Among the Echoes (Wrecked and Ruined #2.5)(70)

I can’t focus on anything but Erica, but I somehow manage to drag my eyes to face him.

"We are gone, we were never here, and Wilkes broke in with the intentions of harming Erica. Your security officers were forced to kill Lucas Wilkes when he fired upon Leo." He drops three guns onto the couch beside me. "Ballistics will match one of those three guns to the bullet in Wilkes’s head. By the way, they are all registered to you. You may be ticketed for not securing them properly." He winks. "Do you understand? Leo and Erica have gone to great lengths to prove to me you are trustworthy in this matter. Do not disappoint me now." He taps my shoulder and turns to walk away.

I have no idea what the f*ck he just said, but all I know is that it ended with a bullet in Wilkes’s head. Absolutely nothing else matters.

"Clear the room!" Leo shouts, standing back up.

"Erica! Leo! Should you ever find yourself in need again, you know where to find me!" Rodriguez shouts over his shoulder as he heads back toward the security room.

Erica runs forward, slamming into my chest. "Don’t be mad," she says quietly.

"Oh, I’m f*cking furious, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why," I growl, looking at her with more anger than I ever thought possible.

"Well, the cops will be here any second, so aim your anger at the dead man on the floor. When they question you, remember everything happened except for the part where Rodriguez showed up."

"Jesus Christ, Erica, did you plan this?" I snap at her.

"Not now, Slate. We’ll talk tonight." She blows me off.

I don’t recognize this woman. There were just bullets flying around her, and now she is dismissing me as if I’d asked why we are out of milk.

Leo limps over even though it was his shoulder that was hit. He points down at the guns and says, "Pick those up and hand them to the guys. I need your prints on every single one of them."

I narrow my eyes at him but follow his orders. I’m not in any position to question him tonight.

Leo gives me the world’s quickest brief, reminding me of what ‘fictionally’ went down tonight. Not even two minutes later, the room fills with at least a dozen police officers. They question us numerous times until Leo’s contact at the US Marshal’s office shows up, clearing us all. I’m not sure if they believe our story as much as they just don’t give a damn that someone killed Lucas Wilkes.

They confiscated all of the weapons, but Leo assured me that they were in fact all legitimately (forged) registered to me. It seems Leo has been a busy guy over the last few weeks—even before he left.

However, it’s Erica who surprises me the most. I’m pissed as hell that she blatantly played me for a fool, but I’ve never been so proud of someone in my life. To watch her transform from the terrified woman I first met all those months ago is utterly incredible.

She’s far more of a fighter than I could ever imagine being.





"Are you f*cking kidding me?" Slate yells as I fill him in on how tonight came to be.

"Will you stop yelling?" I whisper-yell back at him.

We are, after all, in a suite in a downtown Chicago hotel. The last thing we need is the police being called on us yet again.

"You could have gotten us all killed!" he scolds, gritting his teeth.

I knew he would be pissed, and while I hate that he’s mad, I’m so euphoric about how flawless tonight went down that I can’t even hide my smile.

"Are you going to let me finish now?" I say, cocking my head to the side, but I’m sure I’m still smiling, which only pisses him off more. "So yeah, I may have drunkenly hatched this plan, but Leo and I were very sober when we put it into action."

"Fucking hell, get to the God damn plan. I can’t listen to you tell me for one more minute how you and Leo devised this shit over beer and pizza."

"Right. Well, Leo has always said that, as far as he could tell, Rodriguez didn’t hold any ill feelings toward either one of us for testifying against Dom, but we couldn’t be absolutely certain. I know I told you the story about how Wilkes’s little brother found us, but what you don’t know is that it was a member of the Marshal’s office who tipped him off about our whereabouts. He straight-up used us as bait to take down part of the Wilkes family. After that, I lost all faith in the program. If I’d had anywhere else to go, I would have gone. No questions asked. But we were both stuck.

"So while at dinner the night you were at the fight, and yes over a few beers, Leo and I decided we were sick of running and playing games with our own lives. I suggested using myself as bait to lure Wilkes out, but Leo being Leo, his first instinct was to protect me. However, within two hours, I talked him into it. Guilt is a hell of a tool," I say as Slate curls his lip in disgust. "Oh hush! It worked, didn’t it?"

"Erica, this is not a game. You could have been killed!" he says, but once again, I smile, because I am no longer afraid.

I know how it turned out. This conversation before tonight would have had me rethinking everything, but they say that hindsight is twenty-twenty. And tonight, I see freedom.

"We both knew you would never go for it, so we decided to keep you in the dark. I love you, Slate, more than anything in the entire world. But I couldn’t live like that anymore. Every single day, I lived in fear that not only something would happen to me, but worse that something would happen to you because of me. I knew you wouldn’t allow me to risk my life, no matter how solid the plan."