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“You’re part of us,” I tell her, leaning in to nuzzle at her neck again for a second. “At least no obvious moves, you know. I guess since he’s trying to advance in ‘civilized’ society,” I make heavy air quotes with my free hand. “He’s probably trying to brush the whole wedding incident under the rug. Guess it doesn’t look too good when cartel members show up to shoot up your sister’s wedding or whatever.”
Gage hums under his breath, and I can practically hear him turning all that information over in his head. That’s what he does.
“So the cartel is off our backs, then?” Ash asks. “I mean, if I lost most of my people in one attack, I’d back the fuck down from that fight.”
“I think we can probably assume they won’t be fucking with us any time soon, at least,” Gage agrees. “Both times they’ve come after River, they’ve lost men. It’s probably not worth it to them anymore.”
“You’re probably right. But we should keep our guard up anyway,” Priest says. “In the unlikely event they do come after us again, I don’t want them to catch us by surprise again.”
He tightens his fingers into a fist, and I know he’s thinking about the dude we chased down who shot at River outside the house and then died before he could give us anything.
“Agreed.” Gage nods, his dark hair glinting. “Julian is the bigger priority, but we need to stay alert toanypossible threats.”
I grin at him, giving him my monster’s smile. “Julian’s going to get his, and if the cartel decides to start more shit, they can get in line to get theirs too.”
Before Gage can respond to that, there’s a knock at the front door. The room goes silent immediately, all of us going still as we tilt our heads like predators listening for a sound on the wind. It’s not too late for visitors yet, I guess, so it could be nothing. But we’re all on edge anyway, considering all that’s happened lately. We don’t get a lot of unexpected guests around here.
“I’ll get it,” Ash says, casting his gaze around at the rest of us. His tone is light, but his expression is serious.
He strides out of the room, and none of us move as we listen to the muffled sounds of him greeting someone at the door. He’s only gone for a minute or two before he comes back into the kitchen with a now familiar face trailing behind him.
Mitch Carter, the FBI agent.
Ash gives us all a look that we don’t need words to interpret. Time to switch into “covering our asses mode” for whatever this fucker wants to ask us about.
River gets down off the counter, and I give her some space, even though I don’t want to. Fuck this guy for coming in and thinking he can interrupt what we had going on.
We’ve met this FBI guy a couple times, and I don’t like him. He’s broad-shouldered like I am, but not as big, and he’s older than me by at least a decade, with a few lines around his eyes. His sandy brown hair is cut short and styled carefully, as if he wants everything from his clothes to his haircut to let people know he means business.
“I don’t mean to barge in so late,” Carter says, glancing around at all of us.
Gage just arches an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, making it pretty clear that if he hadn’t meant to barge in on us, he wouldn’t have done it.
“It’s not a problem,” Ash chimes in, flashing his charming smile. “What can we help you with, Agent Carter?”
“I’m following up on a shooting that happened at a church yesterday,” the older man says. He describes a few details about the incident, including when and where it happened, then lifts an eyebrow slightly. “You were there when it happened, right?”
Gage nods. “We were.”
He leaves it at that, and he and Carter stare at each other for a long moment, both waiting for the other one to say something more than that. But Gage doesn’t budge, so Carter’s the one who has to speak up if he wants more information.
“What was your business there?”
“A wedding,” Gage replies. “Same as everyone else who was there.”
“I see. And do you know anything about the attack that happened?” Carter looks away from Gage to Ash.
“I know it was fucked up,” Ash says. “I mean, who attacks a wedding, right?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out—who was behind the attack. Any information you can give me will help me on that path.”
Ash shrugs a shoulder. “No idea. One minute, we’re sitting there, waiting for the vows to start, and the next minute, there are gunshots and men in black running around. Some of them were masked, so it was hard to see their faces, and we weren’t really trying to see if we knew any of them, you know? Too busy trying not to get shot in the head.”
Carter looks at him for a long second and then glances over at Priest. “And you don’t have any idea why someone would’ve wanted to attack this wedding?”
Priest gives Carter his best blank stare. “Why does anyone do anything?” he asks. “I could make some guesses, but that’s not really helpful, is it?”
It’s clear that Carter doesn’t really believe us, and he keeps looking around at all of us gathered in the kitchen like he thinks one of us will break and spill our guts for him or something. Everyone’s doing their best neutral face, and it seems like he understands he’s not going to get much out of us.
