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“T-M-I.” She curled her lip in disgust.
“You need to stop confusing fucking with feelings,” Callum scoffed.
“Aw, Dashiell. Did the country bumpkin hurt your feelings?” Evie prodded; a wicked smile splashed across her face.
Callum gave her a look cold enough to freeze hell over. Calling him by his middle name was one of the quickest ways to irritate him.
“Enough. Whether Nova talks or not, we have a timetable and its ticking down with every second we waste on bullshit.”
“Exactly,” Tripp agreed. “If J lets this be a free for all we might as well load the AKs up right now.”
“That can’t happen. Nova would be an even bigger target just by her association with our scumbag donor, which would make us all targets because we’d obviously protect her,” Evie said, surprising all of us by claiming her sister outright for once.
“She’s right. And we gotta take the lumpsum J’s offering. That’s a fat stack of money for those at the bottom of the chain. We have no idea what kind of deranged assholes would come crawling out of the woodwork for it,” Tripp said.
“So, what do we do?” Angel asked, looking to me for a solution.
“I’ll ask her one more time and if she won’t talk…there’s only one other option.”
“We use her best-friend,” Callum finished.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NOVA
I hoped someday when I looked back on my life, I would be able to understand why certain things had to happen. Not in a why me? sort of way, but an ah, that makes sense now! kinda way.
This was the first thing I thought when I woke alone. And then, as I lay there in that big cushy bed, I realized that for the first time since all of this started, I had some clarity on what was going on and a chance to ponder all of it without interruption.
The past few weeks had been a roller-coaster ride, but the last twenty-four hours? I needed an entire bottle of Tequila for breakfast.
Pushing the duvet off me, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stretched. I wasn’t sure where Rhys had gone off to, but I was ready to leave the room. I dressed in a simple ice-cream sundress—sans panties--and left my hair down in its usual style.
In the hall, the plush carpet was swapped for cool marble. I looked left and right, wondering how many people lived in
such a big space. The ceilings were taller than the church back in Legacy Falls. I thought I’d seen ‘mansions’ before, this place made them look like simple split-levels.
Hearing voices from below, I followed the sound of them, careful not to touch any of the walls. I refused to be that one person who left their grubby ass finger-prints behind. I kept an eye out for the guards Rhys has been spoken of the night before, but I didn’t see any.
Maybe they weren’t allowed in the house? Descending a swirled staircase, as I neared the bottom, I was able to pick-out who’s voice belonged to who. None of them were Emery’s. It almost sounded as if they were arguing. Rhys spoke over them and they all stopped.
“We have forty-eight hours to get Jericho his proto-type.”
I could only assume that was a reference to the flash-drive. I moved off to the side of the hall, or whatever I was standing in, keeping my breathing quiet.
“Did you talk to Nova about it?” Angel asked.
“Did it sound like they were talking last night?” Tripp questioned sarcastically.
My cheeks heated. I hadn’t considered how loud we were.
“That’s usually how I communicate too,” Callum joked.
Gross.
Someone called him a fuck-boy, Evie if my memory served me correctly, the Jessica Rabbit replica. I’d had little interactions with her, and when I did, I got the feeling she wasn’t a fan of mine.
When their voices lowered in volume; I crept a little closer, missing some of the conversation.
