Why?
Or more to the point, whynow?
“Their church is about to start,” I blurted.
The room quieted, the whole council except Rubi crammed into my kitchen, all eyes on me, even Alexei, whose expression was droll, as if he knew everything already.
Fuck that. He owed us nothing, but I didn’t have time to think it out on my own. “You think Saint was the target?”
Alexei shrugged. “He is your sharpest blade. It makes sense to eliminate him before beginning an operation you’re likely to object to. Perhaps they planned to make it an accident, a crash, but they ran me down instead. They are new Crows, but still stupid, no?”
Crowswerestupid. Years and years of them had taught me that. They were calamitous and short-sighted. But if they’d planned to come after Saint, why hadn’t Rocco warned us?
Saint’s put him on his arse every time we’ve seen him in the last two years. Maybe it suited him for Saint to be gone.But that was the life and Rocco was smarter than that.Something happened to him. I had zero evidence to corroborate the gut instinct, but I believed it all the same.
“Whatever their plans,” I said slowly, strongly, and without conscious thought, “it doesn’t matter anymore. We have to end this before they ship a truckload of kids onto a fucking trawler or put a pipe bomb in a brother’s bike. It’s all the same now. We need to act.”
I got no argument, but the sense that Saint had something to say flooded the room.
He licked his lips, fiddling with a frayed thread on his wet jeans.
I waited.
We all did, Alexei drifting from my side to his, not touching, but stopping close enough that they shared body heat.
“The truck,” Saint ground out. “We should let it come. If we don’t, we’re missing the chance to set those kids free.”
His eyes found mine.For Alexei.
* * *
Alexei
Cam’s early morning orders made sense. Rubi stayed on the wire. He was good at it. Sharp. Meticulous. And it kept him off the road while he was still waiting out his recovery from a harsh concussion. Mateo and Saint went back to the compound to round up the brothers they trusted, readying them for an assault like they’d never seen before.
Nash was paired with me to scope out Crow HQ before I laid the explosives to raze it to the ground.
We parked up in a nondescript car, Nash behind the wheel while I worked on a tablet, systematically erasing every ounce of financial security I could find without raising suspicion.
“Where did you learn all this shit?”
I spared Nash a glance. His gaze was where it should’ve been, on the auto garage where most Crows seemed to spend their daylight hours, searching out the mysterious Butch Crow and his knife-happy deputy. If we were going to kill them, we needed to put faces to names, and the photos I’d found in government databases were ten years old. “The same way you learned to rebuild an engine, I suppose. By watching, yes? You did not learn it at school.”
“I didn’t learn much at school. Too busy chasing girls.”
“How did that work out for you?”
Nash snorted. “Exactly how my ma said it would.”
“She knew you would fall in love with Orla.”
It was not a question and Nash didn’t acknowledge it. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You’re right. I learned mechanics by watching, and then doing it myself over and over until I got it right. I’m not like Saint. I can’t see something once and be good at it forever afterwards.”
I filed the nugget of Saint information away, smiling as predictable warmth bloomed in my abdomen. I could not envisage a time when Saint Malone would not fascinate me. When Cam O’Brian wouldn’t possess every ounce of strength I needed to keep breathing.
The warmth in my gut flared into a prickle of heat. To an itch I’d carried since the night had faded into daylight. A craving born of a fantasy that had distracted me enough to let the Crows run me off the road.
I shifted in my seat. The bruises and scrapes on my back hurt enough to ground me, but barely.I want Saint.Cam too. Until now, we’d ended every night of blood and violence in bed. Together. But there was no time now. The simmering conflict had gone from nought to sixty in the space of a few hours and I did not know when we would be alone again.