, the thought of going out was terrifying. My cold sweat at the bus station had done more harm than good.
Tyler readied to leave. Paused at the door. “When you’re ready to meet her, I’ll be there with ye.”
“Why do you care if I meet my sister, hun?”
“Because I think you’ll love her, and she’ll love ye. Everyone needs that.”
Perhaps they did.
“Bye. Don’t die,” I said. Same words I’d used a few times when he left the warehouse on missions. Almost the entirety of our conversations, pre-kidnapping.
But my quip landed harder than expected.
Tyler’s lips parted, his self-assuredness vanishing to reveal something darker, vulnerable.
