And they were not wrong.
Boone and Hawk came back and Boone sat next to me, wrapping an arm around me and tucking me into his side.
The rest of the boys (and Hawk, who no one in their right mind would refer to as a “boy”) waited until he did this before Boone urged, “Right, what didn’t you tell the cops?”
Part of my multilayer freak-out was shifting places, rising to the surface.
“I should have told them,” I said to Boone.
“Tell us,” Boone said to me.
“I think you were kind of right about Brett.”
Boone’s eyes darted very briefly up to who I suspected was Hawk before they came back to me.
“Why do you say that?”
“He called me.” I swallowed. “After the gunshots.”
“Shit,” I heard, the voice was Mag’s.
“And he said the threat had been neutralized,” I finished.
“Fuck,” I heard, and that was Auggie.
But Boone was up from the couch, demanding of me, “Where’s your phone?”
I got up too, saying, “Boone, maybe we should just—”
“Where’s your fucking phone, Ryn?” he bit out.
“Boone,” Hawk said quietly.
“Fuck that,” Boone said to Hawk.
Axl’s brows shot up in a way I sensed that it was not often that anyone talked back to Hawk.
Like, never.
I felt my phone sliding out of my back pocket, where somewhere along the line, I’d stowed it.
“Get me in,” he ordered, handing it to me.
“Boone, I think—”
“Kathryn.”
I shut up and took the phone from him, thinking this was kind of good seeing as his bossy behavior and constantly interrupting me was breaking through the freak-out, and instead, I was getting pissed off.
But I didn’t want to have words with him in front of his boss and friends.
So I engaged my phone, stared at it, it opened up, and I gave it to Boone.
He took two steps away, turned his back on us, made his call and stared out the window.
“No, you’ve got Sadler, motherfucker,” he said to the window. “We need to talk, and you know why. You name the time and place and you better believe I’m gonna have my boys with me and we’re gonna be armed. So plan accordingly.”
My gaze flew to Hawk.
He had his arms crossed on his chest, his eyes on his man, and a carefully blank look on his face.
Ditto times four with Mo, Mag, Axl and Auggie.
“Right. I’ll be there,” Boone stated, and I turned again to him.
He didn’t look to me.
He looked to Hawk.
“Who’s on her and who’s with me?”
“Mo’s on her, the rest with you. Including me,” Hawk answered.
“We’re a go,” Boone then stated.
And with no further ado, he came to me, hooked me behind my head and pulled me in to kiss my forehead.
He leaned back and curled his fingers in my hair to give it a gentle tug.
When he caught my eyes, he ordered, “Call your girls, do whatever you need to do to deal. Mo’s got you until I get back and then I’ll have you.”
Although when one (that one being me) was riding the edge of a multilayer freak-out after a dead body was removed from one’s back door, one could say the goodness of Boone Sadler uttering the words “I’ll have you” was as off the charts as the intense face scan he’d given me earlier. I nevertheless had no chance to let loose that first word or even open my mouth before Boone prowled out with Hawk, Axl, Auggie and Mag prowling with him.
I’d pivoted to the doorway to watch them disappear through it.
And once I heard my front door close, I pivoted back to Mo.
“You want me to call Lottie?” he offered.
“What are they gonna do?” I asked.
“Make it clear shooting someone on your back porch isn’t acceptable. Now, you want me to call Lottie?”
“How are they gonna do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you lie to me about not knowing how they’d do it?”
“All I can say is Boone wouldn’t do it like I’d do it because Boone’s not me. I just know however he decides to do it, it’ll be clear.”
“How would you do it?”
“Not sure you want to know.”
I decided to abandon that line of questioning. Mo had resting terrifying face even though he was a big softie. I didn’t want to have reason to believe he was anything else.
“When it was all going down, Boone told me to go to the bathroom, not out the front door,” I shared. “Why didn’t he tell me to escape out the front door?”
“Because sometimes there’s a guy at the back making his presence known solely in order to flush you out the front. And it is not a good scenario to be freaked, thinking of nothing but escape, and doing precisely what they want you to do. Running right into a bad guy you do not expect to be there.”
No.
That would not be a good scenario.
I kept going.
“Would he have some reason to believe there would be someone at the front?”