Page 42 of Cash

Christ, this kid was killing me.

I put the call on mute, turned to Jonas, and ordered, “Call Garrett and Shep. I want everything they can find on Stella. And see if they can figure out who Cara is.”

“This could be a trap, brother,” Smith said from the backseat.

He was right. I could be heading straight into an ambush, towing my brothers right along with me.

The King. The Dove. The Snake.

Me, Nebraska, Zane.

The three people Lore would trust.

Cash. Nebraska. Zane.

I didn’t need to get ahead of myself. If our numbers were programmed into a phone, my name would come up first and a scared little girl would start at the top and work her way down if I hadn’t answered.

But there was no denying I was happy Lore had included my number.

“It’s not. Something has happened to Stella.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“We’ll go in the back through the elementary school,” Jonas said, looking at the map on his phone. “The turn in will be on your left in half a mile.”

“Smith and I will come in through the front,” Easton added from the back seat. “Let us out as soon as you turn in. The house is around the corner, less than a half a mile. By the time you cut through the field and the woods behind the house, we’ll be there.”

The thick woods on either side of the two-lane highway opened up, giving way to more farmland. Jonas and Easton’s directions registered but my mind was locked in a battle between anger and fear.

“Cash—”

“Copy,” I bit out, cutting off whatever else Jonas was going to say.

“Listen—” He tried again but I was in no mood to listen to anyone.

“Less than thirty miles,” I sneered. “I thought she was doing what she does best, gallivanting around the world causing Lore-style mayhem, and turns out she’s thirty fucking miles away. What the fuck?”

No one answered, so I continued my rant. “And a little girl? What the actual fuck?”

It was the little girl, Cara, who was the cause of my fear. The only thing that was cutting through my anger. Obviously, Lore had been taking care of her in some capacity, or she wouldn’t have instructed her to call me.

“Cash are you still there?” Cara’s trembling voice over my truck’s speakers reminded me I hadn’t responded to the end of the story she’d been telling me.

I reached for the screen and unmuted the call. “Yes, sweetheart, I was just thinking about those cupcakes you said Lolo made,” I lied. “That was nice of you to share them with your friends at school.”

“Lolo made me,” Cara reminded me.

Lore coaching a little girl on how to be nice didn’t compute.

“Yup.” Jonas warned me the entrance to the school was up ahead.

“I’m here, sweetheart. But I’m going to look around the house before I have you come out of your special room. Do you remember the code word?”

“Cash is King,” she whispered.

Christ, that sounded wrong coming from a place of innocence when I’d uttered those words countless times before kicking in a door and dispatching evil.

I pulled into the elementary school’s entrance and rolled to a stop. Easton and Smith quickly exited the truck.