Page 88 of Fire Fight

Lane sighed and wisely dropped it. We could both tell he wasn’t getting through to Crew, not right now, and not like this.

Clearly desperate for a subject change, Lane asked, “Notice anything weird when you were knocking it down?”

“Diesel.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“They’re fucking taunting her now,” Crew ground out, his jaw ticking as he looked at me. There was such…ragein his eyes. I knew it wasn’t directed at me, but it still had me yielding a step. Correctly interpreting my movement as fear, he blinked, replacing it with wariness and worry. Then he reached for me, and I let him take my hand, allowing the contact to soothe us both.

“That’s why I’d like to take her into protective custody.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Crew spat at his brother.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” Lane said.

“The hell I don’t. She’s safest here withme.”

Lane raised a brow, glancing pointedly between us and the burned out husk of my Suburban. “You sure about that?”

“She’s not going anywhere with you and your useless fucking deputies,” Crew snarled, getting in his brother’s face. “Definitely not with Johns involved.”

“I heard that, you stupid fuck!” the deputy—Johns, presumably—shouted.

Crew shot his brother a look as if to say,see what I mean?

Before things could get out of hand, or before Crew could assault another cop tonight, I squeezed his fingers tightly. His attention turned to me instantly, menacing expression softening to concern.

“How about we let me decide what I want to do?”

Lane glanced at me, blinking slowly, as if remembering I stood right there while they’d been talking about me like I didn’t. “I suppose that would be the humane thing to do.”

I snorted. “You think?”

The sheriff pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’m sure I can accurately assume you’re going to stay here.”

I nodded, tucking myself into Crew’s side. “It’s like he said: I’m safest with him.”

Lane tipped his face toward the sky, squeezed his eyes shut, and sighed heavily. Then he looked at Crew. “Would you at least let Trey run a check and make sure everything is working properly?”

Crew nodded. “That’s fine.”

“Did I hear my name?” the third Lawless brother asked, strolling up to our little pow wow.

Beyond the house, the sky had lightened considerably while we’d been out here, no longer that bruised purple right before dawn but a soft golden getting brighter by the minute.

Between this and the nightmare I’d had late last night, this had already been an especially long and emotionally draining day. I was ready to crawl back into bed.

The thought of my nightmare combined with the words on the garage triggered something else in my memory, and I blurted, “Did the firefighters find any sort of timing device?”

Their conversation about Crew’s security system died, and three pairs of eyes turned to me, two of them narrowed in confusion, the third wide in understanding.

“The weird noises you heard last night,” Crew said, thankfully remembering my off-handed comment from when he’d found me in his bed.

“What weird noises?” Lane asked.

I screwed my eyes shut, willing myself to recall those dark, quiet moments that had been interrupted. “Scuffling noises, I guess. I thought it might’ve been an animal of some sort, but there were also a couple bangs. Not loud. More like…muffled. Those happened right as I was on the edge of sleep, though, so I could’ve imagined them.”

Lane withdrew his little notebook from his pocket, quickly jotting down what I’d said. “Where in the house were you?”