Page 166 of Waiting For A Girl Like You
Michael spared her a glance. “What’s that, Mama Bear?”
“Make it hurt.”
A glimmer of satisfaction crossed Michael’s face. “That’s a very Fairweather type of request. But yeah, Claudia. I plan on it.”
“Good.” Claudia nodded once, then pulled Emily toward the door, keeping her head held high. “I look forward to hearing his screams.”
“Jamison, go with them,” Liam ordered once Claudia and Emily had cleared the room. “But stay right outside the door and wait for us.”
She hesitated, rooted in fear. Her instincts screamed that this could all still be an act. Michael switching sides, Bryan being dead, Taylor quietly biding her time in the corner. It could all be a show. If she left Liam alone…
“Go, baby,” Liam said quietly, his focus and gun steady on Parker. “You don’t need to see this.”
Choosing to trust his judgment, she took a tentative step toward the door. In her mind, there had never been a more deserving person to meet their end with violence. Parker had used Claudia, wormed his way into her heart, and had a child with her. All for Taylor, who probably didn’t care about him at all.
She couldn’t meet Parker’s hate filled gaze as she left, keeping her eyes lowered while she moved around him to step over Damon, still sprawled on the floor.
And that’s when things got a bit fuzzy.
She was stepping over Damon when the world turned upside down. One second, she was upright, and in the next, Parker’s elbow was coming directly at her face. It connected with her nose, the crunch of pain shooting her backward into the wall. The dull smack of her skull againstthe wood vibrated loudly in her ears, mixing perfectly with the echo of a gunshot. She tried to scream, but the darkness was too much. It claimed her immediately, swallowing her consciousness and wiping away the chaos as it descended upon the room.
Chapter 39
Annabeth gnawed at her fingernails while Rowan watched both his semi-live satellite streams, one eye on the map, the other tracking the cell signals of their people. Liam’s phone was long gone—tossed or dumped, and the GPS in the car he’d stolen had been disabled not long after he parked it close to the little Haven House estate. Rowan would eventually trace it, but right now, all that mattered was the raid.
Will and Ben wove constantly through the crowd of feds and local cops. Holden did the same, but often went off on his own, hiking as far as he could through the dense forest until he reached the far edge of the property. He would stay there for a few minutes, hanging back in the line of trees at the rear end of the fence, directly next to a body of water.
Rowan fired off a text to Holden.Anything?
His phone rang immediately.
“It’s too quiet,” Holden said.
The satellite feed showed the same thing. One car had come and gone this morning, followed by a second one not long after. The first car had been Eugene Gilbert, and the cops had hung back, wanting him to cross state lines so the feds could take over.
The second car held Taylor and Parker. There was a debate when she entered the property. A massive one where Benjamin Fairweather nearly lost his shit on Dr. Cohen when he directed the feds and the cops to stand down and not approach.
Not yet.
The number of men and women preparing to raid the property they now knew belonged to Michael Sinclair was staggering, but everything was in place and ready to begin.
Rowan watched Holden’s tracker dot on the movie screen as he navigated the forest. “What do you mean, it’s too quiet?”
“Earlier, there were people everywhere, but once Eugene left, the traffic outside tapered off into nothing.”
“They could have gotten wind of what’s about to happen and are in there preparing.”
Holden’s breathing picked up as he started to jog, his tracking dot heading back to the staging zone. “And no Liam.”
Rowan pushed away from the desk, forcing his expression to stay neutral for the sake of the room. Bernie and Simone sat on the sofa in the corner, hunched together as they talked. Simone hadn’t stayed at the hospital for long, too concerned about what was happening with Jamison. She and Bernie wanted to go to Arkansas, but Will and Ben had told them no. None of them knew what was going to happen in the coming hours, and they didn’t want the women stuck in the middle of the insanity.
Rowan slipped into the hall and kept his voice low. “Holden, this isn’t good. If Liam made it inside and we’ve heard nothing—”
He couldn’t finish. He knew better than to think with a defeatist attitude. It wasn’t his style because when you did, you never got out of your head to find a solution. But even as he gave himself internal pep talks, there was no way he could shake the unease.
“Liam Cohen is one of the most capable men I know,” Holden huffed as he ran. “If he made it in, I guarantee you, he’s talked circles around everyone until they figured out what to do with him.”
Rowan leaned his forehead against the cool plaster wall. “I should’ve gone. I need to get on a plane.”
