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Gone was the sarcasm, but I could hear his anger. He was keeping it banked. And cameras? Jesus.
I frowned. “What cameras?”
“At this point, we have no idea. Cover your head, too.”
But there were no reporters, if that’s what he’d been referring to, as we left the station and went to the waiting Escalade. Yet I saw Tanner still looking around. He was worried about long-zoom kind of cameras. Like PI cameras or… I had no clue.
I didn’t do this world.
I was in the civilian world.
I had no clue what it took to be a criminal, but Tanner did. He ran a good portion of the business for Kai in the United States. That much I did know.
We settled into the back of the vehicle, which had a driver and a guard in the front seat. As we left the station parking lot, Tanner turned to look behind us, and I followed. The car trailing us was full of Tanner’s security team.
I didn’t travel with one because I lived a normal life, so there was no need—or that’s what I’d insisted.
Kai had argued with me when I left for medical school, wanting to send a team. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be normal, but he made me try it for a while. I couldn’t be normal with bodyguards trailing me, and I was good at spotting them, even when they tried to be hidden. So after a year of me ditching them, Kai finally conceded and pulled everyone.
I didn’t even have a gun.
If I’d had a guard on me, she would still be alive, though.
God.
“She’s dead because of me.”
I felt Tanner look my way, but he didn’t respond. He did say, “Sorry for taking so long to get to you. I know our family is flying nowadays, but I couldn’t get to you fast enough. The lawyers couldn’t find where you’d been taken. You didn’t go to the usual station for this jurisdiction.”
I frowned, looking at him. “Where’d they take me?”
“It was another station, but just not the one where you should’ve been. We think they were trying to hide you.”
Wait. “But not from you guys.”
His eyes were heavy, waiting for me to put two and two together.
I did. “They thought the shooter was going to come back and finish me?”
He shrugged. “At this point, we don’t know. I just feel bad that it took so long. They questioned you the whole time?”
I nodded, then shook my head. “Yeah, but they gave me a lot of breaks. So no. I don’t even care. I—” Melissa was gone. Another wave of anguish was coming, going to hit me hard. “I want to see her.”
“Melissa?”
I nodded. “I asked her to marry me two days ago.”
He pulled in a breath.
“We were going to call the families.” I looked away.
“You were going to tell her about us?” He eyed me a moment.
I nodded, my head feeling so fucking heavy. “Yeah.” That’s all I could get out.
“You’re Jonah Bennett?”
“Who’s asking?”
Bang!
I jerked. I’d never get that out of my head. Ever.
“Kai will be here in a few more hours,” Tanner offered.
“He asked my name.”
“I know.”
“He shot her. I never told him who I was.”
“What?”
I mused to myself, going over it. “He didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to kill her because she was with me. He wanted to hurt me.” Which meant… I looked at Tanner. “He either wanted to hurt me because of me or he wanted to hurt me because I’m a Bennett.”
My grief was morphing into something else. I pushed it back, along with the anger.
No, the anger remained, but I was moving it. Controlling it. Channeling it.
I wanted vengeance. I needed it. But first, I wanted to figure out why me.
“It was another station, but just not the one where you should’ve been. We think they were trying to hide you.”
What murderer would go to a police station to finish the job?
Not a normal one.
But a mafia one, yes. A hitman.
“Do you know why this happened?” I asked.
The inside of the Escalade was quiet. We were on the interstate, heading out of town.
Tanner didn’t look at me. He didn’t answer either.
“Tanner.”
His eyes were clouded over, but he could never hide, not from me. Others, yes, but I knew my brother. I’d worshipped my brothers, all of them.
Cord was the oldest. Then Kai. Tanner. Brooke followed him, and then me.
For a while, growing up, I hadn’t been living with them, and neither had Brooke. But then Cord died, our dad died, and Brooke came home from boarding school.
Kai took over and brought us all together.
Our mom was gone long before any of that. I could barely remember her.
Tanner still hadn’t answered me.
What the fuck?
I slammed my fist into the back of the driver’s seat. It was abrupt, jarring, and violent.
The driver and the guard both jerked, but Tanner barely flinched.
