It’s closely tailed by confusion.
“What is it?” More heavy breathing, then another question. “To whom?”
I angle my head when a roared voice booms out of Trey’s cell phone. I don’t know who Carmichael is yelling at, but even from a distance, it’s obvious he’s pissed. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
Justine’s eyes ping between Trey and me when more shouting sounds down the line. “For fuck’s sake, Jeremy! Did the loss of your finger not teach you anything? They’ll kill you this time when they discover what you’ve done.”
She’s most likely recalling the numerous arguments her brothers have undertaken the past ten-plus years. You can’t have four testosterone metalheads in one space and not expect things to get heated. But this is different. This is one brother stepping over another to better himself. That isn’t how the Walsh brethren operates.
Justine’s hand shoots up to caress the scar in her shoulder when Carmichael’s attention shifts back to her. His voice is softer, meaning I can’t hear a thing he says, although the hope it flares through Justine’s eyes assures me it is good.
My intuition is proven right when Justine disconnects the call before suggesting we search the Kyle Cannon area.
Not even two seconds later, Trey points out the rugged terrain area on an aerial map before delivering bad news. “Except for a few housing developments, there’s nothing out there.”
“Carmichael said there’s a dirt road hidden by bushes,” Justine explains, her voice both breathless and pained.
After another brief search, Trey replies, “I’m not seeing any roads.”
I can’t help but smile when Justine gabbles under her breath, “Because most men can’t locate their nose. Give it to me.”
She drags the map to her side of the desk so she can slowly scan the page.
She’s barely perused the landscape for two seconds before she asks, “What’s this?”
When she highlights a shimmer on the map that could be mistaken for a droplet of grease if she had eaten anything I’ve placed in front of her the past four hours, my heart beats out a funky tune. It looks similar to the aerial shots Agent Machini has of Clarks, Nikolai’s hidden base a couple of miles from here.
Even with my heart raging, I try to play it cool. “A dome?” I lock my eyes with Trey’s before attempting to pull the wool over them. “What material was used to build Clarks?”
Assuming my knowledge of Clarks is part and parcel of Nikolai’s offer for me to use both his crew and property to assert my final wish, not the slightest bit of suspicion is seen in Trey’s eyes when he answers, “Anything we could get our hands on, but a majority of our supplies came from a decommissioned airstrip on the outskirts of town. Others were shipped in.”
“Decommissioned?” I double-check while pointing out an obvious airstrip in the otherwise rugged terrain. “Or still in operation?”
Before Trey can answer me, Justine jumps back into the conversation. “Maxsim had to get me to Vegas somehow. What if he didn’t use a commercial airstrip?”
Her theory is plausible, and I’m not the only one willing to back it. Trey leaps out of his chair before barking at his men to get ready for battle.
When Justine misses the ‘men’ part of his statement, Trey ends her endeavor to follow him out of the room in a way I’m reasonably sure he should protect his nuts. “No, Justine. Just because I didn’t send you away with Kristina doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have. You can’t come with us. It isn’t safe.”
Before today, I thought Justine only wore her victories on her body.
Now I realize she also wears them on her heart.
Trey straight up told her she isn’t coming, but she ignores him like she did me when I attempted to chase Brax out of the hot tub with a loaded BB gun and a can of mace. She would have preferred to see his ass shot than give in to her overbearing brothers.
When it dawns on Trey that his aggressive stance isn’t getting him anywhere anytime soon, he shifts on his feet to face me. “Talk some sense into her,please.”
“J—”
It’s the fight of my life not to smile when Justine interrupts me before I get a single word out. “No.”
Although I’m loving the rejuvenation of her backbone, part of me does wonder if she’s walking into a tornado, like sirens aren’t wailing in the distance. “Mom has been through enough—”
She cuts me off for the second and final time. “I feel for her, truly I do, but her pain isn’t even half of what I’m being pelted with right now.”
I’ve felt the same way for years. No one understands how much it hurts until you’ve experienced loss firsthand. It has you willing to face a disaster head-on because you know even if it does kill you, death may be the only way to ease the pain.
I realize that Agent Machini is still listening in when she suggests I lay things out in black and white for Justine. “Some women need statistics. Others need support. Justine needs both.”
