Page 19 of Caught
Chelsea and Olivia giggled.
Leilah shook her head. “You’re terrible. And keep it down. The last thing we need is to get kicked out of this place before we’ve managed to properly talk ourselves into it.”
The number changed on the display.
“Oh, we’re up!” Chelsea exclaimed.
8
As the four men started down the trail that Reggie Slidell had taken only moments earlier, Trent pulled out his phone to text Olivia.
Ryan bobbed his head in Trent’s direction and said to Omar, “They went to Frederick, right?”
“The girls?” Omar asked.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Ryan frowned. He’d known—apparently, they’d all known—that Leilah, Marielle, Chelsea, and Olivia had no intention of sitting on their hands simply because they hadn’t been invited to the meeting with Slidell. But he didn’t love the idea of the four of them off on their own.
“That’s okay with you?” he pressed.
Omar shrugged. “Olivia’s highly trained. She could probably take any one of us. Marielle’s a genius. Chelsea’s tough, and she knows all that survivalist stuff. She could probably make a fire with a paperclip or some crap.”
“And Leilah?”
Omar stopped walking and turned to face him. “My sister is mean. And I say that with love. She’s stubborn and determined and mean, like a predator. A tigress. She’ll hold her own.”
Ryan eyed him closely.
“What?” Omar said.
“You’re right about Leilah. But if that’s really what you think, what was all that stuff about making me promise to protect her and take care of her?”
Omar flashed a lopsided grin. “Standard operating procedure for big brothers and the fools who want to date their sisters.”
Ryan drove his shoulder into Omar’s. “You wanna go?”
Omar laughed and shouldered him back, raising his fists and dancing from one foot to the other like a prize fighter. “Bring the heat, Hayes.”
Jake turned around. “Save it for the gym. Let’s go.” Then he called ahead to Trent, who’d disappeared around the bend. “What did Olivia say?”
Trent didn’t answer.
Jake cupped his hands around his mouth. “Trent!”
Trent hollered back, “Get your asses down here.”
They broke into a run. When they rounded the curve, Trent was squatting beside a figure crumpled on the path. Reggie Slidell lay on his back with a gunshot wound between his eyes. He gasped for breath, and frothy blood burbled from his mouth.
“That’s not a good sign,” Jake muttered. He pushed Trent aside. “Call 911.”
Jake put his battlefield medic training to use while Trent placed the call.
“Did you hear a gunshot?” Ryan asked Omar, who was staring at Slidell’s prone body.
“No. They must have used a silencer.”
