Page 64 of Scars Run Deep

The secure number I’d memorized flashed in my memory.

It was the only way it could exist for security reasons.

Even that was dangerous, as was about to be proven, unfortunately.

He deserved peace.

And he’d had it for several years.

It looked like that was going to have to be enough.

He’d told me to call on him if I ever needed anything. A small price to pay, he’d said, for me saving his life.

That might not still ring true once I made the call.

I clenched my fists.

This was an emotional response.

It wasn’t fucking logical.

Because of her.

Because of Aurora.

Under my skin.

In my—in places I wasn’t used to allowing people into.

If I couldn’t strike a compromise, find a way to prevent it from infecting me, from it going too deep, there’d be nothing left of any of us, nothing left of the three of them to get on my case about me shutting down again and cutting them out anyway.

No.

I needed to fucking well do this.

While I trusted that Lance would keep to his promise and divert the Heretics from us when we struck against the dollhouses, because it would serve to protect Aurora, I didn’t trust anything beyond that now. Not with this issue of her between us. He’d considered me taking her as mine as crossing a line. And now he’d crossed one too with this bullshit meeting tonight.

The likelihood of it escalating beyond that was high.

And when that happened, I needed to be prepared.

There was a new enemy out there that I didn’t know, didn’t understand, that I knew next-to-nothing about. I couldn’t trust Lance to take care of that now. At any moment he could make a play for Aurora and disappear into the fucking ozone, basically throwing me and the boys to the wolves in the process, surrounding us with both the Infidels and these new interlopers.

Time to even the playing field.

I dialed the number and waited as it rang and rang, until finally hitting an automated voicemail, giving away no details as to who the phone number belonged to.

As soon as the abrasive beep sounded, I spoke, “I need information. New player. Heretics.” Then I rattled off the security code we’d put in place, “Sierra-Alpha. Zero-One-Zero-Five.”

It would take some time for him to pick up the message, for it to be routed back to him.

In the meantime, I had a dinner to attend.

The final phase of the calm before the storm indeed.

Jesus fucking Christ.

9

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