Page 81 of Running on Empty

If we’d have tried to muscle in on Ash’s planning time, we’d have been tossed out on our ears, our brother only able to talk civilly to the rest of us once he had it all sorted out in his head. And the trouble was, he was so damn good at it. Every contingency planned for, every obstacle obliterated. We’d move like a well oiled machine through the next mission and the next.

But there was no soul in all that machine-like perfection.

“She always was,” Ronan agreed, but when she escorted him in through the door, we paused, like two kids hovering at their parents’ door while they slept.

My brother looked at me and I looked at him, both of us snorting at the fact we were letting the customary Ash bullshit keep us from the room. Ronan could kill a man in more ways than I could count, and I’d helped our omega slash a man’s throat today. But that wasn’t what earned us a place in the room, just this.

We were pack. I’d always felt that and while most packs weren’t exactly a democratic collective, ours felt even less equal than most I’d seen. But as we sat down in the chairs Ronan brought in, Ash slumped down into his office chair, then turned to us.

“So what do we do?” The crack in my brother’s voice told us everything we needed to know, Stevie crawling into his lap. “It goes without saying I should’ve driven Scar to the airport or chartered her a plane.”

“We all fucked up in that regard,” I said. “We thought the Spencers were focused only on Stevie. There was nothing on the message boards about Scar.”

“Jack would’ve found someone, anyone he could for insurance,” Ronan said, crossing his feet at the ankle and leaning back in his chair. “The little cunt just hand delivered his brothers to us, hoping it’d be enough to placate us. If it wasn’t Scar it’d be Mum, Cat, Bianca, someone. There was no way to avoid this. He’s a rat running back to his hole, hoping the threat of hurting Scar is enough to stop us coming from him.” His fangs flashed as he grinned. “It’s not.”

“She’s not collateral damage in anything you have planned,” Ash snapped, his spine straightening right up until the point Stevie slid her hand across his chest. He blinked at that, forcing his muscles to relax. “She gets out in one piece, unharmed. That’s non-negotiable.”

“And Jack Spencer dies screaming,” Ronan shot back. “Also non-negotiable.”

“So this is where I come in then.” I blinked, not having intended to say that, but as soon as the words were out, I felt the truth of them. “I’m always in between a rock and a hard place, so… I guess it’s time to make a virtue of that. Everyone wants Jack to pay for what he did, to Stevie, to Scar and to countless others?”

I looked at each one of them then and then all nodded, Stevie and Ronan enthusiastically and Ash much more stiffly.

“But we’re not willing to put Scarlett at risk in any plan we come up with.”

Again, everyone seemed in agreement at that, though much more equally.

“So, if the little fuck is preoccupied with his own survival, he has to have gone to ground.” I glanced at Ash’s array of monitors, my brother reaching around Stevie to bring up some maps of the different properties the Spencer family owned. “I’m betting somewhere big, easily protected and away from the city, so that if a war breaks out, the cops aren’t going to stop Jack from eviscerating us with an army of bodyguards.”

“Here,” Ash said, pointing to a rural property, complete with a massive mansion. “Or if he’s gotten on a plane, he could be here or here.”

“We can check flight logs for that intel,” Ronan said. “My gut says he’s sticking closer to home. Harder to shift a captive by air than by road.”

“Then here,” Ash said, coming back to the original property and then zooming in. “High walls, massive area and a property that’s easy to defend. A frontal assault will be a death sentence for us as well as Scarlett.”

“Not if we use the troops as a decoy.” Everyone looked at me. “If the dads and the MCs hit the front gates with thermite, create a fuss that draws all of Jack’s bodyguards as well as induce panic.”

“Jackie boy would have to be thinking he’s sitting pretty behind those high walls.” Ronan nodded then smirked at me. “Anything that contradicts that belief will have him panicking, making dumb decisions.”

“And Scarlett will be in his firing line,” Ash growled.

“That’s why we’ll be moving on Jack before the chaos starts,” I said. “We’ll be in place, ready to strike, and when he goes to hurt Scar—”

“We’ll already be there.” Ronan’s grin was vicious and so was mine. It was as if we could see victory already, emerging from the shadows, right when the little fuck thought he could use leverage to stop us in our tracks.

“All of us.” Stevie hadn’t said anything before this, but she stared into each one of our eyes, then much longer into Ash’s. I watched a battle rage inside my brother, every part of him hating that idea.

“You don’t want me to protect you anymore?” he told her in a deadly serious tone. “Then know this. If something happens to you again, I won’t survive it. I was barely able to put one foot in front of the other when I saw you…” He swallowed hard. “Seeing you… after we picked you up from The Viper Room damn near killed me and if it happened again, I’d put a bullet in my brain for failing you.”

“So don’t fail me,” she said. “Don’t fail us. We can do this. We’re a pack and we hunt together.”

Just one stiff nod from him. I hoped she saw how much it cost him to make it, but somehow I thought she did. She echoed the gesture much more slowly and with that, our fate was sealed.

We’d either get through this together or we’d fail the same way, forced to live with the consequences. I felt some of what I imagined was my brother’s pain, because this wasn’t something I wanted to share. If someone had to go down, each one of us wanted to without taking the others with them.

So our only choice was not to.

“You know I’m in,” I told her. “Mum always said the omega rules the roost and I think everyone’s finally realising you rule ours.”

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