His face looked even more green.
“And what the fuck do we have to do to get those pictures back?” Cleo growled.
I dropped my head as relief poured through me.
“We have all of the pictures back except for the ones directly on Van Morrison’s personal jump drive,” Silas answered. “We’ve tried for over six years now to bring this operation down. Each time we get a leg up, something else comes down on it and shatters it before we can make our next move.”
“You have a mole.”
That came from Big Papa.
I didn’t disagree.
I’d been thinking the same thing for a very long time now.
Lynn had someone in his operation who was hindering it, and one of these days, very soon, I would figure out who it was. When I figured out who it was, I was going to tear them a fucking new one and make them taste it.
This operation should’ve been over and done with a very long time ago. We’ve had ample opportunity to bring them down, but each time something solidified that we could pursue, it would be gone in a matter of hours.
The only thing we kept doing right was interrupting the shipments of children. We’d broken up each and every one over the last few years and had saved a total of forty-two children from being brokered and sold. Forty-two children had been reunited with their parents.
Forty-two times, I’d had a major role in making sure that my parents’ livelihood didn’t thrive.
When those tips came in, we acted on them fast, not giving whomever was in the operation time to contact their bosses or thwart our plans.
The bad thing was that we could never tie any of those child kidnappings to my parents. If anything, their men were loyal to them. Either my parents had something so huge over their heads that they kept silent, or they’d somehow won their loyalty and kept their silence.
Whatever the reason, I knew my parents were involved, and I couldn’t pin a damn thing on them.
On the outside, they appeared clean. On the inside, though? Yeah, they were dirty as dirt could be.
“So, what the hell are we going to do?” That was Cleo again.
“We’ve tried it the right way,” Lynn finally said. “Now we do it the final way.”
The final way meant killing them.
Even across the room from him, I could read the intent in Lynn’s eyes.
The funny thing was that I felt the exact same way.
And I’d been thinking it for a very long time now.
Something released in my chest, allowing me to breathe for the first time in what felt like forever.
Before I couldn’t react to the desire to wipe them out from this Earth, but now? With the power of sixteen Dixie Wardens and Lynn, who I was pretty sure had the authority to close this case by whatever means were necessary, I felt confident that I would make it home to my wife after taking their organization down—and without spending the rest of my days in an orange jumpsuit.
***
I saw the punch coming, but I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
I deserved it, though, so I allowed the hit.
Cleo didn’t stop there, however. The next hit came from the other fist, and this one took me right in the gut.
I took that one, too.
I’d take them all. Every last one of them, if it’d take that fucking look out of that strong man’s eyes.
I’d never seen Cleo look this devastated…or pissed.
He literally looked like he wanted to take my head off, then cradle it lovingly in his arms as he told me he missed me.
Then he dropped to his knees and stared at me with such a forlorn expression that I started stuttering right off the bat.
“I’m sorry y-y-you had to go through that.”
“I see the stutter is back,” he rasped. “Thought you only did that around your wife?”
That was true. At least mostly. I did it in during high times of stress, or when I was excited.
The entire fuckin’ lot of the Dixie Wardens were standing around me. Eight from the Benton, Louisiana Chapter, and eight from the Alabama Chapter. They surrounded Cleo and I, watching, waiting.
“It’s the heart rate,” I explained. “When it gets up there, I forget to control it.”
Cleo stopped, his chest heaving, and stared at me.
I stared back.
Which was why I never saw the other fist coming at my face until it was too late.
Torren’s fist hit me square in the jaw, and I turned my head to the side at the last second, which likely saved it from breaking.
“Fuck,” I spat, blood landing on the concrete with a wet splat.
I turned a glare on the man.
“I gotta do stuff with this mouth tonight,” I told him. “And my wife hasn’t had it in six years. If you’re going to hit me, go for the fuckin’ kidneys. I, at least, have two of them.”
Torren didn’t hit me again.
Instead he stared at me like he’d seen a ghost.
“All this time, we thought you were gone,” he rasped. “We’ve spent many Friday nights at your grave, mourning you, and you were alive this whole time.”
I stared at him gravely.
“I was,” I confirmed. “But my wife and daughter’s lives trump your feelings any day.”
He stared for a moment. “As they should.”
Then, for a few long seconds, we stood in awkward silence as the men around me stared at my bruised and bleeding face.
Then, with a suddenness that surprised me, Sebastian was in my face and taking me into a bear hug that surprised me.
“Fuck, I’ve wanted to do that for a really long time now,” Sebastian said.
And then he threw up.
Thankfully, not on me.
Chapter 24
If my life had to have a narrator, I’d choose Samuel L. Jackson. No offense to Morgan Freeman, but my life requires the use of multiple ‘fucks.’
-Meme
Ghost
I walked into my house at around eight in the evening, and immediately regretted it when the book in Sienna’s arms fell to the floor. It hit the stained concrete floors with a dull smack, causing everyone in the room to freeze.
“Ghost!” she cried out and ran to me. “What happened?”
Mina’s head whipped around from where she was cooking dinner, fajitas by the smell of it, and her eyes widened once she got a look at my face.
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Sienna rushed over to me, and I caught her up in my arms and lifted her to my chest, just like I used to do when she was younger. Her hands went to my face, and those big green eyes of hers stared at me intently.
“You look bad,” she whispered none too gently.
My mouth quirked.
“I got in an accident,” I said by way of explanation. With kids, less was better. Because where there was an explanation, there would then be at least a four-question follow-up.
Luckily, Mina stopped any further questions when she came up to my side and stared up at me.
“Sienna, would you please go set the table?” she asked carefully, trying valiantly to control her emotions that I could see just beneath the surface of her eyes.
“Yes,” Sienna sighed. “If you’ll let me play with my iPad later.”
Mina looked at her child.
“You can play on your iPad if you read. Otherwise, no sir-ree-bob.”
Sienna sighed and wiggled.