Those green eyes were solely on me now, beckoning me to get lost. “A-Astoria? Why?” she asked, tilting her head. She hadn’t pieced it together yet, and I couldn’t fault her for that.
I brought my hand to her face, softly grazing the underside of her bruise. “Because I had to get to you as quickly as possible yesterday. Chopper was the fastest option,” I murmured, following the trail of my finger, studying the coloring of her cheek. In a few days, the bruise would lighten, and I couldn’t wait for it to be gone. She was too beautiful to bear the stark reminder of the past she’d crawled her way out of, my sweet Temper.
Margo flinched, eyes shining with disbelief.
Yes, I came for you. I’ll always come for you, baby.
“Well, I’m happy to know that Ash’s yapping didn’t turn out to be all lies and bullshit,” Jake drawled.
Margo and I turned to look at him, my hand dropping down to her jaw before falling away completely.
Jake adjusted his glasses. “Can I tell you all what I found, or has this turned into a tea party?”
“Do you have tea?” Margo asked.
Jake blinked. “In the sense of information, yes. If you’re referring to actual tea, no.”
“Don’t let Rossy know that,” she mumbled before asking, “Where is Gordon? Running his drugs out of a shed in Huntington?”
“No, Gordon left his hometown years ago,” Jake informed us. “His operation is in Seattle.”
“Operation?” she whispered.
“Glad you marked her, Mitchell, because before Red Snake goes any further, we need to make a call to Agent Garner.”
Oh, hell.
“Fucking shit,” Grayson clipped, hands on his hips.
Margo looked back and forth between the four of us. “Who’s Agent Garner?”
“You’ve met him,” Dominic answered, snapping the file closed. “When Grayson was in the hospital. He was the one who came to arrest him.”
Margo’s jaw went slack.
“Time to draw straws.” All eyes went to the doorway. Ash was standing beside Dominic now. “Who has to make the call?”
“I’ll do it,” Gray said, rolling his neck. “Ash, I need blueprints of every building Samson uses for his operations, including former ones. We need to know how far this stretches. Dominic, get with Jake and start making a profile.” He turned to me. “Now that we know the fucker is local, she doesn’t need to be here. Take her back to Astoria.”
“Wait, you can’t just drop me back off! What’s the plan?”
The boys ignored her, nodding at Grayson. Dominic and Jake disappeared down the hall just after Ash.
Gray walked up to Margo, staring down at her, his eyes soft. “Sorry for pushing you,” he whispered. Then, with a quick look at me, he was out of the office, shutting my door behind him.
“Well, I guess we’re taking our lunch to go,” I sighed, running a hand over my hair. I knew, given what she’d told me about Gordon, that he very well could be in Portland too, given its proximity. It was the perfect city for a low-level dealer like him. Perfect to build, to gain power.
Margo whirled to face me, eyes one fire. “You are not just going to take me home and drop me off. I deserve to know what’s going on.”
“I’m not dropping you off,” I declared. “I’m moving in.”
She jerked back but recovered quickly. “You can’t just move into my apartment! We barely know each other.”
I raised a brow. “Is that what you really think?”
Her cheeks heated, eyes fierce, her plump lips pressing into a tight line. “Then have Dominic give me a gun or something!”
“No.”