now?” he asked.
I blinked. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
Sly chuckled. “I think he means, ‘we’re glad your girl is back and all, but you got some explaining to do.’”
Link snapped his fingers. “That.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you guys want the information I have on Skeleton or what?”
Ash spoke behind me. “What’d you find?”
I thumbed over my shoulder. “Smart man. What I found is that Skeleton is officially desperate.”
The trailer went quiet as Bowser spoke. “Desperate? How?”
I cleared my throat. “I’ll give you the short rundown: so, Simone is taken. Right?”
Link nodded. “Right.”
“So, they track us to the motel, they take her, and they drive her way out of town. And I mean Cherry Branch? Where I found her? A good four hours from where we originally were. No clue where they were taking her, but they stopped at a rest area. You know, the one I kept going back to? They stopped there, and she made a break for the highway. Got away, hitched a ride into Cherry Branch, and got herself a damn job to make some money to get back into town for us.”
Sly grinned. “Hell of a survivor.”
I shrugged. “We had to be, growing up the way we did.”
Ash stepped up to the plate. “Growing up? You two grew up together?”
I paused. “Technically, we lived together. We had the same foster parents growing up.”
Sly smiled wildly. “You nasty little dog, you.”
I shot him a look. “Anyway. I find her in Cherry Branch after patrolling through all hell and high water, and I find her by flashing Skeleton’s picture. He tracked her back to that little town after all that time had passed. Almost two weeks, and he’s still looking for some girl that may or may not route back to us?”
Link nodded. “He’s desperate.”
I snickered. “Who else chases some girl that long if it’s not his last way to get to us?”
Bowser clapped his hands. “This is good. We can use this. If he’s still desperate and he’s still looking for her, we could—”
I pointed at him. “She’s not your bait and she never will be. Back off that idea right now.”
Bowser held up his hands. “Just a thought.”
Link cleared his throat. “So, we’ve got a desperate man ready to be trapped, we’ve got the Feds breathing down our throats thinking we’re involved in all of this somehow, and now we’re stuck out in the woods for fuck-only-knows how long until this heat dies down?”
I sighed. “Any chance we have someone in the force we can place a call to? You know, feel shit out?”
Bowser shook his head. “The second I put my battery back in my phone, we’re toast. They’ll track us in a heartbeat.”
Sly furrowed his brow. “Someone wanna take a chance at backtracking to get a burner phone?”
Link pinned him with a glare. “We all stay here. The entire reason why we have this system in place is, so we don’t get caught. Let’s not fuck that up now.”
Sly scoffed. “We aren’t even a part of this, though. We’re trying to help!”
Link turned on him on a dime. “And you think the FBI’s gonna care about that shit?”
The trailer fell silent as Sly’s face turned to stone.
“No,” he said flatly.
Link licked his lips. “Then, shut up about the burner phone.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s take a breath. We’ve got no reason to fight one another right now. Things are severed enough as it is.”
I heard the faintest of giggling in the background and I turned around. My eyes fell out a small window right behind Ash’s shoulder and the sight before my eyes made my heart soar with pride. Simone was out there with the girls, passing something around with her head fallen back in laughter. I liked the fact that she was getting along with them so well. I hoped they all became friends. Because Simone wasn’t going anywhere, and the last thing I needed was a conflict between my family and my girl.
“Congratulations, by the way,” Bowser said.
I looked over at him. “On what?”
He chuckled. “On finding what most of us usually don’t.”
Sly snickered. “Yeah, all you guys went soft.”
I grinned as I turned to face the only one of us that refused to find himself a good woman. He was the youngest of the group. The newest recruit out of all of us. And he had the temperament of a toddler sometimes. He was a good person, Sly. Intelligent. Street smart. Had a hell