Page 22 of A Fine Line

I crane my head around so I can look at her face, my lips twisting at the incredibly smug expression on her features. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She waggles her eyebrows and shoulders at me and says teasingly, “You seem a little tense. I figured you’d be the opposite right now.”

I glance over at Carolina, whose innocent expression doesn’t match the tone of her giggles. I give her a stern look. “Really?”

Carolina lifts a shoulder dismissively. “I had to confirm that I didn’t welsh on the bet.”

“That insinuates that you wouldn’t normally talk all the dirty details with each other.”

Caroline and Nettie look at each other, then break out into cackles. I roll my eyes and huff, giving them my back as their laughter escalates. Dare snorts beside me, and when I look over at him, he asks, “Girl trouble?”

I scoff, “You damn well know those two are trouble.”

He glances back, his eyes softening as his gaze settles on Nettie, and then he shifts his attention back to me and nods.

Anton pipes up from the front passenger seat, “Women will always be trouble, but us men are too stupid to stay away from them—“

“Hey now,” Nettie interrupts from behind me. “I don’t think you all have any right to be calling us trouble. You guys are all-caps trouble.”

None of us bother denying it since we’re certainly responsible for our fair share of chaos.

“What’s the status, Anton?” Dare asks. “Where we at?”

Anton turns in his seat so he can look at Dare. “We’ve got some good leads. Agatha went to meet up with Jayme, and they’ll meet us at our rendezvous point for a full briefing.”

“Did you find her?” Carolina’s voice breaks through from the back, sounding hesitant yet hopeful.

I turn my head to look at her as Anton replies dismissively, “We’ll do a full briefing once we have everyone together.”

Her face falls, and she looks like she wants to say something further, but rather than speak, she snaps her mouth shut and remains silent. My eyes narrow, that increasingly familiar zap in my chest triggering me to turn around and lean in close to Anton and whisper menacingly, “You’ll answer her fucking question now.”

Anton turns his body and looks back at me, the surprise on his face clear as he then glances back at Carolina. His eyes widen as understanding dawns, and he says, “Not yet. But we will.”

She gives me an appreciative smile, then turns her gaze out the window, the tension in her body palpable, and she visibly clenches her jaw. I peek over at Nettie, who’s eyeing me with an odd expression on her face. I look at Carolina pointedly and then back to Nettie, who gives me one of those soft looks she typically reserves for Darius, and I repress my urge to roll my eyes. Nettie does what I silently ask of her, easing a little closer to Carolina and taking one of her hands in hers.

Carolina accepts the support without a word, turning her hand up and gripping Nettie’s hand like it’s a lifeline.

I face forward again, saying nothing else as I look out the window. I feel Dare’s eyes on me, burning a hole into the side of my head, so finally, I turn to him, sneering, “What?”

He shrugs his shoulders a bit, inclining his head at me as he sing-songs, “Oh, nothing.”

I’ve known this motherfucker for a long goddamn time, and if he’s singing, it ain’t fucking nothing. I also lack the strength and energy to get into it right now, so I flip him the bird and then go back to staring out the window. I don’t feel a need to unpack every action and reaction I have that’s related to Carolina. Maybe that’s shortsighted of me—maybe avoidance isn’t the right path to be on, but right now, that’s all I got.

Eventually, we pull up to a gate where Anton’s driver stops and stares into a camera until the gate opens. We drive down a long driveway before finally pulling up to a large home with an even larger garage.

One of the garage doors opens, and we pull in, driving up to the door on the far side of the room as the second vehicle pulls in behind us. We all exit the vehicles, and then one of the garage doors a few bays over opens as a lifted 4x4 pulls in. The driver’s side door opens, and Agatha jumps out, slamming the door behind her as she rushes toward Nettie. “Toni, you bitch. Get over here!”

Nettie smiles widely, laughing as she meets her sister halfway, returning her embrace as they squeeze each other tightly. They break apart, staring at each other with abject emotion shining in their eyes, and that stupid fucking pain is back in my chest again.

What the actual fuck?

I shake my head and snort at myself in disgust, turning my focus back to our upcoming mission as Anton indicates for us to follow him. We make our way down a long hallway with various sets of stairs headed upwards and downwards until, eventually, the faint smell of bleach has the fine hairs on the back of my neck prickling.

I fucking hate the smell of bleach.

We enter a large room that appears disgustingly similar to a warehouse, and Dare and I look at each other with matching annoyed expressions on our faces as we walk over and join the group of people milling around a workstation in a far corner.

There are a few dozen of Anton’s men there, and I look around in confusion when I don’t see Carolina nearby. I look back the way we came and see she’s standing about twenty feet away, frozen in place, staring at something behind me.

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