10. Precious Weight
10
PRECIOUS WEIGHT
Diana
I sat in one corner of the couch, Big Petey sat in the other.
We’d had our donuts, and now Hugger was sleeping in my bed and Suzette was in her room doing who knew what.
I’d been riding the high of what had happened on the balcony with Hugger .
No , it wasn’t like I forgot that on paper—us being in the midst of a major drama that involved gangsters and the FBI , Hugger living eight-hundred and twenty-one miles away (yes, I looked it up)—taking our relationship there was the last thing we should be doing.
But man…
That kiss .
After that kiss , and, well…just about everything else about him, I didn’t care if Hugger lived on the moon, I wanted to know what more we could build together.
And I wanted that bad .
( We could also just say he had a body made for cuddling; best two movies I’d ever watched, bar none.)
Thus , as if enough world-rocking stuff hadn’t already happened that morning (though, all of that was the good kind, I could still feel Hugger’s lips on mine, and his scratchy soft beard… dayum ), and it wasn’t even ten o’clock, I was staring at Armageddon on my phone.
The least catastrophic part of my technological apocalypse was my friend Bernie demanding my attendance for a night of cocktails on Friday .
I’d been pretty much blowing everyone off because of Suzette , then of course, the boys turned up and took all my attention (especially one of them…ahem). Since Nic knew everything, and because she did, Larry did too, they helped me move Suzette in, but I hadn’t been super forthcoming with my friends. Only telling them that I had an out-of-town guest staying for a while, and I needed their help putting together a guest room, getting it in the form of borrowing some of their stuff.
I wasn’t sure I could do Friday cocktails. I’d have to ask Hugger .
So my answer to that was easy, That sounds fun! I’ll get back to you. Soon !
The more catastrophic part was that I’d texted Dad to let him know I was okay to have dinner.
I thought he’d be at the gym or playing a round of golf, but his reply was immediate.
Wednesday good for you?
It warmed my cockles (and I didn’t even know I had cockles) that he texted back quickly and wanted to get together soon.
But I had to ask Hugger about that too. Though , since Dad and I were both under biker protection, I assumed it would be okay.
I need to check something, but I think so. I’ll confirm soon.
I then realized I’d forgotten my father’s bent at control and his need to form an opinion so he could voice it, the power of this urge so strong, he’d even do this when the focus should be on us figuring out where we were at with things.
I remembered when he returned, Feel free to bring your boyfriend .
I just knew that would bite me in the ass.
I didn’t share he wasn’t my boyfriend (as such… hmm ).
I replied, I’ll talk to him .
Gak !
I’d barely sent my last when I got a text from my mother.
And that was when Armageddon struck full force.
The text said, Hey sweetie! I’m going to be in town to do some shopping! Pick me up at the airport Friday around two. We’ll go to Fashion Square and have a fun dinner and then spend the weekend decimating Rick’s bank account .
Rick , by the by, was her husband, who I did not refer to as my stepdad. Ever .
To which I responded, Hey Mom . Did you already buy your tickets?
And got back, Yes ! It’s all set! Girl’s weekend!
I had to sit with that a minute (okay, it took five of them), tamping down the feelings I sometimes (okay, often) got when my mom entered the picture of my life.
I loved her. She was fun and had lived almost her entire life without responsibility (like me, she was an only child, but Gram and Gramps went the opposite way with that than Dad did for me—that being spoiling her kind of bad).
Spending time with someone who was carefree with nothing dragging on it felt freeing.
For a while.
But I did have responsibilities.
And as much as I didn’t want to get ticked at my mom, the fact she didn’t ask before buying her tickets, and she expected me to be at the airport at a time when I’d be at work, not to mention, expected me to play chauffeur at all (she didn’t drive in the city, “ It rattles my nerves!”), I had to admit, bugged me.
However , this time, I simply couldn’t be at her beck and call when she got the hankering to spend time with her daughter (or spend time at the designer boutiques at Fashion Square where I could act as her chauffer, travel guide and bag handler, and it sometimes felt that was what I was and that sometimes (okay, often) hurt).
So I had to say, I’m sorry, I can’t Mom . I have plans next weekend .
To which I received, More important than a visit with your mother?
At this point, I glanced at Big Petey , who was in the other corner of the couch. He’d taken off his boots, his stocking feet were on my coffee table, and he was watching old episodes of My Cat from Hell ( I got this; Jackson Galaxy was the bomb-diggity).
