Page 29 of Being Lost

“Is everything okay?” Lost asks, sounding concerned. “Not the way you like it, babe?”

“No,” I refute fast. “It looks too good. I can’t remember a time a man ever cooked for me.” I don’t think anyone ever has since I was a kid. My ex never did.

“What?” Lost fills his own plate, then comes and sits beside me. “Your son never brought you breakfast in bed?”

“I didn’t get the cooking gene,” Dan laughs. “But I do make a mean piece of toast.”

“Beth would spoil me,” I tell them, a pang of loss shooting through me. We’d prepare almost all our meals together, working as a team, each moving around the other with practiced ease, never getting in each other’s way, so familiar with what we were doing. I’d barely even had to give her instruction, she’d always second-guess me and have something chopped or taken out of the oven when it was ready.

“You miss her a lot.” Lost is eyeing me thoughtfully.

I grimace, seeing the look of regret on Dan’s face. “I can’t not,” I admit. “But I’ve got to put that behind me. She had me for twenty-seven years, I’m here for Dan now.” I decide continuing with this subject is going to see me in tears, so I change it. “What are you doing here so early, Lost? Is it about what happened yesterday? I thought you wanted Dan and I to come to meet you?”

“I did. I changed my mind.” He shoves some food in his mouth, chews and swallows it while I look on wondering how come the man can even eat sexily. “And it’s not early, it’s almost eleven o’clock.”

What?I glance at the clock on the oven and see that he’s right. Now my attire makes me feel worse than ever. I rarely oversleep. I’m just about to offer an apology when he speaks again.

“I needed to have a talk with you about what you do next.”

I open my mouth to ask what he’d discovered when he’d spoken to the man who had been following me, but my son doesn’t give me a chance.

“I move,” Dan says tersely, sending me a remorseful look. “This is my problem, not Mom’s. She should be able to go back to her old life, and I’ll get relocated again. Lost, it’s great Demon asked you to watch out for us, but no one should have ever known that Connor Foster was alive, let alone where Dan Forster went. So I’ll talk to the marshals, get them to change my name again, and then, well…”

Then he’ll disappear from my life and won’t be able to come back. I put down my fork having lost my appetite.

Lost narrows his eyes. “One choice you’ve got, obviously. Dan talks to the marshals and get either both of you or just him moved.”

“Our only choice,” Dan informs him.

“Not true.” Lost shakes his head. Unlike me, he’s still hungry and takes a moment to chew on a piece of bacon, as Dan and I sit impatiently waiting to hear what in hell other option we’ve got. I can’t think of anything. “What you can do,” Lost finally enlightens us, “is stay, face it head-on, and get Alder out of the picture for good.”

“Are you talking about taking him out?”

My eyes open wide and go toward my son who’d spoken. Phil had certainly been a bad influence on him as that hadn’t been the first thing that had come into my head.

Lost’s eyes are stern. “Commit murder? Plan it in cold blood?” I start shaking my head, ready to say of course Dan hadn’t meant that, but stop when he grins. “You’re growing on me, kid.”

Find Alder and kill him?My eyes flick to one then the other as I realise, they are right. We’ll never be free of him while he’s still breathing.

Chapter Ten

Lost

After I’d spent time talking to that asshole yesterday, I’d done what I normally do. I had retreated to my room to think. I’m not a man who leaps into action, not without considering all the options first.

I tend to look at a problem from one side and then the other, considering solutions then dismissing them, then formulating more. It hadn’t taken long to come to the conclusion that Dan and Patsy had had their fair share of running and needed the requirement for them to keep hidden over and done.

That I’d come up with the correct way to play things was confirmed when I’d placed an early morning call to my counterpart in Colorado. Demon had told me something in confidence that moved the goal posts considerably. It seems though the couple wasn’t officially announcing it as it was early days, Ink had admitted to his prez that Beth and he had something cooking, something that was going to arrive in seven more months.

If all goes well, Patsy was to become a grandma, and it seemed beyond cruel to keep that from her. Crueller still, perhaps, to let her know about it because she’d be more torn than she is already, wrenched between wanting to be there for Beth, and needing to stay with Dan.

She’s a loyal family woman but asking her to live as though she hasn’t got a daughter is tearing her apart. I can already see how much she’s hurting, and as yet, she doesn’t know exactly how much she’s going to miss.

So the idea I’d come up with became fixed in my head. It was the right path forward for Patsy and Dan, but that led me to different considerations. It’s one thing to offer our protection to them, quite another to put ourselves on the front line.

My problem is, am I right to ask my brothers to take on this fight, now we know who it’s likely we’ll be going up against?

I’ll be putting the club in this Alder’s headlights. A man so shady we know little about him, but one powerful enough to evade the reach of the feds. This isn’t some two-bit criminal we’re dealing with. This is a man who can command an army of druggies at the very least to search for the woman he wanted to locate. One drugged-up man can be overcome easily, but a whole group of men who have brown sugar dangled in front of them can be unpredictable and dangerous, without morals when they’re seeking their next fix.

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