No Saint (Wild Men 6)

Great. Is this a case of territorial pissing? For a second there I thought...

I thought John Elba had come for me, not to piss on the sheriff’s shoes. Not that it didn’t feel good, hearing someone defending me, but now I’m properly awake, and starting to realize that this probably wasn’t about me at all.

Yeah, killing hope isn’t as easy as it sounds, but I’m getting there.

***

“Hey!” I bang on the bars, shake them. Sometimes I wonder if I’m dreaming, if this is a nightmare and I’m caught in it in a fucking loop, never actually waking up. “I said, hey!”

“What do you want?” the bored officer at his desk asks, without lifting his head.

“I wanna make a phone call.”

“Don’t you have your cell phone?”

“You guys took it.” Said it was so I wouldn’t warn my accomplices. What the fuck ever. “Give it back to me and I’ll use it.”

“I’ll have to check with the sheriff.”

“Check what? I’m allowed phone calls, right? I wanna call my family.”

“He’s right,” the drunk beside me confirms, and shoots me a conspiratorial grin. “He’s got rights.”

Awesome.

“You’ll get your phone call,” the officer says. “In a minute. Just calm the hell down, the lot of you.”

I have to call Merc, tell him about the earrings and the letters, about the names I found out from Dad. Who knows how much leeway I will have down the line to call. Better get this over with now. Merc can look for our lost brother.

And if he finds him, maybe he’ll keep me out of it, not mention that he has a half-brother who fucked up so royally he’s locked up in prison for the foreseeable future.

I just hope he lets me know if he finds him, so that part of me that’s worried about the boy can relax.

If only I could let go of Luna, too, then I’d be ready to accept my fate.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Luna

“Ross called,” Merc says, coming back to the porch. We’re still at Ross’s house, sitting out front, thinking.

I know where he’s kept.

“That’s good.” I turn away to hide my face, not to show the shock. He called Merc, not me. Why? “Is he okay?”

“Says he is. He sounds like shit.”

I turn back to face him, my heart pounding. “Did they hurt him?”

“I think he’s just tired and stressed. He only called to ask me to grab a box from his bedroom. Do you know about it? Letters and earrings... he says they could lead us to a half-brother Dad talked to him about.”

“Is he serious?” Gigi mutters, looking up from her phone. She’s been texting back and forth with her boyfriend, Jarett, who’s babysitting Octavia and Matt’s kids. “Tati mentioned something like that years ago but I thought Ross had made it up.”

“Seems not.”

“He told me about it,” I say. “He said he’s worried about the boy. Would like to track him down.”

“That’s what he told me, too.” Merc frowns at the house. “He said the house’s unlocked. I’ll go look.”