Page 28 of His Claim

“I never would have thought you were a coward, Murphy.”

I folded my arms over my chest and shrugged. “I just like to attack problems with the best strategy. I knew the old man wouldn’t be able to say no to Tatum.”

King slipped behind the van's steering wheel and stuck the key in the ignition. “Well, I guess I can’t argue with that.”

Gravel and Ethel were behind the wheel of one of the trucks, and Apollo was in the other one.

“Besides, we wouldn’t have had enough vehicles if Tatum and I were headed out, too.” There was the beat-up car on the side of the garage, but I wasn’t sure that would make it more than twenty miles down the road.

King nodded. “Fair point.” He closed his door and rolled down the window. “Take care, and call us if you need anything. Hopeful this shit is over soon, and we can all go back to reality.”

“I like lockdown,” Cyn called from the backseat. “I miss the days of all of us hanging out at the clubhouse. I get that back when we lockdown.”

“Babe,” Rigid muttered from the passenger seat. “You hang out with Meg and the girls all of the time.”

“Not the same,” Cyn sighed. “I think it has something to do with the danger in the air that just makes me nostalgic.”

“Agreed,” Meg called.

King fired up the van, and I stepped back. “Let me know when you get back to the clubhouse.”

King nodded and pulled out of the driveway; the van loaded down with Rigid, Meg, Cyn, Snapper, and Lennox. Snapper had been able to get his bike to the cabin, but the front wheel had been bent by the explosion and wasn’t safe for him to ride back to the clubhouse. Gravel and Ethel followed behind, and then Bear and Greta pulled out with Easy, Frost, and Creed smushed in the backseat. Bear hadn’t been kidding when he said only four people could fit in the Bronco comfortably.

“You all good?” Apollo called.

I nodded. “All good. Take care of yourself, and let me know when you get to Greer and the kids.”

“Say hi to Greer for me,” Tatum called from the porch.

Apollo raised his hand in farewell and headed out.

I watched until his taillights faded and took a deep breath.

Everything was still, and the solitude of it just being Tatum and me settled over me.

Just Tatum and me.

Chapter Twelve

Tatum

“This is not at all how I saw this day going.”

“I say that at least once a week, baby girl.” Murphy strolled over to the porch and looked up at me. “It comes with the territory.”

“The territory of working for Leo Banachi?” I asked.

“The territory I tried to keep you away from five years ago,” I explained.

I wrinkled my nose and squinted at him. “I think you just said there wasn’t a place in your life for me. If you had specified things like this, I would have understood more.”

“So if I told you the threat of being kidnapped, blown up, and killed were daily possibilities, you would have been good with me breaking up with you?”

I shook my head. “No. It would have just given me things to argue back with you about. Your blanket statement really packed a punch back then.” Would the truth have scared me, yes? Would I have run for the hills? It might have been a possibility, but I would have liked to have been given the choice to stay or go. “And look at us now. We’ve both been kidnapped, you were almost blown up, and now we’re both in hiding. Everything you thought you were protecting me from still happened.”

“Yeah, look at us now,” Murphy sighed. He glanced over his shoulder at the setting sun. “Why don’t you head on in while I check the perimeter?”

“You think they know we are here?” I asked. I thought we were staying here because Brandt didn’t know about it.

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