“How much do you know?” Cam stuck a cigarette in his mouth and tossed the box to me.
I let it fall, treating myself to another Alexei stare before he deigned to answer Cam’s question.
“I would like to hear it from you.”
Cam sighed through a lungful of smoke and repeated the words that had echoed in my head all night. “This is a distraction from where I need you right now.”
“A distraction for who?”
“You. I need you to find Locke and kill everyone who’s hurt him.”
I sucked in a harsh breath, choking on reality. Had I fucked up too much for God to let that happen?
Weakness rattled my legs.
I dropped to a crouch, bracing myself on the wet ground as Alexei stepped forward.
“Folk is on the road. There is nothing I could find that he will not, but if you are truly worried, I suggest you impart the information I have requestedquickly.”
Put like that, Cam had little choice but to let go of what had led him to keep this from Alexei in the first place—the fear that, to save us from turningrat, Alexei would murder an entire police department and Cam, and Saint, would lose him forever.
I combed my brain, trying to remember.
Failed, and I tuned him out as he filled Alexei in. I didn’t need to hear this story, I’d lived it. Wasstillliving it as I forced my mind to return to the scene we’d just left. Forced myself to care, just for a moment, before I realised that the foreign sensation coursing through me wasrelief.
Alexei could fix this.
Fuck me, hehadto. Or we’d lose Cam. Through the fog of stress and trauma, I saw that now, and Alexei did too, the split-second flash of fear in his gaze so stark it drove me to my feet.
“Thatis your plan?” he spat, the terror in his gaze morphing to ice-cold rage. “To wait three days and then give them exactly what they want? Give themmore?Where is the sense in this, Cam? Show me.”
Cam widened his stance, stubbornness seeping from every pore. “I didn’t say I was giving them anything. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Why not? They are true. You would never sacrifice Nash, so it must beyouthat you are giving them.Youthat will go to them with the list they have asked for. And then what? They just go away and never ask you for another thing?”
“They—”
“No.” Alexei’s voice whipped the air. “There is nothing in this except the end of you, and I will not let you do it.”
Cam’s gaze darkened. “Let me? You think I’m standing here asking your permission to protect my family?”
Alexei laughed. Bitter. Cold. And yet somehow so full of love that another crack fissured my heart. “You are naïve, Cam. There is no family without you.”
Their stand-off continued without words.
I rescued Cam’s cigarette box and lit up. Changed my mind and threw it away.
“DNA,” Alexei snapped. “Do not be as foolish as your president.”
He strode to his ride and saddled up, gunning the vicious engine that made his sport bike one of the fastest in the world. I waited for him to zip away into the night, leaving Cam in a cloud of angry dust.
But Alexei stayed.
Hewaited.
And he rode with us all the way home, parking his bike up Cam’s arse before he stormed across the yard and into the bar, slamming the door behind him with such force that it fell off its hinges.
The commotion unearthed Saint from who the fuck knew where.