Page 73 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

With only one laptop between us, and my needs far outweighing Jay’s, he sits at the front window with his binoculars most of the day, sneaking to my laptop to get an eye on his brother while I take pee breaks.

He wants to snoop and find a little home, and while I sympathize with his need to make sure Kane is fine, I need my computer more. So he makes do with my pee breaks, and I order a new laptop online for him so he doesn’t have to keep making me coffee in hopes to make me pee more.

I run searches on everything I know up to this point, and I add Trenton’s cell data to the mix. I follow his GPS tracking; I plot his every move before he died in an attempt to find a pattern –where did he re-visit most? Who did he call the most? Who did he email the most?– and all the while, Jay works out to help regain his strength from before he was hurt. He builds up his lung capacity so he doesn’t have any moremomentswhile running from assholes with guns, then he watches Kane’s house.

April turns to May, and though Kane is here, and word is getting out, no one comes for him.

May turns to June, and the sad girl across the street smiles a little more often when Angelo arrives to work on the old Buick he drove up in that first time.

June turns to July, and finally, I let Jay out in the dead of night because he wants to visit with Raya Cruz, a woman who suffers from dementia, and to whom Jay swears he owes his life.

He’s been cooped up for months, forced to work out in the backyard or the spare bedroom, forced to watch the neighborhood kids play in the street while the child in him wanted so badly to join in on the games.

The cold that haunted us in our last city has turned to sweltering heat, and if I have to listen to him bitch once more, I might tie him to a tree and beat him with the stick the kids use to hit a baseball.

So I let him go for a midnight run; I demand he take his phone and gun, and when he arrives home at two with a goofy grin and a tale of how the forgetful Raya Cruz remembered him, hugged him, and told him he was welcome back anytime, I felt my heart unclench for the first time in months.

Jay Bishop is not a solitary man; he’s not a hermit, and he was not built to hide away inside a home for months at a time.

Staying in is killing him just as fast as Abel and the cocaine were, and though I’m only trying to protect him, I can acknowledge at least part of my insistence is to protect my mission.

I’m trading Jay’s happiness for my sister’s peace.

I have a powerful tool in my arsenal, a dangerous weapon that no one knows exists. I have Jay Bishop, the ghost, and I don’t want to risk losing that.

Ace doesn’t want to lose that, because of Ellie’s suffering.

And the woman in me, Sophia, doesn’t want to share him, because my heart beats faster having him here. He jokes of love, but I feel something each time he walks through the room and shoves gummies in his mouth. He jokes of forevers, but my heart insists forever can’t be a reality if he shows himself to the public.

So I hoard him and drive him a little crazier with each day that passes.

I’m so unbelievably selfish.

“Babe. Babe. Babe! Babe!” Jay bounds from his single chair by the window and races toward me.

Glancing up from my laptop and a military record that looks kind of promising, I meet his eyes and lift a brow. “Yeah?”

“Road trip!”

“Hm?”

He spins his laptop and shows me an image of four people sitting in Kane’s home. Kane sits with his blonde, Jess, and Angelo with the long hair watches the other blonde. The girls sit in the middle of the living room and write in a notebook, but the guys share stares that communicate something we’ll never know without words.

“They’re going on a road trip! They’re leaving, so we can finally get in.”

“Why do you wanna go in?” I drop my eyes back to my computer. “What’s inside that you want?”

“Apart from a giant cache of weapons, I just wanna go in. The heat is turning up on this shit, so getting him out of town is a good thing. You gotta order up some of those GPS dots, Soph.” He drops down onto the couch beside me and smiles when his weight has me falling into his side. Despite my work, he pulls my leg over his, then sets his laptop on top.

Kane Bishop smiles and watches his girl. His smile is similar to Jay’s, so unbelievably similar it makes my stomach clench. They’re not twins; they’re easily distinguishable. Jay’s face is a little rounder, his lips just a little thicker. Kane’s hair is a little shorter, though both men wear it short. But the things that matter, the things that make up their souls – their eyes and smiles – are the same.

On the screen, Angelo slams his water glass down and shoots to his feet, indicating for Kane to follow. Jay and I watch while new cameras are activated as the duo move through the kitchen and into the garage just like ours.

Stepping onto the concrete floor and closing the door, Kane turns with a smirk. “Feeling a little put out, Ang? I saw you humping her in the yard; your balls a little blue? Don’t fret, brother, at least you have a set.”

“Shut up,” Angelo replies in the same moment Jay flinches. It hurts Jay to hear Kane call him brother, to see this new friendship in the house across the street. Angelo isn’t just a guy who hangs around because of a girl. We’ve watched this family of misfits via camera for months; they have a bond, a brotherhood that cuts Jay deeply. Seeing his brother this happy is both a blessing and a curse; he feels replaced and redundant.

“Turn the cameras off,” Ang demands. “And the sound, and whatever else you got in here that feeds right back to the girls.”

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