Beyond the Breaking Point - Lori Sjoberg Page 0,73
forced the lock open.
Bingo. “I found a laptop.”
Austin stepped into the room and parked his ass on one of the brown leather chairs. “Great. Let’s see what’s in it.”
Pulse racing, Wade set the laptop on the desk and pressed the power button. Nothing happened. The battery must be dead. He rooted around the desk until he found a power cord in one of the other drawers. After plugging it in, he pressed the button again and felt a rush when the screen flickered to life.
Unfortunately, the rush evaporated when the startup screen appeared.
“Shit, it’s password protected.” Not surprising, but he was hoping for things to be easy for a change.
Austin tossed him the sat phone. “Better call Larissa.”
For a second or two, Wade stared at the phone as though it might sprout teeth and bite him. From a practical standpoint, it made sense to call their sister. Her computer skills were second to none. But he’d pissed her off by taking off the way he had, which meant this might not be a good time to ask for favors. “She’ll probably respond better if you made the call.”
“Dude, really?” Austin shot him a look. “You’ve got to deal with her sooner or later.”
If given the choice, he’d rather go with later, after she’d had more time to settle down. Like a year, maybe two. She wasn’t the type to forgive easily. But seeing as how that wasn’t an option, he sucked it up, pressed the power button, and dialed his baby sister, who picked up on the second ring.
The sound of her voice made him smile. God, he’d missed her. “Hey, sis.”
The line went quiet for so damn long he wondered whether she’d hung up on him. At last, she said, “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” Might as well get this over with, Wade thought as he stared down at the wood floor. Eating crow wasn’t on his list of favorite foods, but he’d brought this on himself. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry—”
“Didn’t mean to make me worry?” Her voice shot up half an octave. If this had been a face-to-face encounter, this would have been the part where she thwacked him upside the head. Maybe nailed him in the nuts for good measure. “How the hell did you think I’d react to you running off on a suicide mission?”
His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t a suicide mission. I had every—”
“You left your life insurance policy, last will and testament, list of log-ins and passwords, and financial statements for us to find. That’s not the way someone behaves when they plan on coming back.”
At the time, he’d viewed it from a practical standpoint, but he understood how that might have freaked her out. It made him feel even more like the asshole he was.
Wade rubbed at the tension along the back of his skull and chose his next words carefully. “I’m sorry, Larissa. You’ve got every right to be upset. I always planned to come back, but I wanted to make things easy for everyone in case things didn’t work out. If it makes you feel better, Austin kicked my ass when he found me.”
“It’s a start.” The edge in her voice had softened a fraction.
In all likelihood, she’d still thwack him upside the head when he got home. But the worst of her anger had dissipated, which meant the shot to the nuts was probably off the table.
“I swear, if you ever pull a stunt like that again—”
“What?” A smile tugged at his mouth. He knew better than to poke the bear, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. “Going nuclear doesn’t work on me anymore, remember?”
As the only girl among six kids, Larissa had learned at an early age how to contend with her brothers in ways that truly hurt. Instead of resorting to violence, she preferred to make them squirm by telling them all about her menstrual cycle, sex life, childbirth, or anything else that was equally horrifying to them.
All that changed for Wade last year when he had to assist Larissa in the birth of her daughter, Sophie. There simply wasn’t enough brain bleach in the world to wipe away the memory of a tiny human squeezing out the business end of his sister. After witnessing that, there wasn’t anything she could say to unsettle him.
“Shane and I took the girls up to Georgia to visit Mom and Dad.” She sounded way too pleased with herself, and it immediately put