Page 72 of Overstaying His Welcome

“My partner and I are still here, yes. You just barely caught us. She wanted to do one final walk-through before we left. Which was good because we found a few more things.”

Tank’s eyes closed at the reminder of where Stabler was. At what he’d just lost.

Chance took over speaking. “Hey, Stabler. Chance here. Bring your partner with you if you need to. Just… get here so we can talk. There’s a lot to go over. It’s best to do it in person.”

Nothing could be heard other than Stabler’s steady breaths for a moment before he hummed his agreement.

“Very well. Mindy Strong, my temp partner, and I will be there in a couple of hours. I’m going to update my director under the excuse of delivering the news in person since I know Tank. That will buy us some time for whatever you guys are cooking up.”

“Perfect,” Tank said, finally calm enough to jump back in. “You’re going to want to hear all of this. It’s big, Stabler.”

“It always is with you.”

The room broke into laughter at the innuendo as Stabler grunted, “Fuck you guys” before hanging up. It wasn’t a perfect situation, but it was what we had.

“We’ve got to get everything in order for him. And we need a plan. If we rely on him to sort it out, there will be too much red tape,” Ronan said.

I stood. “Before we start that, I do have one suggestion.”

“Hit us with it.”

“Wouldn’t Pratt have tracking on his FBI issued phone? Couldn’t we track him to see if he leads us to where his brother is? If it’s all linked, and Lune is behind the murders and connected to the Gilded Ones, then we could find him quicker, right?”

Memphis’s mouth dropped open. Sinclair reached over, closing it as he giggled. “I’m going to take his shock that youthought of this when he didn’t as him saying yes. He doesn’t do well when someone one ups him, you know.”

I smirked. Yeah, I knew alright.

CHAPTER 25

TANK

After Orion droppedthe bomb of an idea to track Pratt, things got a bit hectic. Memphis was on a mission to find the access he needed to be able to get into Pratt’s phone without alerting any FBI IT people. The rest of the team laid out the plan of how things would go down for Stabler. Damari, Sinclair, and Archie decided to go on a food pickup with Godric as their protection detail.

Which left me and Chance to our own devices. As if reading my mind, he leaned over to whisper, “Why don’t we go get cleaned up? We’ll be finished in time for the food to get back.”

I nodded easily. It wasn’t that I wanted to be away from the team. More that I needed a second to think.

Things were picking up speed quickly. We were going a million miles per hour, with the finish line damn near visible at this point.

If we could get the last of the Gilded Ones handled and take down Pratt as well, then life could move on. I needed it to. Because this era brought far too much loss and grief.

I wanted to get to the happy parts again. With Chance and I out to my friends, it meant I could bring him around to the officemore. He and I could hang with them in a more relaxed manner instead of sneaking around.

Sure, the press might catch wind, but I had a feeling my man didn’t care about that all that much anymore. Call it intuition or a gut feeling.

Either way, I hoped it to be true.

Chance led me back to the room I’d come to consider ours. when I put this space in, I had no idea that I’d need to use it myself. In fact, far too many of my guys had needed the space as theirs at some point along this journey.

Yet another reason I couldn’t fucking wait to rid the world of the last of our enemies.

“Straight to the bathroom. No reason to hold off,” Chance said with authority as he locked the door behind us.

I raised a brow at him. “Worried someone will accidentally come in?”

“Yes. I don’t need them to see what I plan to do to you, baby.”

Fuck.

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