Chapter 2 #8
JD pointed at him. “That. Assume everything has eyes. Traffic cams, doorbell cams, satellites, private security, rich neighbors with drones, kids livestreaming because they think trauma is content.”
Edge looked at Regan.
Regan looked upstairs.
Destiny.
The decision broke across her face like pain.
“She can ride?” Regan asked.
“Not a bike,” JD said. “Not a car if we can avoid roads. Old-school. Through the back land. Horses if Cal can get them close enough. Ranch utility trail where no city camera sees. If she’s stable enough to move, you get her there before dawn.”
Regan swallowed.
“She hates horses.”
A rough sound moved through the room. Not laughter, exactly. Too broken for that. But something human.
JD’s mouth twitched once. “Tonight she stole Edge’s bike and blew up a Bronco. She can tolerate a horse.”
Edge didn’t smile.
Neither did Regan.
But some of the death drained out of the room.
For half a second.
Then JD kept going.
“Third, Cabo becomes a shield, not the whole defense.”
Hacker frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means we do not rely on a lie we can’t support.” JD looked at Regan. “You did not fly because Destiny hates flying.”
Regan blinked. “She does.”
“Good. That part is true. You drove east. Houston. Maybe you planned to cruise, maybe private travel from there. Keep it messy enough to be human but clean enough to track if needed.”
Edge’s eyes narrowed. “She hasn’t gone anywhere.”
“Not yet,” JD said. “That’s the problem. The lie only works if part of it becomes true before anyone asks the right questions.”
Callum understood first. “Move her for real.”
JD nodded. “Once Doc clears her enough, she goes. Cabo, beach, private place, no public airport circus. We get real photos after the fact. Sun, ocean, Regan fussing over her, Destiny looking tired because she’s ‘been sick from travel.’”
Regan’s mouth tightened. “You’re asking me to take my injured daughter out of the country.”
“I’m asking you to keep your daughter from becoming the only face attached to that fire.”
Regan flinched.
JD looked like he hated himself for saying it.
But he didn’t take it back.
“That said,” he continued, turning toward Hacker, “nobody manufactures anything we may have to hand to a court. No fake evidence submitted. No forged documents in legal channels. You want social noise? Fine. You want plausible private receipts? We discuss it with counsel first. But the minute you hand fake records to a lawyer, an insurer, or a judge, you’re not helping Destiny.
You’re building a second felony on top of the first.”
Hacker nodded, chastened for once.
I respected JD then.
Not because he was clean.
No man in this room was clean.
But because he understood the line between dirty survival and stupid self-destruction.
Edge looked up the stairs again. “And if her face is already on video?”
“Then we change what the video means,” JD said.
Tris lifted her head.
JD turned toward her, Jake, and Nyla.
“That’s where you three matter.”
Jake stiffened.
JD’s voice gentled by a fraction. “I need everything. Screenshots. Group chats. Names. Dates. Who said what. Who printed the articles. Who taped money to her locker. Who called her a stripper. Who asked about her father. Who had drugs tonight. Who handed her the blunt. Who laughed when she was already gone.”
Tris’s eyes filled again.
“We have some,” she said. “Not all.”
“Get all,” JD said. “Quietly.”
Nyla wiped her face. “What if they delete things?”
Hacker snorted without looking up. “Then they’re adorable.”
JD shot him a look.
Hacker lifted one hand. “Sorry. Serious room.”
JD looked back at the kids. “They will try to turn Destiny into the monster of the night. We show motive, provocation, intoxication, possible drugging, and a pattern of targeted harassment against a minor. That doesn’t erase what happened, but it changes the battlefield.”
Tris nodded fast. “We can do that.”
Jake looked at Edge. “She didn’t want you hurt.”
Edge’s face went tight.
Jake swallowed, then kept going. “She said you all already had enough scars from Mandy. She said she wasn’t going to be the reason you had more.”
Regan turned away and pressed her hand to her mouth.
Edge closed his eyes.
JD’s face softened, just for a second.
Then he looked at Callum. “San Diego still has a meet with Santa Fe?”
Callum’s expression went dry. “This feels like it.”
“No. This is family triage. The meet waits, but the reasons for it don’t. If cartel movement was enough to bring you in, then tonight’s chaos is smoke cover. We can’t get tunnel vision on Destiny and miss someone using the fire to move something worse.”
That earned him a look from Callum.
Then a nod.
Because he was right.
I hated that he was right about everything.
My mind went back to the explosion. The first boom. The way the party had been too drugged, too easy, too ready to become chaos. A rich-kid disaster, maybe. Or something uglier wearing one.
“Someone dosed her,” I said.
The room turned toward me.
I hadn’t meant to speak.
