“I think we’ve figured that out for ourselves, Britt,” Tanner states. “But I’d rather force his hand than have him catch me unaware. We need to do this on our terms.”
“Your terms suck,” I spit out, giving him my most fierce, angry stare.
Sighing, Riptide asks me, “What would you have us do, Britton? How would you suggest we do this in a controlled way where one of my men doesn’t get hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, slumping back into the chair. “But not use my man as bait.”
“Britton, we have the home advantage here,” Tanner expresses. “Nobody knows this plot of land better than we do. Leaving him loose to live in his imaginary world puts our family in danger. Now that you’ve been rescued, he’s gonna get desperate.”
His statement hits me, and I reach up to rub my chest where it’s now aching. “I can’t lose you. We can’t lose you, Tanner,” I declare.
“You won’t, baby girl. I have my brothers at my back, they won’t let anything happen to me,” Tanner promises.
“It’ll be safer for us to take him on as a unit, Britton,” Riptide adds. “If it’s just LoneStar and one of the other brothers out and about, he’ll be an easy target.”
The wind gets sucked out of my sails with that prediction. “You’ll be safe, you won’t try and take him out by yourself? Promise me, Tanner.”
“I promise, darlin’. I won’t make a move without my brothers being with me,” he vows.
Holding up my hand and sticking out my pinky finger, I state, “Pinky swear. Give the mother of your child a solemn oath that you won’t get a wild hair up your ass and go through those woods without every single brother being there with you.”
He anchors his pinky with mine and shakes them. “I pinky swear that I won’t go out there without my brothers.” I notice that he doesn’t promise to take all of them with him, but I can’t argue that point because I’m feeling utterly exhausted and my brain has all but shut down.
It’s nighttime and after that emotionally draining conversation in Riptide’s office, I went up to our room and crashed. When I came back down around dinner time, it was to find Tanner huddled with Riptide, Icer, Shade, Indiana, and Renegade. Booker was giving them some sort of goggles, explaining how they work in regard to the outdoors as opposed to being indoors.
I raptly listen, finding the demonstration interesting and consider using it in one of my Security Corp books.
“What are they up to?” Jersey asks.
I’m not sure how much I can tell her without finding myself in hot water, so I recap what the professor confessed to me, figuring that’s not too much information.
“Are you kidding me?” she whisper-squeals, her eyes growing comically wide as she digests what I just told her. “He’s been watching us, all of us. That’s creepy, Britton.”
“Yeah, it is,” I say, agreeing with her, although I have a lot of other, not so kind, descriptive words I could tack onto hers. And all of them would be appropriate to use in regard to him. “I’m worried, Jersey. What if he’s set traps out there and they walk right into them.”
“They wouldn’t go out there if they weren’t aware of that and prepared for all outcomes, Britton,” she points out. “These guys think ten steps ahead.”
“I wish that made me feel better, but it doesn’t, Jersey.”
Jersey reaches out and grabs my hand with hers, squeezing it until I swing my eyes and meet hers, telling me, “Not too long ago, you told me I needed to learn and trust my gut, and that’s what I’m doing now. In my heart of hearts, I know they’re going to be okay. Your professor, however, may not be. I know you want him to get mental help, but Britton, he’s threatened not only you, but LoneStar. The club’s not going to take that lightly and they’re going to want to eliminate the threat. Are you ready to deal with that?”
“As long as Tanner and the rest of the guys are okay, I will. I feel bad for Mr. Stratton, don’t get me wrong, but I won’t lose a wink of sleep if he loses his life because of the decisions he’s made, no matter how irrational they are. If it comes down to my man staying alive or him getting the help he desperately needs, he’ll lose every single time.”
“You have a good heart, Britton, because if it were me in your shoes, I’d want his head hand-delivered to me on a platter,” she harrumphs.
“Since when did you become so bloodthirsty, Jersey?”
“When some motherfucker stole my best friend and held her captive,” she retorts.
“Jersey! Did you just cuss?” I ask, laughing because she hardly ever lets a curse word fly.
“I can cuss, when the time calls for it,” she mutters.
I pretend to wipe a stray tear from beneath my eye, and sigh. “Look at my girl growing up and swearing. Release that anger, Jersey.”
“If that’s all it takes to consider myself an adult, I would’ve started using swearwords when I was seven,” she muses. “But I don’t think using profanities will release all the pent-up anger I harbor inside of me. It’ll take a lifetime for me to recover from whattheydid to me.”
Recalling what we have in common—self-destructive, cataclysmic parents who thrived on drama and belittling their children, people who should’ve been neutered long before they started reproducing, I reply, “Amen, sister. A-fucking-men.”
