throw it on with some shades and we’re in your car, our chances of anybody noticing me go way down. I don’t want Ray to recognize me.”
Nice. I’d planned to get her in some kind of disguise, but she’s already ahead of me.
“I’ve got one. Nothing much to look at, but it’ll do the trick. And I have an old pair of sunglasses around here too.”
I grab a baseball cap, sunglasses, and one of my button-up shirts for her and then holler upstairs to tell Bryce we’re leaving soon.
“Where are we going?” he asks, running down the steps.
“Just out for a drive. Maybe we’ll swing by and pick something up for dinner.”
“Cool!” He jumps off the bottom step. So does the cat. “Can Savanny come with us?”
“No,” both Valerie and I say at the same time.
The cat would be a dead giveaway, and even if it’s damn near becoming closer than his own shadow, I’m not ready to take a half-wild feline on joyrides.
“Okay.” Bryce scratches the beast’s head. “Sorry, Savanny. I’ll see you later, dude.”
Then he runs to the garage door I’m holding open for him.
I wait for Val to walk through first, then pull the door shut and walk around the truck, noting how cute she looks with a hat on.
What the hell?
Adorable or not, someone’s trying to kill her. That’s the only reason I’m doing this. Once this King Heron crap gets settled, odds are I’ll never see her again.
She’s not my wife. She’s not my girl. She shouldn’t even be my eye candy.
As I start the engine, I make a silent vow.
I’ll keep denying every last hard-on this chick gives me.
Part of keeping her safe from the Cornaro Outfit and her own fucked up brother means saving her from my stupidity.
My chatterbox son cuts through the tension, telling Val about the video game he was playing as we drive.
She keeps the conversation going, laughing at how many times he beat me today. The kid enjoys that. Besides my ma, and Cash every so often, he doesn’t have a ton of adult interaction without counting his teachers at school.
I rarely feel guilty over it, and I’m too distracted to dwell on it now. But I’m happy as hell to see him making a connection with someone new.
Pulling my mind back to the task at hand, I pinch my jaw shut.
Ray Gerard must be balls deep in the Cornaro Outfit. There’d been panic in his voice; the guy was almost screeching, demanding to know where Val was immediately. Like he had a God-given right to know, and not as a concerned brother.
More like a selfish pig talking like he owned his little sister.
Asshole. That bastard must be so shady he can’t cast a shadow.
“Bryce, how about you pull out your Switch and play a couple rounds? Use your headphones, please,” I say.
He goes quiet and gives me a knowing smile. The boy rarely puts up a fight when he senses I need a little privacy.
“Will do. Thanks, Dad. It’s in the middle console,” he says.
I reach over to open the compartment.
“I’ll get it for him,” Val says, lifting the lid. She pulls out the game as well as the earbuds and passes them back to Bryce.
“Thanks. Dad keeps this in the truck for when the drive gets boring,” Bryce says.
“Like now. Nothing but overgrown hills and touristy traffic this time of day,” I say. “We’re going to Aiea.”
“Blah,” he says. “You hate city driving. Why are we going to Aiea again?”
“Looking for someone,” I answer. “Leave that to us.”
“Oh, wow! So you’re going into action?” he asks, then looks at Valerie. “Dad’s like half cop and half ninja when he goes into action. It’s so cool.”
“No, son, nothing too crazy. Should be so boring we’ll be done by the time you look up from your game,” I tell him, hoping like hell that’s true.
No good reason it should go down any differently.
He’s just an excitable kid. I shouldn’t stress. Guess I hate even reminding him this shit was once the beating heart of my life in the SEALs, and then with Damysus Security.
He’d been with me one time, when I’d had to apprehend a man several years ago.
It was a smaller job, this wealthy, deadbeat asshole who owed the state and his kids’ mama six figures in back child support. He owed so much they hired my crew to bring him down, only to find out the fuck was tooling around downtown Honolulu in his shiny new convertible,