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A woman slid her arms around his waist and kissed him hard before slipping away with the others. As soon as they were gone, Asher’s smile slipped from his face and anger filled his features.
“What the fuck happened?”
“We’d like to know that, too,” Lock muttered. “All we know is that we pissed someone off.”
“Cash pissed someone off,” I retorted. “They went after Leah. I was too late,” I admitted, trying not to let my emotions get the best of me.
“I heard,” Asher said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. FNG said you have a little girl.”
“I just got home with her.”
“That’s a hell of a way to find out.”
I nodded, unwilling to say anything else. Thankfully, Lock took over.
“What happened with you?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, sighing heavily. “Holly was leaving for work. I headed out after her. That’s when I noticed the tail. I called Wyatt and asked him to look after her while I tried to lose them. Those fuckers wouldn’t let up. I just lost one when another appeared. I had to force an accident to get rid of them. When I showed up at Holly’s work, Cash was there with Knight.”
I looked at Lock, surprised by that. “They were at Leah’s house also. How do they know who these guys are gonna hit next?”
“Maybe they don’t. It could just be luck.”
“Or maybe they know more than they’re letting on,” I muttered.
Lock nodded in agreement. This whole thing fucking stunk. “What else?”
“I was only there a minute before we were hit. There had to have been at least ten of them.”
That was unexpected. “Ten? After the first attempt?”
“Yeah. I was surprised, too. Any idea how many went after Leah?”
I shook my head, remembering the image of her in that fucking chair. It wouldn’t have taken more than one or two of them to subdue her, but that didn’t mean more of them weren’t there.
“There were shells all over the house. She fought back,” I said after a moment. “So, there were probably a few of them, but ten?”
“And that was only the second wave.”
My head jerked up in surprise. “The second wave?”
He let out a sarcastic chuckle, shaking his head. “I took her home to grab a few things. We were gonna leave with her parents, but the moment I opened the door, I saw a green light in the house, and I just fucking knew…We don’t have any green lights in the house. I knew it was a sensor of some kind. We barely had time to get back down the steps before the whole fucking house blew.”
“Fucking hell,” Lock muttered.
“If they’re after information, they wouldn’t fucking blow the house.”
“And they wouldn’t fire upon us at Holly’s store like that if they expected to get answers out of us. They were shooting to kill.”
“Yet, none of you were injured,” Lock surmised.
“I haven’t been part of OPS in five fucking years. What could they possibly want from me?”
That was laughable. “Are you serious? Asher, you worked for Rafe. You were in deep with The Syndicate.”
“Not that fucking deep,” he grumbled.
“Closer than anyone else got. If you hadn’t walked away, you would have established new ties and probably taken down Zavala from the inside. You’re a threat simply because you were there.”