Dream Chaser (Dream Team, #2)(56)

When he caught my eyes, he ordered, “Call your girls, do whatever you need to do to deal. Mo’s got you until I get back and then I’ll have you.”

Although when one (that one being me) was riding the edge of a multilayer freak-out after a dead body was removed from one’s back door, one could say the goodness of Boone Sadler uttering the words “I’ll have you” was as off the charts as the intense face scan he’d given me earlier. I nevertheless had no chance to let loose that first word or even open my mouth before Boone prowled out with Hawk, Axl, Auggie and Mag prowling with him.

I’d pivoted to the doorway to watch them disappear through it.

And once I heard my front door close, I pivoted back to Mo.

“You want me to call Lottie?” he offered.

“What are they gonna do?” I asked.

“Make it clear shooting someone on your back porch isn’t acceptable. Now, you want me to call Lottie?”

“How are they gonna do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you lie to me about not knowing how they’d do it?”

“All I can say is Boone wouldn’t do it like I’d do it because Boone’s not me. I just know however he decides to do it, it’ll be clear.”

“How would you do it?”

“Not sure you want to know.”

I decided to abandon that line of questioning. Mo had resting terrifying face even though he was a big softie. I didn’t want to have reason to believe he was anything else.

“When it was all going down, Boone told me to go to the bathroom, not out the front door,” I shared. “Why didn’t he tell me to escape out the front door?”

“Because sometimes there’s a guy at the back making his presence known solely in order to flush you out the front. And it is not a good scenario to be freaked, thinking of nothing but escape, and doing precisely what they want you to do. Running right into a bad guy you do not expect to be there.”

No.

That would not be a good scenario.

I kept going.

“Would he have some reason to believe there would be someone at the front?”

“Those cops that visited you, there were two. So yeah.”

Fuck.

“How am I in the middle of this mess?” I asked.

“Because Cisco is a fuckwad.”

Hmm.

It was occurring to me that Mo was saying more words to me now than I think I’d ever heard him say in the entire time I’d known him.

As noted, he wasn’t unfriendly.

He was just not talkative.

“Don’t you have something better to do than look after me?” I asked.

“No.”

There was the knight’s vow, revolutionary’s speech and lover’s promise voice.

And it was then I realized I could no longer hack it.

“I think I’m going to freak out now,” I whispered.

Mo didn’t hesitate.

One second, that big mountain of a man was four feet away from me.

The next, I was in a tight bear hug.

I slid my arms around his thickly muscled waist and started shaking.

I also said, “I think it’d be good to call Lottie now.”

“Whatever you need.”

Yeah, these guys were really, really good guys.

And some random man got dead on my back deck for reasons I did not entirely understand.

And that was extreme.

So I knew only one thing in that moment, holding on to the mountain of Mo.

I was really, really lucky I had these really good guys.





Chapter Eleven





Mamá Nana





Boone


The asshole was twenty minutes late.

So even though not a one of them was in a good mood, Cisco fucking away their time made their moods significantly deteriorate.

Matters didn’t improve when Cisco walked into Mamá Nana’s tiny kitchen, two of his henchmen at his back, two of Mamá’s henchmen (or more accurately, one henchman, one henchwoman) at their back, to add to the two of her guys in the little kitchen with Boone and his crew (making space scarce), and he immediately said direct to Boone, “You left me no choice.”

“Is that a joke?” Boone asked.

“You left her alone,” Cisco returned.

Boone had no reply.

He had left her alone

But she was in her home.

She told him she wasn’t going to go work on her house. She was going to hang, try to get a nap in, and chill.

She was going to work on her house tomorrow.

Which would have given him time to arrange a man to be on her tomorrow.

As for that day, he was taking her to work later and bringing her home.

So in a sense, he thought she’d been covered considering he was unaware of how significant the threat was, most specifically because, boiling it down, she was entirely ancillary to all the shit swirling around Cisco.

A threat Boone now obviously knew.

It was next level, breaking into someone’s house, someone who had nothing to do with the shit swirling, in order to do them dirty.

He was not so far gone to his anger that he didn’t realize that was his fuckup.

He was also not so far gone that he wasn’t thinking rationally, including the fact that Cisco knew the depth of Ryn’s need for coverage, Boone did not, and Cisco had not thought to share that intel with him.