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When she didn’t answer, I forged on. “Why is your brother coming home so early? Did you ask to see him?”
She shook her head immediately, and suddenly, a crack showed in her tight, flawless mask of indifference. “No. I’d never. I never wanted him to come back here,” she muttered.
“Why not? Is it dangerous? Is it Brian? I pressed, even as the sound of Lura’s stepfather drifted toward us. He was on his way back, just when Laura had let me see under her mask.
Her eyes moved to the end of the hall and the man striding toward us. The sight seemed to sober her, and any vulnerability disappeared as she pulled herself together. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of Benji. I don’t need your help or pity,” she muttered and then hit me with a look that I felt down to my toes. “I don’t need saving, Bennet, so don’t try. Just don’t get in my way.”
Just like that, she swirled around, and headed into her room, shutting the door tightly behind her, as Brian reached me.
He tucked his phone away and smirked at my pensive expression. “Coffee?”
CHAPTER5
Laura
Bennet Archer was a problem. A noisy, well-meaning, hot-as-hell problem with a hero complex. I got dressed and went downstairs to meet his team. They were all about what I’d expected from the former Marine turned bounty hunter. I’d looked him up, of course. I’d been curious as hell about the enigmatic man with gray eyes who’d tried to comfort me on the way home yesterday. Who tries to comfort a suspected violent criminal? Bennet Archer, it seemed.
His sister looked just like him, but willowy and feminine, even in leather trousers. They were both so beautiful, I couldn’t take them both in. The other men were just as intimidating as Bennet, if not more so, because they didn’t speak at all, only watched me, Brian, and scrutinized the house. I felt like a fish in a bowl, which made me simultaneously braver and more worried.
My plan wouldn’t work if too many people were watching.
I ate breakfast while Brian showed Sigma Squad Bail Bonds around the house, the exit points, the alarms, and the surveillance room. Just as they were about to leave, a car drew up, and Benji shot out of it. He ran up the front drive, over the gravel, and burrowed into my arms before Brian could get a word out.
I was twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two, and Benji was only ten. An eleven-year age gap was hefty, but despite that, I loved my brother more than anything in the world. My mother had me young, too young, and by the time she came to live with Brian, she’d already been kicked about by the world. They met at the bar across town where my mother had waitressed at night. A two-month whirlwind romance, and we moved across town from a dilapidated rental I’d been born in, to a mansion bigger than all the others in the street.
Within a month, my mother was pregnant with Benji. She died when he was five, and left me all alone with Brian and my half-brother. He was all I had left of her.
“Hey, kid. How’s it going?” I smoothed his fine hair behind his ear. His small, hot body was trembling in my arms.
“They said you went to jail, and you were never coming out again.” Benji sniffed against my chest.
I shook my head and made my tone light. “Well, that’s silly. I’m right here, ain’t I?”
Benji pulled back and nodded, placated for now. He turned his inquisitive eyes to Bennet and his team, looking like bad-ass superheroes playing at being civilians, in the driveway, watching us. “Who are they?”
“Just a company Brian is working with. Don’t worry about them,” I said, and turned him away from the group. “Let go inside and make lunch, shall we?”
“Make enough for three,” Brian warned me, making my shoulder hunch. I hated the sound of his voice and the way he ordered me around. He was flexing his power over me in front of Bennet on purpose, and it could embarrass me, but I was used to it. Brian didn’t allow staff in the house. Too many eyes to keep track of. A man with so many secrets couldn’t afford to have too many outsiders around.
I went inside with Benji as he talked excitedly about a new video game. I glanced up at the security camera blinking in the corner, taking us in. That was one reassurance. Until the trial, Bennet and his team of super strong good guys would be watching. It didn’t matter if it was just to make sure their investment didn’t run off. It was an extra layer of safety. Brian couldn’t do shit with their eyes on us.
However, it would make my plan all the harder to pull off. I reached the kitchen and pulled open the cavernous fridge. As always, the sight of food that Brian had provided turned my stomach. “Sandwiches?” I suggested.
Benji nodded happily and jumped up on a stool at the counter. I slowly and methodically took the ingredients out of the fridge and assembled sandwiches. In my head, a timer slowly counted down.
While Brian might be hell-bent on clearing my name so he could drag me back into this house of horrors, and Bennet Archer and Sigma Squad Bail Bonds might be determined to make sure I made my court date, to be judged fairly, in a court of law, I had other plans.
Benji couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t get put away and leave him alone with Brian.
Therefore, we had to leave. My brother and I were going on the run, and I wasn’t going to let anyone, not even burly, capable Bennet Archer, stop me.
CHAPTER6
Bennet
The security feed of the Lavin place played on my phone as I ate dinner, my eyes straying to it now and again. My place was quiet, and the mountains beyond the window were dark. Thoughts of Laura Lavin filled my head and made me distracted. In the footage, I could see a black and white grainy image of the hall and kitchen, the front door and driveway. The image cut out now and again, and Brian Lavin admitted that he’d had problems with the cameras. They hadn’t been working the night that Doug Greyson was hurt, for example. Awfully convenient, that.
I ate sparingly, too distracted to even enjoy the buttery lemon chicken breast and green beans I’d pulled together. Laura’s cryptic words went around in my head. There was something in them that was a clue to her, and what made her tick, but I was missing it. All my life, my instincts had saved me if I listened to them. In the military, and in my work, my gut already niggled over things that turned out to be important. Maybe it was a higher power at work, or my subconscious registering things my brain couldn’t quite get, but whatever it was, I’d learned to listen to it.
