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It was only as he let me go, placed a kiss on my forehead, and watched us leave that I realized something was wrong.
“He’s not following us,” I said carefully, looking in my mirror.
“No,” Dad said. “I expect not.”
“What do you think he’s going to do?”
Dad stayed silent until we got to the house, and when my mom saw me, she immediately started forward to hug me. “I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” Dad mumbled. “And, if there’s anything left when Hoax gets done with him, it’ll be a miracle.”
Mom ordered me to take a seat on the couch, and Dad followed me, making sure that I did as I was told.
“You two hang out here, and I’ll get dinner. I don’t have any chicken, but I made lasagna.”
My stomach growled at the mention of her lasagna. “That’s good enough.”
She winked and walked to the kitchen.
My father pulled me down and then threw his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in tight.
“Why were James, Downy, and Jack there?” I whispered into his chest.
“Area SWAT meeting,” he murmured. “Bear Bottom hosted this month.”
That made sense. Now.
Then? Not so much.
“I’m going to offer him a job,” my father said, startling me.
His chest rumbled underneath my cheek, and I shifted on the couch to look up at him in confusion.
“What?” I asked.
“When he’s done doing the Delta thing and realizes what he has at home—and he will—I’m going to see if he wants to slowly start taking over the business.”
I blinked in surprise. “You’re going to do what?”
He chuckled. “I’m getting old, girl. I’m not the spring chicken that I was when I started this place. And I have grandbabies on the way. As much as I’d like to admit that I’m still capable of doing all the things I once did, I’m not. It’s time for the next generation to start taking over.”
I shook my head.
This program my father and his buddies had created was amazing.
They helped abused women—and even a few men—establish new lives. They gave them the tools and the means to disappear, reappearing in a new place with a new ‘face’ to live a different life as someone else—free from the abusive situations they’d escaped from.
My father had built Free from the ground up. To hear him acknowledging that he was ready to step down struck a chord inside of me.
It meant that he believed in Hoax, and he liked him. That he trusted him with something so utterly important meant that Hoax was always going to be ‘in’ with him.
“What convinced you that you could trust him with this?” I whispered.
“I’ve been tossing the idea around for a while,” he admitted. “Janie has started taking on a lot more duties than she used to. Kayla has slowly started taking over some as well. Their husbands have offered us quite a bit of help over the last year and knowing that Hoax and Carl are looking for jobs—something that’ll keep them closer to home and their lives—was just the conviction that I needed to make the call. But, seeing him when he heard about you? That you were almost hurt? Yeah, he absolutely lost his shit. That was all for you, too.”
I licked my lips. “He’s not doing anything stupid, is he?”
Dad wrapped his arm back around my shoulder and pulled me into his chest. “Don’t worry about what he’s doing. The less you know, the better.”
He was right.
Eight hours later, when I was called in to give my statement as well as bail Hoax out of jail for the assault of Kelley, I was able to say that I truly had no idea what had been going on.
Which worked out, because as Hoax walked toward me, I broke down into tears and ran toward him. Apparently, he’d used my distraught, pregnant hormones as well as my worry that he’d try it again, and this time succeed as a reason for doing the things he’d done—i.e., beating the shit out of Kelley—and I’d played directly into his hand.
Hoax and I walked out of the police station hand in hand.
The moment we arrived at my dad’s truck that I’d borrowed, I came to a stop and glared. “Swear to Christ, you owe me at least ten nugget meals or I’m going to never let you forget this.”
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulled me in until his mouth was inches from my own, and dropped a kiss onto my nose. “I’ll buy you whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want it.”
“Anything?” I teased.
His grin got bigger. “Anything.”
A burger from Whataburger, a nugget pack from McDonald’s, an Icee from the gas station, and a dozen donut holes from the Donut Palace later, we were sitting in the main hub of Free while my father offered him a job.