I went back to my phone. Yes . I have a friend who needs me.
And I need some time with my daughter .
Oh crap.
I was getting angry.
And it was probably the current situation that made me do something I’d never done, outside of burying all this disquiet about Mom , ignoring it or making excuses for it.
I pushed back.
Okay , Mom , you know I love spending time with you. But she’s been gang-raped. So maybe next time shoot me a text or give me a call to make sure I’m free or can take time off work .
And that was when I got, Oh my God , Diana . Trigger warning next time .
I stared at the text, something bubbling inside me like acid.
It was then I remembered I didn’t tell her about my own assault.
It wasn’t because I was worried her response would be like Dad’s , but because I knew she couldn’t handle it.
I’d protected her, my own mother, from my assault.
“ Not sure, no matter how hard you frown at your phone, you can make it blow up in your hand,” Big Petey remarked.
I looked to him.
“ You okay, girl?” he asked quietly.
“ My mom can sometimes be difficult,” I told him.
He watched me closely. “ Yeah . That can happen.”
“ She made plans to come this weekend but didn’t ask.”
His scraggly gray beard twitched with irritation.
“ Yeah ,” I agreed. “ And she wasn’t a fan of me putting her off.”
“ Welp , she’s got a grown girl on her hands, so she doesn’t really have a choice, does she?”
No . She didn’t.
I turned back to my phone.
We’ll plan something later , I promised.
I was about to set that unpleasantness aside and chat with Big Petey about Suzette when my phone vibrated in my hand.
Another text from Mom .
Whatever . Rick’s going to be furious we have to pay for a flight change, but I suppose we’ll have to deal with it .
She would, I had no doubt, have spent tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, shoes, purses, and if she went hog wild, that ante would be upped substantially if she hit a jewelry counter.
So a flight change was the least of her expenses.
But a chill crept over my skin at understanding this happened too. Me being to blame for something Mom didn’t get when she wanted it.
She’d given up custody. Didn’t even fight for me. I saw her on some weekends. We’d have dinner together. Dad gave her alimony until she married Brendon (husband two of three). And that alimony wasn’t stingy.
Fortunately for Dad , Brendon came on the scene quickly, and as Mom told it, even though she was heartbroken at Dad’s infidelity, Brendon , “ Swept me off my feet.”
With the custody deal, and even after it, during the short time she was with Brendon (and when I grew older, I realized Brendon didn’t last long because he was a rebound), I thought at the time she just couldn’t deal because she was so brokenhearted at the betrayal then loss of Dad .
I thought this, because she told me that was the way it was. She harped on quite a lot about how Dad “ruined me and our family,” and how difficult it was to be replaced and have to start “from scratch,” and then when things ended with Brendon it was because “your father’s treachery ruined me for all men.”
As noted, Brendon came quick, well within a year of them divorcing ( I didn’t like him either, and he didn’t like me— I’d been eight). Rick came quickly after, and she didn’t blink when he moved them up to Idaho .
It was like she wasn’t leaving a daughter behind.
That hurt too. Then , and now I was allowing myself to remember it.
Over the years, I just put the emotional effort in to forgetting it happened.
“ Now you wanna tell me why I feel the need to go out and buy more donuts for you?” Big Petey asked.
I turned again to him. “ I’m just noticing stuff about Mom that irks me and wondering why I didn’t really notice it before.”
Big Petey had a ready answer. “ We got blinders on with our parents. We need them to be perfect, or at least as good as we can make them in our heads. They made us, for one. So they’re a part of us.”
He seemed to drift after he said that, doing it so bad, I got concerned. He wasn’t young, but he seemed sharp.
“ Well , goddamn,” he whispered like he was talking to himself.
“ What ?” I asked.
He visibly shook it off and refocused on me.
“ Nothin ’, darlin’. Something just occurred to me. Anyway , getting back to it. We also need to know we can count on them for answers and support. But no one is perfect, Di , and every kid figures it out sometime that their parent is just a person, figuring it out like all the rest of us.”
“ Seems like I’m a late bloomer,” I mumbled.
“ You said she made plans to come this weekend. That mean she don’t live close?”
I shook my head. “ Idaho .”
“ How long’s she lived there?”
I thought about it and said, “ She moved when I was ten.”