But once I did, I kept going.
“Maybe it was just some spoiled kid with party drugs. Maybe not. But I saw her out there. She was too far gone too fast. Whatever she took hit hard. And those kids were already talking about ghosts, curses, Mandy. Like the story was primed before she ever picked up fire.”
JD stared at me.
Callum did too.
Edge came down the last step.
“What are you saying?”
I met his eyes. “I’m saying maybe those kids pushed her until she snapped. Or maybe someone wanted her to snap in public.”
The room went silent again.
Not grief this time.
Threat assessment.
Edge’s voice went deadly soft. “Why?”
I looked toward the stairs.
Toward where Destiny lay bleeding because the whole damn town had decided she was easier to haunt than protect.
“To hurt you,” I said. “To hurt her. To hurt Santa Fe. Pick one.”
Callum’s jaw tightened. “Or all three.”
Regan turned back.
Her eyes were wet, but the softness was gone.
Good.
Soft would not survive the next few days.
“What do we do first?” she asked.
JD looked at Doc, who had appeared at the top of the stairs again, listening with a grim expression.
“Can she move?”
Doc blew out a breath. “I don’t like it.”
“Nobody likes anything tonight,” JD said.
“She needs monitoring.”
“She’ll have it.”
“She needs fluids.”
“Bring them.”
“She needs to stay awake if concussion signs worsen.”
“Regan can do that.”
Doc looked at Edge.
Edge looked like refusing was killing him.
But JD’s words had done their work.
The clubhouse was too obvious.
The law was too close.
The other side of Santa Fe was already waking up with lawyers, rage, and money.
Finally, Edge said, “How long before she can leave?”
Doc’s mouth tightened. “Give me thirty minutes to wrap her hand better, check her pupils again, and get something in her stomach if she can tolerate it.”
“Twenty,” JD said.
Doc glared. “Thirty.”
JD nodded once. “Thirty.”
Edge looked at Cal, who had come in quietly sometime during the chaos, dust on his boots, ranch still clinging to him like a second skin.
Cal didn’t wait to be asked.
“I’ll call the ranch,” he said. “No lights on the north side. Horses ready. Gate open on the wash trail. Nobody uses the main drive.”
Regan straightened. “I’m going with her.”
“Yes,” Edge said.
It was not permission.
It was gratitude.
Regan crossed to him and took his face in both hands. For a moment, they stood like that in front of everyone, his forehead almost touching hers, both of them breathing through the same terror.
“She’s our baby,” Regan whispered.
“I know.”
“She thought she had to protect us.”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t anymore.”
Edge’s hands closed around her wrists.
“No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”
The words sounded like a vow.
JD turned back to Hacker. “Phones stay here. All of them. Destiny’s phone goes dark. Regan’s phone goes dark after Houston noise is planted, not before. Edge, you do not call her from your own phone once she moves.”
Edge’s head snapped up.
JD didn’t blink. “You want to protect her or soothe yourself?”
That was the bravest thing I had seen all night.
For a second, I thought Edge might break his jaw.
Instead, Edge gave one short nod.
“Good,” JD said. “Hacker, coordinate with counsel before anything that could become evidence. Callum, keep your men clean on this. San Diego getting caught helping Santa Fe hide a minor at a felony scene makes everything uglier.”
Callum’s mouth curved faintly. “Clean is relative.”
“Cleaner, then.”
Nate leaned toward me. “I hate when the suits make sense.”
“He’s wearing a cut.”
“Suit energy.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Upstairs, something thumped.
Regan moved first.
Edge was faster.
Both of them were gone up the stairs before the rest of us fully registered the sound.
I took one step without meaning to.
Then stopped myself.
Not mine.
Not my room.
Not my girl.
Never my girl.
Nate saw the step.
Of course he did.
His voice dropped. “Careful, brother.”
I stared at the staircase.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I looked at him then.
For once, he wasn’t joking.
Nate nodded toward the room, toward the men, toward Edge upstairs, toward the entire mess unfolding around one injured girl with fire in her blood and half a town ready to throw her on the pyre.
“She’s not just forbidden,” he said quietly. “She’s radioactive.”
I should have laughed.
I didn’t.
Because upstairs, Destiny cried out softly, and the sound went through me like a blade.
Radioactive.
Forbidden.
Edge’s daughter.
Mandy’s shadow.
Almost eighteen.
Almost ruined.
Almost mine.
No.
I killed that thought before it finished forming.
JD was still laying out the Cabo cover when I heard myself speak.
“They can’t go alone.”
Every head turned toward me.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
But enough that the weight of the room shifted and landed squarely on my shoulders.
I probably should have kept my mouth shut.
That seemed to be a theme tonight.