I took the phone from my ear, disconnected the call and blocked the caller.
I did all of this remembering after what went down with Axl how to breathe.
And I was doing that rapidly.
Staring at my phone.
“Okay, okay, okay … ” I whispered, deep in the trenches of flashback city.
Not my own flashback.
One that was about what had started all of this. Months ago. When Lottie got that creepy guy sending her even creepier letters which was why Smithie arranged a bodyguard.
That bodyguard was Mo.
Not long after, Lottie was living with Mo and fixing all her girls up with Mo’s boys.
And now I had a call from a number I didn’t know, someone who probably saw me dance, someone who’d found out my name, my number and was calling me telling me he was going to tie me down and whip me.
I should tell Mo, Mag, Boone … Axl.
I should call them and tell them what just happened.
But I’d blown it.
And it was just a creepy phone call.
Nothing to get excited about, right?
Though, they’d never shared in full, but when they found out who was sending Lottie sinister threatening letters and put him out of commission, the vibe with Smithie was super off for a while.
It wasn’t just a crackpot.
It was worse.
And then there was the thing with Evie and her brother, the result of which got all of us (save Lottie) kidnapped.
Which carried on to Ryn having her thing, and a guy was shot dead on her back deck and a friend of hers was murdered.
So, I mean, it seemed like if shit could happen, it would.
And he knew my name.
My number.
Probably, if he was talking about my ass, where I worked.
And he could follow me from there to where I lived.
I shouldn’t take any chances.
I reengaged my phone.
Went to Contacts.
And scrolled.
I hit the button to make the call and put the phone to my ear.
“Hey, beautiful,” he answered.
“Brett, um …I think I need you,” I replied.
CHAPTER THREE
Don’t Give Up
AXL
He knew something was up the minute he walked into the offices the next morning after he laid into Hattie.
All his buds, Mo, Mag, Boone and Auggie, were in a huddle at Auggie’s workstation two rows up in the large theater-style main space that made up Hawk’s operations base.
Workstations ran across each row and were aimed at a variety of monitors on the front wall that someone watched 24/7.
And Auggie’s station was the one next to Axl’s.
Elvira, their operations manager, had an office on the first floor left, and there was a big conference room across the space opposite. A smaller conference room in the midsection left, with Hawk’s office at the top. Walls to all of that space were windows.
To the right, the side space on the upper levels was closed from view, secured with keypads and retinal scanners and held their gear, meaning tech stuff like listening, comms and tracking devices (as well as other), protective equipment like Kevlar vests and body armor, and some weapons and munitions.
Axl looked left, saw Elvira’s office empty, looked top left, saw Hawk’s office dark, and this didn’t make him happy because he really wanted to avoid the huddle and he had nowhere else to go.
He wanted to avoid it because first, he’d thrown down with Hattie the day before, and she was no longer tight with her girls, but he’d been such a dick, and that was something she might share.
And his brothers were not big on guys treating women like dicks generally (and the same with him, but when Hattie ran away from him after that dance, compounding it with dissing Lottie on her party—he was far from proud, but it couldn’t be undone—he’d lost it).
Definitely the men were not okay with someone being a dick to a woman in their crew.
Or second, he wanted to avoid them because this could be about the dirty cop situation they were investigating that Brett “Cisco” Rappaport dragged them into when he’d kidnapped the women, a situation that couldn’t be ignored, because … dirty cops.
Enough said.
And since there was absolutely zero movement on that, just like all the men, Axl was frustrated as fuck about how that was not going down.
And he wasn’t in the mood to talk about either, but his workstation was next to Auggie’s.
Fuck, Mag was standing right in front of it.
Axl was less in the mood when his friends caught his eye and he didn’t like the change that came over their faces.
Mo and Mag, concerned and alert.
Boone, annoyed.
Auggie, prepared.
Considering whatever it was, it was better to get it over with, but regardless, they all worked in one room, and it was a big room, but they were at his station, so there was no way to avoid it, he made his way to them.
“What’s up?” he asked when he got close.