Blaze (Steel Brothers Saga 21)

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s all right. Still…”

“Still, that was fourteen years ago, Jesse,” Rory says. “Give it a rest. We all know you were more talented than Donny.”

I open my mouth to disagree but then shut it quickly again. I can’t take sides between my brother and my boyfriend. So not happening. Not tonight anyway.

“We’ve got bigger problems now,” Rory continues.

“What’s your plan?” Jesse asks.

“We don’t really have one yet. We can get him if he in any way publishes the photos of Callie, because she was a minor at the time. We’ll bring him up on child porn charges. But…my photos are another story.”

“Easy enough,” Jesse says. “If those photos ever see their way anywhere, I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

“For God’s sake,” I say. “We have to figure out how to be smart about this. For example, did he bury these underneath the place where we buried the safe-deposit box key on purpose, knowing we would find them? Or did he think he was being so smart, putting them in a place where we wouldn’t look, so we would never find them? If the latter is the case, these may be his only copies. In which case we can end this now.”

“But if it’s the other,” Rory says, “we’ve fallen right into his trap.”

“What a fucking dick,” Jesse says. “I’m still open to killing him.”

“We have a preliminary plan. We think Brittany Sheraton, Doc Sheraton’s daughter, is the person who impersonated Rory to get into our safe-deposit box, which means she has a fake ID. Saturday we’ll take the dogs over there and find out how to get in touch with Brittany.”

“And if that’s a dead end?” Jesse says.

“Then we put our thinking caps back on,” Rory says. “We haven’t had a lot of time to deal with this.”

“Why don’t you just have your boyfriend pay him off?”

Rory raises her eyebrows. She’s thinking the same thing. She’s been thinking it since the beginning, and I can’t blame her.

“No,” I say.

“You think he wouldn’t?” Jesse scoffs.

“I think he would,” I say. “In a minute. But where does that get us? Lamone will never give us all the evidence. He’ll always keep a copy. Then, when he runs out of the first payment, he’ll come back for more. No. First of all, I don’t want to ask Donny to do that, and second of all, it doesn’t get us anywhere. It’s a temporary solution at best.”

Jesse nods, to my surprise. “You’re probably right.”

“Exactly. So what’s the next step, then? If the Doc Sheraton thing doesn’t pan out?” I ask.

“That, I suppose, is what we need to figure out.” Rory twists her lips into her thinking pose.

“Let’s figure it out,” Jesse says. “The two of you aren’t in this alone anymore. I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

“Thank you,” Rory says. “Thank you so much, Jess. And I’m really sorry you had to see that.”

“So am I. But that’s nothing compared to what he has put the two of you through. We’ll get him. We’ll figure it out, and we’ll get him.”

I nod, as my phone starts ringing. It’s Donny. “Sorry,” I say. “I need to take this.”

“Donny?” I say frantically into the phone.

“Callie, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I tried to text you, but I didn’t hear back from you.”

“I just got into a place where I could get service and got your text. You said it’s urgent.”

“Yeah, at the time I thought it was.” I quickly fill him in about finding the file box and then having it disappear. “Turns out Jesse had it, and he opened it. So Rory and I had to let him in on what’s going on.”