AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turned on my heel and left his office. I was out of Cypress twenty minutes after that. On the way there, I called up Archie. Out of all my siblings, he was the closest, both figuratively and physically. He’d be able to get to Cypress in less than an hour.
He answered on the second ring, and from the sound of his voice, I took it he was still half-asleep, “Yo, bro. What’s up? Must be something really important to wake me up at—” There’s a pause as he must’ve checked the time. “—ten in the morning.”
My lovely brother had accustomed himself to a life of best had at night. He was good at what he did, but he liked to party a bit too much, if you asked me. He was still in his twenties, so I guess it was more acceptable for him, but whatever. The idiot was the only reason I’d gone to the Playground in the first place.
So, really, all of this was his fault when you thought about it.
“It is. Get your ass out of bed and get to Cypress. I’m going to send you two addresses. One’s for an office space I’ve rented out, and the other… I need you to watch the other while I’m out of town. I should get back late this afternoon—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell is going on? Why do you need me? Where are you going?”
“I’m meeting with the Lioness to return a contract I accepted.”
“Shit. Dad know?”
“He knows.”
Archie groaned. “Fine. I’m assuming I’m watching that girl you were talking about before. What’s her name again? Antelope?”
My jaw ground. My brother, trying to be funny. “Giselle.”
“Ah, right. That’s the one.” He was lucky I had too much on my mind, otherwise I would’ve told him how shitty a joke that was. Archie sounded worlds more awake when he said, “Just send me the addresses. I assume there’s a lockbox somewhere for the stakeout space? I’ll need the code to that, too.”
“Thanks, Archie.”
“No problem. I just really hope you get the girl after all this, because man, what a pain in the ass—”
I hung up after that, not needing to hear him complain. I sent him the info. If all went well, I should be back before nightfall, but that depended on how long this meeting with the Lioness took. She wasn’t going to be happy, and when she wasn’t happy, she let the world know it.
I wouldn’t say she was my boss, but… well, no, she was definitely my boss.
The meeting took a while, mostly because the Lioness made me wait. The woman was never late, so she was doing this on purpose. I sat there, at Guild headquarters, in that room made of glass, for what felt like an eternity before she strolled in, a hard frown on her face. A middle-aged woman, she took no shit from anybody. I respected her, and she, in turn, respected those who actually completed the jobs they accepted.
She was not happy. Oh, no, she wasn’t happy with me in the least. She reamed into me, talked about how unprofessional this was, how it was making my entire family look bad, all that shit.
Trust me, I knew how bad it’d make us look. I’d already wrestled with it. Now I had to face facts, and the most important fact was that I could not kill Giselle. Not for a mysterious client, not for anybody.
The last thing the Lioness told me before I walked out of that conference room was: “Whatever you’re doing this for, I hope it’s worth it.” A remark meant to be acidic and biting, but that wasn’t how I took it.
Of course it was worth it. Giselle was worth it.
It was as I was in the elevator, heading down to the lobby, that my phone rang. I picked it up and saw Archie’s name flashing across the screen. Something inside tensed up, and I answered it immediately. “Archie, what’s going on?”
“Uh.” I could hardly hear him. It sounded like he was on his bike. “Yeah. About your girl? Someone took her. Right out of that hotel suite.”
My jaw ground. No one else was there with her? Didn’t make sense. “And you didn’t have your scope, or what?”
“Uh, no, I do have my scope, but I figure since someone’s out to get her, I can tail them wherever they go and find the source. Cut the head off the beast for good.” Ah, so that’s why it sounded like he was on his bike—because he was. He must’ve been following whoever took her.
The elevator was not something you could speed up, unfortunately. The floors ticked by one after the other, and I grew antsy. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Whoever it is, he didn’t shoot her at the hotel, so—”
I was alone in the elevator, which was the only reason I felt comfortable saying out loud, “He’s taking her to a secondary location, which means he wants something from her.” Whether that was information or to simply take his time in torturing her, I didn’t know. Either way, I needed to fly once I was in my car, break every single speed limit there was on my way back to Cypress.
Fuck. It was going to take entirely too long for me to get back.
“Keep me updated,” I said. “Don’t make any moves without calling me first.” I hung up after that, my nerves fucking shot.
