Page 7 of Eternally Ginger

“Not in the slightest. I don’t usually joke,” she said, point-blank without any hint of humor in her flat voice.

“It was rhetorical,” I deadpanned with a shake of my head and dropped into the chair. “What do you need us to do?”

“Bring Hazel to meet us.”

Frustration brimmed to the top and boiled over. I couldn’t take any more of this tiptoeing shit. Either Agent McFaye would have my cooperation, or she wouldn’t. It was as if she just called this meeting without considering how it would play out. Even the Royal Bastards MC preplanned when it was needed to deal with… however the hell she had put it, something along the lines of a sensitive manner. We were a fucking outlaw biker club and had our shit together, so they definitely should, considering the humongous number of people they employed.

“Then why the hell didn’t you just ask her to come with us? This makes no fucking sense.” My fingertips curled around my face and scrubbed up and down, pulling at my bottom lip as I tried to relieve some of the tension Agent McFaye created.

“Because Mr.—”

I cleared my throat to interrupt her. If she called me Mr. Blakely one more time in that uppity voice of hers, I was going to lose my shit.

“Ghoul,” she continued to speak, looking down the table to me, “this meeting wasn’t only for our sake. It was for yours as well. It wasn’t for the sake of Mr. Starcher or any of the other men here with us. It was for you.” She dragged her freshly manicured fingernails through her hair. This was on her. She could have made it easier for everyone if she would just give us all of the information at once and not make me pull it out of her like we were playing fucking twenty questions.

“Why?” I said, grinding my teeth together. Anger shot through my body, and my hands balled into fists for the second time in less than thirty minutes. If she didn’t get to the point, I was leaving. I’d had enough of her bullshit. “Spit it out…please,” I added the last part when her lips set into a thin line, hoping she would take the hint.

“We’re not certain if Hazel’s mother is alive or dead. I wanted to give you a chance to prepare her. That kind of news is best delivered by someone close whenever possible. I didn’t think she should hear it from us.”

“Well, damn.” I cleared my throat, rolling my shoulders, and adjusted my cut off my arms a bit. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information. Ginger didn’t talk about her mom much, but when she did, her words were never as forced as they were when her dad came into the subject, which was rare. I avoided talking about her dad every chance I could. It was the biggest reason I wasn’t forthcoming about essentially being a gun for hire. It was not that I was ashamed of what we were doing—I was actually pretty satisfied ridding the world of bad people, as Agent McFaye put it—I just didn’t want to remind Ginger her father was one of those men.

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