for the day and spent the evenings with him and Blue. Copper was still keeping his distance, but the rest of the club seemed to enjoy having me around—if the number of times someone stopped by unexpected was any indication. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was beginning to wonder if the three of us would have any evenings to ourselves. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to find out as all hell broke loose the next day.
After another productive morning of writing, I removed my earbuds and was headed for a bathroom break when the store’s phone rang. “Hello, Books, Books, and Books. Can I help you?”
Josie’s eyes landed on me as her face paled. She held one finger over her lips, telling me to be quiet, and then she pointed to the office and mouthed, “Tatum.”
I darted behind the checkout counter and into the office. “Josie needs you,” I blurted. “Seems urgent.”
She got up and went to see what was going on faster than I expected, which left me with a growing sense of unease. Before I could process what was happening, Tatum herded Josie and me into a room in the back of the store and locked the door.
“That phone call was someone threatening to ‘send the store up in a ball of flames,’” Tatum said matter-of-factly. “Sloane, we’ll have to explain along the way, but we’re leaving now.”
“Oh, okay, um, I’ll just grab my laptop and bag, and I’m ready to go.”
Tatum grimaced. “I’ll have to bring it to you a little later. We have to leave now,” she explained, though she didn’t seem as panicked as I felt. I hadn’t realized I’d been following her as she was talking until she came to a stop in front of a bookshelf in the back room. She removed a book from the third shelf and revealed a hidden keypad.
Once she entered the code, a secret door opened, and she ushered us inside, the sound of the locks sliding into place echoing around the dark, bare room. I wasn’t scared of the dark by any means, but I also wasn’t crazy about standing in a secret room with zero visibility.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain everything once we get to safety.”
At that, I shut my mouth and followed instructions. It only happened once—as far as I could recall—when I was younger, but I remembered that time vividly. Part of what stuck with me was my mother’s voice. I never found out what happened, but she conveyed her fear and the seriousness of the situation solely by the tone of her voice. And Tatum’s tone was damn near an exact replication of my mother’s.
Moments later, more locks clicked, and light illuminated the small space before another door opened. “Sorry,” Tatum apologized. “It’s hard to find the hand scanner in the dark,” she explained and pointed to a device mounted on the wall.
After my eyes adjusted from the sudden brightness, I realized we were in what looked like another type of safe room, and thankfully it was one with lights. “Almost there,” Tatum shared and set about opening yet another door, which opened into the bookstore’s office. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Not where you think,” Josie murmured and took my hand to pull me along behind her. She quickly moved through the store and, to my shock, out the front door.
“Wait! I can’t leave without telling Bronze!” I insisted as I increasingly became alarmed.
“He already knows,” Tatum told me while practically shoving me into the backseat of the weirdest looking four-door Jeep.
“Is this Jeep pink?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
Tatum huffed while Josie laughed. “Barely. I made one offhanded comment about preferring a pink Jeep over a minivan, and my boss thought it’d be hilarious to make my dreams come true by having this bitch painted the palest shade of pink he could find before delivering it to me.”
“So, this is your work vehicle? As in, belongs to the Bureau?”
She shrugged, failing to notice how I was gearing up to have an epic freak-out. “I wouldn’t call it my work vehicle, but it does belong to the government.”
“And it’s bulletproof,” Josie supplied.
“Why am I in a government-owned, bulletproof vehicle?” I asked through clenched teeth while my voice became increasingly louder.
Tatum cleared her throat and fulfilled her promise to explain. Sort of. “I can’t tell you the reasons why, but we have plans in place for a variety of possible situations—one being the need to escape quickly and quietly with minimal