“ You see her a lot?”
“ When I was at school, summers. Some holidays. When I graduated high school, not as much.”
“ Not close enough for you to get a lock on it sooner, sweetheart,” he shared. “ That kinda time, it’s all good. Vacations and celebrations. Day to day life is a different thing.”
Life was a different thing.
Like the life my dad lived where he was ambitious. He wanted to make money, make partner, make a name for himself, and he was mother and father to a daughter.
He sucked at it, but he didn’t shirk it. There was never a time when he seemed pissed he was saddled with me. He lived his life. He worked. He dated. He golfed and played tennis. And yeah, in a perfect world, maybe he should have spent more time with me, and when he did, he was less hard on me.
But he stuck. He wanted to. Because he was my dad.
I was getting the supremely uncomfortable feeling I’d been too hard on him.
Big Petey cut into my thoughts by handing them back to me. “ Don’t be too hard on yourself, Di . You were livin’ your own life too.”
“ Right .”
“ You wanna talk about that more?” he offered. “ I got some livin’ under my belt myself. May not have all the wisdom, but what I got, I’m good to share if you wanna lay it on me.”
God , Big Petey was the best.
“ I think I need to process a few things first, Big Petey . But thanks.”
“ I’ll be here awhile, you need me.”
Not that it needed to be announced, since it happened way before that moment, but… yeah .
I really liked these guys.
All of them.
“ You wanna jump to a not-at-all less sticky subject?” he asked, lowering his voice.
I scooted closer to him and lowered my voice too. “ Suzette .”
He slouched to the side to get nearer to me. “ Hugger says she spoke to him. Said goodnight.”
I nodded. “ It felt like a big breakthrough.”
His face got scary. “ What she went through, reckon it was.”
“ Yeah .”
“ Time to push, Di .”
Ugh .
“ Yeah ,” I repeated. “ Got an idea about that?”
“ I figure we gotta set priorities. Do we want her under police protection first, or do we wanna know her real name?”
“ I want her safe. But this isn’t about what I want.”
“ In part it is, darlin’. You put yourself in front of her as her shield, and that was your choice. But she’s usin’ you as a shield, and that was hers. We got you. We’re here for the long haul. But I cannot say we can offer better than the US Marshalls if the FBI gets involved and they look after her. And that isn’t a betrayal of what you promised. You promised to keep her safe. Did you promise how you’d go about doin’ that?”
He was genius .
“ No ,” I replied.
“ Okay , then, if it was me, I’d give it to her. Go in her room. Say she’s been here awhile and maybe it’s time to talk. Tell her it’d be good to get it out. Share it with somebody.”
“ Big Petey ?” I whispered.
“ Right here, Di .”
“ Can I tell you something?”
His face got scary again, before it turned tender.
“ I know, love,” he said so gently, my nose started stinging with threatening tears.
They’d all figured it out, why I’d lost my mind and got involved with this mess.
All of them had.
I didn’t mind. I wanted them to understand and not think I was a harebrained idiot.
And it was nice not to have that in the way and know they were already handling me with care, so I didn’t have to worry they would.
“ Should I tell her?” I asked.
“ I think yes. If you got it in you to share, I think she feels very alone and that’ll make her feel less of that.”
I nodded.
“ Go now. Get it done. Let’s see where she’s at so we know how big a job we got ahead of us.”
I nodded again, pushed out of the couch and headed to Suzette’s room.
I didn’t know if Hugger was a light sleeper and I didn’t want to wake him if he was. I also didn’t want to invade Suzette’s privacy.
So I tried to strike a happy medium, opened the door, stuck my head in, words of greeting on the tip of my tongue.
They died before they were formed when I saw her quickly drop her hand with her phone in it and tuck it under her thigh where she was sitting cross-legged on her bed.
And the look of sheer terror on her face made my mouth get dry.
I slipped in and closed the door behind me.
“ What was that?” I asked.
Her eyes darted this way and that, like she was trying to form an escape plan.
I came closer. “ Suzette , what was that?”
“ You’re gonna be mad,” she said in a small voice.
“ I’m not gonna be mad,” I assured her.
“ I think I need to go someplace else,” she informed me.
My heart started beating really hard.
“ Like where?”
“ Somewhere away from you. Somewhere away from the guys.”
I took another step closer. “ Are the men frightening you?”
