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“I love that you want to visit us, but now’s not a good time.”
“It’s never a good time!” she mutters, her voice going from happy to bitter in a matter of seconds.
“It’s not like that,” I exhale. “I honestly have so much going on right now.”
“I want to see my daughters and my grandson. I don’t know why I can’t come out and see you.”
I grit my teeth, fighting for calm. “You can come out and see me, Mom, but if the last few visits are anything to go by, we just end up fighting, and I can’t handle that right now. It’s not personal, as I said, there is a lot going on.”
“When are we going to move past this?” she says, her voice clipped.
“Mom ...”
“You refuse to let me in, I’m trying so hard. I’m better now, and I’m trying, but you just up and move away from me, without even giving me a chance.”
“You know why I moved away!” I pathetically say, a poor attempt at defending myself.
“You say it’s because of him, but I know the real reason. You don’t want to forgive me. I don’t know what I have to do.”
“Please, it’s not you. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“When can I come and visit?” she pushes.
“I’ll call you when things settle down, I promise.”
She laughs, bitterly. “Why don’t I believe that?”
Keep it together, Willow.
“I promise that you can come and visit, or maybe soon I’ll come and visit you.”
She brightens just a touch. “That would be nice.”
“I have to go. I’ll call you, I promise.”
“Okay. I love you.”
I close my eyes and sigh. “You too, Mom, bye.”
I hang up and then make my way out to join everyone on the wrap-around deck. It’s time to get to business. I don’t even know where to start, but I’m hoping they do. Ace scoots over and makes room for me on the swing chair, so I sit down beside him. He’s holding Jenny’s hand, but he reaches out and takes mine, too. I’m grateful for that.
“Okay, so we’ve decided to help Jagger,” Angel begins. “What we need to do is have a secure plan in place. It’s not going to be easy. The show Mick is running is large, as you all know, and if we make one mistake, it could go very wrong, for all of us.”
“Is he still running the island?” I ask.
Angel nods. “Yes, but that isn’t really a concern at the moment. Jagger has fights in Florida this month, but the problem is finding a contact in the fighting world that’s going to get us near enough to be able to get in. Even if we make a bet, we can’t get in. It’s very strict. Available to the upper-class, hand selected few only.”
“Yeah, it’s not going to be easy. When we get a contact, we need to somehow try and get word to Jagger. If he doesn’t know what we plan on doing, it could ruin this plan entirely,” Ace adds. “It would help if he knew what was coming.”
“How are we going to get him out without someone coming after us?” I question. “Mick isn’t going to just forget Jagger and move on because we decide to take him.”
The men all look at each other and then Ace squeezes my hand and says, “We have a plan.”
I narrow my eyes. “What kind of plan?”
“It’s safer if you don’t know ...”
Heart racing, I whisper, “You’re going to kill him.”
Nobody says anything, which is answer enough.
“Don’t worry about that part of it,” Angel goes on, trying to change the subject, “you just worry about getting Jagger home.”
“Mick is only one person; if you kill him, that island is still running,” Jenny says, shaking her head. “It’ll never end.”
“That’s why we’re going to blow it up,” Bull mutters, as if he didn’t just say what he did.
“What?” I gasp, eyes wide.
“Fuck it, Bull,” Angel growls.
Bull shrugs. “She’s goin’ to find out.”
“You can’t just blow it up,” I say, shaking my head. “All those women ... They don’t deserve to die. Not to mention it’s far too guarded, you’d never get in.”
“That’s why we need Jagger, he goes back and forth. He can slowly begin planting explosives, and, before we do anything, we’ll find a way to get those women off. That’s where we will need you also. We will need locations of the halls, where they eat, things like that. We want them all in one place when we go in.”
“It’s dangerous,” Ava whispers.
“It is, but if we don’t end it, I assure you it’ll get worse,” Angel says to her.
“I agree with Angel,” I reluctantly say. “I saw that place, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. As much as I don’t like this idea, it does need to end. How are you going to get the coordinates again?”
