24
Kaige
I couldn’t sleep,again. No surprises there. I stretched out in the hammock and took a big bite of the spicy taquito I’d grabbed on my late-night snack run.
The pot brownie in my pocket was going to make the perfect dessert. If I couldn’t rest, I could at least have a good time.
I was just popping the last bite of the taquito into my mouth when faint voices reached me. It was three in the morning—who the hell else would be wandering around at this time? Unless one of the guys on patrol was talking to himself.
Tipping my head to the side and squinting in the thin moonlight, I made out two figures coming to a stop under a tree several feet away from me. The thicker shadows there obscured their faces, but they were close enough for me to make out their low voices clearly now, and the one who spoke next was none other than the big boss himself.
“Is everything in place as we discussed?” Ezra asked.
I froze, holding my massive body as still as I could. What was the head of the Nobles doing having a chat out here in the middle of the night? Nothing good, I had to guess. Whatever was going on, Wylder would want to know about it, since there was no guarantee his dad would fill him in.
The other man’s head turned to scan the surroundings, and I stopped breathing, but he didn’t pause when his gaze skimmed past the hammock. Here between the two trees that held it up, it must have looked like nothing more than a vague blob in the darkness.
When he spoke, I recognized his voice as Axel’s. “I snagged the phone during the fight. The guy never had a clue. He’ll definitely remember her slamming into him, though. I gave her a good shove. He was pretty pissed.”
My nerves prickled. Was he talking about Mercy? I’d seen her collide with one of the Demon’s Wings men in the middle of the fighting yesterday. I hadn’t realized Axel had set that up, though. What the fuck was he playing at?
“And the rest?” The understated menace in Ezra’s tone made my blood run cold.
“It all went smoothly. I used Jasper’s contact details in the phone to arrange for him to be at a specific restaurant expecting to make a deal tonight. I just heard his men fended off the mercenary, and now he’s rightfully pissed that someone tried to take him out. He’s eager for blood for sure.”
“Perfect,” Ezra said. “Let me have the phone. I’ve already put out a request to speak with Jasper here this morning. I doubt he’ll take much convincing. I’ll say I caught her with the phone, and he’ll put the rest of the pieces together from there. Easy to encourage him to believe she was acting on wounded pride after the date she was forced into.”
I could hear the smirk in Axel’s voice. “And then you hand her over?”
“Naturally. We wouldn’t harbor some stray who’d commit an offense like that against an ally of ours.”
Axel chuckled, and my hands clenched. “Two bucks says that she doesn’t live past sundown.”
There was a rustle as Ezra must have pocketed the phone. “That’s my expectation, Axel. We get her out of the way while solidifying our alliance with a show of good faith. I look forward to seeing it through.”
Every muscle in my body tensed, my vision hazing with rage. I was going to kill them for talking about Mercy that way—for setting her up for some kind to attempted murder—they wanted to see her dead. After all Ezra’s talk about taking her into the Nobles—
A snarl caught in the back of my throat, and I was a split-second from flinging myself off the hammock and charging at them, fists swinging. I shifted my weight—and then closed my eyes.
No. No running in half-cocked. As satisfying as the idea was right now, pummeling Ezra Noble and his right-hand man wasn’t going to fix anything, was it? They’d probably kill me.
And then there’d be no one left who knew and could defend Mercy from their sick scheme.
For once, I needed to think. I had to be like Gideon, sharp and strategic.
Oh, who was I kidding? Better plan—I needed to get Gideon and let him do the thinking. And Wylder and Rowan, maybe Anthea too. I didn’t care how many people Ezra ruled over or how brutal he could be. We were not letting him destroy Mercy.
I waited several minutes, the thumps of my pulse almost deafening in the quiet of the night, until I was sure Ezra and Axel had gone back inside. Then I eased off the hammock and hurried to the house, all thought of anything other than protecting Mercy gone from my mind.
Everyone else was asleep, as you’d reasonably expect at this hour. I went to Wylder’s room first. It was his dad—he’d have the best idea how we should handle this.
On my way down the hall, I tapped in the emergency text code we’d decided on that would provoke an obnoxious ringtone to wake him up. I could tell it’d worked because I heard him muttering swear words under his breath through the door before I even rapped lightly on it.
As Wylder opened the door, he swiped his hand over his weary face and glowered at me. “The emergency had better not be that you’re out of Red Bull.”
“I wouldn’t use the code over something like that,” I said under my breath. “This is important. Mercy’s in trouble.”
Wylder snapped to alertness in an instant. No matter how much of a dick he’d been toward her, he clearly didn’t like the idea of anyone else causing her problems. He motioned me into his room and shut the door behind me. “Tell me everything.”