I wholeheartedly supported their endeavor.
Jessie Dresden had died almost two years ago now. Kidnapped, raped, and butchered by Samuel Haune.
So Nyx had kidnapped him.
Lynched him.
Butchered him.
I dug my knuckles into the counter, appreciating the pinch of pain because the need to gnaw on one of my fingernails was suddenly strong.
So, so strong.
Lawyers with a four-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year retainer didn’t bite their nails.
Not in front of some of the payers of said four hundred K.
Even if they had all known me since I was a kid…
“He’s said what he wants?” I inquired, trying to sound calm when I didn’t feel it.
The need to puke, ever since Nyx had called me yesterday about this unknown entity, had made it hard to get any rest.
Link slung his arm around my shoulder, and controlling my immediate response, I groused, “Don’t touch what you can’t afford.”
Link being Link cackled as the rest of the guys, like a bunch of high school girls, hissed.
“Feel the burn, Link,” Sin said around a chuckle.
“I felt it. Worse than what Cruz uses to melt bodies,” he joked, grinning at me, totally unoffended. Winking, he said, “The kid wants to join in the fun.”
My brow furrowed. “But you’re not in the business anymore.”
Like pedophile-hunting was a business.
“Nope. Indy locked that up,” was Nyx’s bitter retort. He cracked his neck in a way that told me his demons hadn’t gone any-damn-where, regardless of any promise he’d made to his baby sister.
“Speaking of, has the PI slunk back down to New Orleans?” I asked.
Link nodded. “He’s gone.”
I didn’t want to know what had happened to Indy’s ex-receptionist, but I imagined it meant he was a bag of soup or whatever it was Cruz did when he disposed of corpses for the MC.
Not that I was supposed to know about Cruz’s proclivities.
“Good. That’s something off our backs at least. David’s family must be concerned at the lack of progress in the investigation into his whereabouts,” I said, tone sober.
“He took off,” was Nyx’s retort. “What are we supposed to do about that? Not our fault if there ain’t a trail.”
Sin snickered, which confirmed it was the Sinners’ fault there was no sight nor sound of David—and hadn’t been for months.
I pursed my lips. “You all need to buck up because you’ve been reckless for too long and, now, when each of you are settled and finally happy, isn’t the time for your asses to be hauled to jail.”
“That’s what you’re for,” Link charmed, batting his lashes at me.
Like that’d do anything.
“I’m damn good at what I do, Link, but I’m not a miracle worker.” Huffing, knowing they’d do whatever the hell they wanted anyway, I murmured, “The PI might be back.”
“Nah, he won’t,” Steel disagreed.
“That’s wishful thinking,” I retorted. “If he is—”
“No body, no crime,” Nyx said smugly.
“That’s a facile view of the law. It really is a good thing you pay me so much,” I drawled. “Regarding the Dresden boy, what are you going to do about him?”
“How old is he?” Sin stopped stacking beer bottles in a fridge to ask. “Legally.”
“Said he was twenty-four,” Link explained when I shot Sin a confused glance. “Looks about twelve.”
I snorted. “He’s twenty.” And that wasn’t the worst of what I’d uncovered about him.
At my answer, however, Nyx’s mouth relaxed.
Just a fraction.
I didn’t trust that.
Nothing about Nyx was relaxed.
Ever.
I blew out a breath, and decided to let it go.
They paid me a lot of money to keep their asses out of jail.
This wasn’t my circus, and it wasn’t my monkey—it was Rex’s.
“You okay?” Link asked softly, almost in an aside as the others bitched about the Dresden kid.
I shot him a tight smile even as my stomach did the tango again. “I’m fine.”
We both knew it was a lie.
I wasn’t okay.
Nausea so bad that I felt like I was constantly on a turbocharged carousel, heartburn even if I ate a salad, and a hypersensitivity to smells…
No, I definitely wasn’t okay.
I had a feeling it was an ulcer, but I was too chicken shit to go to the doctor about it.
“—you could be his Mr. Miyagi.”
Well, that was one way to get my mind off a visit to the doctor’s office.
I stared at Maverick. “Are you insane?”
His mouth quirked up in a sneer. “I’m many things according to the doctors, but nope, insane isn’t one of them.”
Scowling, I retorted, “You want Nyx to teach a kid how to kill pedophiles? This isn’t Cobra Kai, Maverick.”
Sin chuckled. “You watch Cobra Kai?”
My scowl darkened. “That’s what you’re taking away from this conversation?”
Link’s grin lit his eyes up. “Rachel has a TV addiction. Mostly reality TV unless that’s changed…”
“I don’t have an addiction to anything,” I said with a huff. “You know I don’t have to take this shit. I could go into New York and deal with people who treat me with respect—”
“Who you can freeze out,” Link inserted.
“Who I don’t need to freeze out because they have boundaries,” I said pointedly.
“Boundaries, schmoundaries,” he scoffed. “You’re one of us.”
Despite myself, I couldn’t deny that felt good to hear.
It really did.
“You are,” Nyx said calmly.
He shot me a measured glance, one that speared me to the quick because Nyx didn’t say shit like that. Nyx didn’t make overtures. Even two-worded ones.
Coolly, I told him, “I stopped being that a long time ago.”
Shuffling a deck of cards in his hands, Steel murmured, “You breaking up with Rex didn’t change things with us, Rach.”
Link nodded. “You froze him out and try to freeze us out, but you can’t. Not entirely.”
“You’re only the Ice Princess when he’s around,” Nyx agreed. “Seeing as you broke up a lifetime ago, you’d think you’d be over it by now.”
Hot and cold chills shot up and down my spine when a spike of nausea sliced through me. I could literally feel the beads of sweat forming on my top lip from the urge to puke.
I could have sniped at them. Could have roared at them, even. They’d take it. They took a lot worse from each other. But they were right—I was different when Rex was around.
“That’s the problem with connections like that,” Steel rumbled softly, his gaze fixed on mine as he broke into my thoughts. “Time and distance can separate them, but they don’t die.”
He’d know.
He and Stone had reconnected this year after almost two decades of infighting.
“This isn’t about me. It isn’t about Rex. It’s about the Sinners, and about the fact that if a snot-nosed kid believes the MC had something to do with his sister’s death, then what’s to stop the FBI from doing the same?” I sucked in a breath. “Whatever the kid wants, give him, but in repayment, demand to know what evidence he found that led him down this path. When he tells you, find a way to destroy it before that destroys you.”