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Neither of us budge, and he looks between us again. “Why aren’t you coming closer?”
I hold up my watch.
He frowns. “We have time. The kids are busy, Dusty’s with them, and Jack’s out, gambling business ventures with the usual high rollers. Loosh has eyes on him.”
I shake my head. “The tracker.”
“Oh,” he says, still frowning. “How does Jack’s keeping tabs on you stop us from taking? We’ve already established it’s not a bug — which is a blessing for us, and a missed opportunity for the old man. He could prevent his impending doom if it were. Guess he just wanted to prove a point and make an example out of you, to scare the rest of us into line. As is his way.”
“I’m not your fucking cautionary tale. That’s just a happy side effect, for the asshole.” I nod toward Kira. “I’m not the only one he keeps tabs on.”
Kira helpfully points at her ankle, to draw Thaddy’s gaze there. “The question you want to ask is, why is he tracking us both?” she says. “And the answer is, to keep us from ever coming closer to each other than ten feet. It’s his idea of entertainment. I’m to be killed if we cross the invisible barrier and sound the alarm. It’s a deadly protocol that will also be triggered if either of us attempts to remove the devices.”
Thaddy stares at us, then pulls out his phone and holds it to his ear. “Jules. Quin’s room. Now.” He pushes his hands into his hair and rubs his head, as if his brain will respond positively to the massage.
I stare at him, too angry to speak.
He catches sight of my death glare and sits straight. “What?”
“What the fuck did you do that for? Call him back. Cancel the request.Cancel, fuck it.”
Thaddy does no such thing, raising his phone and his hands in the air, as if I’m holding him at gunpoint. “If you didn’t tell me any of this before, I’m assuming you haven’t told Jules, either. If he doesn’t have all the information, how the fuck can he solve the challenge you set for him?”
I hurry to my room and toss the bedding aside in search of my phone. “When he comes to me with potential answers, we talk it through, and if it’s no damn good, I tell him he needs to go back to the drawing board.” I flip the whole mattress of the bed and chase the softclunkmy phone makes, dropping to the floor. “Thaddy, I’m not sure you’re fully grasping the lengths I will go to, to keep Kira from harm, but I can assure you they equates to your voluntarily climbing into a dumpster full of deadly fucking peanut butter. So, can you stop inviting more people into my fucking business and—”
My door lock clicks, and my stomach twists with regret, at having given Jules a key to my room when we arrived. “Fuck.”
I whirl on him and point to where he should go. “Leave. Immediately.”
“Come next door,” Thaddy calls, before Jules can shut the door behind him. He gets off his chair and smiles at me, when I take one step after him, see my proximity to Kira, and then freeze.
Thaddy shakes his head. “It’s ironic for me to be the one saying this, butchill, Quin. We’ll figure it out.”
Wanting to pull my hair out, I return to my room, close the door, and scream enoughfucking fucksinto a pillow to dissipate my rage and calm myself.
It takes a while.
Eventually, I open my door, clear my throat, and sit calmly in my chair. I nod a casual greeting to Jules, who’ll be almost impossible to take seriously during this conversation, because the amount of color splashed over his skimpy Lycra outfit makes it look as if he fell into a fucking eighties’ fluoro version of a Justin Pollock painting. He’s gone next-level for Jack’s birthday, just to rile our old man, and I’m proud as fuck, but I literally have to blink away the color-spots in my vision if I look at him to long.
I face Thaddy and lift my chin. “I’m sure my… restorative absence allowed you time to catch Jules up on our star-crossed relationship and deadly tracking bracelet issue like you wanted. I’d just like to say, Thaddeus, that you’re making me look like a fucking pussy bitch, who can’t handle his shit, when I have literally been the puppet master of this entire take-down operation, and I don’t appreciate it. I have been working my ass off, to protect Kira from knowing exactly how many sordid details I’m juggling, and I don’t need you two coming in here and ruining everything in one fell swoop.”
I turn to Kira and suck in a deep breath, because she’s giving me her I’m-about-to-throw-a-fucking-axe-at-your-head-on-purpose look, and I can’t handle that right now.
“Kira, baby, I’m going to need you to tone down the glare, before I have a fucking breakdown.” I project the rumble across the room with such authority, everything goes silent. “We’re going to sit here, nice and quiet for a second, so I don’t lose one more iota of control, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I crack, and that’s a terrible and dangerous situation, for a lot of people we care about. I can’t have their blood on my hands, baby. I can’t be a good dad if I’m a fucking monster, so please —please— help me not to be monster.”
She opens her mouth to say something, and then folds her arm over her chest and looks out her window a moment, before turning back to me. “When this is all over, I’m going to need you to use that voice on date night,” she says with a sexy smirk, her eyes flashing at me.
“Done.” I relax into my chair. “Thank you.”
She returns her hand to her stomach, and Jules sits straighter.
Fucking hell.
I pinch my nose, squeeze my eyes shut hard, and then slowly open them as I exhale. “Okay. Now that you’re all here, and I’ve made it clear how important it is not to fuck this up, let’s put our heads together, to end this thing once and for all, before Kira gives herself away in front of Jack.”
“What I do?” She scoots forward, to the edge of her seat. “Give what away?”
Jules and Thaddy look at her. “You’re pregnant,” they say at the same time.
