Page 7 of Pay the Price

I looked at Wolf. “Want one?”

He shook his head and patted the sheath holding his knife. “I’m good.”

“These guys aren’t townies having a little fun,” I said.

We’d left the diner after our meeting with Crash, gone to an electronic store to buy a drone, and driven straight to the woods to scope out the situation.

It wasn’t great: lots of big guys wearing tactical gear, looking like soldiers guarding a dangerous prisoner rather than a twenty-year-old girl who’d probably never been farther than a hundred miles away from her rich dad’s property.

“I know,” Wolf said.

I took one of the semiautomatics, then closed the panel hiding the spare tire compartment.

Wolf could handle himself — with or without a gun.

Neo and Drago were already there, armed and ready to go. A minute later, Rafe and his men — I hadn’t bothered to memorize their names — joined us in full tactical gear: Kevlar, grenades clipped to their belts, the whole bit.

He looked us over. “You want some more gear? We have extra Kevlar.”

“I’ll take a vest,” Neo said.

I looked at him in surprise.

He glared, silently daring me to say something. “I’m going to be a father. You think I’m going to leave my kid without one of their dads for this shit?”

“I’ll take one too,” Drago said.

Jesus fuck. If loving a woman and becoming a father made you a fucking pussy afraid of a firefight, one where we had the advantage of surprise, that was a hard pass for me forever.

Daisy’s face flashed in my mind, the way she looked when she was sleeping, when I watched her on the security cameras Otis had installed in her bedroom. Would my life matter if she loved me? If she had my baby?

WouldImatter?

It took me about a half second to get real. Daisy would never — could never — love someone like me.

Not that I fucking cared.

I was only here because she was Blake’s little sister, because we’d promised each other a long time ago that we’d keep her safe.

“You pussies ready now?” I asked after Neo and Drago had strapped on the Kevlar.

“We don’t have to be here you know,” Drago said, his dark eyes flashing.

“Let’s fucking go,” I said, heading into the trees.

I slowed down to let Wolf move into position in front of me. No one knew these woods like Wolf. He’d get us to the dam.

And then we’d get Daisy out.

I tried not to think about Blake’s phone, about the fact that we’d found it in her bag, our last conversation right there in his text history for anyone to see. I wasn’t naive enough to believe Daisy hadn’t seen it: she’d had Blake’s phone for a reason, had been angling for the truth about his murder since the night she’d invited us to stay at the house.

She knew we’d killed him, and that was going to change everything — if we could get her out alive.

Chapter 4

Drago

Imoved through the woods behind Neo — Rafe and his men at my back — and tried to get used to the Kevlar. It was a literal lead weight on my chest, but Neo was right: we couldn’t afford to take chances.

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