Page 18 of Unraveling Connections

The door opening seems to shock him, and he pulls out a weapon. As Luc’s mom rushes through the doors, she heads straight for the door on the other side of the room and pulls it open. She has only taken one step through the door when the masked man takes aim and shoots, hitting her in the leg. She clearly yells in pain, although we can’t hear it, and falls to the floor, looking around. As soon as her eyes land on the masked man, she stares at him accusingly. He lifts his mask as soon as her eyes land on him. We can't see anything that could be used to identify him, but the beard does prove that the person is male.

“That’s not the look that you’d give someone who shot you,” I mutter. “She is looking at him like she recognizes him.”

“You’re right; there is no fear or anything. If anything, she looks pissed off,” Jensen agrees.

“Can any of you tell what she’s saying?” Pete asks, his eyebrows furrowed.

Jensen shakes his head at the same time as I reply, “No, but we can show Rafe; he is really good at lip reading. Hopefully, he will be able to pick something up.”

We carry on watching as the masked man rushes over to her and scoops her up, still being very careful to make sure that the camera doesn’t see his face. They quickly disappear through the door.

“So, we know that there were definitely three people in the house today, the one that we caught, Luc's mom, and now this guy, and we know that this one shot Luc’s mom, but he didn’t mean to, and that there’s no reason why she wouldn’t survive the wound. We don’t know who he is, who he works with, or who he works for.” I summarize for everyone.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums everything up, or at least some of it at least,” Jensen replies. “This whole situation went fromkind of confusing to extremely confusing.I’ve only just gotten used to the fact that Luc’s dad was involved with Hunt, and now, his mom’s back in the picture, and let’s face it, most likely has something to do with Hunt.”

“You’re right. She recognized the guy in the balaclava before he lifted it, so he had most of his features hidden, which means he is someone she is very familiar with. She knows some dangerous people.” I agree.

Peter’s laptop makes a noise, and he grabs it, “Well, my laptop has got all of the information that it needs, so that we can head back to the safe house now. Luc should be discharged by now.”

“Good, we need to fill everyone in,” I reply. As I move toward the door, my stomach growls loudly, and I add, “And I need to eat. Apparently, I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Jensen agrees.

“We can pick up some food on the way back,” Pete suggests, “we hadn’t planned to stay this long, so Rafe hasn’t gone shopping or anything, so although he will hate that we are not eating healthily he’ll most likely be just as hungry as we are.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, he loves the unhealthy stuff just as much as we do.”

We lock up as we leave the house, and I make sure to put the blood sample that we got into this special container that we keep in the car. We are going to have to drop it into Headquarters before we head back home, which is a bit of fucker, since I wanted to head straight back as soon as we can.

Once we have started the drive to the safe house, Pete asks, “How do you think Luc is going to react to the news of his mother being back in the country, in the house, shot, and quite possibly working with or for Hunt?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it does sound like quite a lot to deal with,” Jensen replies with a frown.

“I think he will handle it quite well. He handled coming back here much better than I thought he would.” I reply.

“I think he’ll be angry as fuck,” Jensen adds, and when Pete and I look at him curiously, he goes on to explain, “His mom got out, we were leaving her be, and she could have stayed on that island, living her lavish lifestyle and stayed out of everything to do with criminals but instead, for some bizarre reason she’s back in the country, illegally since we have no record of her entering the country otherwise and most likely involved with Hunt, who is one of the biggest bads out there. I would be pissed.”

I think about it for a moment and realize that he is right, she had the perfect out. We were leaving her alone.

“Why didn’t we look any closer at her?” I ask curiously, “I mean, she clearly knows her shit, and she got shot and then got angry as hell. Most people would not only be terrified but also screaming in pain.”

Jensen frowns, “I’m not sure. I know that we did the usual checks and then deemed that she had no involvement with the shit that Luc’s dad was doing and was actually as much a victim as anyone else in the situation. That is why we left her alone.”

“Well, she is clearly involved now, even if she wasn’t back then. Which makes me wonder what changed over the last few years that would mean that she would willingly get herself involved in all of this shit and risk the easy life that she had.” Peter replied.

We all fall silent as we pull into a drive-thru and order food for everyone, earning some raised eyebrows at the sheer amount that we order. I have to admit that it is a lot, but my men eat a lot. Fortunately, between Pete, Jensen, and I, we remember everyone’s usual order, or at least I hope we do; otherwise, someone is going to end up with something that they don’t want. Although, to be fair, someone will eat it. No one wastes food. It doesn’t take us long to grab everything and then we are headingback to the safe house. We never intended to stay long enough to use it, but then again, a lot has happened over the last couple of days.

“Oh, thank fuck you brought food,” Rage says as soon as we walk through the doors with the food bags.

“Nice to see you too,” I tease with a smirk.

He gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye and pulls me close, wrapping one hand around my neck he kisses me like a man starving for air and then leaves me gasping as he pulls away, and grabs the bags of food out of my hands, a dirty smile on his face as he winks at me.

“That was hot,” Cash mutters as he pulls me into his arms and kisses me, too, making my toes curl as he quickly takes charge of the kiss.

The whole room is smirking at me knowingly when Cash pulls back, and I stumble slightly. So, of course, I do the mature adult thing and stick my tongue out at all of them before I take my fresh coffee and sit my ass down on one of the couches because the table here is tiny, and there is no way that we’re all going to fit around it.

I narrow my eyes at Cash and Trick, “Where are your casts?”

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