“Uh huh, sure.” I climbed off the bed and walked to the end of the room to where I’d stored my bag.
“What are you doing?” Cecilia asked, sitting up.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I asked as I tugged off my t-shirt.
“It looks like you’re stripping.” She paused. “If this is a show, at least do a little dance.”
I huffed in amusement as I pulled off my jeans, not doing a little dance.
“I’m not sleepin’ in my clothes,” I said as I strode back toward the bed.
“You’re sleeping in here?” she asked as I slid into the bedding beside her. “My parents are here.”
I couldn’t help the loud bark of laughter that left my mouth. She’d sounded so scandalized and worried, so not like the Cecilia I’d known. Hell, we’d once had sex against the outside wall of the clubhouse while everyone—including her boyfriend at the time—partied inside.
“Shut up,” she grumbled. “It’s just that my mom is already saying shit.”
“Like what?” I asked curiously.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Just little comments.”
“Cec,” I said patiently, trying not to laugh, “I didn’t give a shit what your parents thought when we were kids, and I give less of a fuck now.”
“Well, I give more fucks,” she said quietly.
I thought it over for a moment. “Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning up on my elbow. “If somethin’ happens, someone needs to be in here with you. If you’d rather share a room with your parents, you can do that. Or Lu—she probably wouldn’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “Do you think something will happen?”
“Nope,” I lied. “It’s just a precaution.”
I couldn’t know if they’d find us, not without knowing how they’d found Cecilia in the first place. The house was secure, with silent alarms and—if I knew Wilson—booby traps, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t show up. It just meant we’d have a little warning before they got in.
As Cecilia got herself and the baby settled, I turned off the bedside lamp, leaving the room aglow from a light in the closet. I knew better than to pitch the room into darkness. Neither of us had ever discussed it, I hadn’t wanted to broach it, and she’d never offered the information, but I’d always known that Cecilia was afraid of the dark.
It was just one more thing that she hid from everyone and hadn’t been able to hide from me.
“My parents are going to want to take us home soon,” Cecilia said after I’d curled into her, the curve of her ass cradling my dick and her legs tangled with mine. “Do you think he’ll search for us in Oregon?”
I couldn’t lie that time. “He’ll search until he finds you,” I said carefully. “No matter where you go.”
Cecilia sniffled. “She doesn’t even have any legal tie to Cane’s money,” she said in frustration. “And we don’t fucking want it.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“I have money,” she said. “More than we need.”
“You cut a lot of hair?” I asked.
“I’m damn good at it,” she replied, elbowing me in the gut. “But Cane and Liv also paid me for being a surrogate.”
My head jerked in surprise. “They were buying Olive from you?”
“No,” she said with a huff. “It was payment for a service, in this case, growing their child. It’s completely normal and not at all shady or weird.”
“Sounds weird.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” she said. “Surrogates get paid for their time and energy and trauma to their bodies, and emotional upheaval of having a child for someone.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I get it.”
“Though, I doubt most get paid as much as I was,” she mumbled.
By the time I grew the balls to ask just how much she’d gotten paid for having Olive, she was already asleep. I laid there for a long time, listening to her breathe. The situation she was in was so extreme that we seemed to have fallen back into something that we’d lost years before. It was an easy camaraderie, but I knew it wouldn’t last. At some point, things were going to calm down and we were going to have to face the things we were choosing to ignore.
I tightened my arm around her. Eventually, she was going to come to her senses and not let me anywhere near her. I could feel it coming like an axe being swung at my neck. Because, even though she trusted me to keep her safe—Cecilia was never going to forgive me for what I’d done.
* * *
The next few days passed pretty slow. Cecilia spent most of her time in bed with the baby, which, along with the antibiotics Forrest had picked up, was exactly what she’d needed. Wilson had even set her up with a laptop—warning her not to check any social media or search anything to do with the Warrens or herself—so she could stream movies. And she’d been telling the truth about falling asleep, whenever I checked on her, she’d passed out with Olive, whatever show she’d been watching still playing. The only time she was able to stay awake was when she was taking care of the baby.
Wilson was making progress on the FAM, but it was slow going. Every thread he pulled connected to five others that he’d have to follow. Most of them were dead ends, but we’d found a few land mines. One of Richard Campbell’s daughters had shown up at a police station the year before, reporting that she and her mother and younger siblings had been held hostage on her father’s property for years. Unfortunately, when the police had gone to follow up on her claims, all they’d found was a saccharinely happy family with stories about how unstable the oldest daughter was. Even if she hadn’t gotten the outcome she’d hoped for, the daughter, Kaley, had at least put herself on the state’s radar, which meant that she’d been able to escape the FAM’s hold with little repercussions, and was now living somewhere in Eastern Oregon.
Because she had insider knowledge of the workings inside the FAM, Wilson had started immediately trying to contact her, but hadn’t had any success so far.
Things were pretty quiet for the most part, with everyone researching and calling contacts for information—but we hadn’t found much. Warren’s group was surprisingly quiet for a bunch of white supremacists, which I was pretty sure worried all of us.
We were sitting around the kitchen table Monday afternoon, eating some sort of chicken bake Eli had concocted, when Forrest’s chair dropped down onto all four legs. The noise got my notice, and when my head snapped up, I realized why he’d come to attention.
Casper had stepped just inside the back door with his phone clenched in his fist, tension radiating from him in waves. “Cam, Farrah,” he called. “Need a word.”
They were up and out of their seats immediately, and even though he hadn’t asked us, Cecilia and I followed.
“Rose and Mack are missing,” he said without preamble once I’d closed the door behind us.
“What?” Farrah replied, gaping. “Together?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Casper responded. “Went outside during one of Rose’s breaks at the bar and never came back in.”