TEN
Blaze
Even first thingin the morning at this time of year, the roofed backyard was hot enough to send sweat trickling down my back. I wanted to pace to let out my restless energy, but walking around only made the heat more uncomfortable.
Nothing was as uncomfortable as the tension between the four of us, though. I couldn’t remember the last time that the Chaos Crew had been so divided in our opinions, but a pretty girl and an angry client seemed to bring out our different moral compasses.
“Toss her to the client, and let him handle the little thief. Wiping our hands of her will be the best thing we could do,” Garrison said, shaking his head. “What’s she worth to us anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter what she’s worth,” Julius said evenly. “It’s a question of what’s justified. If we believe her story, then she barely had anything to do with the job. It might look worse for us to admit someone got past our surveillance to see the scene of the crime. And whoever hired us for the job, they’re not likely to want witnesses walking around.”
Despite what he was saying, I could hear the doubt in his words. Dess could be a threat to us as much as to the client, depending on how much exactly she’d seen. Julius put the security of the crew above all else.
“If we believe her,” Garrison said in a scoffing tone.
“She hasn’t acted as if she knows we had anything to do with it,” I had to point out. Dess hadn’t exactly warmed up to us in the past day, but we hadn’t given her much of a chance to. She hadn’t seemed scared of any of us—the opposite, really. I’d rarely seen anyone less nervous when faced with Talon’s physical prowess and icy gaze.
Garrison grimaced at me, which meant he couldn’t argue against that specific statement. That fact didn’t stop him from going on, though. “You heard her. She stole from her friend after finding her dead. Do we really want a chick like that sticking around?” He took a swig from his morning mug of hot cocoa.
I didn’t know how he didn’t end up as wired as I was with all the sugar and caffeine he put in his system. The guy downed the stuff like an insomniac chugs coffee.
Talon grunted. “It didn’t sound like she had another option. Desperate people do desperate things. But that applies to how she might act with us too. She’s unpredictable.”
Talon would go along with whatever Julius decided in the end, but he’d want to come to that decision quickly. The guy always preferred to deal with potential threats as swiftly as possible.
“Exactly,” Garrison said. “And the client is breathing down our necks. If it’s those necklaces and the cash he’s after for whatever reason and he finds out we kept them from him, it’ll be our heads on a platter. We’re just seeing the job through.”
What he said made logical sense. I couldn’t deny that. But something in me balked at his suggestion anyway. The same something clenched up when I saw how pensive Julius looked as he rubbed his jaw, as if he was seriously considering Garrison’s suggestion.
Dess had a quality to her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but it intrigued me—maybe because I couldn’t identify it. She wasn’t like any other woman I’d ever come across, and I’d made the acquaintance of quite a few in my time.
I wasn’t thinking just with my dick, though. She might have been mysterious, but I didn’t think she was an enemy. She’d done what any of us would have done when trapped: fought to escape. Her story was tragic but understandable.
If we threw her to the client, he’d almost definitely kill her. How would we be any better than the asshole boyfriend she’d finally escaped?
I cleared my throat. “We all know what’ll happen to her if we hand her over. She’s going to end up dead, and possibly tortured plenty before then. All because she ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time? I thought we only hurt people who deserve it.”
“It wouldn’t be us hurting her,” Garrison said with a twitch of his jaw that indicated he wasn’t as indifferent to Dess’s fate as he was pretending. “Would you rather we handed ourselves over instead?”
The sneer in his voice would have raised most people’s hackles. I knew it was just Garrison being his usual arrogant asshole self.
“Well, personally, I’m confident that I can defend myself if the client tries to pick a fight,” I replied evenly, deliberately poking at him with the words. The implication was, of course, that he wasn’t so sure of himself.
Garrison’s eyes flashed, and his jaw tightened even more. “Why would we put ourselves in danger if we can avoid it?”
I shrugged. “What part of our code makes using an innocent girl as a shield an acceptable approach? Or are you in favor of throwing out the whole code now, just because she made you feel incompetent?”
“We think she’s innocent,” Garrison retorted. “Do we really know her?” At the edge that came into his voice, I knew I’d hit another solid blow.
It was way too easy heckling Garrison. He’d never drop his mask completely, but he couldn’t put on a total front with us. We might not know all of each other’s dirty secrets, but we knew the biggest one that mattered right now, the one we were all mixed up in. It was good for him to remember that.
Besides, Julius was listening. I was mostly talking for his benefit.
I shot Garrison a wide smile. “I think I know her better than I know you.”
His mouth snapped shut. It only took him a few seconds to loosen up his posture, taking a deep breath and regaining his composure. “Then I’m doing the job Julius hired me for well.”
“Enough,” Julius ordered, raising his hands. We both fell silent, our attention turning to him. He frowned, and then tipped his head toward us. “We don’t know how true her current story is. We also don’t know if those necklaces are even what the client was worried about. Acting without information—or with the wrong information—is what screws people over. We’ll take her to the mansion today and see how she reacts to the crime scene.”