She shook her head and did it hard, her face beginning to crumble. “ No . No . They did at first, but they’re all real nice.”
Cautiously , I sat on the side of her bed. “ Talk to me, Suzette . What’s happening?”
Her face finished crumbling and she dropped it into her hand.
God .
“ Can I touch you?” I asked.
She nodded her head but didn’t take it out of her hand.
I scooched closer, and careful of her injured arm, I drew her into both of mine.
She still didn’t pull her face out of her hand as she cried into my T -shirt. She cried quiet, but there were big gulps and body heaves to share how hard she was doing it.
I let her have at it, and it lasted a really long time.
When it started to let up, I whispered, “ Stay here. I’m gonna get some Kleenex .”
I shot out of the room, hit the laundry/storage area that was on the other side of the hall, nabbed a new box of tissues, and hauled ass back.
I tore off the cardboard opening, yanked out about five and handed them to her after I sat back on the bed.
She was still weeping but she wiped her eyes.
I handed her more and she blew her nose.
“ Feel better?” I asked softly.
“ N -no.”
Of course not.
Stupid question, Diana !
“ I mean in the now.”
“ No !” she cried, and I jumped at the force of it.
I’d never heard her be loud at all.
“ He’s gonna hurt them. He’s gonna hurt you. He’s gonna hurt me .”
Oh , poor Suzette , sitting in this room, stewing in that fear.
“ You’re safe here,” I promised.
“ No I’m not. He knows them. He knows them and he wants to hurt them.”
My blood ran cold.
“ He wants to hurt who?”
“ H -hugger. And Eight and Muzzle and even B -b-big Petey !”
“ How do you know that?”
She yanked the phone out from under her thigh and stated, “ Because when I got away, I stole his phone. He talks to me. He tells me what he’s gonna do if I don’t come back to him. And I just want him to do it, Diana . Go back to him. I’m so tired. So tired of…of…of everything . And I can’t let him hurt you or…or… the guys .”
Dang , crap, shit .
“ I need you to give me that phone, Suzette . And then I need to give it to Detective Scott .”
“ I need a phone so you can get in touch with me.”
“ I’ll get you another one. I don’t want you to use his anymore and he shouldn’t have any communication with you. Not any at all. And I think it’s important that the police have that phone.”
That seemed to stun her.
“ You’ll get me a phone?”
“ Yes . Like you said, we need to talk.”
“ But phones are expensive.”
I forced a smile on my face. “ I can’t promise to get you the latest and greatest. But you’ll be able to call, text, and download some phone games.”
She hesitated a second, then handed over Imran Babi?’s phone.
I felt dirty just touching it.
“ You know the code?” I asked.
She nodded. “ I saw him put it in. He wasn’t being careful because he…he…well, he thought I’d passed out.”
I flinched for her.
“ I changed it though,” she went on. “ It’s two, two, three, two.”
“ Got it. I’ll be back again.”
“ Okay .”
I left her and nearly ran into Hugger in the hall.
He’d heard her No ! and was loitering outside Suzette’s door.
“ Okay ?” he asked in a growl.
I shook my head, grabbed his hand and dragged him to the living room.
Big Petey was alert and sitting on the edge of the couch.
He’d heard the No ! too.
He stood when I let Hugger go and headed right to him.
I handed him the phone.
“ That’s Imran Babi?’s phone. She stole it.”
“ Jesus ,” he murmured.
“ Christ ,” I heard Hugger say behind me.
I ran to the kitchen, opened my junk drawer and found Detective Scott’s card tucked right where I left it. I nabbed it and dashed back to Big Petey .
“ Can you call Detective Scott ? Tell him we have Babi?’s phone.” I handed him the card.
“ Will do.”
“ The code is two, two, three, two,” I shared. “ And Big Petey , he’s been communicating with her. Threatening her, me, us.”
“ Motherfucker ,” he gritted.
Hugger said nothing, but I felt the wall of anger coming from him slamming into me.
“ I gotta get back to her,” I said to them both.
“ Go ,” Big Petey urged.
I ran back to Suzette’s room and went right in.
She was up against the headboard, hugging a pillow to her chest, her good arm folded around her calves, curled into herself, still terrified, clearly having taken that time to convince herself she’d done wrong.
I sat back down on the bed.
And I made a scary decision.
But I sensed I had an in.
And I was going to take it.
