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“Now wait just a fucking second. What makes you think we’re going anywhere with you? How can we trust anything you say?” Warren bites back.
“If you’d like to stay, be my guest. But I’m taking Blythe and she’s staying with me until I can be sure that she’s safe. Eddie Reynolds is not going to rest until he gets what he wants, and he’s here to kill not only me but most likely her as well. My intel says he intends totake careof me and my family, and he thinks Blythe and I are together.”
“You’renottogether?” Tripp asks with a disbelieving tone.
The room falls silent.
Gage and I look at each other. After this shit storm of a morning, I know he’s gutted right now. I can see the regret on his face. Maybe even a glimmer of fear. I might be shocked, and still a little confused with the news he dumped on us all, but not about this.
Without breaking eye contact with him, I throw it out there without hesitation. “We are actually.” I wait with a lump in my throat for his reaction.
Warren turns toward me in a flash of disbelief, but Gage’s face turns from dread to pure delight.
“Hang on,” Warren interjects. “You’re not pissed at him for lying about all of this?”
“Maybe a little bit,” I admit. “But I understand where he’s coming from. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m just as scared right now as you are Warren, but he was just trying to protect us. We heard him out and now we’re going to stand by him until this is all over.” The last part is more of a strong statement than it is an explanation for Warren.
If you care about someone, defend them out loud. It means more than empty words or promises. It’s proof.
Warren softens his expression and takes a minute to think. I know he’s not furious with Gage, not really. This is just his way of hiding his fear. Fear that his best friends, his sister, and even himself are in actual danger.
His shoulders fall and he nods. I smile softly at him and loop my arm in his to remind him that we’re all in this together.
“Well, I’m not leaving my sister,” he says.
“This is some fucked up shit, but I’m in. I’m a better shot than any of you anyway,” Tripp laughs.
The thought ofanyoneshooting at the moment sends prickles down the back of my neck.
Heston walks past us and pulls his shotgun off the rack on the wall. “Kinda seems like we don’t have a whole lot of time to waste chit-chatting. If y’all are done crying and bitching and moaning, let’s get this shit taken care of. Where we going?”
My jaw drops. We all stare at him in disbelief. That’s the most I’ve ever heard him talk by a long shot. His tone of determination was intercepted loud and clear though as we all jump into action.
There’s so much on my mind at the moment, it’s unbelievably overwhelming. But I’m changing into jeans and throwing my hair into a messy bun anyway. There’s a switch that I flipped inside my brain years ago that prevented me from feeling too much. Instead of crying myself to sleep over all of the things in my life that were going wrong, I decided to take charge and do something about it. I need to channel that again right now.
I sink the heels of my feet into a pair of shoes and pull the strings tighter on the neck of my light lavender hoodie. Something about it makes me feel more secure. Like when I have it on, it creates an illusion of protection and the people around me can’t see the way that I’m feeling on the inside no matter how tumultuous it feels.
“Jesus. If a spy movie and old Western had a lovechild, it would look like this,” I say as I make my way down the steps from the loft. They’re all huddled around the kitchen island looking at something on a computer screen. At first, I can barely make him out through the sea of denim jackets and cowboy hats, but Gage stands slightly taller and darker than the rest.
Everyone else is looking down at whatever is on the computer while he looks right at me. I walk up to him and slide my hand into one of the back pockets of his jeans.
Tripp squints and points toward the laptop. “So, this is your property line?”
“No, that’s the county line. I own everything up to this line here,” Gage scrolls down several times and points at the very bottom of the screen.
“What’s the black area?” Tripp asks another question. I’m so thankful he’s here. He never takes anything too seriously. If I was stuck going through this with just Gage, Heston, and Warren tonight, there’d be an hour of silent brooding and glaring followed by a ceremonious fistfight.
Gage’s face twists like he doesn’t want to answer the question, but we make eye contact again and I think it jolts him back to his new reality of transparency. He leans toward the screen and points. “This part is a warehouse. And this is a house…“ He pauses to think for a moment and looks at me again and clears his throat. “It’s my house. That’s where we’re going.”
“There’s no road,” Heston says as he looks confused at the map.
“There is. It’s just hidden. Not accessible from a map or public road. You know the far south field we planted Sorghum on last spring?”
They all nod.
“The ditch road that runs along that field has a gate at the end of it. It looks like there’s nothing but trees beyond it, but there’s a narrow clearing. Maybe a mile or so long. It leads up to the house.”
Warren blows out a stressed breath and suddenly closes the laptop, tucking it under his arm. He turns toward me and places his hand on the middle of my back. “You good?”
