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“You didn’t know who he was?” I asked for the third time. “Are you sure?”
Rook pinched the bridge of his nose. “I told you, I couldn’t tell. It was dark. He was masked. Could have been a Saint. Might not have been.”
“It could’ve been a Saint and still you threw him through a window two stories above the ground?” Grey asked, raising a brow as though that was surprising.
“Couldyouhave stood there and let someone strangle our girl?” he challenged Grey and that shut him up. He dropped his gaze, pensive as he considered the implications of his response.
I began to pace the narrow slice of carpet between her bedroom and the bathroom, thinking. Connecting. Formulating a way to move forward.
“Okay,” I said after a minute. “Okay, so we can’t ask Diesel if this was him because he’ll know something is up, and I’m not sure we want him knowing if this is somethingotherthan a trial. At least for now. He doesn’t need more reasons to want her gone.”
“We can find out ourselves if a Saint has been injured,” Rook suggested, and I’d been getting to that. “He’d been fucked up pretty good after that fall. Wouldn’t be hard to pick him out.”
I nodded.
“This couldn’t have been Diesel,” Grey said, repeating what we were all thinking, and I felt like an absolute piece of shit for even considering it.
But he’d made his obvious distaste for her clear. He didn’t want her around us. He didn’t trust her.
“How far would you go to protect your family if you thought there was a threat?” I asked, meeting each of their hard stares, nodding when neither replied.
“We can’t rule him out, but I don’t think this was him. If it were a trial, he’d be ringing your neck for interrupting it,” I told Rook, and his upper lip curled.
“Not if he felt guilty for trying to alter the results with whatever’s in that syringe.”
“We need to explore the other option,” Grey said, his eyes fixed on the door and the Sparrow beyond it.
He was right. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but it needed to be handled. After tonight, there was no way she was being left alone again. Not even for a second. She needed to know why. She needed to know that we knew what she’d worked so hard to hide from us.
I followed Grey through the door and back out to the living room where Ava Jade was placing a warm mug of tea in her friend’s hands. Leave it to her to comfort her friend after she was the one who was attacked.
“She doesn’t need to be here for this,” I said before I could soften my tone, indicating Becca. “Do you have somewhere you can go?”
Sparrow curled a hand around her friend’s wrist to stop her from standing. “She stays. I don’t want her going anywhere alone right now. Whoever that fucker was could still be outside somewhere.”
Becca shuddered and remained sitting.
“Fine,” I managed, resisting the urge to press my argument.
Grey walked into the living room, sitting on the edge of the coffee table facing Ava Jade so there was only an inch of space between their knees. He leaned over, and I could imagine the gentle expression he would wear as he told her.
“We know about your stalker,” he said, his tone somehow managing to sound hard and gentle all at once. It brokered no room for argument. He was stating a fact, and giving her an opening to tell him the truth.
Her mouth pressed into a hard line. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“You should have killed the dark one while you had the chance, but now I see I’ll have to do it for you. Nobody touches what’s mine,”Grey said, repeating the text message from where it’s seared into his memory.
Her brows drew together and a flash of hot fury danced in her eyes.
“Don’t worry, my love, I’ll help you...but if you let them touch you again, I’ll have no choice but to punish you.”
“Stop,” she growled in reply, and I saw how Becca was clutching her friend now, worry in the tight lines around her eyes.
“Aves?” Becca prodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was handling it,” she all but hissed in reply, fixing her stare on Grey. “You went through my phone?”
He nodded slowly. “The,uh...the day at the diner. It was all planned. I had the laptop ready when you got out. Took a while to decrypt the files, though.”
