Page 44 of Incoming Layne Shift

Straightening up from her bent-over posture, Danielle glanced back at the two party crashers in disappointment. “Just give me a ring if you change your mind.” She turned from Gage, walked up to Layne, and wrapped her arms around her neck in a hug.

Layne stood there awkwardly unsure if she should hug the girl back. She opted for a light pat on her back as she looked over at Gage with a confused expression on her face. Secretly, she had hoped that one of them would save her from the bizarrely random gesture. Had this girl just gone from flirting with Gage to suddenly hugging her? And for what?

Danielle smiled at Layne after releasing her hold. “I wanted to thank you.”

One of Layne’s eyebrows perked up. “For what?”

“Oh!” She gave the fakest of giggles as she realized that it was unclear to Layne. “Ever since Italo and his gang stopped coming here, it has been such a blessing. They were a bunch of creeps. Honestly, they were shitty tippers with even smaller dicks. After you came that one night, they haven’t bothered showing their faces again.”

The twist of confusion on Layne’s face increased as she tilted her head at the statement. Sure, she had interrupted Danielle’s private party in that room, but she had been wearing her mask.

“Um. You’re… welcome? I don’t know why you think…” Layne shot looks over at Joey at her side and Gage across the room.

Danielle gave her a wink. “I would know these curves anywhere.” Her hand slapped Layne’s ass. It came so unexpectedly that Layne nearly jumped out of her boots as her eyes widened slightly.

The guys seemed to find humor in Layne’s surprised reaction as they stifled their laughter. Danielle walked out of Gage’s office, and Joey shut the door after she was gone. “It seems we’re not the only ones that appreciate how fuckin’ hot you are,” he said as he moved over to the chair in front of his brother’s desk and took a seat.

Layne was still a little weirded out by the entire encounter. Sure, Rebecca had given her ass a smack or three but it had always been during drunken shenanigans. She shook her head trying to reset her focus on why she and Joey were both here.

She approached Gage’s desk, partially taking a seat by perching half her ass on it so she could look at both of them. “I heard back from Brandon.” Or, as he preferred to be called by his hacker name, Cowboy. He had been a great asset to Layne after Joey had introduced them during their initial investigation into Eric’s dirty work.

“He said that technology has changed so much over the last ten years, there wasn’t much to work with to confirm if Russell had a hand in what happened with Rosie. As for Eric,” she swallowed down the nausea churning in her stomach at even saying his name. “His operations were still in their infancy, making them far more difficult to trace. He could have contacted Russ, but there’s no way to be sure.”

Joey’s eyes still held a little bit of rage knowing that Eric was still stirring up shit postmortem. He shifted his look to Gage. “Also, since Sean hated anything that left a trail, we don’t have anything like cameras to rely on.” Despite repeated requests from patrons to at least put a television in McGregor’s, Sean had been a hardheaded son of a bitch and refused any bit of technology.

Gage ran his fingers through the shortly-cut blonde hair on his head as he tried to think of other avenues. “What about street cameras?”

Layne shook her head. “That area is jam-packed with people coming and going. It would be impossible to tell who may have been inside at any given time. We’d be pulling from an entire city’s worth of straws.”

“Fuck,” Gage sighed. This wasn’t the news he was hoping for. He really wished that Joey and Layne had just let him shove a gun down Russ’s mouth that night at Bethesda Fountain. It would have solved a shit ton of his problems, or at the very least would have made him feel better.

Joey propped his feet up on the edge of the desk, crossing his ankles. “The best we’ve got is what all of the city’s top-tier criminal leaders have had to say.” Which wasn’t much.

The cocoa-colored hues belonging to Gage reflected a moment of realization of a new approach. “What about your brother?”

She wrinkled up her forehead. “What about him?”

“Would he have insight or something that could be a lead that we haven’t already considered?” Gage looked so hopeful that maybe this was the key to it all.

It made Layne snort. “Liam wouldn’t know good intel from his own ass.”

“Is he still at Rikers?” Joey curiously asked since he hadn’t heard Layne griping about her brother recently.

Layne shrugged, the lack of fucks obvious from how she did so. “Probably, I guess? I haven’t talked to him. I know he didn’t make bail at his arraignment and that was the last shit I had to give about it. Let him pay the piper.”

“Alright, then back to square one. We keep digging.” Gage still was sure that Russ had involvement in all of this. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let history repeat itself and allow Layne to suffer the fate that Rosie had. He knew they were two very different women, but he never wanted to see Layne endure anything less than what a goddamn goddess deserved. A fuckin’ dangerous goddess that deserved the gods of chaos and wrath at her side.

They all sat around and chatted a little longer, talking out some other unturned stones that perhaps they could turn over. Finally, Layne had decided all the iced coffee she had ingested earlier needed an outlet. She left Gage’s office to see herself to the ladies’ room.

Once Gage was sure that Layne was out of earshot, he looked over at Joey. “She’s stressed. I don’t like it.” Layne would never admit it, but she would carry the weight of her world on her shoulders even though she had a hell of a support system to share the load.

Joey nodded in agreement. “Until this all gets resolved, I don’t think it’s going to get any better. She was talking earlier about postponing the wedding just until everything settles.”

With an immediate opinion on that issue, Gage shook his head. “You didn’t agree to that, did you?”

Dropping his feet back down to the floor, he could only shrug. “It doesn’t matter if I agreed to it or not, Gage. She’s hellbent and set on it. Rebecca even got involved, threatening to wear some hideous pumpkin gown if Layne didn’t change her mind.”

Nodding his head as he soaked this all in, Gage let the gears in his head spin. He suddenly smirked, thinking back to earlier when he had been alone with his thoughts. “You know what I think she needs?”

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