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I couldn’t keep that up any longer. The guilt at avoiding him had me twisted so fucking tight I could barely sleep at night. Not that the guilt from my lying was any better. I was a fucking mess, and if I didn’t figure out how to make shit right soon, it was all going to blow up in my face.
Lincoln had stopped giving me shit about telling the truth. He’d said his peace, given his advice. Now he was stepping back and giving me the space and time to make the right choice.
If only I could find the balls to actually fucking do it.
Scrolling through my phone, I pulled up Dalton’s name and hit go. He answered on the second ring. “Hey brother, how’s tricks?”
“Still tricky,” I answered with a chuckle. “How’s everything going back there.”
“Same shit, different day. You know how it is. Got stuck on another assignment with Xander and Sage.”
“Ah, shit.”
Sage was Xander’s, wife, and she had a serious knack for pushing her man’s buttons. Those two loved to fight just so they could go home—or sometimes close themselves in the fucking copy room at the office—and work their shit out in ways none of us wanted to hear.
She handled the filing and most of the admin work at Alpha Omega, but the woman could be a bit of an adrenaline junky, so when she needed a fix, Lincoln would occasionally put her on a job that needed the help of a woman. Being stuck in a van while those two fought over the wire was fun for absolutely no one but them. Each job they teamed up on usually turned into a complete shit show, with Sage going off course every damn time and Xander losing his mind like he hadn’t see it coming. The woman had a wild streak a mile long, so how he managed to be surprised every time she went off script was beyond all of us.
“How the hell did that happen?”
“She brought in a cake for West’s birthday, and Linc made the announcement right in the middle of us digging in. I had a mouthful of frosting and couldn’t get the words “not it” out in time.”
I didn’t bother holding back my laughter. “Fuck. Betrayed by your love of sweets. That sucks, man. Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah,” he grunted unhappily. “I’m thinkin’ of cutting that shit from my diet altogether. Can’t risk being caught off guard again.”
I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t exaggerating. Every one of us hated working jobs with the husband-wife duo that much.
“Don’t blame you on that.”
“Yeah, well . . .” he trailed off for a beat. “So how’re things where you are? You still on the west coast?”
“Yeah. Still here.” When Linc and I agreed to keep the knowledge of Sawyer under wraps for the time being, I’d also figured it would be best not to give any specifics of where I was. If Dalton knew I’d been in one place this whole time, he’d start asking questions I didn’t feel comfortable answering, at least not until I could be certain Sawyer’s life wouldn’t be tossed upside down when more people who knew the truth discovered her location.
“You find anything yet?”
It was the question I knew was coming, but that didn’t mean I didn’t hate it all the same. “Working on it.” Then, for some reason, most likely immense shame, the words, “I think, I’m closing in,” came spilling out of my mouth. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave him with nothing. I was a prick. A prick for keeping secrets, and a prick for giving him hope instead of the truth.
He let out a soft, barely-there curse. “That’s really good to hear, man. I was starting to worry all this was for nothing. Can’t tell you how glad I am you think you’re on to something. It’ll really help Charlotte, too.”
Resting my elbows on my knees, I squeezed my eyes closed and pinched the bridge of my nose as my temples began to throb. “Yeah, well, I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”
Dalton let out a sigh through the line. “Thanks, man. Appreciate you saying that.”
“So, anything new with Knightly? Xander and Hunt still keeping tabs on him through his phone and computer?”
There wasn’t a device anywhere that Xander Caine wasn’t able to hack into, and we’d stopped asking a long time ago whether or not what he was doing was legal. Hell, we didn’t give a shit if it was legal or not. We’d kept a lot of people safe because of the intel Xander was able to give us, and it wasn’t like we didn’t all do questionable things to arrive at the same outcome. None of us were ones to judge.
“They’re still keeping a close eye, but there’s nothing new there. Not sure if he’s just stopped looking for his wife or if he’s being more careful after how bad his guy fucked up, targeting Charlotte. But either way, he hasn’t been giving us shit lately.”
That unsettling, twisting pain in my gut wasn’t going anywhere until Graham Knightly was taken off the board for good. I didn’t believe for one second that he’d given up on Sawyer, and I knew there was no way she and Renee would ever be completely safe until he was out of the picture in a permanent way.
“All right, well, keep me posted if you hear anything different.”
“You got it. Talk soon.”
“Yeah, brother. Talk soon.”
We ended the call, and I tossed the phone on the coffee table. Picking up my glass, I tossed back the rest of the whiskey before standing and going to pour myself another.
