“Dane Locklear is my ex-partner—boyfriend, whatever.”
“We were just supposed to come here and rough you up a bit. Nothing serious. He didn’t say shit about dogs and you being a fucking beast. We fucked up, okay!”
The sounds of the sirens became too much to compete with. A few moments later they were surrounded by sheriff’s cruisers. Jesse called the dogs to him and they finally settled between him and Lily-Grace as one of the officers climbed out of his car. Even though it had been years, Lily-Grace immediately recognized Ned’s older brother Mike.
He calmly took stock of the situation. “We have some unexpected guests?”
“Looks that way,” Jesse said.
“Miss Pleasant, if you could, put the gun down.”
“Yeah, sure.” Lilah slowly lowered the gun and set it on the ground to her left.
“How did you guys get here so fast?” Jesse asked.
“Park and Miller were driving by. Saw a car parked out on the road over there just as the call came in. Lots of Giants stickers, which we don’t get much around these parts. Thought we’d check it out,” he said.
There was a flurry of activity; still, by the time the geniuses were unmasked and handcuffed and the property searched as a precaution, Lily-Grace still had a hard time processing how Dane could do this. Lilah graciously gave her some shorts and a blanket when they gathered in Miss Leona’s kitchen to give Mike a thorough rundown of what had happened. Miss Leona had hot tea handed out before they could even sit down. Mike had questions for everyone, Corie, Zach, and Evie included. Sam and Amanda were spending the night up at the ranch. They were in for one hell of a story in the morning.
Lilah was explaining what she saw when she stepped out her front door, when one of the deputies came in to join them.
“What you got, Coop?”
“They’re spilling everything,” she said. “This Dane Locklear hired one of their cousins, who passed the job on to them. Luckily they didn’t do much in the way of recon. They didn’t even know there were three houses out here.”
“More like lucky they are bush-league amateurs.”
Lily-Grace was going to be sick. Jesse’s whole family was in danger because of Dane. Because of her.
“Can you tell us more about this Dane?” Mike asked her.
“Yeah. I—” She tried to speak, but her voice was trapped in her throat. She caught the look Jesse shot over his shoulder, and next thing she knew Zach was herding everyone but Miss Leona and Jesse out.
Lily-Grace looked between the two of them, Miss Leona where she was sitting, and Jesse where he was leaning against the counter, arms folded tight across his chest. He was almost as tense as he’d been the moment he’d woken up. There was a rage simmering in him and she was wondering when it would break. She didn’t think an apology would be enough but she tried anyway. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, sweetheart,” Miss Leona said. “Just tell Michael what happened with this Dane person.”
“We were together for five years. He was possessive ... but that was a part of our dynamic.” Mike nodded for her to go on. “I was sexually harassed at work and he basically told me I should be flattered and it wasn’t a big deal. He knows the guy who harassed me.”
Mike sighed, sounding annoyed on her behalf. “Okay. Then what happened?”
“I left my job and I broke up with Dane. I came home to—regroup. I think he thought we were just fighting at first. No.” She stopped herself. She was being a little too fucking charitable. “We broke up. I told him it was over before I left. But he called me and texted me and emailed me pretty much every day.” She glanced at Jesse. He was looking at the floor.
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“Last week. I told him not to contact me anymore or I was going to go to the police if he didn’t stop. I emailed him because I wanted there to be something in writing, and I know how he can be on the phone.”
“How’s that?”
“Pushy.”
“So you felt like it had gotten to that point, that you should go to the police?”
She swallowed, forcing herself to nod. “Yeah, yes. I blocked his number and he just kept calling me from different unknown numbers. He replied to the email with a link to the article about the date auction and said he hoped Jesse and I would be happy together. That was a week ago. Same day.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since then?”
“No. No calls from weird numbers, no voicemails—beyond actual spam—and no emails.”
