Page 35 of Play With Me

“There’s one problem.” I twisted in my seat to look back at Brook. “Brook is afraid of scorpions.”

“I’m not, Lola.” He rolled his eyes, and both Cameron and I chuckled.

“Tarantulas? Snakes?” I teased.

“Nope. Sorry, hun. Not afraid of those either.”

“Well, neither am I. In fact, there’s not much that scares me.” At least, there hadn’t been much that had scared me before I met Brook. Now I sort of wanted to see where this thing between us would lead. I wanted to be there to see whether he was truly mad to choose someone as broken as me; but I hoped I wasn’t too late. At the moment, he distracted me too much, and when you were dealing with the mafia, mistakes were unforgivable.

Half an hour later, we pulled up behind a hill and removed our gear from the trunk. I double-checked the security of the blade at my hip, and then wearing our night-vision goggles, we hiked the rest of the way. The night was clear out in the desert, and the moon provided just enough glow to illuminate our way. Brook caught up to me and nudged me with the side of his arm.

“Listen, Lola. If anything happens there, and I don’t come out, you have to run.”

“I don’t leave people behind.”

That wasn’t even up for a discussion. Besides, if we happened to have a shootout with Cortez, someone was bound to get hurt. I might not have cared if I got shot, but I cared enough about Kate to know that if anything happened to her, I’d never forgive myself. It was bad enough that I’d allowed her to be kidnapped.

“Lola, I’m serious. If anything ever happened to you—”

“Come on, Madman. Don’t get sappy on me. If you’re half as good as I think you are, we’ve got this.”

“This is the only time I will ask you to run, Lola. If I ask you to run, youwillrun, and you will not turn around or wait for anyone. Do you understand me? You’ll go back to New York and tell my brothers what happened. They’ll know what to do.”

I stopped. He was talking to me as if I were the damsel in distress, and I couldn’t take much more of his yapping.

“Fine. I promise, but you need to know that this is peanuts compared to what I’ve been through. You need to know that I can take care of myself, so pretend that I’m not there. Let me do my job.”

When I felt him flinch beside me, I sped my walk. The last thing I needed was for him to tell me how worried he was about me. I already knew that he was.

We trekked another two miles before resting. The chapel was nearly a hundred or so yards to the west. Further out in the distance, dimmed lights glowed in the over the town of Pace. We lay on the ground as Cameron scouted ahead through his binoculars.

“It’s them,” he said. “Kate, Anna, and Father John. They must be hurt – Mike is carrying Kate.”

I cringed.Shit!

“Who’s Father John again?” Brook asked from the side.

“Anna’s ex. She left Pace pregnant with Kate, and didn’t tell him about the pregnancy.”

“And Mike is Anna’s son? The one that Cortez kidnapped, and she thought was dead?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re telling me that Kate’s father is a priest?”

“Yes.”

Would he quit with all the questions? Sometimes Brooke annoyed the hell out of me.

“Don’t get mad at me. You asked me not to interfere, and I didn’t. Given how we’re about to face Cortez, I think I should know all the family dynamics.”

His tongue was sharp and it stung, but I shook it off.Concentrate, Lola. This is not your first gig.

Cameron finally pulled the binoculars away.

“Aaron and Mateo Cortez are with them. We don’t have a lot of time. If Anna doesn’t spill the beans about the money, we need to find a way to lure them inside the crypt.”

“Leave that to me,” I said.

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