Page 16 of Colton’s Mate

“Nobody’s stopping,” Brandon said. “We need to install the damn toilets today in the other bathrooms. And start on the plumbing for the showers.”

Remy scrambled to his feet. “So you can boink in privacy?”

Brandon said, “I’m pretty sure that’s an impossible dream, but I’d like to give it a shot. And we need to build a weapons cache, too. We have all those guns and explosives from when we were going to go after Austin Raines, that we didn’t use. I don’t like having it all out in the shed.”

“Why?” Jason asked.

Colt and Remy and Brandon and Kitty—all the former Bad Bloods—gave each other identical ‘duh’ looks.

“What if we get attacked when we’re inside?” Kitty said. “Then the weapons are outside, where our enemies can get them, instead of inside where we can get them.”

Colt stood up, dusting himself off. “Where are we putting the weapons locker?”

Brandon said, “What’s wrong with putting it under the dining-room floor, like civilized people?”

“We’re not civilized,” Colt said. “For one thing.”

“But it’s tradition,” Kitty said. Back at home, the main weapons stash was under the dining-room floor in the alpha’s cabin.

Remy said, “Yeah, but this is a way bigger house than Flynn’s cabin. It’s a long way from the third floor to the dining room. I’m thinking we should have upstairs weapons and downstairs weapons.”

Kitty and Brandon look at each other.

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Brandon said.

Colt and Remy high fived.

Brandon walked away, Remy following him. “Can we make one of those cool hidden weapons lockers like on TV, where shit slides out of the wall and the drawers have built-in places for all the different guns and knives and stuff? That would be so cool.”

Brandon rolled his eyes. “Who’s paying for all that tech?”

“Duh. Me. And Colt, of course.”

Of course. Not that they didn’t have the money—Remy was a financial genius and had been investing their money since high school. But he didn’t need his brother spending it for him, too.

Colt went to follow them into the house, before he realized that nobody was helping him unload the truck.

Looking around, he saw no one but Phantom Nick, the crew’s panther ghost, wandering across the lawn.

“I don’t suppose you want to carry a toilet or two?” Colt asked him.

Nick rolled over on the grass and batted his paw at a passing butterfly.

Colt sighed. Unlatching the tailgate, he heaved out a toilet and carried it towards the house. Let nobody say he didn’t get the glamor jobs.

Chapter 7

Two weeks later, Callie was stretched out on her sofa on her night off, watching a Criminal Minds marathon and going through her contractor file for approximately the fifty-eleventh time.

She’d pulled out the old bids from the contractors who’d submitted them before she picked Bobby the Scammer, and contacted them to see if they were still interested in being considered. They were.

She’d also solicited bids from two other contractors.

And now she was stuck, trying to figure out which one to choose.

A couple of them looked promising—a little more expensive than Bobby, hopefully because they were not planning on using insurance fraud as a secondary income stream.

But how the fuck was she supposed to tell?