“I get that, Boone, and all that is bad. I get that too. So the cops can catch him for what he’s doing, not what he didn’t do.”

Boone had heard that recently.

He picked up his burger.

“Do you want me to call him?” she offered.

He looked at her over his bun. “Yeah, I want you to call him, but not when we’re in a bar. And I don’t want you to ask him over the phone. I want you to see if he’ll meet you somewhere. Somewhere safe for him. And I want you to tell him that I’ll be by your side when we meet.”

“Right. Cool. We’ll do that on the way to where we’re going next,” she said casually, and grabbed a ring.

He watched as she coated it deeply with ketchup before she bit into it.

And Christ.

This was getting a little freaky.

Never in his life had he thought this, but he was a condiments guy. Ketchup. Mustard. Mayo. Horseradish sauce. Soy. Relish. He liked it all.

And he didn’t go light.

“What?” she asked. “I like ketchup.”

She noticed him noticing.

So he grabbed a ring, reached to her pile of ketchup and gave it a thick coat before shoving it in his mouth.

She grinned at him.

No.

Not freaky.

Just right.

They didn’t get into anything heavy as they finished their food and drinks.

But they’d eaten in the back room.

And on their way out, he glanced at the bar in the front room.

There, he saw a man having a beer who was also a man who’d been walking to his car in the Cherry Creek mall parking lot when they were heading to Boone’s Charger.

Goddamn shit.

He’d barely gotten them on the road with Ryn giving him instructions to get on Speer before he said, “Cisco on the phone, babe. And tell him I’m here and you’re going speaker.”

She dug her phone out of her bag, called, but left a message, and when she was done, she began to state the obvious, “He’s not picking—”

Her phone rang before she finished.

She took the call with a “Hello.” Then, “Hey, Brett. Listen, Boone’s here…” and the man knew that “…and he wants you on speaker. Is that okay with you?” A pause before, “Okay, cool. Going speaker now.”

He saw her holding her phone up between them.

And immediately asked, “You got a man on Ryn?”

“Of course,” Cisco answered.

“What?” Ryn breathed.

“Corinne was killed,” Cisco stated. “I’m not taking any chances with my girls.”

Boone felt his fingers tighten on the steering wheel as a pulse beat through his temple.

His girls?

“They can stand down, Cisco,” Boone growled.

“Two women are dead. Like I said, I’m not taking any chances,” Cisco replied.

“Our girls are covered,” Boone stated.

Ryn read his mood, which was probably impossible to miss, so she said, “Brett, that’s sweet. But really, it’s not necessary. We have commandos at our backs.”

“I didn’t cover Corinne. I didn’t think she’d be a target. I can’t say I got it all going on, but what I can say is that I only make a mistake once,” Cisco answered.

“Corinne didn’t have a man who kept a sheikh’s son safe while they were extricating themselves from a volatile situation with their tribe sitting next to her in a car or sleeping next to her in her bed,” Boone returned. “Tell them to stand the fuck down.”

“You kept a sheikh’s son safe?” Ryn asked.

“Later, baby,” Boone muttered.

“Isn’t this a situation of more is better?” Cisco asked.

“You got a woman?” Boone queried.

“Not yet,” Cisco shared.

“When you do, you tell me if you want another man on her you don’t know.”

There was a beat of silence before, “I take your point.”

“Tell him to stand down, and if you got men on the others, they can take a hike too.”

“I’ll make some calls. Is that it?”

“No,” Boone told him. “We need to meet.”

Nothing to that.

“This is not a setup,” Boone assured him. “You can imagine I’m tweaked, Ryn’s friend gets executed and the cops are on her doorstep twelve hours later.”

“The man I had on Ryn is just a precaution,” Cisco said. “She has nothing to do with anything. Corinne was not the same. She was my attorney. I was in her home two nights ago. As I said, I’m just not taking any chances.”

“That isn’t what I want to talk to you about.”

More silence.

Ryn broke it.

“They want to help you, Brett.”

“I’m not unaware five cops sat that meeting at Delgado’s joint this morning, Sadler,” Cisco said.

And they were being watched too.

“You dragged the women into this, Cisco,” Boone retorted. “Now we’re wading in and we gotta have a firmer grasp on what we’re wading into.”

“This is splitting hairs, but it was actually Evie’s brother who got the women into this,” Cisco returned.

“That asshole didn’t kidnap them, and he also didn’t have Corinne Morton arrange for one of them to come over to her house for a chat. If there are dirty cops out there, officially last night, Ryn got on their radar. And you can imagine that doesn’t make me happy.”

“It’s my understanding you two hooked up just last night,” Cisco noted.

Boone glanced at Ryn.

She shrugged, saying non-verbally she’d “shared” quite a bit with Cisco.

Friends with a felon.

Jesus.

“What you understand doesn’t factor,” Boone told him.

“Protective,” Cisco said. “I approve.”

Boone fought a sneer.

“Brett, you should talk to Boone,” Ryn encouraged.

“They have what they need to know,” Cisco replied.

“Not even close, and you know it, man,” Boone said.

Cisco had no response.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Boone pushed. “You don’t have a man on Ryn because you’re taking precautions. It’s Mueller and Bogart. You have a man on Ryn because they showed at her door this morning.”

He got the answer to his question without getting an answer to his question.

“I’ll meet with Ryn or Evie,” Cisco declared. “No one else. They can tape me. But no wire. And you have my assurances they’ll come in safe and leave safe.”

Before Boone could say dick, Ryn told him, “It’ll be me, Brett.”

“I wanna be there with her and you have my assurances I’ll come in and you’ll be safe, and we’ll leave, and you’ll still be safe,” Boone put in.

“Only Ryn.”

Fuck!

Cisco’s voice had changed significantly when he said his next.

“I wouldn’t hurt her, Sadler. I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t let anyone else. I know it isn’t worth much to you, but it’s worth a lot to me, and you can count on it. You have my word.”