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On top of that, I had extensive training, as Lo demanded, but was nowhere near as much of a natural at it as Lo was. She should have gone with them, been their voice of reason.
I was probably the only one in the car who felt relief when we first saw the police lights flashing.
Of course I also realized that it meant The Henchmen were back at square one. If they couldn't get their hands on the men, they couldn't extract information, and they couldn't find where the rest of them were so they could be taken out.
"You guys hang back," Reign started, reaching for his handle and Mitch reached for his as well.
"You're not going alone. Lo's orders," Mitch said and Reign made a low, growling noise in his chest, clearly not used to not being listened to.
"Fine. We'll see how much this fuckhead will give us," Reign said, gesturing toward the tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed detective.
"Lloyd," Renny said, exhaling hard.
"He's hungry to prove himself," I offered.
"Yeah, but what are the chances that he wants to do that by catching the people who are picking off another organization in the area?" he shot back.
"He wants his cases solved. But these guys will likely plead out to breaking and entering and maybe some weapons charges if they're carrying. They'll probably get little more than time served. They'll be on the street again."
"Yeah, in half a fucking year," he scoffed. "We could all be dead by then."
I felt my stomach clench hard at those words, realizing for the first time that I would care about that. Death was as big a part of my life as anything else. After a while, you almost become immune to loss. It stops being so Earth-shaking. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but I had long since stopped crying my eyes out every time we lost someone.
But hearing Renny say that they could be dead in six months, that got to me. It shouldn't have. While I genuinely liked all the people I had met within the confines of The Henchmen compound, they weren't exactly friends. If I didn't cry over the loss of people at Hailstorm, how could I feel so worked up over veritable strangers.
I had a gut feeling that the answer had less to do with the MC as a whole and a lot more to do with a certain red-headed, tattoo-covered, blue-eyed biker.
Which was insane.
Truly.
I barely knew him.
I knew less about him than anyone else in The Henchmen compound. Granted, now that I had a full name to go on, I was about to know a hell of a lot more.
But somehow, it almost felt wrong and invasive to look into him now.
That wouldn't stop me, of course. My drive to know was perhaps just shy of as obsessive as his own drive to know things. It would drive me half-crazy to try to go to sleep at night without having at least some answers.
Like who were his parents?
What had they done to him to make him run away?
That little line about a rat and the sticky tape was telling. While they may not have beaten him, they had obviously done some kind of irreparable damage, they had left wounds that might never heal.
"What do you think of this Lazarus guy?" he asked suddenly as we both just stared out the window, watching Reign talk to the detectives, shooting a look over at the cop cars every once in a while like he was trying to memorize the faces of the guys they caught.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think his story pans out? He was just taking a fucking walk and just happened to see a break-in in progress?" he asked, his voice more guarded than the usual, laid-back Renny generally was.
"What? Do you think he was just trying to get inside? Gather more information?"
"Just think the timing is interesting. And I think his lack of concern for the guns and being taken prisoner for a while is..."
"Suspicious?" I supplied. "Maybe. Or maybe he was genuinely just doing a good deed and just so happens to come from a background in either military or crime that makes him immune to the threats you guys fed him. We'll know more when we get back."
"We?" he asked, and I could feel his gaze on me.
I knew I shouldn't have. Really, I did. But I turned my head to face him anyway and found his eyes lighter, his lips tipped up.
"Yes. That would be how you say more than one person, wouldn't it?"
"Nope. You want us to be a we. You just said it. No takes-backsies."
"What are we, five?"
"I think we should hold hands now," he went on, ignoring me. "If we're a we, I'm pretty sure we are supposed to be at the hand-holding stage."
