Page 77 of Firefly (Redemption 2)

Her smile mirrored my own then shifted into a knowing grin. “I see. We’re all still at my mom’s house. He’s there.” Pulling her phone out of the back pocket of her dark jeans, she checked the screen for a second then put it away. “You happen to be in luck, because I’m not closing tonight, and I get off in about twenty minutes. You can follow me.”

“I walked here.”

Her eyebrows lifted, that grin widening. “Of course you did. Well, you can walk if you want, but it’s about three miles from here, as I’m sure you remember. It’ll be faster if you wait for me to drive you.”

“Okay,” I said, the word too soft in my nervousness.

“Go find a booth, I’ll find you when I’m done. And, Elle,” she called out when I started to leave, “what I said still stands. If you plan on running, make sure my brother knows.”

“I don’t,” I replied immediately, not realizing until after she’d gone back to work the meaning of my response.

It was the first time in my life I’d ever said I planned on staying in this confining town.

And it had been instinctive.

“It’s happening soon. Sooner than we’d originally thought,” he said from where he stood a few feet from Johnny and me. “And he’s planning something big with it.”

“Bigger than a fucking human trafficking ring? Bigger than signed contracts from twenty of the richest and most influential men in this and the surrounding states, vowing and paying to go in on bidding wars to own these women?”

Eyes that promised destruction locked onto me, but he didn’t move or give any hint to what he might be thinking. “Something he’s trying to keep from me,” he said after a few tense seconds. “Something he’s excited about. And that’s not good. We’re leaving tonight, and we’ll be gone for a few days. Use that time to look for what he’s planning.”

I blew out a pent-up breath and scrubbed my hands over my face. “Fine. I’ll—” A growl sounded in my throat when I looked back up, only to find him gone.

I got really tired of him doing that.

“I’ll tell you what we need to be looking for,” Johnny mumbled from beside me as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. “A trap to take us the fuck out of the picture. ‘We’ll be gone for a couple days.’” He scoffed. “Right. More like, ‘Come on, idiots. Walk into my trap.’”

I shook my head as I turned to head back into the house. “Shut up, Johnny.”

As soon as we walked into the house from the back door, I knew I’d walked into something Johnny had just imagined.

It felt like a trap.

Except my sister was at the helm of it.

“Hi,” I said, wary of her too-large smile and the fact that she was sitting on the couch with my mom . . . and they weren’t arguing.

“Well, hello, favorite brother of mine,” she said in a saccharine voice. “Have fun working?”

Instead of responding, I let my gaze drift slowly around the large living room and over to the small part of the kitchen I could see from where I was standing.

“I told you,” Johnny hissed through gritted teeth. “I told you. That motherfucker.”

“Enough.”

I could hear his teeth gnash together as he clenched his jaw tightly in order to keep from talking. Where Johnny had been anxious and shifting the entire meeting in the backyard, he was now tense and shaking as he stood still, waiting for whatever threat to reveal itself.

“Earth to dumb and dumber,” Libby said with a huff. “You look like two wolves sniffing out dinner.”

My hand twitched toward my gun when I heard movement off to the side, but relaxed when Maverick walked into the living room from the kitchen with sandwiches in hand and a wolfish grin on his face.

“Hey, hey. Libby tell you about your little present?”

“Hard to when they walk in and stop to pose like they’re Batman and Robin,” Libby muttered as she looked at her nails. “Johnny, Einstein’s waiting for you in your room.”

Maverick staggered to a halt in front of us, his eyes darting from Libby to Johnny.

Johnny didn’t move.

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