“ I know your name isn’t Suzette ,” I told her.
She winced and curled deeper into herself.
“ I’m not mad about that either,” I assured her. “ I’m not mad about anything, except what was done to you. You were protecting yourself.”
“ I don’t want them to find my parents.”
“ Who don’t you want to find your parents? Did that man threaten them too?”
“ No , not him. The police. I don’t want them to tell my folks where I am.”
Oh boy.
“ Do you wanna say why?” I asked.
“ Because I got mad at them and took off. It was stupid. And he lied to me. And it was…it was just so, so stupid.”
Oh , this sweet girl.
“ What’s your name?”
“ Madison ,” she whispered.
The tears hit my eyes. “ Heya , Madison .”
The tears hit hers before she tossed the pillow aside and threw herself in my arms.
I held her, stroked her hair, and cried with her this time.
Maybe she’d used up most of hers, but she stopped before I did, so I forced myself to do the same.
I held her close even as I reached for the Kleenex . We both mopped up and then I settled us against the headboard, holding her to my side, keeping the tissues at hand.
And I asked, “ You wanna tell me?”
She rested her head against my shoulder, and it was the most precious weight I’d ever born.
And then she said, “ Yeah .”
I closed my eyes in relief.
And Madison told me.
Big Petey
Hugger was prowling the area between the living room and kitchen like a caged animal.
Detective Rayne Scott was sitting on the edge of the seat of one of Diana’s armchairs, elbows to his knees, evidence bag with Babi?’s phone in it dangling from his fingers. His attention alternated between Hugger and the wall beyond, which was where Diana and Suzette were.
Big Petey had never thought much about cops until Tack brought a few into the Chaos inner circle. Not the brotherhood, but they were as close as that could get without a patch.
Normally , if cops stayed out of his way, he stayed out of theirs.
But he respected Mitch and Brock unreservedly.
He recognized Rayne Scott was of the Mitch Lawson / Brock Lucas bent. And not simply because the sumabitch was tall, dark and a damn fine-lookin’ man.
He was no nonsense. Alert . Attentive . Concerned about the state of play in Suzette’s room. And being there on a Sunday morning, obviously dedicated to the job.
Hugger stopped moving abruptly and stared down the hall. So Pete got to his feet, noticing not for the first time the dry heat of Phoenix was good for his old joints. Denver was arid too, but the cold could creep in. His body felt a full five years younger down there in the desert.
Diana showed from the mouth of the hall and went right to Hugger .
And Pete went still when Hug claimed Diana immediately by wrapping a hand around the side of her neck and dipping down to get nose to nose with her.
“ You ,” he grunted.
She understood that word and whispered, “ I’m okay.”
Scott got close, so Pete did too.
Hug got out of her face and she looked to Scott .
“ Her name is Madison O’Keefe . She says she’s nineteen years old. She’s from Lubbock , Texas . She was in school to do manis and pedis. She’d met a guy online her parents had a bad feeling about. Turns out they were right. They argued about him more than once, but the last one was really bad. She packed a bag and went to him. He took off with her, and when she expressed concern about where they were going, which was crossing over the state line to New Mexico , things went downhill.”
“ Damn it,” Scott muttered. “ She didn’t mention any of this when we interviewed her at the hospital.”
Pete watched as Hugger slid his hand down her back until his arm was wrapped around her waist. He then fit her right to his side, and by damn, she looked purpose-built to be right there.
This move could have knocked Pete over with a feather.
Until yesterday, Pete didn’t know if he’d seen Hugger touch another human being, outside horsing around with the kids. When he was with Rider , Cutter , Nash , Playboy , Wren , Princess , Travis , Clementine , Wyatt , Raven …any of them, he was a different man.
With them, he was the man he was with Diana .
He was a man who had a life that he thought was worth living.
“ He essentially sold her to Babi?’s boys,” Diana continued, yanking Pete right out of his thoughts. “ And one of the reasons she knew who Babi? was is because the men who bought her said, ‘ Hands off. Babi? always gets first crack.’”
Pete ground his teeth, he heard Hugger growl, and he saw Scott’s eyes turn to slits.
“ She struggled to get away at one point, and they laughed at her,” Diana kept at it. “ Told her half the police were on Mr . Babi?’s payroll, so if she went to them, they’d bring her right back.”
“ I’m hopin’ that was bullshit to make her think she’s fucked no matter what,” Pete remarked to Scott .
