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SEVENTEEN
Julius
Dess and Garrisonwere the last to arrive, and I had to do a double take. I’d seen Garrison in his finery while he was getting ready, but I hadn’t been here when Dess had come out of her room, dressed in that resplendent purple gown. Striding through the room in that get-up, she looked like something out of a dream.
She nodded greetings to the rest of us and ducked into her bedroom to change. Garrison stayed behind, shrugging off his tuxedo jacket and loosening his tie. He took off the vest of his tuxedo and hung it on the back of Blaze’s chair before pulling both of his white undershirt sleeves to his elbows. Then he leaned across the counter of the kitchen island where Blaze was tilted toward the screen of the laptop. “What was so important that you pulled us out of the mission?”
Blaze frowned, his gaze still flicking back and forth as he took in the data streaming by him. “There’s a lot of activity in the criminal underbelly of the city, and throughout the night, it’s been spreading.”
Garrison shook his head. “And? Forgive me, but that’s not exactly a new pattern.”
Blaze nodded and opened his mouth, but then he closed it again. “I’m going to wait for Dess to get into the details. In the meantime, did you get any information at the fundraiser?”
“Would have gotten more if we hadn’t been pulled out,” Garrison muttered, and tipped his head toward Dess’s room. “You’ll have to go through all the phones she pilfered. I have a couple of notes for you to follow up on, but nothing that seems all that promising.”
I held myself back from clenching my jaw in frustration. I’d hoped the fundraiser would get us more of the answers we needed—and it might have if we hadn’t needed to end the mission halfway through. But the activity Blaze had picked up on had felt too ominous to risk leaving our people in the field. Their safety came before anything else.
“Here you go.” Dess strode into the room in her usual T-shirt and sweats and tossed her purse onto the counter. It landed with a heavy metallic thump.
Blaze’s eyes lit up as he unzipped the purse. He started pawing out phones onto the countertop until Garrison cleared his throat. “Are you going to get to the point now?”
“Tell them,” I said. Dess moved to stand between Talon and Garrison, a shadow of worry crossing her expression as she watched Blaze.
The hacker motioned to his laptop. “I’m seeing activity that specifically suggests that several other groups of mercenaries have arrived in this area and are trying to track down our location with the intention of attacking us. A few of them stopped by the meat factory, looking like they were attempting to pick up our trail there. Another two groups found the safe house that was compromised by that idiotic attack by the Cutthroats.”
“We still have to pay them back,” Talon muttered.
“This is what the guy we interrogated warned us about,” Dess said, rubbing her hand along her jaw.
“Exactly.” Blaze exhaled in a rush. “These are crews from all across this part of the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some from farther abroad once word gets out that there’s a huge bounty and no one has cashed in yet.”
Dess’s arms went rigid where she’d braced them against the counter. “It’s because of me,” she said.
My head jerked toward her. “What?”
She met my gaze steadily but with unmistakable horror in hers. “They’re all trying to track you down because they know I’m with you. That’s why the men at the factory attacked us too. If I wasn’t here, they wouldn’t bother you at all.”
A growl formed in my throat so swiftly I had to swallow it down before I spoke. “It isn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself.”
She tilted her chin a little defiantly. “Why not? I’m just pointing out the facts. You wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for me.”
Damn, did that woman have an effect, even when she was just standing there in plain clothes. She gave off such an assured air even now that I had no doubt she was capable of meeting this threat on her own if she had to. Just as capably as she’d moved those skilled hands over my body days ago. A flicker of heat coursed through me at the memory of her leaning back into me, taking my cock with abandon as she sucked off Talon at the same time.
But she didn’t need to be alone to face the threat, any more than she’d needed to satisfy her physical desires alone. As strong as I knew she was, I wanted to protect her. She sure as hell didn’t deserve to go through even more shit than she already had in the past two decades. I wanted to defend her from the pricks who were determined to stick her back in a cage… and I wanted to defend her from her own self-recriminations.
Blaze piped up first. “Technically, we kidnapped you, so even as far as you being in our company goes, that’s our fault.”
I could already see Dess gearing up to argue his point. I stepped in firmly. “And ignoring all that, it’s not your fault that a lunatic has decided he owns you and pulled out all the stops to get you back. You don’t belong to him, and nothing’s going to stop us from helping you drive that fact home to him, no matter what he throws at you.”
She stared back at me, but then she nodded just slightly in acknowledgment. Accepting the help while not compromising her pride. I had to admire her even more for her grit.
“We also need to give you more freedom even from us,” I admitted. “When we’re done talking here, I’ll take you through the tunnels and show you the exact route to and from the street and this building. No blindfolds, no tricky turns. I should have done that earlier. You’ve earned your spot with us, and you should be able to come and go if you need to by that secure route without having one of us escort you.”
A more eager light came into Dess’s cool gray eyes, one that warmed me to the core. “Thank you,” she said quietly, but I could tell she understood what a show of trust the gesture was. She was going to be the first person who knew the hidden route to our main apartment outside of the four of us and Steffie.
I braced myself for Garrison to bicker the point like he seemed to so often when it came to Dess, but he actually relaxed at my offer. “About time,” I thought he muttered under his breath.
A twinge of surprise shot through me. Had something happened to make him suddenly willing to support Dess without complaint? Maybe even he had finally gotten tired of all his grousing, however much it’d always been an act.
