Page 30 of Smooth Sailing

“You program those into your phone. Get Suzette to do the same. Just precautions, you’re gonna be covered,” Eight said.

Diana nodded.

“We got another man with us. His name is Big Petey. He’s older, softer, less of a visible threat, but he’s still got it goin’ on. He’s gonna hang with Suzette during the day while Hugger stays on you”—her eyes raced to Hugger on that—“and other brothers make sure shit is copacetic here at home base. You with me?”

Her attention swung back to Eight. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“Okay, yeah. Right. You don’t quite get what you agreed to. I’ll elucidate,” Eight said magnanimously. “Suzette and you just turned this over to us. We got this now. You do what we say when we say it. You don’t question it. We got you how we need to get you. And how that is, is never open to discussion. You still with me?”

She opened her mouth.

Hugger nearly smiled when Eight kept going before she could say anything.

“Great. It’s not gonna be tough. Unless shit gets fucked, nothing will change. You go to work. You come home. Except, when you do that, you got a man at your back in case Babic gets any ideas. Suzette stays here. She’s covered, inside and out. We keep things good, and in the meantime, you and us talk Suzette into vanishing somewhere safe so you’re out of this equation, and we are not havin’ to deal with providing protection in what amounts to a huge-ass apartment complex on top of a mini fuckin’ mall.”

She opened her mouth again, and again, Eight got there before her.

“I heard you when you said she wasn’t down with leaving you. We’ll get her there, and you’re gonna help. But you got no business being a middleman in shit this heavy. You need out from under it and she needs to be somewhere we got total control of her environment. We’ll have a sit down with Buck to see if there’s some local cop he knows is squeaky clean, so we can get word to them that she’s vanished, but she hasn’t vanished, and he can keep the case moving forward.”

He took a breath, but even so, she still wasn’t fast enough to get in there.

“Sooner rather than later on all this shit. We’ll get her used to us so she can trust us. Then we’ll extricate you. Sound good?”

“Who’s Buck?” she asked quickly in order to get the words out, and Hugger felt his lips quirk.

“President of Aces,” Eight answered.

“Um…as for Hugger—” She didn’t quite begin.

“Yeah, we dropped our shit at our local crash pad. Muzz is gonna hang with you, Cruise and I will go out and get the lay of the land and provide presence, and Hugger is gonna go get his shit and bring it here. He’ll be back in around an hour. It’d be good you talked her out of her room. Hug’s a big guy, but he’d end his own life before he’d hurt a woman. She’ll learn that, but not if she’s in her room.”

Diana pushed back on that. “You have to give her space to do what she needs to do.”

Eight nodded. “Sure, she can have space, but we don’t got a lot of time. You are not a dumb broad. You know what I’m sayin’ to you. You’re either on this team or we’re gonna have to huddle and figure something else out.”

Hugger could not only see, but feel Diana getting pissed.

The fuck of it was, he liked it. That grit and the fact she wasn’t a fan of letting anyone, even someone like Eightball, steamroll her.

“Figure what else out?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, that’s why we’d need a huddle,” Eight told her easily. “What I do know is, whatever way it goes down, you’re out and she’s safe. That’s our goal line. And we’re gonna get the fucking ball over it if it kills all of us.”

“You’ll have to excuse me for being a mite confused as to why you all are so dedicated to this task,” she remarked.

“Maybe we’ll share that over a beer one day when Babic is rotting in a cell and his crew is scattered to the winds,” Eight replied. “For now, you’re just gonna have to trust we’ll do what we have to do to get the job done.”

“I’m not sure I have any choice,” she bitched.

Eight smiled. “Good we’re on that same page.”

She glared at him.

Eight turned and said to the men, “Right, let’s get this shit rollin’.”

Hugger started to move to the door, which was through an opening that led to a room that had nothing in it but a long, white dining table (with blue upholstered chairs), a built-in bar and a glassed wall that held a walk-in wine cooler.

She clearly inherited that with the pad, because there wasn’t much wine in it.

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