Chapter 27 #2
“Sorry about the mess,” Ink said as he got into the passenger seat. There was a strange man in the driver’s seat. “This is my truck even though Stone is driving. This stuff is mostly from driving my daughter around.”
Addie nodded, and she glanced around as she realized that no one else was in the car, except for her and Cash in the back and Stone driving.
“We thought we’d mix things up a bit. Captain, one of my other men, is driving another car with your sisters. I’ll get someone to pick up the other vehicles and bring them later.”
“Addie, meet Ethan Stone,” Cash said. “Stone. This is Addie. She doesn’t say much when she’s stressed and anxious. How is your throat? Does it hurt?”
She wobbled her hand in the air. So-so. Which wasn’t entirely true. Her throat definitely hurt. All she wanted was a hug but she wasn’t sure how to ask for one. She leaned against the door, but the window was cold, and for some reason, she was shivering.
Suddenly, something warm was placed around her, and she glanced down to see that Cash had taken off his jacket and set it over her.
“You’re shaking,” he said. He fiddled with the controls for the back seat, and the seat beneath her bottom grew warm.
A feeling of relief filled her, and her muscles started to relax. Of course, her stomach chose that moment to let out a loud growl. Shoot, that was embarrassing.
Cash shot her a look. “That might explain why you’re shivering. You’re exhausted and hungry. We need to get some food into you.”
“The safe house is fully stocked,” Ink said from the passenger seat, where he was doing something on his phone. “I’m just going to set up a roster so they always have someone with them for the next few days.”
“I’ll be there,” Cash told him.
He would be? Relief filled her. She hadn’t considered that somebody would stay at the safe house with them, and to have a stranger there would have been really hard on her.
It was bad enough that she was going to be staying in a strange place without her own bed or her things around her, but having someone in the house that she didn’t know, she wasn’t sure how she would handle that.
Addie was already on edge from spending days in that hotel room, and then having someone trash it. Even though it wasn’t her space, it still felt like an invasion.
Addie needed her routine back. Reaching down, she picked up her bag and placed her hand inside it so that she could feel Snaggles.
Instantly, she felt a bit better, more settled.
A bit like how she felt in Cash’s arms. But it was probably best that she didn’t think about that.
Cash’s gaze moved down to her hand, where it was hidden inside her bag. Leaning over, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out.
It was her cube squishy! She’d been wondering where it was.
“You left this in my truck.” He handed it over to her, and she took it with a grateful smile, squeezing it firmly. That helped a lot.
Ink turned. “I might need to get one of those.”
“What is it?” Stone asked.
“One of those stress ball squishy things. Might help me cope every time I get a phone call about the twins.”
“You probably just burst it with how hard you’d be squeezing it after a phone call like that,” Stone told him.
“Good point,” Ink replied. “My twin boys are a handful. They’re in college, which you’d think would mean that they’d start behaving themselves and making better decisions.
But they nearly got kicked out last month because they hacked into this guy’s phone and blasted his content across all of the computers campus wide. ”
Holy heck.
How had they done that? And why?
“Turns out the guy was a complete ass,” Ink added. “He had all these videos that he’d taken of girls through the windows of their dorms. Anything to identify the girls had been blocked out, but it was clear what he was doing.”
“Good for them,” Cash said. “I’d do the same if I had those sorts of skills.”
“I don’t object to what they did, just the way they did it. They really don’t need to get kicked out of college. Anyway, back to you being on the roster for the safe house. Are you forgetting that you don’t work for me?”
That’s right. Cash was only here out of the goodness of his heart, right?
Although she couldn’t really understand why he cared so much. Why was he putting himself at risk? Was it really just because she climbed into the back of his truck and he felt responsible for her?
That didn’t make a lot of sense.
“You’re going to need people to watch them. I’m free. I have the skills to take care of them. So does Ralen. So put us on the roster.”
“And what about the person you actually work for? How would he feel about all this?”
Were they keeping Cash from his actual job?
She couldn’t let him do this. He needed to go to work, or how was he going to pay all his bills?
“Let me worry about that,” Cash said.
“The last thing I need is your boss coming for me,” Ink replied.
“He won’t.”
There seemed to be some subtext that she didn’t understand, or maybe she was just too tired to figure it out. Exhaustion was pulling her under, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes open.
She couldn’t fall asleep here. She still wasn’t safe. No matter that her body seemed to think otherwise with Cash around.
“Just put me on the roster. I’ll figure everything else out,” Cash said.
Ink shook his head. “I can’t have you pulled away to go do something else.”
“I won’t be.”
There was a tense silence between them.
“If I get called away, I’ll let you know, and I won’t leave until there is someone there to protect them,” Cash said. “Look, you don’t have to put me on the roster, but I’m going to be there, all right?”
“Yeah, all right.” Ink sent him a knowing look that she didn’t understand, then he turned back around and glanced over at Stone. “We’re not being followed?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” Ethan Stone said. “I’ll check in with Captain but I haven’t seen anyone who looks like they’re following us and have taken a roundabout route.”
“Good. Then let’s go to the safe house.”