Page 138 of In Case You Didn't Know

“Why didn’t he tell me?” I say, trying to keep a hold on my emotions.

“He thinks he’s doing the right thing, I guess.”

Skyler snorts. “Of course he does. That’s so stupidly Fitzgerald. You idiots always do this. You clam up the moment things get hard, like your vocal chords have unionized. This isn’t chivalry, Hudson. It’s stupidity.”

There’s a long silence. I’m pretty sure Hudson knows better than to say anything else. Then, because she’s as frustrated as I am, she ends the call without saying goodbye.

And all I can think about is that Asher is going to lose everything, because he won’t talk to me. Won’t tell me the truth.

Like I’m some kind of delicate flower who can’t handle it.

I take a deep breath. “Skyler, we’re going,” I say.

She glances at me. “Where? Home?”

I shake my head. “To Manhattan.”

Skyler does a fist bump. “Hell yes!”

“I’m done being protected,” I say, tossing my cold coffee. “If Asher wants to play the noble hero, he can do it with someone who likes that bullshit, because I don’t.”

She slides behind the wheel, then pauses. “Wait. Tracker.”

A second later she’s crouched with her phone flashlight, triumphant as she flings a tiny black device into the grass. “Suck it, Hudson Fitzgerald.”

She looks at me as the engine growls to life.

“Let’s go educate our men on what happens when you try to outmaneuver women with a vat full of coffee and a grudge.”

We peel out of the lot. Fueled by caffeine, fury, and just enough heartbreak to make it dangerous.

I grit my teeth, thinking about the video, the lies, the way Asher treats me like I’m breakable.

Like my brothers always did.

But I’m done playing the damsel. And Asher Fitzgerald is about to find out exactly what happens when you underestimate the heroine.

ASHER

“Come on,” Hudson mutters, staring at his phone. “Move, damn you.” He looks at me. “I don’t suppose you can hack into the security cameras at the rest stop?”

I shake my head. “That’s not how this works. I’m a security expert, not James Bond.”

Hudson groans and tilts the screen toward me. The little tracker dot of his SUV is still in the same place twenty minutes after Skyler hung up on him. At a rest stop somewhere off I-95.

“She threw the tracker, didn’t she?” he mutters.

West, who’s been unusually quiet since Skyler’s telephone rant, finally opens his mouth. “Of course she did. Maybe those two should be running a security company, instead of you idiots.”

“I don’t run a security company,” Hudson says. I notice he doesn’t deny that he’s an idiot, though.

Nor do I, come to that.

I let out a sigh and take Hudson’s phone.

“What are you doing?” There’s still that note of hope in his voice that I’m somehow going to be able to follow every security camera between I-95 and here.

“I’m calling them back,” I say. Because somebody needs to stop this lunacy. I’m hanging on by my last thread of sanity here. I never should have told Hudson about this. He’s weak when it comes to his wife. One look from her and he folds like a deck of cards.