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JACE
After dropping Allie off at her internship, I opened my glove box to make sure I still had the gun that I’d picked off the man who had killed my mother, then drove to Poison’s place. I needed to protect Allie and her mother, and if this was the way that I needed to do it, then I would. I needed Poison to hurry the fuck up and get along with incriminating or just fucking killing Nicole’s father already.
The chaos from Principal Vaughn’s death was slowly dying down, but everyone was still worried about who would be next. Poison had leaked secrets here and there throughout the week, but nothing as huge as the police chief—the one person who people should trust the most—molesting his own daughter and pimping out the cheer girls.
My phone buzzed.
João: 8th St. Five minutes. Alone.
Making a U-turn, I merged onto the highway toward 8th Street and parked at the curb until I saw Kai stuff his hands into his pockets and walk out of a run-down house with broken windows and beer bottles littered in the front yard. When he spotted me, he nodded to the house and walked back inside.
I shut the car off and stuffed the gun into my waistband, pulling my hood over my head and starting toward the house. Checking around to make sure nobody was watching, I slipped in through the side door and locked it behind me.
After following the dim light, I made my way down the stairs and into a basement of a house that I had never been in before. While the house looked run-down, the basement was fucking stacked with computers, hardware, money, and guns.
“This is your place, Kai?” I asked, studying all the up-to-date tech they had down here.
“How’d you know?” Kai asked, leaning against one of the many desks.
“Couldn’t picture João or Landon being a tech geek.”
Kai laughed and deadbolted the basement door behind us, leading me to another room, where Landon and João were looking through ammo and loaded guns.
João looked over his shoulder. “Which one you want?”
I pulled my gun out of my waistband. “I have this.”
Kai whistled and grabbed the gun from me, looking it up and down. “This is pretty nice, but”—he pointed to some part of it and tossed it down—“it’s broken. Won’t shoot cleanly or accurately. Pick something else out. There are tons of them here.”
Staring around the room, I studied each one, not knowing what the fuck I was looking at. I didn’t know shit about guns, but I needed to if I wanted to protect my family. Allie might not really be pregnant with my baby, but someday, she would be. If we didn’t get through these next few months, that someday would never come.
After glancing around a couple, I walked over to one and brushed my fingers against it. “How about this one?”
Kai looked over his shoulder and tensed. “Anything, except that one. That one was my—” He paused and looked down for a moment. “That one was Allie’s father’s from when he was in the military. You’re going to want something lighter and newer.”
“Why do you have his gun?” I asked.
“His business is his business,” João said, nodding to the other guns. “Pick a gun and get out of here. We have shit that we need to figure out and to plan for Nicole’s father. We can’t spend all day holding your fucking hand as you pick your poison.”
After sighing through my nose, I picked up a handgun that seemed light enough. “How about this one?” I asked, still not knowing what the fuck I was doing. I hated the fucking thought of killing someone, and I really hated actually picking out a gun to do it with.
Landon tossed me some ammo and nodded to another room. “Practice in there and don’t come back out until you hit the center of the target. You’ll get one, maybe two shots in real life before your father reacts. You can’t miss.”
My fingers curled around the ammo, and I headed to the other room. One to two shots at the most, and I needed to make them count. Because if I thought Redwood had been in chaos before, Redwood was about to drown in it soon. This was how I’d ensure a better life for Allie.
