He was not a big fan of her tone.

“Cut the sarcasm, sweetheart,” he growled.

“Fuck that, Boone,” she bit at him. “What am I gonna do with all my free time? Cower behind my locked bathroom door and wait it out?”

“I’m gonna have you covered.”

“Actually, no, you’re not,” she retorted. “You’re relieved of duties considering you aren’t super-hot at executing them.”

Boone grew completely still.

Fucking hell.

She did not just say that.

She kept going.

“Now I need to talk to Lottie, and the girls, and freaking Smithie, so if you’ll excuse me.”

She made to move around him.

Boone stopped her by speaking, his voice vibrating again like it did earlier that day when he was talking to Cisco.

“I should have been more cautious. I shouldn’t have left you today, but I had no idea half this shit was going on,” he clipped. “So that was a low fucking blow, Ryn.”

Her eyebrows shot up even as her hair swayed with the violence of her head jerk.

“That wasn’t what—”

Boone interrupted her.

“And straight up, some jackholes set a monster on you, that isn’t in any way on me.”

“Of course it’s—”

“But if you think I’m fallin’ down on the job, sweetheart, I hear you. You got to trust who’s got your back. So, I’m out.”

With that, her entire body jerked.

“Boone, if you’d let me speak,” she said slowly, semi-irately, but still, there was carefulness in her words.

Too fucking late.

“Think you said enough,” he returned. “I’ll talk to Mo and the boys. You’ll be good.”

And with that, he turned, walked out of her room, down her hall, and right out her front door.

He didn’t slam it.

He didn’t even slam his car door.

He drove carefully, but not calmly, to the office.

And in the parking lot, he made his calls to make sure Ryn was covered.

After that, he went to work.

And he worked on shit that was her shit.

Even when it wasn’t.

Chapter Thirteen

Dry as a Bone

Ryn

Arundown of my last three not-so-great days:

After Boone prowled out in a snit, I walked to my living room in maybe an even bigger snit and informed the girl gang what had just gone down with Boone.

All of it.

Now, we were women hanging together.

So obviously I’d already shared what had gone down with Boone until that point (particularly the bathroom sink sex, and the profoundness of the same, a conversation that made Mo look like he wanted someone to shoot him).

But as sisters were wont to do, earlier profound lovemaking was completely forgotten and there was, as there would be, general outrage at the high-handedness of the new man in my life who, just that morning, I could not get enough of, had plans to be with him as much as possible for the whole freaking week, but who had just told me he was “out” and then walked out when I was having possibly the worst day of my entire life.

And mind you, that worst day bested the fact that I’d been in a firefight in the parking lot of a goddamned mall and was currently barred from seeing my beloved niece and nephew because of my pathologically self-involved not-quite sister-in-law and alcoholic brother.

So we could just say that was a bad fucking day.

But noooooo…

My mega-alpha dominant damned Dom of a maybe-kinda boyfriend thought this was all about him, threw a mood and stalked out.

Huh.

Obviously, the girl gang decided something needed to be done about this (not the Boone part, he could go fuck himself as far as I was concerned, or, at least at that moment I thought he could—about the Smithie part).

Thus, we made the decision to haul our asses to the club and let Smithie know exactly how we felt about all this shit.

Mo was not a big fan of this.

What Mo was, was a pushover for his woman.

So, even though he was by no means hip on driving me and Lottie in his truck with Evie, Pepper and Hattie trailing in Evie’s Prius, that was what he did.

Commence us storming into Smithie’s office en masse, which I thought was pretty cool, and I loved my girls even more for having my back in doing it.

But before any of us could open our mouths to get one word out, Smithie decreed, “My decision is final.”

To which maybe (okay, definitely) stupidly, I replied, “I’m not accepting pity money.”

“It’s not pity money,” Smithie shot back. “Think of it like you’re on vacation. Which right now you are, seeing as, to assuage your fuckin’ pride, we’ll start with your PTO.”

Huh, again.

“Vacation in hiding from bad cops?” I asked.

To which Hattie asked, “Are the guys putting you in hiding?”

I looked to her. “I don’t know. Boone and I didn’t get that far.”

“I bet Hawk has like, a gazillion safe houses. Probably on about three continents. Maybe four. Maybe he has one by a beach,” Pepper said.

“I’m not going to a safe house,” I declared.

“I would, if it was by a beach,” Pepper replied.

“A beach would make it seem like a vacation,” Evie put in.

Unfortunately, she was right.

And if Boone came along, it’d be a great vacation.

I could not focus on this. I had to focus on important shit.

Yeah.

You’re reading it right.

That would be focusing on the “important shit” of having the absolute wrong reaction to all that was going down with me.

And that would be getting in the face of people who were trying to look out for me.

By the by, it would take a while for me to have this epiphany, so wait for it.

In that moment, however, Smithie cut in to share, “I’m not changing my mind. Until it’s safe for you, you’re not onstage. And Ryn, when you get your head out of your ass about all of this, you’ll realize that’s not only about looking after your best interests, but the shit at play here, I gotta protect a whole lot more than just you.”

He swung his arm out, indicating the “whole lot more” included the other girls then went so far as twisting to swing his arm behind him toward the back wall to indicate the club.

“We’re talking dirty cops,” he continued. “I run a strip joint. I bet you can think of at least a dozen scenarios where they could find reasons to fuck with me, you, and my entire staff. I’ll also bet they can think of three dozen. Are you understanding me?”

Okay, so at that juncture, it was dawning on me that it might be me that was being pathologically self-involved.

Cue us leaving the club with our tails tucked between our legs.

Though Lottie, surprisingly, the most together of all of us, the most mature, was the one not feeling it.

So not feeling it, she ranted and raved the entire way home about how life couldn’t just come to a complete stop because some assholes had targeted me.

This meant by the time we got home, I was no longer feeling it.

And thus, when we reconvened with the other girls, we got them to not feeling it (and just to say, Mo did a lot of studying the ceiling during all of this, as well as heavy sighing, but he spoke not a word), and in the end, Lottie got on the phone, starting with Jet, her sister.