“I don’t have a home, Jersey,” I negate, even during my childhood I never felt like I had a home.
“I’m your home,” she murmurs. “Home isn’t a place, it’s the family you choose. My door isalwaysopen to you and you’llalwayshave a room here waiting for you.”
“I’ll think about it, Jersey.”
“Stubborn,” she says with an exaggerated sigh. I don’t have a response to that because she’s right, I am stubborn and I won’t apologize for it. Again, I assure her I’ll consider it, and I will, I just can’t make any promises—not yet.
CHAPTER
TEN
LoneStar
Here we are again,in church. For some reason I can’t decipher, I’m antsy as hell. I can’t stop fidgeting and my feet are bouncing. I should be out scouring the streets for Jerome or scaring the piss out of Patrick, but church is sacred and there’s no excuse for missing it unless someone is dying or has recently passed. Another exception would be if you’re laid up in the hospital. Even then, we’ll find a way to hook you in via the teleprompter.
“What’s the word on the street?” Rip asks.
“A package was delivered to Patrick through a courier last night,” Indiana reports.
“How do we know it was for him and not his mother?” Slayer inquires.
“Because after the councilwoman answered the door and received the parcel, Patrick was standing behind her, anxiously dancing on the balls of his feet. As she swung it shut, we saw herhand it to him,” Rebel, our tail gunner and Indiana’s appointed partner, answers.
“Do y’all think this means Jerome’s still in town?” I probe. “He has proven to be a bit of a control freak, wanting to keep all of his minions close by so he can watch over them.”
“We never thought he strayed far from town, if he ever left in the first place,” Riptide utters, causing Icer to snarl. “He’s just not reacting to our antagonizing.”
“He’s letting his men do his dirty work for him,” Renegade supplies. “I can’t seem to wrap my head around why he’s hiding. He gets off on being neck deep in the chaos he creates.”
“He’s laying low for a reason, we just need to figure out why that is,” Riptide muses.
“It’s because he has a flair for the dramatics,” I conclude. “He’s not going to make his appearance until he can make it grand.”
“He is a bit of a showboater,” Rebel acknowledges.
“Everything he does is with calculated precision,” Slayer points out. “He’s an asshole, but he’s not a dumb one.”
“After what happened to his dad, he’s biding his time, and trying to make us sweat while planning the ultimate payback,” Indiana remarks.
“But there’s no proof we were behind that,” Renegade adds.
“That may be so, but he knows we were behind it even without the evidence showing we were,” Riptide states. “It may have been officially ruled as a suicide, but those close to him are aware he was too egotistical to take his own life.”
“The sheriff was pretty damn self-absorbed,” I remark, snorting. “Even so, we covered all of our tracks and no forensic evidence was left behind that’ll lead them to our doorstep.”
“But that won’t stop Jerome from coming up with his own conclusions,” Slayer conveys.
“We need to pry him out of his hidey hole,” Riptide insists.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do, Rip,” I remind him. “So far, nothing’s working. Whoever is hiding him, is doing a damn good job of keeping his location a secret.”
“We need to start taking his men out,” Icer grunts.
“I concur,” Shade endorses. “We’ve been on the defense chasing a ghost, it’s high time we go on the offense.”
“That could bring the law down on us,” Slayer snaps, looking none too pleased by that suggestion. “We have women and children depending on us to be here.”
Leaning forward in my seat, I bring something up that’s been plaguing me. “What I want to know is how he’s managed to stay one step in front of us. He knows what we’re going to do before we make our play.”
