Page 29 of Sully

She was definitely a creature of comfort. She was going to want some clothes, at least.

“Good. But I want at least two people with you. One on the floor. One in the car.”

“Got it,” I agreed. “I’m gonna go look at the vest. If you hear Bonnie, give me a call.”

He gave me a nod, and I moved down the basement steps, adrenaline starting to surge through me.

This was all hinging on me.

Bonnie’s life.

The safety of all of my club brothers. Maybe even their wives or kids.

It was a lot on my back.

I hadn’t felt that kind of pressure in a long fucking time.

I had to figure this shit out.

I wasn’t sure that if all this shit blew up—literallyorfiguratively—that I could come out on the other side of this with the same lightness I’d found over the years with this club.

That, well, that wasn’t a good thought.

The suicide vest was laid out on a pop-up table under one of the bright lights. Janie and the crew from Hailstorm had opened up and emptied out all of the projectiles but left everything on the table. Likely in case anything could be some kind of clue for me.

“What were you here to tell me?” I asked.

Because, surely, the plan wasn’t to blow us up, not really. It was too easy to disable. So either he thought he was better than he was, and I was dumber than I am, or he knew I would figure it out.

Which meant it genuinely was just… some kind of message.

I had to assume that, given that it was a bomb, it had to do with my time in the service. And, sure, early on in my career, I’d seen a few suicide bombs. But that was ages ago. I really didn’t think it was anything linked to that.

Later on in my career, yeah, there were also many bombs, though not this kind. Could I have killed someone in the line of duty and now their friend, family, or partner was coming for me?

That was… insane.

But people did insane shit all of the time.

And grief could really fuck you up in the head. Especially if it was some kind of mistake.

I didn’t like to think about that. But, yeah, in war… there were sometimes mistakes. Bad intel, bad choices. Sometimes people died who never did anything wrong.

It was something that, in the moment, it was somewhat easy to compartmentalize things. You were always on the way to the next fiasco.

It wasn’t until it was all over that you really got to start processing that shit.

But the end of my military career included, well, a different kind of shitstorm that buried everything that came before.

Processing that…

Well, I hadn’t really processed that, had I?

I’d been too busy seeking the fun, leaning into the light, filling myself up with other, better, shit.

If I stopped, I was sure I’d have no choice but to process. Which was why I never stopped, why I was always leaping from one new fun project to the next.

“Enough,” I grumbled to myself, flipping the vest over.

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