Page 4 of Sunrise Arrows

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” he brushes away before hugging me back.

When I step back from him, I put on a stern voice and order, “Make sure Briar gets home safely. And don’t take any of her shit. There will bezerohookups with anyone from your old team. For meorher. They can survive war, but we both know they won’t survive a night with Briar Davenport.”

From behind me, Mikey hoots out his agreement before bumping both his fists against John’s in parting.

We wait for John to get back in the SUV and head down the driveway. Once Mikey receives a notification on his phone that the gate’s secure, we head inside. The big muscled and tattooed man who has the first overnight shift with me looks hilarious with the handles of my pink luggage in each of his giant hands. By contrast, for the last seven months, he’s been living out of the far too practical black duffle bag that’s slung over his shoulder.

The front door has hardly shut behind us and the bags dropped before Mikey is swearing up a blue streak. My house is trashed. There’s dirty glassware and dishes clustered together on every available surface. The smell of cigarettes and weed is so pungent, I’m slapping my hand over my mouth and nose to try and stifle it as I tuck my face into my shirt.

Mikey is all business as he wiggles an earbud in and calls John while yanking me behind him and pulling out his gun.

“You know the drill, Miss Jacobs: you stay to my right and behind me while I clear the house.”

As he talks to John in clipped phrases summoning him back to the house, I grip the back of his shirt and follow his steps.

When we come to the kitchen, we find an entire cleaning crew filing in from the back service entrance. Mikey barks questions at them, but no one answers as they all stare at me.

“You’re… you’re… you’re…” one of the women stutters, pointing at me. “I can’t… Maria, pinch me.”

“Where’s Sonya?” Mikey demands, scanning each person as if they’re an enemy of the state that made my majordomo, Sonya,disappear. “How’d you get her code?”

“Corey,” I scoff in answer, abandoning the training and obedience Mikey and John have given me over the years that they say has made me a dream client as I turn around and head for the back stairs.

“Miss Jacobs!”

“Don’t worry about it, Mikey. It’s just CoreyfuckingWithers,” I snap, stomping up the stairs as he runs after me.

We hear the front door open down below, and John calls out for us. Mikey quickly relays where we are as I burst through my bedroom door, ready to dump Corey both on his ass and out of my life for good—but not before making him help clean my damn house he wrecked.

When I see my bed, I stop dead in my tracks. There’s not one person or even two in it like I was prepared to find. There’s three.

Any final threads of patience I possess snap.

I snatch the first thing I can reach—a glass candle jar, not exactly the best, but I’ll have to make do—and throw it at him shouting, “WAKE UP, ASSHOLE!”

Corey and the two naked women in my bed spring awake as the candle shatters a good five feet away from them, fighting over the sheet to cover themselves.

When his wild, bloodshot eyes lock on me, I put my hands on my hips and smile in a way that would send the Devil himself running and greet, “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

Corey jumps out of bed, taking a pillow with him to cover up what Briar accurately guessed is a less than impressive package and stammers, “I can explain.”

“Don’t need you to. I just need you to put that nub between your legs away and go clean my goddamn house. And when you’re done, get the hell out and lose my number.”

“Miss, I’m gonna have to request you put that away,” Mikey says sternly to one of the women who has pulled out her phone.

“Tinsel, baby, come on, we can talk.”

“Ihateit when you call me ‘tinsel.’”

“Ma’am, he said put the phone away,” John says more forcefully.

Behind him, Briar’s phone is going crazy, no doubt getting blown up with notifications from whatever the naked woman in my bed is doing that seems to be more important to her than getting the hell out or even getting dressed like her friend is doing.

“Lux, come on,” her friend urges, trying to hand her clothes and push her phone down.

“Are you kidding? This is Tinsley freaking Jacobs and Carsen Withers.”

“It’s Corey,” the worst arrangement of my career corrects.

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