“And I don’t know why the fuck she did that, but the penthouse is our space. Crew only. She doesn’t belong there.”
“Steffie comes all the time,” Talon pointed out.
Garrison rolled his eyes. “Steffie’s practically crew too. You guys took her on before you even brought me in.”
There was more to his defiance, though, wasn’t there? I didn’t think he only objected to Dess over Steffie because Steffie had been with us longer.
Garrison might never admit it, but I doubted he hated Dess as much as he pretended. I saw the way they bickered, and I’d noticed the light that had danced in his eyes—a genuine enthusiasm that I so rarely saw in him.
Dess wasn’t a danger to our lives, but she was a danger to the steel walls he’d built to ensure nobody could get past them.
But then, I wasn’t being totally honest with the others about my reasons for wanting to keep her with us either.
There’d been a moment toward the end of the fighting when I’d glanced over and caught a glimpse of her face in the middle of grappling with the last man she’d killed. Something about the cool stillness of her expression and the intense focus in her gray eyes had triggered a jolt of recognition. One that had made me want to run over and tear the guy trying to hurt her limb from limb.
It didn’t make much sense. I couldn’t place her, couldn’t say where or when I might have encountered her before. There was no point in putting much stock in the impression. But even now, when I checked on her stance in the car again, that protective urge flickered up in my chest.
I planned my life and our careers according to hard data and strategic thinking, but I’d learned to trust my instincts too. And my instincts insisted that this woman was someone we should defend just as vehemently as she’d defended us.
I turned back to Garrison. “We already have an extra room, so no one’s getting put out on the sofa this time. We can set up a cot in the weight room. With Steffie coming by regularly, she’ll have an added layer of supervision. We’ll have all our equipment right there, everything we need to take care of our work in one place. You can’t get simpler than that.”
“We can’t hand her over to that Viper prick,” Blaze added. “And we can’t let her go when we still don’t know what her real story is. Julius’s approach is the only way that covers all the bases.”
Garrison turned his glower on the techie. “You just want another chance to put the moves on her. Nearly having your windpipe crushed once wasn’t enough?”
Blaze rubbed his throat. “She didn’t hit me that hard. And I provoked her. She hasn’t been remotely aggressive with any of us except in self-defense, has she?”
Talon hesitated as if he still had a few doubts, but then he dipped his head. “She hasn’t. There’s something more to her than she’s said, but I don’t think it makes her a threat to us.”
Garrison’s eyes became narrower. Then a switch flipped inside of him. He stood straighter, loosened his posture, and placed a cold expression on his face. “Fine, but if she kills us all in our sleep, I hope you die knowing that I was right.”
“If we die, you will too, so you won’t get much satisfaction out of it,” Blaze retorted.
Garrison ignored him and stalked back to the car. He whipped the door open and dropped into the front passenger seat without so much as a glance at Dess. She looked at him and then the rest of us approaching, her expression coolly quizzical.
“We’re taking you somewhere,” I said as I got in on the driver’s side.
She cocked her head, a glint of amusement coming into her pretty eyes. You wouldn’t have known looking at her that just an hour ago she’d stabbed at least one man to death. But then, who knew how much shit she’d seen before she fell in with us. We weren’t exactly broken up about the violence we’d dealt out either.
“Let me guess,” she said dryly. “You’re not going to tell me where.”
“You’re catching on,” Garrison muttered.
I gestured to Talon and gave Dess a mildly apologetic smile. “For this trip, you’re going to be blindfolded. I don’t want you even seeing where we’re going.”
Her body stiffened just slightly, the light in her eyes vanishing as if storm clouds had rolled in. “Blindfolded? What the hell—”
“You’ll be able to take it off as soon as we get inside,” I said, cutting her off. “It’s a precaution for both our security and yours.”
I watched as an array of emotions flashed through her gaze, each pushed away until cool indifference was the last thing that remained. “I feel like it should be illegal for cops to blindfold people and take them places.”
Blaze’s laugh filled the car, and I went on before he could say something stupid. “It’s also illegal to kill people, but on some occasions, it’s necessary.”
“You’re not going to arrest me for that, right? Isn’t self-defense allowed?”
“It is,” I said. “You were our responsibility, and we’re responsible for what happened in the safe house too.”
She nodded slowly and leaned into her seat. “Fine, but you’re going to take the blindfold off as soon as we get there.”
As Talon placed a strip of thick cloth over her eyes, a sense of appreciation rose up inside me. For the trust she’d just shown us that I wasn’t sure we’d earned, considering I was still lying through my teeth about who we were. For the way she’d fearlessly fought on behalf of four men she barely knew. Maybe she was some kind of kindred spirit, a piece we hadn’t known the crew was missing. She wasn’t an enemy—of that, I was completely sure.
But at the same time, I had no doubt that if she became a liability, I would kill her. The crew always came first.
I just couldn’t help hoping it wouldn’t come to that.