Mati blinked up at him. “They’re going to want to know why.”
“Tell them the boss-lady says so and to suck it up,” Hodges suggested.
“Oh yeah, that’ll go over like a lead balloon,” she said with a laugh as she dialed. She was trying to come up with a reason to go back on her demand when the call went to voicemail.
“Stephen, do me a favor and hold off on firing Frankie. I want to talk to you and Mikey about something first. Don’t say anything to him, okay? Call me when you get this.”
She hung up to call Mikey and ended up leaving the same message.
If her idiot brothers were off sulking, she would be pissed.
“What do we do now?” she asked, worrying her lip between her teeth.
“Well,”’ Hodges said, “you could go to Chaz’s house. That’s where Hunter spent the night once he discovered his uncle’s vacation had been cut short and he was home.”
All three of them ran toward the door, pulling on coats and grabbing keys.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Hodges asked.
“Yes,” Reese said, plucking the keys from David’s hand. “I’ll drive. We’ll call you once we’re there and have spoken to Chaz.”
They were halfway down the stairs to the street when Reese realized no one had questioned his driving. He grinned as they strode across the sidewalk and jumped into the car.
After all these weeks, all theseyears,he might finally have some answers. They’d already learned so much, and while none of it made any sense yet, they had a clear path forward, and that path led directly to Chaz.
Unfortunately, Chaz lived outside the city. Fortunately, Reese still knew all these roads like the back of his hand. He broke more than a couple traffic laws getting there in record time.
He tore up Chaz’s driveway and stopped in front of the door.
“We’re not sneaking up on him, I see,” David said dryly from the passenger seat.
Reese cringed. “Sorry, I—”
A flash of movement at the corner of the house caught Reese’s eye.
Chaz bolted out of a side door and toward his garage.
“Oh, hell no,” David said, leaping out of the car.
As soon as David was clear, Reese yelled, “Hold on!” and threw the car back into gear. He didn’t let Chaz’s carefully manicured lawn and a couple flower beds stop him as he drove straight for the garage.
They landed back on the driveway with a grinding noise Hodges would give him hell for and a loud whoop from Mati in the back seat. The car skidded to a stop behind Chaz’s car, blocking it in just as he reached it. His eyes widened in alarm and he took off toward the woods along the back of his property. He made it twenty yards before David was sailing through the air and tackling him into the bed of pine needles and tree roots.
Mati hissed.
Reese cringed. “That’s gotta hurt.”
When the two men remained in a motionless heap on the ground, Reese’s heart stopped.
“David!” Mati cried.
She and Reese shot out of the car.
If David was hurt, if anything at all had happened to him, Reese didn’t know what he’d do. He’d never forgive himself, to begin with, and the ideas only went downhill from there.
When they got closer, Reese saw David was smashing Chaz’s face into the dirt and speaking in a low voice, directly into Chaz’s ear.
Reese heard the words “eunuch” and “mercy”.
