Page 33 of As Darkness Fall
“That’s how you carry out one of these plans,” Aaron said as if he hadn’t heard a thing. “You don’t parade down Main Street begging for attention from everyone you pass.”
“If you and your men could outrun the enforcers, then maybe we could have snuck in,” I said. “Vir’s faster and strong, too. He could have carried Jo while the rest of us ran.”
Aaron snapped his mouth closed.
“Leaving me out of the conversation would have been preferred,” Vir said quietly from the backseat, his voice calm. “I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong.”
“Not yet,” I muttered.
“We could take the enforcers,” Aaron pointed out, still acting like neither Vir nor I had spoken. “We’re all re-armed, with proper ammunition and weapons. If we snuck in and took them out silently, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Earlier, blood-thirstier me had agreed with that idea. My wolf still did. She hated that anyone who touched our friend was going to be allowed to live. The rest of me didn’t.
“I want to give them a chance,” I said, rehashing the same argument again. “How many of them are acting in fear? Has Lars threatened their families? If Lars is removed from the picture, we’ll see who is acting out of fear and who was truly loyal to him.”
Personally, I suspected the split was about even. Some of the thugs who hung around with Lars had been Aldridge family sycophants for generations, and nothing would change their minds. Others were first-timers, and those I suspected had much weaker loyalties.
“Except we’re not planning to remove Lars from the picture,” Aaron said. “We’re here to rescue your friend. That’s all.”
“I know,” I said.
But if Lars gets in our path on the way out…
“The people of this town are just used to his family being the Alpha family,” I muttered. “If they could just see that better options existed…”
“Not our responsibility,” Aaron cautioned.
“I know. But it’s time for people to understand that those they ‘know’ to be their leaders might not be good people. By freeing Jo, we might be able to show them that without directly intervening.”
“Quite,” Aaron said.
I felt more than heard Vir’s reaction. A glance in the rearview mirror showed him smirking. “You have good instincts,” he said when he saw me looking. “That’s how you lead.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, Vir. Keep working on how to sever our Soulbond.”
The god shut up, his eyes going flat.
Ignoring Aaron’s smirk, I got out of the truck. “Try not to kill each other while I’m gone,” I said before slamming the door closed on their replies.
“How do some women do this?” I muttered to myself as I approached the house, seeing the second truck filled with Aaron’s team doing a U-turn in the driveway to point back down the lane while they waited.
Smart move,I thought, noticing Fred behind the wheel.
“Dani?”
I spun my head around to see Mr. Alustria, Jo’s father, standing in the doorway, only the screen storm door separating us. I’d not heard him approach.
“Hi, Mr. A,” I said with a wave of my hand, trying to act relaxed, even if my heart was thundering in my chest.
“Dani, what are you doing here? I thought you were dead?”
“Lars tell you that?” I asked, irritation filling me as I walked up to the door and paused in the light spilling down from overhead.
“Rumor got around,” Mr. A replied slowly. “You’ve changed your hair.”
I frowned, then looked down, remembering the chunky blue highlight I’d gotten just before I’d come back to Seguin the last time. “Right,” I said with a smile and a laugh that rang hollow and empty. “Yeah. You know how those rebellious streaks go sometimes.”
In truth, with everything that had happened since that night, I’d completely forgotten about the added color to my normally midnight locks.
