Chapter 22
SABLE
Forrest was the first on his feet, striding over to a screen on the wall. He tapped at it. Peering, his jaw clenched.
"What is it?"
Leif and Woody were right behind him, trying to see over his shoulder, while Savannah and I exchanged glances.
What the hell was it?
Forrest turned around and pointed at us.
"Both of you. In there, now." He gestured toward his bedroom.
Any other time someone would have joked about him having a dominance kink. Right now though, with the sirens continuing to wail, no one did. Yet.
I pushed myself to my feet.
"I don't want to hide…" I started to say.
Forrest's expression didn't change, nor did he lower his hand. He stood and waited, expecting us to obey.
"We should probably do what he says," Savannah said, raising her voice over the alarm.
"I don't like this," I said, but I grabbed up a few forks and headed over, stepping just inside the doorway.
Forrest gave me a frustrated glance, but lowered his hand and turned back to the screen, conferring with the other guys in urgent tones.
"What do you think is happening?" Savannah had the presence of mind to bring her tofu with her.
She was still eating while staring out at the men.
She could have been at the zoo watching performing seals while having her lunch.
Well, except for a hint of fear in her eyes.
Even with that, she looked more relaxed than I felt.
"Hopefully it's a false alarm," I said, unconvinced.
She gave me a 'really Sable' look. "Pretty loud for a false alarm."
"Yeah." I sighed and started hunting around in Forrest's wardrobe for a pair of track pants, maybe some underwear.
Everything was too big, but I rolled the waistband over a few times, tucked in my t-shirt and did a wriggle. Everything stayed up. For now.
Just as I was fixing the track pants in place, the alarm stopped.
The apartment fell into an eerie silence. So quiet my heartbeat sounded loud. My ears rang with the lack of sound.
"Thank fuck for that," Savannah said, spearing another piece of tofu on her fork and popping it into her mouth.
I hummed my agreement, but the guys were still looking at the security panel, as if watching for something or someone. Their expressions didn't fill me with a great deal of confidence. Dread? Absolutely. Fear? Yes, that too. But not confidence.
"Leif, come with me," Forrest said. "Woody, look after Sable. And Savannah," he added, as if he just remembered she existed.
Woody glanced over, irritated. Not at me. No, he was visibly annoyed because he wanted to add to the tally of people he'd killed for me to forgive him. He was ready to stab, slice and maim, not babysit us.
I shrugged. I didn't have a number in my head, but now was not the time for that conversation.
He stalked over to us, pulled out a gun and stood in the doorway, his legs apart. He nodded toward Forrest as he and Leif, their own guns ready, unlocked the apartment and stepped out, closing the door behind them.
"What's going on?" I insisted. If we were going to hide in here, I wanted to know why. That wasn't too much to ask, right?
"Dunno," Woody said without looking over his shoulder.
"Why are they going out there if we don't know what's going on?" That made no sense to me. They could be walking into…who knows what? If they were about to get themselves killed without knowing why, I was going to be frustrated. Not to mention devastated.
"You know what Forrest is like. He needs to be sure," Woody said.
"Sure of what?" I stepped over and placed my hands on his shoulders, my nose pressed against the back of his head.
"Sure you're safe," Woody said, as if that immediately explained everything.
"I'd be safer here, with all of you present, wouldn't I?" I squeezed his shoulders, my nails pressing into the fabric of his hoodie.
Three big, gun-toting men were better than one, wasn't it? Also, I had forks.
"You're safe with me," he insisted.
"But they aren't safe. They're out there. What if something happens to them? How are we going to know if they need our help?" There could be someone out there, ready to have tines shoved into his eyeball. I might be just the person to do it. I could fork them up good.
"We don't." Woody glanced back at me. "Forrest told me to keep you safe. That's what I'm doing."
I caught a glimpse of conflict in his eyes. He didn't like this either; them being out there, alone. They could be facing an army for all we knew. And we were doing…what? Hiding here in a bedroom and hoping for the best? Thinking up cutlery puns and waiting with…whatever bated breath was?
"We should be helping."
