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“Tell me, Leopold.” I kept my voice quiet while everything inside me screamed with the need to make him stop. “Do you come from brave people?”
He blanched. “What? N-no ma’am. Not at all.”
“I’m surprised you’d say that. Most people see their family in a good light.” As I spoke, I rested my hand on top of my open purse. My BB gun was in there, just inches away, and in my head I made him pay for taking my father’s eye by shooting out both of his. I could do it. At this range I knew I could do it. “What’s your last name?”
He shook his head. “You won’t like it, Miss Eden. And that means you won’t like me. I already screwed up on the flowers. I don’t wanna mess up anything else when it comes to you.”
Cobee was lying unconscious on the floor, possibly dead, and my poor father was partially blind with a ruined face lying in a hospital bed. It was amazing he believed he still had a shot with me. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t I like your last name?”
“Because it’s… bad.”
“How can a last name be bad?” I slipped my hand into my purse. “Don’t be shy. Tell me who you are. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
“Well, I guess you’re gonna find out sooner or later.” Looking at me like he expected me to attack him—smart man—he cleared his throat nervously. “It’s Driscoll, Miss Eden. I’m Leopold Driscoll. Leonard Driscoll’s son.”
The ground fell out from under my feet.
*
Luke
“You suck so hard at this.”
I turned sharply at the whispered words off to my right. Half a second later Nix pulled me off the gravel path and around the side of the building.
“Nix, you fuck, Eden’s in trouble—”
“We know, asshole,” came the hissed reply before he shoved his phone in my face. I stopped resisting his hold when the reality of what I was seeing on the screen sank in—a view of inside the greenhouse. Eden stood in what looked to be a hydroponic aisle with her hand in her purse, a man lying unmoving at her feet while facing another man who was mostly blocked by a tall hydroponic stand. I could only make out the back of a left shoulder and a partial profile, but it was enough to gauge that this fucker was around the size of Nix or Steele. A grizzly bear in human skin.
And Eden?
She had nothing but a misfiring brain.
Fuck.
“See that plastic-covered door back there behind Eden?” Nix grated in my ear. “We saw your shadow looming up on it, asshole. But even before that, you went stomping up that gravel pathway like a fucking herd of buffalo, making enough noise to wake the dead. When are you going to get it through your damn head that you’re not a field agent? Leave this shit to us.”
“Leave this shit to you?” I glared pure death at him. “You’re the assholes who are leaving Eden in there with herfucking stalker. Why the hell haven’t you moved in already?”
Nix looked at me like I was nuts. “He’s got a goddamn weapon, dipshit. Or haven’t you noticed that body on the ground? We can’t see what he’s packing, so we can’t move in until we know we can secure our protectee without getting her killed with whatever he’s got.”
“Echo should just drop him now.” Seriously, fuck, did I have to think of everything?
Again Nix stared at me like I was deranged. “Drop him? This isn’t a goddamn warzone, you idiot. We’re not 007 with a license to kill, and we’re not law enforcement. We’ve already called the cops, so they should be here any minute, but in the meantime we can’t just use lethal force without a whole lot of legal trouble raining down on our asses. You’d know this if you were thinking straight.”
“So you’re just going to let that motherfucker kill her?”
“Cap’s already authorized us to take him out if he makes a move toward her. That’s something you would know if you’d bothered to coordinate with us before riding in here like a knight in seriously fucking noisy armor.”
Goddamn it. “Don’t lecture me about procedure when my woman’s three feet away from the fucker who had no problem with trying to beat Tru Steadfast to death with his bare hands.”
Nix offered the faintest eye-roll, the bastard. “Look, Luke, right now the perp doesn’t seem to have any interest in hurting her, okay? Just be patient and trust that your girl’s got this. See for yourself, she’s fine, she’s not even scared. She’s perfectly calm.”
“Calm is the one thing she’s not,” I began, then stopped when I heard Eden’s voice whisper through the phone I still held in my hand.
“You can’t be Leonard Driscoll’s son. I mean, the odds of it… youcan’tbe Leonard Driscoll’s son.”
*
