Page 78 of Bravo

Because the truth is I’m not afraid.

“Let’s try this again. Where is Kennedy Smith?”

I don’t respond.

“We don’t have to kill you right away. We can start by just taking a bit off the top.” He nods to the guy with his hand on my hair, and he presses the blade against my ear.

“I wouldn’t touch a single hair on his head if I were you,” a woman calls out. Heels click against the concrete floor as a brunette wearing a light-gray pencil skirt and matching jacket crosses over toward me. Her hair is up in a tight bun, her lips painted a bright red.

I’ve never seen her before, but I can’t say I don’t applaud her timing.

“Who are you?” Klive demands.

“Mr. Hunt’s lawyer,” she snaps and reaches into her briefcase before pulling out a folded-up piece of paper. She hands it to Klive, who unfolds it angrily.

“You’re from Boston.”

“And?”

“How exactly does he have a lawyer from Boston?” Klive demands, a snarky grin on his face as though he just caught her red-handed.

She smiles sweetly, but it’s dripping with venom. “I tell you what, Mr. Brown, you explain to me how you got an entire precinct to pretend you don’t exist, and I’ll explain to you how Mr. Hunt came to acquire a lawyer out of Boston. No? Don’t want to play ball?”

He glares at her then back to me. “Let him out,” he orders the officers.

“Fantastic,” she says. “Come on, Mr. Hunt.”

“This isn’t the end of things,” Klive calls out.

I stop and turn toward him.

“I’ll find her, and there’s nothing that will get in my way.”

Because responding to his threat would only fuel his fire, I simply turn back around and follow the lawyer out of the precinct.

After getting everything they’d confiscated from me despite never actually booking me on anything, I climb into the passenger seat of a Kia Telluride while the mystery lawyer gets into the driver’s seat.

“Mr. Hunt, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she says, offering me her hand. “I’m Beckett Wallace. A close friend of Margot and Jaxson Payne.”

I take her hand. “I’m glad to meet you, too. Have to say, your timing is impeccable.”

She laughs and pulls out of the parking lot. “You looked like you held your own. At first, anyway.”

I laugh. “I wasn’t quite sure how I was walking out of that one.”

“God didn’t let my plane be late,” she replies with a wink as we get onto the freeway.

“They made it out then?” It’s a pretty easy parallel to draw given that the only people who could have called in a lawyer were Jaxson, Elijah, or Kennedy.

“They did.” She tosses me a cell phone. “Untraceable. I’ve been told to have you use it instead of yours.”

I don’t hesitate before dialing Elliot’s number. He answers on the first ring. “Hunt.”

“It’s Bradyn.”

He mutters something to someone else. “Thank God, Bradyn. Where are you?”

“Beckett Wallace got me out. We’re in her car.”

---