Page 41 of Sacrifice the Knight (Checkmate 6)

“But then her knight in shining armor rounded the corner and started humping her leg,” Spence adds. “Figured you had it under control from that point.”

“You better have fucked onhercar and nobody else’s,” Ang smarts. “We’re glad you got laid, so we aren’t judging, but if I find her panties stuck on Art Montgomery’s windshield when he trusted me to take care of his Cadillac, I might get a little pissed.”

“You gotta delete that footage. Now.” I climb to my feet and slam Jay out of the way. Head wounds be damned, I’ll slam him with a baseball bat until he stops giggling at Katrina’s expense. “Delete it, and never tell her you got it.”

“Relax.” Spence pushes Jay back when he laughingly tries to come closer. “Feed inside the garage was switched off the second you unlocked that door. We don’t care about your ass being on video, but we figured Katrina would die if she was filmed and found out. It breaches some privacy rights, I think.”

“No footage?”

“Nothing,” Jay giggles.Giggles! “We see you taking her through the door, then nothing. It’s like the worst porn ever.”

“You don’t see me and her… You see nothing?”

“Nothing,” Ang confirms. “Relax, she’s free and clear. You’re lucky I trust you, because nobody has ever let themselves into my garage before without my permission. Now there’s gonna be sex germs everywhere.”

“You mean, sex germs separate from your own?” Spence asks with a chuckle. “I know you fuck that pretty girl against the hoist. You’re a sick motherfucker,Riggs, so I know you make shit kinky for her.”

“You don’t get to ask about that shit.” Ang points in Spence’s face and doesn’t back down when seven feet of muscle and death steps up. “You better mind your manners around her, Spence. You tease Jess, and it’s cool because she’s got the sass to back it up. You tease Soph, and that’s okay, because she’ll slit your throat if you take it too far.”

“Yeah I will.” Stopping at the boardroom door and folding her arms, Soph watches us with a smile as her client walks toward reception. “I’m not a sissy, and I don’t mind getting blood on my hands.”

“Love you, Sugar Plum.” Forgetting me, Jay walks across the room and takes his girl in for a long kiss. “Your badassery is most of the reason I love you.”

“Most? Asshole, my beauty and wit are why you love me.”

“You’re a package deal.” He slides his tongue into her mouth and makes the rest of us turn away.

“Katrina’s free and clear,” Ang repeats. “We saw nothing but you taking her through the door. I saw you leave again and lock up.”

“Thirty-four minutes,” Spence chuckles. “Reasonable amount of time. Could’ve done better, but you definitely could’ve done worse. She was smiling, so…”

“You fuckers sat and waited for us to come back out?”

Ang shakes his head, but Spence nods his like a bobble head toy. “I totally waited. Thirty-four minutes was a long time for me to watch a door, but my imagination got me through it.”

I turn away before I’m tempted to hit a guy bigger than me. We’re friends, brothers, even, but if I start hitting, he’ll retaliate, and I don’t feel like adding a broken face to my healing shoulder. I’m man enough to admit who would win that fight, and there’s no arguing with obnoxious or stupid, so I turn away from the TV screen that plays a ten-second loop of me and Katrina letting ourselves into the garage and go back to my desk.

Keys in, door open, door closed. Keys in, door open, door closed. Over and over, with a fuzzy reset between each.

Someone watched this and fixed the loop to be the most annoying.

I’m laying that right in Jay’s lap.

“I’ve got work to do.” I collect my chair from where it rolled ten or so feet from my desk and drop down with a grunt. “Nobody talk to me.”

“You’d think he’d be more relaxed.” Soph snuggles under Jay’s arm and snickers. “He got laid last night for the first time in forever.”

“Shut up, ballerina! Nobody asked you.”

* * *

Ten hoursafter leaving the diner and five hours after Jess and Kane got back to the office with white faces and shaking hands, I pull up to their home in suburbia and cut the engine. It’s six o’clock on the dot, and the whole block is covered in cars since Jess’ family is massive and everyone knows something big is going down.

Today’s announcement will hardly come as a surprise, but tensions are still high, and big brothers are on alert. Harsh words might be said, so I vow to step in the middle and keep the peace between the Capulets and the Montagues until Jess can get the news out and Kane survives the attacks on his life.

Pocketing my keys and heading up the front path of the home I was living in for a while, I smile when Jess’ twin sister spills out the front door with a relieved gasp. “Finally!” The woman who was once scared of her own shadow grabs my arm and pulls me forward. “Everyone’s here, and the air is thick like butter.”

“They didn’t announce it yet?”

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