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Jason had never, not one time, laid his hands on me. Clearly, he’d fallen so far from who he’d once been, I didn’t dare underestimate what he would do. I turned and gave him my iciest glare. “Are you done?”
Jason snorted, and liquid from his nose landed on his bristly goatee. “Fuck, what is this? You grew a pair?” He looked me up and down again, his eyes lingering on me in a way that made me want to scrub off my own skin. “I’ll be back on Sunday. Should be fun.”
When he stood, a mask folded over his whole body like a ghost costume with two holes for eyes. “Calla! Baby!”
Calla looked up from the sandhill she’d been building, and with a shriek of joy, tore across the playground to Jason’s waiting arms.
I shook with fury. Fear nibbled at my resolve, and I felt that slow build before the nightmares. As I watched Jason scoop up our daughter, memories flooded me in a dizzying whirl. Most people had a fight or flight, didn’t they? So why couldn’t I move? Why had my mind gone blank?
Emotions drained out of me like the end of an hourglass.
Twenty Two
Lachlan
The screen from Remington’s back door slammed shut behind me, and I maneuvered into the doorway. I stepped over a pair of roller skates with my laptop and a takeout container balanced in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. It was eerily quiet in their house, which I usually expected to be overflowing with little dude sounds and a healthy amount of yelling from Michaela.
But it was nine at night, and after getting in the night before, Remington and Michaela had unpacked and nursed their proverbial wounds after their disastrous vacation. Michaela still had debilitating nausea, and the boys hadn’t fared much better.
“In here,” Remington called quietly from his kitchen. I arched my back, silently dodging an overflowing coat rack in their mudroom before shuffling into their modest-sized kitchen. They’d updated it pretty well, but it showed all the wear and tear of three boys under the age of seven. The white cabinets had grimy marks along the bottom, one of the Venetian tiles had cracked under their farm-style table, and several square inches were covered in “artistic flair” from wandering crayons and markers.
Remington sat at their marble island, his shoulders hunched, and a pair of glasses perched on his nose. The blue glare of his laptop suffused the darkened kitchen with an eerie glow, and as he looked up, he took on the appearance of a specter. The ghost of worn-out dads.
I held the six-pack a little higher.
Remington sighed gratefully. “Thank you, God. Give me that. Michaela made us give up alcohol for Lent.”
I pulled a face, sliding the beers across the counter toward him. “I didn’t know she was Catholic.”
“She’s not,” he said, pulling one out and cracking it open. He took a deep swig and sighed deeply. “She’s just trying to lose a few pounds and found a logical excuse to make me suffer with her.”
I snorted. “I mean, you knocked her up three times in six years. I hope you told her that’s unnecessary.”
Remington drank deeply again, burped, and then threw back his head in satisfaction. “God that’s good. Obviously, I told her that. She’s fucking perfection. You know how women are.”
No,I thought, and I mashed my teeth together.No, I don’t. I have no idea what I’m doing with Laurel. All I know is I miss her like hell and giving her space is giving me an ulcer.
“What food is that?” Remington asked warily, looking over his glasses at me. He was younger than I was, and admittedly, had run away with all the model genes in the family, but he looked like a stressed-out father if I’d ever seen one.
“Fries,” I said. “You like greasy shit when you’re working.”
“Yes,” he groaned happily, and threw open the carton before shoving five fries in his mouth. Moaning happily around them, he cracked his neck. Still chewing, he said, “Okay, I got the info from Brady last night. I think I’ve got this figured out, but we need him to really lose his shit and actually try to steal it.”
I came to stand next to him, leaning over to peer at his screen. None of it made any sense to me, but I recognized the file Brady had sent me. Remington called it “baiting.” Apparently, once Jason decided to steal the report, it would unleash holy hell on his system and not only shut down whatever he had going on, but it would create some kind of digital blueprint that Remington would receive. It would prove that Jason had been the one who had stolen the information he claimed to have, encrypted or not. And, depending on how much napalm we wanted to use, it could reach its fingers into things like his credit score, his bank account, his emails…
“I’m sure I can find a way to piss him off sufficiently,” I murmured. “Walk me through the process again.”
“You sure you want to do this? Once we do it, there’s no going back. I’ll need to shut him the fuck down so he doesn’t have the ability to retaliate.”
I hadn’t heard from Laurel other than the text she’d sent about my car. And her astute suspicions about Azura. Brady’s words echoed through my mind.Consent is for sex. In this case, he might be right. I grabbed a fry and popped it into my mouth. “Do it. Show me.”
Remington chuckled darkly. “Fuck, yeah. Karma here we come.”
* * *
A crack of thunder startled me out of a deep sleep. My heart pounded loudly in my chest, filling the silence of my bedroom, just before rain cascaded against the windows. Another loud peal of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning, split the night. Letting out a long breath, I flopped back onto my pillows and ran my hands through my hair. I’d been worked to the bone again, and I’d let that ER walk all over me. Better to be overworked than overthinking everything, though.
It was Friday, and I finally had a few days off to round out the week. And I was dreading it. I had already spent two hours in the gym before going to bed, and I’d still had too much time to think. I hadn’t heard from Laurel in nearly a week, and I was about to go kidnap her again. She didn’t have strep, but she was hurt, and if I had to bring her back to my bed to do it, well… so be it.
