Dream Chaser (Dream Team, #2)(53)

I unlocked and opened the door.

Axl was standing smack in the frame.

He did a body scan which ended in a quick but intense face scan before he asked, “You good?”

There was a lot happening in that moment, so I’ll quickly break it down.

Not sure this was priority, but I’ll start with the fact Axl was amazing-looking.

The kind of amazing-looking that, no matter how often you saw him, or, say, someone might just have been shot outside your back door, you had to take a second to process how amazing-looking he was.

He was young, probably in his early thirties, like all of Boone’s friends, but he had a thick head of hair that was kind of a creamy silver, a pair of piercing, steel-blue eyes, knockout bone structure, and as was de rigueur with these dudes, a killer bod.

Second, I had a feeling Brett just called me to share he, or more accurately one of his men, shot someone who was trying to break into my house.

To communicate this last part to Axl, I began, “I’m okay. Uh—”

That was as far as I got.

Axl started issuing orders.

“I gotta go out and meet the cops. Go to your living room. Stay in your living room. Don’t go to the kitchen. You with me?”

Don’t go to my kitchen?

“Just—”

He gently twisted the Taser out of the death grip I had on it and put it on the bathroom sink.

He then took my hand in both of his and stated, “A lot is going to happen fast right about now, Ryn. Before it does, take a second, get your shit together, yeah?”

I nodded.

He squeezed my hand just as a loud knock came from the direction of the front door and a deep voice shouted, “Police!”

“Be back,” he said on another squeeze and then he took off.

Okay, shit.

Okay, shit.

Threat neutralized.

Was there a dead guy on my back deck?

I went to my living room, eyeing Axl in my front hall who was talking to the cops at the door, but I didn’t take a second to get my shit together.

I didn’t because I didn’t have a second.

The cops were in, Axl with them, crowding me like he was a bodyguard and I was a celebrity unsuspectingly caught in a sea of rabid fans.

More sirens could be heard.

More cops came in and there was shit happening at the back of the house I couldn’t see that was making a lot of noise and taking the attention of all the police who’d entered the house.

My kitchen cart was moved unceremoniously, which included the canister I had on it that was filled with flour falling to the floor (I knew this because of the poof I saw rising from it over the counter from where I stood in my living room).

And finally, Mo showed, had a ten-second huddle with Axl and then glued himself to me before Axl took off.

“Uh, Mo—” I started but Mo glanced down at me before he looked over my head and did a chin lift.

I turned and that was when Boone was there.

Boone did a body scan, which was intense, and then a face scan, which was about seven hundred notches above the intensity of Axl’s.

He then came to me and pulled me into his arms.

Okay, that felt good.

I pressed into him.

“What’s going on?” I asked his chest.

I asked this just as a male voice stated, “Sadler, we need to talk to your girl.”

“A second,” Boone replied.

“Right,” the man said. Then he went on, “Morrison, need you.”

Mo grunted and I felt him leave us.

I pulled slightly away (but not fully out of Boone’s arms) and looked up at him.

“What’s going on?”

“Babe, fuck,” he muttered. Then, “There’s a dead guy out on your back deck.”

Okay, first, evidence was suggesting that Brett did not back off like he’d promised Boone he would.

Second, it couldn’t be argued that Brett was pretty dedicated to making absolutely certain “his girls” were okay.

Last, if I didn’t keep a lock on it, this was going to freak me right the fuck out.

“The cops are going to have to do some stuff that’s probably gonna take a while,” Boone kept talking. “But then, I’m sorry, sweetheart, they’re gonna ask you to go out there and have a look at the guy to see if you knew him.”

Fabulous.

“Boone, I need to tell you something,” I said, and then I was treated to a face scan the intensity of which had not yet been charted and it was a damned miracle it didn’t sear the skin from my flesh.

After he did that, he murmured, “Later.”

Yeah.

Good idea.

Later.

It was then the cops chatted to me.

I told them I’d been asleep. I told them I saw and heard someone trying to break in. I told them I called Boone. I fielded the now-familiar questions about why I called Boone and not the cops. I then fielded the same question about why I again called Boone and not the cops when I heard gunshots (this had an easier answer, he was the last call I’d dialed so he was the easiest to hit when I was freaking out). And then I fielded these questions again when it came to light that I’d been visited by Englewood police officers the day before due to an acquaintance of mine being murdered and I was up for questioning since I was semi-kinda-kidnapped by an alleged cop killer.