Page 64 of Daring You

“Phew.” The cabbie laughs. “Can’t have next year’s fantasy football team be fucked over like that. Don’t get arrested any time soon, got me?”

“Sure thing, my friend.” I pass a few bills through the glass partition.

The cabbie thanks me profusely, but thankfully doesn’t ask for a selfie. I get out and sprint for the closest door to the courthouse, where maybe I’ll plan this shit out better and figure out what floor Astor is even on.

Turns out, all I have to do is ask anyone inside the building this morning. Everyone knows what’s going on and where, and after going through the metal detectors and blending in perfectly with every other perp in casual, sports-related clothing surrounded by suited lawyers, I take the stairs two at a time to the right floor.

As I stride over the marble tiles, giant wooden doors in front of me burst open, and people stream out. Reporters who had the ability and trickery to wait indoors descend upon the suits and spectators exiting, and my height allows me to adequately scan for Astor’s sleek, brunette head.

She’s tall, too. I should be able to instantly spot her—there.

I find her encased in five to ten other lawyers, microphones already thrust into their faces and questions being tossed left and right. Using my girth, I elbow through most of them. Everyone’s too focused on the ruling to notice the jacked-up football player trying to get a girl’s attention.

Astor’s gaze slides towards, over, then skirts back and locks onto me as I’m a few feet away.

Ben? she mouths, then breaks away from her suits of armor.

Astor grabs me by the elbow and drags us out of the thick of it. “What are you—?”

“Locke’s worried about you.” I cut her off, fully aware that I have a few seconds before anger, or more likely, indignation over being Locke’s sister who doesn’t need protection hits. “Especially after you called him.”

Those sails of righteous anger billow closed. “I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have called him. And you shouldn’t be here.”

“You said you were being fucking followed, Astor.” I lower my voice at her warning glare. “What part of that worry makes you think I wouldn’t race over here?”

“Because—because I overreacted,” she says. “There’s no guilty verdict today, nothing to incite anyone, never mind a drug lord. I’m on edge, and I didn’t mean to drag Locke or you into it—”

“Consider me dropped into the center of it,” I say. “Because this is exactly what I warned you about, and now you have dickheads showing up at your door?”

“It wasn’t my literal door,” she says. “My security isn’t that terrible. It was outside. Chavez was waiting—”

“Chavez? Fucking Chavez?”

Information I don’t want to think about scrolls its way across the back of my eyes regardless. How my biological father, Tim Delaney, became a reluctant informant within Chavez’s drug cartel when his roofing company went bankrupt and he became desperate. How my mom, a nurse pulling triple shifts, found safety in it so long as the FBI was involved. She didn’t think we’d be hurt.

“That, more than anything,” I say through my teeth, “should tell you what kind of level you’re playing at.”

“Ben, I’m fine.”

“Say that one more time.”

Astor takes a step back at my tone, a decibel I reserve only for rival teams or an asshole who’s particularly determined to start a bar fight with me. I don’t use it on women. I don’t curl my lips and dare them with a glare. But Astor’s doing things to me I’m not proud of.

And—no great surprise—she meets my scowl with one of her own. “You don’t know this job, or what I’m honor-bound to do.”

“Represent killers?”

“Find justice,” she spits. “So sociopaths like Chavez don’t get opportunities to corner single women on sidewalks and threaten them.”

“Newsflash, sweetheart. Guys like that always will. They think the law is a piece of paper they can light on fire. They will threaten. They will torture. They will kill.”

“You have your way, I have mine.” Astor makes to turn her back on me. “Get lost, Ben.”

“No.” I hook her elbow. Not hard, but enough to halt her steps.

“Let go.”

“When you let go of this case, I’ll let go of you.”

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