Page 106 of Piece You Saved

“I thought you wanted him gone,” Harley says.

“What I want,” Kade bites out, “is that sick puppy in a shallow fucking grave. Whatever way gets him there sooner is good enough for me. So this plan...”

“Can’t happen without Saige,” Aden says from the door.

“You were supposed to keep her up there, Aden,” I growl, my eyes locked on the cop.

Footsteps move toward the table, the same steps I heard make their way down the stairs. Saige sits in the same seat as before. Aden leans on the kitchen counter behind her. Both are back in gray sweats, their skin pink from the shower they had minutes before.

“All of this started with me,” Saige says with a note in her voice that compels me to look at her. “And it ends with me. Aden can show me how to shoot a gun. I can’t do this on my own, but you can think like him, so you can help me end this.”

“It isn’t safe,” I say.

“It isn’t your job to keep me safe.” She stares me right in the eye, not backing down an inch.

How the fuck did this woman become so integral to me?

She continues. “I heard you say the cop is the thing Rylan won’t see coming, butI’mhis weakness. He won’t kill me, so while he’s busy not killing me,Ican killhim.”

I cross my arms over my chest and sit back, pretending nonchalance I don’t feel. “And you think you can put a bullet between his eyes?”

She places her palms flat on the table and leans toward me. As if I didn’t lunge at her hours before. As if I’m nothing for her to fear.

If I were to ignore the bitter tang of her fear mixing with her sweet peach scent, I could and would believe it.

“If you knew the things he did to me, if you knew the hell he made my life, you wouldn’t be asking me such a stupid question.”

And there it is again. I swallow my smile. There’s that inner core of strength Rylan did everything in his power to crush. He failed, because it keeps on kicking.

I raise my brow. “Stupidquestion?”

She tilts her chin up, firms her jaw, and nods once. “Stupid.”

Silence.

“I can teach her to shoot,” Aden says, probably to diffuse the tension crackling between us. “But she might not have an opportunity.”

“We’ll have to create one,” Kade says.

“I can’t believe you’re planning to shoot a man in cold blood,” Detective Morgan mutters.

“Rylan Trevailer is no man,” Harley offers.

I shoot him a warning to stop talking because he’s come perilously close to revealing something no human should ever know.

He blinks innocently back at me.

Great, someone like Kade who knows how to test my patience.

I turn to Detective Morgan. “He’s a predator. And he abducted a good friend of ours. We need to get her back.”

The cop’s face freezes. “Her?You didn’t say it was a woman.”

Is he thinking about his dead sister?

“Yes,” Saige confirms quietly. “He wants me in exchange for Sam.”

The cop stares at her, and his eyes dip to the scars—the healed-over bite marks covering both sides of her neck. “And what will he do to you if he gets you in exchange?”

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