Page 88 of Haunted Prey

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “And I thought I pissed him off enough. Emery is going for the gold.”

I pushed his light away. “It didn’t look like he’d used it in a while.”

“He’s been staying at his other place closer to the city. We think it's because of a woman. Still, he doesn’t like people breaking into his spot and snooping around his stuff. By the way, you didn’t happen to see a lighter up there, did you? I’m pretty sure I left it.”

Something large skittered past my feet, and I let out a yelp in surprise, nearly jumping into Lez who grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Was that—”

“A rat? Yeah.”

Quickly, he pulled me down the aisle the rest of the way. “This is why we don’t need you wandering. I might have to submit another request to have you locked up just so you don’t—” He halted, almost sending me flying forward. “Ah, fuck.”

Emery stood just within the doorway leading to the entrance. He stepped out, his hair still messy from bed, his pants without his belt and his shirt wrinkled, clearly showing he had thrown them on in a hurry. He fixed Lez with a look that could kill.

“I’ll give you two seconds to take your hand off her before I cut it off, Lez,” he threatened. “One.”

Lez gripped me, and I could tell he was tempted to let Emery go to two just so they could fight. He thought better of it when Emery counted to two and took another step closer. “All right, don’t cry about it,” he said, letting me go. “I caught her sleepwalking.”

I went to Emery, and he pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around me protectively. “That true?” he asked.

I nodded, finding it hard to look him in the eye as I remembered the dream. “Yeah. It’s true. Leslie was just making sure I didn’t step on glass.”

I glanced up in time to see an odd yet sad look pass over Emery’s face before it disappeared. “Did you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

He searched my face. Then, swiftly, he scooped me up, cradling me against him. He turned back for the door when Lez made a noise, stopping him.

“Sun’s up soon. The others are gonna wake. And Andrea and Micheal will be back. As cute as I’m sure it would be for you two to have a morning fuckfest over coffee and pancakes, Micheal will flip out if he sees you up there. And the last thing we need is more drama.”

I looked at Emery, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go down. I don’t want Lena to freak out when she sees me gone. We can always go back later,” I whispered in his ear.

Emery sighed. “Damn, but I was hoping to have…pancakes.”

Lez grunted as he turned for the stairs. “Don’t we all.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“I’m telling you, Micheal, we are sick of waiting. We should make our move. We got all the info we need, why not get it done now?”

“You meanyou’resick of waiting. But if we move at the wrong time, it could fuck everything, Cass.”

“We got info on each guard. We know when they change. We know where they are stationed. We have several openings,” Cassidy stated.

“We need to make sure, absolutely sure,” Micheal said.

“We should take out a couple of the guards off hours. Try to thin the staff,” Leslie suggested.

“It would be too suspicious,” countered Micheal. “They’ll just replace them. They will likely have backups. If we do it on the change late at night to early morning, that will be our best chance.”

“We are running out of time. You’re stalling,” Cassidy snapped.

“We need to be sure…”

“No,youneed to be sure!”

---