Page 127 of Piece You Saved

A ringing phone silences Dariel.

Dariel fishes a cell phone out of his back pocket, glances at the caller, and immediately ends the call before he returns it to his pocket. “As I was saying, there’s nowhere else we can get to him before the bridge. We’d need to know exactly which direction he was coming from, and even then, the odds aren’t stacked in our favor.”

We all stare at him.

He shakes his head. “Wrong number.”

“Surely you have to actually answer the call to know that. Right?” I ask.

Dariel doesn’t respond.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Kade lifting his eyebrow. So, Dariel just told a white lie. Someone called him, someone he knew, and he doesn’t want to tell us who it was.

I recall the dead brother flung into the backyard.

Since Dariel is unlikely to have sprung up fully grown from the earth, there must be a family somewhere.

I cock my head and ask casually, “Is there any way this wrong number could prove helpful to us down the line?”

Dariel’s expression doesn’t change. “All wrong numbers do is inconvenience you. They areneverhelpful.”

So, thereisa family. Just not one he—or we—can rely on.

I feel Kade, Aden, and Detective Morgan glance over at me. I nod, ignoring their curious attention. “Good to know.”

Bang.

We swivel our heads toward the kitchen doorway, and the front door, the source of the loud bang. Out of everyone, Saige is the slowest to recover, her heart thumping loudly.

Kade scoops her up and places her in his lap before kissing the top of her hair. “Just a car backing up, angel.”

He says it with his eyes on me as if he wants me to know she’s his.

Saige is someone I never thought I would have. I’ve never been so wholly sure a woman belongs to me, or that I belong with her until now. She warned me she came with baggage, and her baggage was liable to rip my throat out. I’d assumed she was talking about Rylan, but she might have meant Kade.

Baggage doesn’t scare me. She’s worth it.

Smiling at Kade, and letting him see nothing he says or does is going to chase me off, I turn to ask Dariel, “How do you think he’ll manage the exchange?”

Kade grinds his teeth. A brief flare of amusement fills Dariel’s eyes before he says, “He’ll have her go to him first.”

“Not going to happen,” Kade says, at the same time Saige says, “I’ll do it.”

He glares down at the top of her head.

Gripping the front of his shirt, she tugs his face down to hers and kisses him lightly on the lips. “I’ll have a gun, and all of you will be close by. He won’t get me away.”

What would it feel like to have her pull me in for a kiss like that? Would it leave me with the same soft warmth I see in Kade’s eyes? Probably.

“And if he does get you away?” Aden asks.

She glances over at him. “He won’t, and you said he won’t have as much backup as he did before?”

I feel Detective Morgan’s curiosity before Aden responds. “Yes.”

“You’ll outnumber him,” Saige says. “He’ll have to move quickly.”

“You’ll be exposed,” Dariel warns. “There won’t be a way we can kill him without someone seeing.”

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