AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s hurting but she pulled through.
Figured someone over there would want to know. And after what you did for me, I owe you that.
Thank you.
“Who’s this?” I asked, already turning to see if Einstein would be behind me.
“It’s from the same number Lily called from,” Maverick answered, jerking his chin at the screen as he did. “I was watching when Einstein looked into it...the number belongs to that guy who was cutting up Willow—the one you killed.”
My attention snapped from him to the tablet as if I might’ve made a mistake that night, even though I knew that guy was dead. We’d had the clean-up crew haul off his body with the others. Maverick just confirmed I’d killed him.
“His name was Sean Higgins—he was a Richmond detective,” Maverick explained. “He was also engaged to Autumn Keane.” A curse slipped from me just as Maverick added, “He has a younger brother, but I can’t imagine he would thank us that way. After what we’ve seen...a fiancée might.”
My eyebrows rose in agreement and understanding, but I still said, “Could be a trap.”
“Or it could be a way for you to get what you want while listening to Dare,” he countered. “If it were a matter of getting Einstein back? I’d be slipping out that door too. But Dare’s right...we go in there now? It’s only going to put Willow and us in more danger.”
I wavered for at least a minute before turning from the door with a conflicted, “Give me that number.”
* * *
Over the past two days, I’d had twice as many calls with the person behind a dead man’s phone—Autumn Keane. She’d given me more information than Maverick and I could’ve gained from filed blueprints and more than Einstein had gathered from footage. She’d assured me dozens of times that Willow was there, safe, and healing. She’d also promised to let Willow know we hadn’t forgotten about her.
That I hadn’t forgotten about her.
That I wasn’t abandoning her.
None of it had stopped me from wondering if she was another trap I was willingly playing into—if every piece of information was laced with purposeful deceptions—but that thank you kept me going.
“Why’d you thank us?” I’d asked her the previous morning when she called with an update on Willow. “In your texts, you said you owed us the knowledge that Willow was okay. You thanked us. For what?”
Autumn had been silent for so long that I’d wondered if she would answer at all or suddenly hang up, as she had the night before. But then she’d said, “I knew they used Sean’s phone when they got your boss’s wife to call in, so I knew that number would get back to someone there—one of you.”
She’d fallen silent again before finally confessing, “My dad always said being a lover would destroy me someday, and I thought he was right. I thought I was cursed because every one of my boyfriends ended up dead. If it wasn’t me, then a rival gang...something...” A bitter laugh bled through the phone. “But it was just my father and Sean, ensuring I’d fall into the role they wanted me in. A link between our families. A silent punching bag. So, thank you.”
It was like Maverick said...with what we’d seen working for ARCK, a fiancée might thank us. I wanted to believe her. Her voice had dripped with hate and venom and the softness of revealing a truth that she clearly felt shameful about. Not that she should.
Still, there was that warning in my head of who Autumn was. Not just a member of the KSG but an actual Keane.
On top of that, with everything I’d asked about Willow, she’d only given me healing updates. She wouldn’t say if Willow understood why we hadn’t come for her yet. She wouldn’t go into what she’d told Willow about our plans. She wouldn’t give me anything other than help in forming plans I couldn’t have full confidence in.
But if Autumn was right—if she was telling the truth—then Lachlan was done waiting for us to retaliate, which meant it was time to go.
I hesitated with my shirt halfway up my arms when I sensed a shift in the air around me, then swallowed a curse and finished pulling the material over my head just before he spoke.
“I know you’re planning something.”
Half a dozen excuses and jokes built in my throat and died when I turned and found Dare’s dark stare locked on me, letting me know there was no getting out of this. He already knew.
Fucking Maverick.
“Think I haven’t been watching you?” he asked as he leaned against the doorjamb of the room Willow and I had shared in the Holloway mansion, since we were all still holed up there.
The rockstars had left to finish their last couple of appearances early that morning, but they were letting us stay until we were done since the Borello house was gone.
“You’re too calm,” Dare went on. “You’re too okay with waiting to get Willow. If it were me? Fuck, I would’ve been gone that first night.”
A bitter scoff burst from me. “Saying I could’ve?”
