Page 97 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
“Stop.” My voice cuts sharp through the cabin. “Beating yourself up doesn’t get us closer.”
His chest rises fast, his hands clenching. He wants to argue, but he doesn’t. He just stares out the windshield, watching the light fade.
The Tahoe roars as I push it harder, weaving past a sedan, sliding back into the lane with inches to spare. I chew the inside of my cheek, my blood running hot. David’s been laughing at us. At her. Every move we thought was hers, her victory, her climb back up—he was behind it, waiting.
There’s a reason he’s been so smug from the start.
It makes me want to put my fist straight through his chest. Instead, I push the speedometer higher.
Wesley’s leg bounces, heel thudding against the floorboard in a jittery rhythm. His fingers twitch like he wants another chance to dig, to find more, to make sense of the thing he thinks he should have caught days ago.
I don’t say anything at first. Talking won’t help him right now. The guilt’s eating him alive, and words don’t chase guilt out. Action does. But the silence gets heavy, filling the cabin until it grates.
“You’re gonna break your damn kneecap if you keep bouncing like that,” I mutter.
“I need to breaksomething.”
“Not you.”
He snaps his head toward me, eyes sharp, voice sharp too. “You don’t get it, Huck. This was sitting in the open. The shell corporations weren’t even that deep. I should’ve traced them weeks ago. Instead, I let her walk right into his trap.”
“Youlether?” I bark out a humorless laugh. “Since when do you control Bailey? She doesn’t let anybody steer her. She wanted that part. She took it.”
“Because it was offered,” he spits. “Because I didn’t see that David was holding the strings. He set the table, and I let her sit down.”
“Stop acting like you’re the only one who missed it. None of us saw it. Not Sean. Not me. And you know why? Because we wanted her to have it. We wanted her to win.”
Wesley slumps back against the seat, his jaw tight, his eyes flashing with something bitter. “That doesn’t excuse me.”
I glance at him. His face is lit by the dashboard glow now, shadows cutting deep into the lines of his cheekbones. He looks wrecked, like every ounce of control he prides himself on has been stripped bare.
“You ever think,” I say slowly, “that maybe David planned it that way? That maybe he counted on us wanting it for her so much we wouldn’t look too close?”
Wesley doesn’t answer. His silence says enough.
I weave us past a truck hauling lumber, the boards rattling in their straps, then slide back into the lane. Driving hard clears my head. Everything narrows to numbers. Distance, speed, angles. Numbers don’t lie the way people do.
Wesley exhales hard, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I hate that he’s still ahead of us. I hate that he’s always one move in front.”
“Then we catch up,” I say. My voice is flat, heavy with the promise in it. “That’s what we do.”
For a while, neither of us speaks. The road curves, the cliffs looming higher, the ocean now just a smear of dark on our left. The sky deepens into navy, streaked with the last red veins of sunset. I flip the headlights on, the beams slicing through the dim.
My hands stay locked on the wheel, my body leaning into the turns. The Tahoe isn’t meant to be fast, but I make it fast. The tension in the car hums like another engine. Wesley keeps muttering under his breath, words I don’t always catch—bits of code, fragments of finance, curses aimed at himself, at David, at the world. I let him. Everyone’s got their coping mechanism. Mine is speed and violence. His is blame.
The dot on the map ticks closer. The hour shrinks to half, then less. The shadows outside deepen. The road gets narrower, the trees thicker. I roll my shoulders back, refocus, let the silence sharpen me instead of weigh me down.
“Almost there,” I say finally, voice steady.
“Half a mile,” Wesley says, eyes on the tablet. His voice is calmer, that brittle calm he builds when the math finally lines up. “Sean’s dot is stationary.”
“And he hasn’t said anything. Maybe David’s just there to talk.”
“You’re smarter than that,” Wesley mutters.
I am. But I won’t give in to fear either.
We drop onto a frontage lane that runs along the bluffs. The air changes—colder, sharper, eucalyptus resin cutting through salt like menthol. Ahead, through the trunks, I catch a spill of light thrown up from somewhere big. That’ll be the mansion. I ease off the gas, coast, let the engine quiet so the night can tell me things.