“ It’s bullshit,” Scott gritted.
Pete studied him carefully, and damn, he hoped the man spoke truth.
“ That’s what I told her,” Diana said. “ I think I got her ready to open up to you more. But she’s had enough for today.” She looked up to Hugger . “ I’m going to call off work tomorrow. Give her a break for the rest of today, then I hope maybe I can talk her into going in to do a formal interview that’s a lot more thorough.”
While she said this, Scott was on his phone.
When she was done saying this, Scott turned his phone their way and said, “ Her parents reported her missing a month ago.”
And there it was, a picture of Madison next to a headline: Local Lubbock Woman Reported Missing .
“ They’re probably scared out of their brains,” Pete remarked.
“ Can I read that?” Diana asked. Scott offered, and she took the cell, scanned the article and her eyes got bright with tears. “ They’re scared out of their brains,” she whispered. She returned the phone to Scott , went to her own, and had head bent to it as she walked back down the hall saying, “ I’ll be back.”
When she disappeared behind Madison’s door, Pete asked, “ What we got here?”
“ Babi? gets up to a lot of shitty stuff,” Scott said. “ But we’ve never heard of him being into trafficking.”
“ That something you’d know?” Big Petey asked.
Scott nodded. “ We’ve been dedicating a lot of resources to this guy. Though , I’m sure it won’t surprise you, he has a vested interest in us not learning all we need to know. Then Madison showed and not long later, so did the Feds . They sometimes don’t cooperate great with the locals, but it came clear this was part of what they were investigating. Being honest with you, it shocked the shit out of me. There’s not even a rumor of it being part of Babi?’s operations.”
“ That phone gonna help at all?” Pete queried.
A slow smile spread on Scott’s face. “ Technically , it’s stolen property. Officially , it was stolen by the victim after the commission of a violent felony, so it’s evidence in a rape case, and yeah, I figure we’ll find some interesting things in there.”
“ He’s been fuckin’ with her head something bad,” Pete reminded Scott of what he’d shared after the man arrived. “ She hasn’t replied, but he’s been repeatedly issuing threats against a whole slew of people she might give a shit about, including herself, for over a week. That a felony?”
“ All I know is, when it gets to trial, it’s not gonna play well with a jury.”
Pete reckoned he was very right. If he was on a jury and he saw those texts, he’d vote to send the man so far down the river, he’d never find his way back.
They all looked down the hall to see Diana had her head and hand out of Madison’s door and she was beckoning to Hugger .
Hug prowled in that direction.
Pete and Scott watched as they had a low conversation. Hugger nodded. Diana disappeared behind the door. Hugger came back to them.
“ Madison lost it again,” he told them both, but to Scott he said, “ She wants to know if you’ll call her parents and let them know she’s okay.”
Being a cop and probably not getting to share good news too often, Scott was all over that.
“ Fuck yeah, I will. Does Madison want to speak to them?”
“ Di hasn’t gotten that far,” Hugger told him. “ But she wants them to know right away.”
Scott nodded, hit a button on his phone and shifted from their huddle.
Pete heard him say to someone, “ Yeah , need you to get me Lubbock PD . Texas . And the name of whoever is dealing with a missing woman named Madison O’Keefe .”
Big Petey got closer to Hugger .
“ Those threats, brother…” He let that trail, because Hugger had also read them.
“ I wanna be here in case Di comes out. Can you call Rush with the update?” Hugger asked.
“ You got it.”
Hugger turned his gaze to the hall.
Pete went to the balcony.
He filled in Rush , who told them to stay the course. Dutch , Core and Linus had hit Phoenix , and Coe and Jag were heading down that day.
Rush also shared, as they suspected, Resurrection wanted to break off with Chaos to do their thing, leaving Chaos on security for Diana , Madison and Nolan Armitage .
“ Kinda feel like letting them have at it,” Rush said. “ We’re clean and clear, and they’re good at that shit.”
Pete didn’t disagree.
By the time he was off the phone with Rush , he’d started to head back inside when he saw Diana return, going right to Hugger . She fit herself into his side that time, but he made the way clear for it and didn’t hesitate to curve an arm around to hold her there.
This meant Big Petey moved back to the railing and returned his attention to his phone.
He engaged the cell.
Because it was time.
Long since time.
So he called Tack .