I tried not to flinch. I really did. “Ms. Stephanie…”
“You can take the lessons at my apartment,” she continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “We can do it on Sundays. You boys are always welcome to come over for supper on Sundays.” And we had a few times. There, beneath it all, was the crux of the offer. She would be there. The guys would be there.
I wouldn’t have to be alone with anyone I didn’t know.
“I’ll think about it.” It was the best I could do, especially since I was sweating at the idea alone.
“Can’t ask for more,” she said, then nodded to the ball. “We still playing?”
One glance at the ball and then back up at her. “You know you don’t have to play with me, right?”
“You know I’m here because I want to be, right?”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
She answered it with a grin of her own. “Now, let’s go, best two out of three and then we’ll get some ice cream.”
Okay, I could do that.
CHAPTER 14
KELLAN
The last of the trucks were in, emptied, and accounted for. We’d lost five total. Five out of fifty. That was a lot of trucks when you considered how long it had taken Jasper to build this operation. He took every single loss personally. Not only were they gone, their GPS transponders were gone, their drivers, their cargo—everything.
Vaughn leaned back against the wall with a weary sigh. We were all tired. No one was sleeping. Not me. Not Jasper. Not Vaughn. And definitely not Milo. Dark shadows underscored his eyes and he hadn’t shaved in three days. Since coming back from prison, he’d taken particular care of his appearance. Always clean-shaven, hair neat, clothes clean, and it didn’t matter how dirty our work got—he’d refused to be unkempt in any way.
Frankly, it reminded me of when he’d been in college and on course for law school. Only then, he’d been aiming a lot higher than we were right now. But I got it, it was all about Ivy. He’d gradually begun to accept that Ivy was Emersyn and that he didn’t know her. They were both trying. It had been rewarding to watch and it had made being patient worth it.
Now?
Now, I struggled to not slug them when he and Jasper snarled at each other, or when Milo tried to tell us to let it go where she was concerned. None of us would. Now that we had the trucks shored up, Liam better have something for us. He and Rome had been “working” on a lead all week, or so Liam had said.
Rome hadn’t answered any of us. Then Freddie vanished two days ago—fuck was it three now? I ran a hand over my face. I needed a shower, a shave, some coffee and—Sparrow. I just needed to see her and know she was all right. The brief glimpse we’d gotten on the news wasn’t near enough. We spent years looking out for her where we could from a distance.
I couldn’t go back to that. I didn’t want to. I liked having her—
“Kel,” Milo said with some force that suggested he’d said my name more than once. When I glanced at him, he frowned. “You good?”
“No,” I said, not bothering to avoid the elephant in the room. I was fucking tired of ignoring it. “I’m not. But we had a job to do. We’re done for now, right?”
He let out an aggravated sigh. “Don’t—”
“What? Don’t call you on your crap?” I met him stare for stare. Vaughn lifted his chin and Jasper lit a cigarette, but he straightened and stared at Milo with an impassive expression.
“We’re going to do this now?”
“I don’t see why not,” I replied. “You’re never going to want to do it and you know what. Fine, count yourself out. The three of us can take it from here. We know where everyone else stands.”
Doc was in his corner, but he wasn’t any happier about all of this than the rest of us were. He might hide it well, but I’d seen his face after he watched the news report. As determined as Doc seemed to be to support Milo, Emersyn’s absence troubled him.
Fine. Whatever.
We would—
The cranking sound of the roll up doors sounded from the other end of the warehouse. We all turned. No one was due back and I slid a hand to the gun tucked into its holster at my back. But the car pulling in was one of Liam’s SUVs. I knew all of his plates.
It wasn’t Liam behind the wheel. I didn’t think so, at least. The twins were identical, sure, but Liam and Rome rarely dressed alike. Rome also had a way of driving that was precise, if abrupt. As soon as the vehicle would clear the underside of the still rising door, he was inside and parked. The door was already rolling down behind him.
“What the fuck?” Milo growled in an undertone. We were all heading toward the car as Freddie climbed out of the passenger seat, rolling his head from side to side and muttering. It was Rome that held my attention, because he went to the back door of the vehicle and opened it. A dark-haired woman—fuck my life, for a split second my pulse skipped, the slam of my heart almost painful—stepped out and glared at Rome.
Not Sparrow.
Too tall.
Lean though, but without her compact muscles.
From a distance and for like half a second, she’d been back. She’d come home. Stuffing that torn and bloodied part of my soul away, I squared my shoulders.
“You live here?” the woman demanded in a cultured tone. She enunciated every syllable, clean and deliberate. Sparrow had similar diction. The similarities were there, but she wasn’t Sparrow.
“Rome?” I asked a lot, saying his name. I was aware of that. But Rome didn’t usually need me to recite monologues. If anything, he preferred short and direct.
“She’s a friend of Starling’s,” Rome explained.
“Why the fuck is she here?” Milo’s question came out more a snarl of ground words, as if he had clenched his jaw in a fruitless effort to hold them back.
“Because I want to be,” she snapped before Rome could say anything. “These idiots didn’t tell me we were a two-day drive from where we needed to be. I could have gotten us here a lot faster, not to mention we’re going to need to move faster if this is going to work at all.”
Despite her claim of two days in the car, she seemed perfectly put together, save for a slight wrinkle to her shirt. She pivoted away from Rome and Freddie, who shockingly didn’t say a word, just leaned against the hood of the SUV, waiting. For what?
Sparrow’s friend glanced at me, then Jasper, Vaughn, and finally settled on Milo. I swore she measured, assessed, judged, and moved on. But Milo earned her stare. “You’re her brother?”’
Silence greeted that scandalized note and I wasn’t the only one who focused on Freddie and Rome. Jasper exhaled a thin stream of smoke and said, “Freddie, what the fuck did you two do?”
“We’re working on getting Boo-Boo back. She has information. She’s kind of bitchy if you interrupt her, so just let her talk.”
“Freddie,” Milo snapped. “We don’t kidnap women.”
“No, we just kidnap Boo-Boo.”
I didn’t laugh. No matter how fucking funny the comment was.
“We didn’t kidnap her.”
“They didn’t kidnap me.” The woman’s comment stormed right over the top of Rome’s dry response.