Page 53 of Pain

“And sunglasses at night won’t draw his suspicion?” I asked, partially amused and partially... hopeful.

Mandy shrugged. “Hey, I can wear sunglasses at night. Saraya can, too.”

“So what happens when you get close enough to him that he can tell you’re not Saraya?” I asked.

At this, she grinned. “Easy. I bait him out of the house and play coy. Stay far enough away that he can’t really see me. Keep him out of the house long enough that someone else can get in. Keep him far enough away that he doesn’t realize anything is wrong. I bide my time, string him along, whatever, while you guys get into the house, find Tinker, and get him the hell out of there.”

Right. So far, this plan wasn’t giving me much confidence.

“And then?”

“Then I shoot Devil and we run,” she finished, like this was the most obvious thing in the entire world.

I stared at her, shocked, and I could feel Saraya twitch next to me. She was, no doubt, thinking the same thing I was—and making a list of all the ways this could go wrong. Mandy didn’t know Saraya well, and she certainly didn’t know Devil. She didn’t know anything about their history or what had made their relationship tick. How the hell did she think she was going to talk to him and convince him that she was Saraya? How was she going to hide her own identity and play a girl she barely knew?

And how was she going to keep her anger over what Devil had done to Saraya under wraps while he was standing right there, no doubt throwing the same charm and manipulation her way?

I knew Mandy well enough to know she didn’t take a man like that lightly, and she definitely wasn’t going to be generous with him. But given how long Saraya had been with him, she was going to have to pretend to have at least some affection for him, if only out of deference to their history. Saraya might hate Devil with every last cell in her body, but she’d still been in love with him once—I assumed—and had certainly been his partner for a long time.

She’d still have some leftover affection for him, or at least I assumed she would.

I didn’t think Mandy would be able to act her way into that. Not for long enough for us to get into whatever house they had Tinker in, find him, and get out again.

Hell, they probably had that house so heavily guarded that we wouldn’t be able to get in. It wasn’t like they just left it open—or left him sitting there by himself, beaten half to death.

Beaten half to death.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? That phrase changed things. Because they’d been hurting him, for either information or for their own entertainment, and that changed things.

Like Saraya had said, we couldn’t just leave him there. Turn him over to them and desert him. We had to save him. Even if the plan was complete shit and there was almost no way we’d succeed. We had to at least try.

And if it didn’t work, we’d just have to try something else. And then something else after that. And another plan after that.

Because I wasn’t willing to turn my back on Tinker. Not in a million years. And I wasn’t willing to trade Saraya’s life for his, either, because we all knew what would happen to her the moment she walked back into Devil’s sphere.

He’d go right back to beating her at every opportunity. And I didn’t think he’d hesitate to make it even worse than it had been. Punish her for having run from him in the first place, and then hooking up with me once she was out.

He’d see it as a betrayal, and he’d pay her back for it. It wouldn’t matter that she’d only run because he’d been abusing her, or that she hadn’t told us anything about anything. All he’d see was that she’d escaped him—betrayed him—and then run straight to me. He might or might not know that I’d taken her to my bed, but it wouldn’t matter. Not really. He’d assume that I had, and he’d assume the same thing Mandy had seemed to assume: that I’d done it just to piss him off.

As if I was that petty or that desperate. I’d taken her to my bed because I’d fallen for the girl, and that didn’t have a damn thing to do with Devil.

Though his ego wouldn’t see it that way.

No, I didn’t actually see any other options. Because I wanted Tinker and Saraya both here with me, and I meant to have them. So unless someone had a better plan than the one Mandy and Gem had come up with...

“No one else has any better plans?” I asked.

Mandy scoffed. “Are you calling my plan bad?”

“Just thinking that there’s quite a lot that can go wrong,” I said frankly. “And not too excited about what happens if it does.”

Mandy thought about that for a moment but shrugged. “True, I guess. There’s a chance I can’t keep Devil on the line long enough, and a chance that Tinker is guarded. It might not be that easy to get into the house. Devil might shoot me and then go after you guys. And you might not get away with Tinker, even if you do get him out.” She looked me up and down, one eyebrow lifted in mocking question. “But the last time I checked, you weren’t the sort of guy to let one of your men suffer on your behalf. And you definitely weren’t the sort of guy who’d second-guess getting one of your guys out of a dangerous situation.”

Both very good points. Of course I had to think about all of my men, not just Tinker. And my women, too. I had to make sure the entire club was going to be safe if we did this.

Which meant I couldn’t leave anything up to chance.

“I’m going to be your backup, then,” I said firmly. “We’ll send Brock and Remi into the house to get Tink, and I’ll stay outside with you.”