"You are helping," he said. "By staying out of the way." He looked back toward the door.
"Was I in the way at the senator's apartment?" I asked. "I seem to remember helping you." I wasn't a helpless damsel, sobbing in the corner and begging to be rescued. I didn't want to be one now.
"You did," he said grudgingly.
"Why can't I help now?" I'd managed not to shoot myself in the foot. I hadn't shot anyone else in the foot either. That counted for something, right?
"We don't want anything to happen to you," Woody mumbled.
"What was that?" I asked, keeping my tone light. "Did you just admit you cared about me?"
He snorted. "Don't come at me with mental gymnastics. Forrest and Leif will be pissed off at me if I let you get hurt."
"Right, they'll be pissed off," I said slowly. "You know what I think?"
"Nope." He grunted.
"I think you do care," I said. "I think you care more than you want to. Certainly more than you'll admit to. I think you'd be pissed off if I got hurt."
"Yeah, I would," he said, after a moment or two of silence. "I'd be the one cleaning your blood off the floor."
He glanced at me again, the faintest hint of a smile on the corners of his mouth. So faint I almost missed it.
"Sure, that's the only reason," I said sarcastically. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear. "You like me."
"You're a pain in the ass," he whispered back.
"You're an asshole," I told him.
"You're a princess." As if that was some kind of insult.
"You're the pea," I said.
He looked at me confused. "I'm the what now?"
"The pea," I said again. "You know the story about the princess and the pea? There was a hundred mattresses and at the bottom of them was a pea. She was so sensitive she could feel the pea all the way through them."
"I'm a vegetable under a hundred mattresses," he muttered. Now he was looking at me like I was a little bit unhinged.
"That's exactly what you are," I said. The analogy was strange, but I was sticking to it.
"What happened to the pea?" he asked.
"Um…"
That was where my story fell apart.
"She slept better after the pea was removed," I admitted. She might have married the prince or something, but that was a minor detail.
He smirked. "Bad luck. I'm not going anywhere."
"Of course you're not, because you like me," I said, smiling sweetly.
He rolled his eyes. "You live in a strange reality." Tone dripping with sarcasm, he added, "This is Swan Lake and we're all in some fancy-ass fairy tale."
"See, you do like me," I said, triumphant. "If we're in Swan Lake, that means we're swans. Swans mate for life."
"It's true," Savannah said from behind us.
I'd almost forgotten she was there.
"You two are cute together.” She waved her fork in our direction and went on eating.
"If you two don't stop it, I'm going to kill you myself," Woody growled.
The threat was completely empty. There was no way he'd lay a hand on me unless I wanted him to.
Nor was he going to touch Savannah in any capacity unless it was to protect her.
These three men, they knew what she meant to me.
They'd risked a lot to save her. They'd do it again if they had to, for me, and because it was the right thing to do.
For a group of bad boys, they were good men. The fact my mother would hate them was an added bonus.
No, that's not true. She wouldn't hate Forrest, not the Judge Forrest Cross she saw on paper. Influential judge, with money. In her eyes, he'd be a perfect match.
The real Forrest? She'd run away screaming and insist I do the same.
Too bad for her, the only screaming I was doing was in the bedroom.
I rested my cheek against Woody's shoulder blade.
"Is there a way to tell what's going on? Where they are. How long has it been? Ten minutes? Thirteen?"
The longer they were gone, the more I felt like I might never see them again. I didn't want to think about it. Couldn't think about it. I did the mental version of sticking my fingers in my ears and humming loudly until the hint of those thoughts was forced back into a corner.
Now stay there.
"Should we go down and check on them?" I asked.
"We're staying put," Woody said, but he seemed uncertain, as impatient as I was. As worried.
"How long are we going to give it?" I asked. We both knew we weren't going to wait them out indefinitely. Sooner or later we'd have to go looking.
Woody sighed out his nose.
"I'll give it fifteen more minutes," he said.
I wanted to argue him down to five or maybe ten, but he wasn't budging. Not even down to fourteen minutes.
The only option was to lean against his warm, firm body, and wait.