Page 57 of Ransom

"You disabled her car every day for months and never told her. What do you call that if not a lie?"

"Practical." He takes a giant bite of banana and looks between us, unblinking. It's creepy.

"Fuck!" Maverick yells, caving to the unrelenting stare. "Fine. Stop it. Ransom has this situation he's been dealing with for about a year. And I think everything's coming to a head."

Jonas scowls at us. "Explain. Be specific."

Groaning, I grab Maverick's arm in one hand and the neck of Jonas's t-shirt in the other, and haul them both toward my office. Something cold and wet presses on my hand, and I release Jonas with a very manly squeak.

"Ew. Did you just rub your banana on me?"

"No. I licked you."

"What is wrong with you?"

He gives me a dead-eyed stare. "The list is long and varied. We don't have that kind of time. Now explain."

I slap a laughing Mav on the back of his head, then drop onto the couch in my office. "Close the door. We don't need an audience for this conversation."

Mav pushes the door shut, then leans his ass on my desk. Jonas crosses his arms and takes another bite of his banana.

"Mav, you want to start at the beginning?"

He grips the edge of my desk and sighs. "About a year ago, Ran came to me and asked me to put an offer together for this garage about two hours away. The numbers didn't really make sense, and the town's pretty far out from a major urban center. Something about it was off, but I didn't ask too many questions, and then I forgot about it. He was offering good money, so I figured it would be a simple transaction. Nobody in their right mind would turn down that kind of offer. It had to be at least double what the place was actually worth."

He winces and scratches the stubble on his chin. "A few weeks later, I got the paperwork back. With a frowny face shot in it."

Jonas barks out a surprised laugh, then takes another bite. "Continue," he says, chewing.

"Things continued mostly like that for nearly six months. I got paperwork back that was chopped into little pieces ordelivered inside a bag of dog shit. There was even a glitter bomb. Looked homemade."

"Where did the bomb go?" Jonas asks, taking a big step forward, looking all sorts of excited.

"That's not important," Mav says shortly. Of course, Jonas wants to examine the bomb. Probably looking for inspiration for his next attack on one of us. Mav's avoiding our gazes, and realization dawns.

"Fucker. You took it and used it, didn't you?"

Mav glares at me but doesn't deny it. "Anyway," he says, turning back to Jonas. "Shit just came to a head, and Nick and I decided we needed to head there in person and figure this shit out. Ransom wasn't talking, and the whole situation was fucked."

Jonas is all in. He sits on the arm of the couch, leaning toward Mav. "What did you find?"

"That the Blair McKenna's who's been fucking with Ransom's head this whole time is a woman. A fucking six-foot-one knockout of a woman."

Jonas's eyes widen, and he glances over at me. "They knew each other?"

"She said Ransom was too big of a coward to come back there. And that whatever deal Ransom and her dad had, it didn't matter, so I'm thinking, yeah."

"Uh oh," Jonas mutters.

"Exactly. I mean, Ransom doesn't talk about his past. At all. We know some bad shit went down, but I had no idea he had a connection to a small town like Badger Falls."

"What did he say?"

"She's his foster sister! He lived there, in that town with Blair and her dad for years."

"Uh oh," Jonas mutters again. "And this all happened when?"

"Last fall."

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