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I tucked my phone into my pants pocket and spun from staring through the open front door of the safehouse as I chugged back my second cup of coffee since we’d arrived here an hour ago, to see Jonah crooking his finger at me.
“We got the phone up and running. We’re ready.” He frowned as he took me in, still in my suit from that fucking gala earlier, albeit without my tie, which I’d tossed on one of the beds upstairs, along with my suit jacket. “You didn’t shower and change?”
“I didn’t have time. It was all about the coffee, trying to fight off that sedative my mom shot me up with.” And the chilly night air I’d been hoping would’ve given me a much-needed jolt too.
“All right.”
“You kept the medicine cupboard stocked here too, like at home, yeah?”
He nodded. “Asher’s orders. I head up here every few months to make sure everything’s good to go in case we end up needing the place—like now.”
“Got any adrenaline in there?”
“What?”
“You know, epinephrine?”
“Even if I did, I’m not giving it to you.”
“This coffee is barely cutting it, J. I need to stay awake and be alert.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I need to be better than fine,” I shot back with a harsh edge that had him tensing, more than he already was with what was going on.
He stepped up to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. “That shit is dangerous. Any kind of stimulant beyond caffeine isn’t a good idea for you right now anyway. A lot has just happened and it has you in a volatile state. Whenever you see your mom again you get worked up as is and this time it was way worse, because she’s clearly caught up in something, she drugged you, tried to take you away from us. On top of that, we can’t go back to Hexwood House, because the Infidels know we were involved in the dollhouse takedowns, so now we’re technically on the run. The guy who usually sees us through fucked-up situations like this is missing. Our brother, Kill. And then there’s Aurora… that car explosion, you seeing her—”
“It wasn’t her!” I yelled.
My whole body shook with it, my coffee spilling over the old hardwood floor in the process.
“As you keep saying.”
There was worry in his eyes for me, but also pity.
He didn’t believe it.
He thought she was actually dead.
No. He was wrong. He didn’t have as much faith in her as I did.
“It wasn’t, J.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “All right, brother. It wasn’t her.”
“Then we’ll search for them both? Asher and her?”
“Yeah, Kill. Yeah, we’ll do that.” He dropped his hand and told me in a gentle tone, “Come on now, Caleb’s waiting.”
I closed the front door and followed him through the small entryway into the kitchen, where he and Caleb had set up a bunch of monitors, a laptop, devices, and had Asher’s phone hooked up to it all in some complicated jerry-rigged way that Jonah, with this technical aptitude and skills, had managed to pull off.
The new guy was still in his tactical gear from earlier, but he’d lost the balaclava and the jacket, standing just in a snug white tee, his arms literally covered with tattoos. Snake tattoos, a lot like Asher’s actually. Different heads, different tails, and not just black like his, but some gold, some red too. They swirled around his arms with somewhat of a realistic 3D effect. His blond Ivy League haircut was all in disarray from wearing the balaclava, and hauling us up here like a bat out of hell in one of his non-descript black vans.
His eyes were sharp and alert though, in spite of it all.
He had that in common with Ash, being able to be pushed to the limits and still persevere and fight forward.
Fuck, I hoped Ash was leaning into that strength of his right now.
