Page 108 of Forbidden Bond

“Who is that?” The Stag situation couldn’t have been resolved already. That couldn’t be Conn. “Strat?”

He put the phone on speaker and dropped it into the center console nook.

“You’re on speaker,” her friend said.

“Sersha?”

“Lach!” It was a good sign he cared enough to check she was okay. Though… “How did you know—”

“I’m with Dad,” Lach said. “Are you safe? Are you hurt?”

“Not hurt, and yes, I’m safe. You’re with Dad?” Wasn’t he still at Stag? “I don’t get it. How can you be with Dad? Is he at your apartment?”

“Your brother’s not at his apartment,” Strat said.

Hmm, another reason her friend might’ve been reluctant to take her there, couldn’t he have just said that?

“Where are you?”

“On the way to the mansion.”

“Whoa, wait, what? What mansion?”

“Strat,” Lachlan said.

“Yeah, yeah,” her friend drawled. “We’ll meet you there.” He stabbed at the screen to disconnect the call. “I told you he’d been around.”

“Around like at Stag around? Like with the guys? Like underground?”

She didn’t even want to utter the word basement. Shocking though that was, she didn’t quite know where to settle her outrage.

Was it that her brother was so “tarnished” now that he could hang around with wise guys and low lifes as equals? That or he was deep in the McDade family intending to collect and share evidence of misdeeds with his law enforcement superiors. Did Conn trust him enough to allow him inside? If he trusted him like that because of her, the McDades could lose everything because she loved her brother.

Her friend shrugged. “You could say that.”

“I can’t believe any of this, I can’t… What is he doing with Conn?”

The question was rhetorical, in that moment anyway. An answer would come from elsewhere… maybe. Now she needed a strategy, something to tempt Conn into divulging details. She’d never had to turn it on like that for him before, not for such acrucial reason. Was she confident? Maybe, he’d ask if she trusted him and—

“Fuck.”

The word was a whisper on her friend’s tongue; his tone delivered a shot of alarm.

“What?” she asked. “What’s fuck? What is it?”

Brow low, he glanced up, down, at the side mirror, then the rearview. “We have a tail.”

“A tail?”

“We’re being followed.”

THIRTY-FIVE

“WE’RE BEING—what the fuck? Followed?”

Twisting, she grabbed the shoulder of her chair to peer out the back.

“Stay low,” Strat muttered. “Seatbelt.”

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