AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No. I… No.”
He huffed. “Why would they send us out here together when neither of us know what the hell we’re doing?”
He didn’t know either? That didn’t make any sense. “I don’t know. Should I go back and—”
“Nah. We’ll figure it out.” He frowned as he looked at the collection of supplies in the back of his ATV. “So what happened to get you sent here?”
Sent? That was a strange word choice, but I wasn’t going to point that out. “I made some stupid decisions.” No one besides Rogue needed to know the details. It wasn’t like I was lying. Not following my instincts about Trey had been incredibly stupid.
“Yeah, me too, or at least my father thought they were stupid. He thinks I left too many bodies behind. So here I am, hiding out.”
Bodies? Hiding out? Like from the police? The world swam in front of me. I needed to get out of here and warn Rogue about this guy.
“What’s the matter?” TJ asked. “Too much sun or something? I know I’m not used to spending so much fucking time outside, and Boston is never this hot. People like us don’t usually see much sunlight, right?” He chuckled, and I just smiled. I wasn’t sure who “people like us” were, but I doubted I actually fit that category.
“Yeah. The sun’s a bit much.”
He huffed again. “Too right. I’d tell Grant to go fuck himself, but I can’t just sit around all day. Never could.”
I tried desperately to think of an excuse to head back to the barn. Surely there was something we’d forgotten, or maybe I should pretend to have heatstroke or some other ailment.
No. If I were feeling bad, I wouldn’t be able to drive myself back, would I? Or maybe I would if I were a tough ranch hand, but I wasn’t, and this guy knew it.
“Let’s see what we can do with this,” TJ said, lifting the fence post. “How hard could it be?”
I looked at the barbed wire wrapped around it and suppressed a shudder. This was way out of my league.
A few moments later, TJ seemed to have figured out what we needed to do. All I’d done was stand there staring at him. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to care, which was good. If he wanted to add me to his body count, there’d be no one to stop him. We were out on the far edge of the ranch with no one else nearby.
Did Rogue’s brothers know about this guy? Did Rogue? I was sure Rogue was involved in something unsavory, but he wasn’t a killer, was he?
“Hand me the wire cutters.” TJ’s tone was neutral, but the words still made me jump.
I glanced down into the toolbox and saw them immediately, but what if… “Sure. Let me find them.”
I lifted them while I moved tools around with my other hand, praying TJ wouldn’t turn around.
I pocketed the cutters as I raised up. “I don’t see them.”
“What? We can’t do a fucking thing without wire cutters.”
I made a disgusted noise. “That’s true. I’ll take an ATV back and get some.”
“Fine. I’ll get these posts pulled up.” I thought he’d protest being left to work on his own, but he seemed content. Maybe he’d realized I wasn’t going to be much help.
“Yeah… um… great.” He turned back to the fence, and I jumped onto my ATV and took off.
6
GRANT
Rhys and I were talking through plans for the day as we cleaned the tack and reorganized it.
“TJ isn’t hanging around here today?” TJ’s father had sent him to the ranch after a hostile encounter with a cousin who’d disagreed with how TJ conducted his work as the family assassin. Since arriving at the ranch, he seemed to spend as much time as he could pushing Rhys’s buttons, and interestingly, while he teased Rogue, he never showed the same amount of interest and had no problem telling them apart.
Rhys scowled. “I told him I wasn’t giving a performance, and he needed to get the hell out of here. Madison sent him to work on the fence.”
I wasn’t surprised TJ was willing to do real work. He wasn’t the type of man who could be idle for long, but I didn’t like him wandering around on his own. That wasn’t what his father was paying for. The last thing I was going to do was assume the men who were sent to us were untraceable. Sure, we were remote and not what most people would look for when searching for a safehouse, but anyone, no matter how good they were, could be followed or traced. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need Madison and the rest of the crew here to have a special skill set that had nothing to do with ranching.
