that they’d probably kill us and anyone close to us, and it was only a matter of time. My father’s clean up jobs have gotten worse and worse lately. So we took a vote,” Godfrey said, exchanging glances with the others. “We decided to push you away before shit hit the fan, and make sure everyone knew that you were nothing to us. Johnny Jack likes to punish his enemies by kidnapping girls close to them. We had to separate you from us publicly as much as possible.” Godfrey explained.
“How did he find out?” I asked.
Rogue and Godfrey shared a look. “I’ve been going through the evidence,” Rogue admitted. “A couple of weeks ago, I tried accessing the USB drive, thinking it would have more clues or photos with the members of Johnny Jack’s crew to incriminate them, but it must have pinged them, because O’Banion started sniffing around us more than ever, making shady comments and threats. He was there when I caught you smoking weed under the bleachers,” Rogue said, and my stomach tightened. “That’s why I had to get you out of there as quickly as possible.”
Well, good to know Rogue hadn’t just dumped trash on me because he was actually meeting with a girl. But still. I had maggots in my freaking bra.
“We kept trying to figure out a way to get the evidence into the right hands without getting ourselves killed or in trouble, but we’re stuck,” Godfrey explained.
“Why not turn it in anonymously?”
“Our DNA is all over it. We thought it was another burn and be done scenario. We were reckless. We can’t be sure that they won’t trace it back to us,” Rogue said, and immediately, my mind went back to the night he killed that man. They’d burned their clothes and disposed of his body. They weren’t fucking around.
My mind scrambled to keep up. From the way they explained things, it sounded like they’d been Mr. Taylor’s clean up crew for years. I hated the fact that they’d basically been forced into being criminals during their teenage years. And I’d never known. I’d never even had an inkling. I saw them everyday, hung out with them nearly every night, and they never said a word or let on that something like this was going on. If I’d known… Well, that was the thing. If I’d known, I would have tried to stop them or help them.
“Why would your Daddy want to involve you guys in this?” I asked incredulously.
“My father is a controlling dick,” Godfrey immediately answered. “I don’t know how his mind works. Maybe he gets off on putting us in danger. But Rogue, Luis, and Bonham should’ve never been involved. The fuckers tracked me down one day and made me tell them where I kept sneaking off to. After that, they insisted on helping me.”
My heart swelled a little at that. People often thought that the Heirs were narcissistic assholes, but when it came to each other, they were loyal and fierce.
“I never knew,” I said quietly, feeling guilty for being a shitty friend and not realizing.
“We made sure of that, Babe,” Luis said. “From the beginning, we were careful not to drag you into that shit.”
I didn’t point out that I was dragged into it now, whether they liked it or not.
“So, that O’Banion guy wanted to scare you all by threatening me,” I said levelly. “He wanted to show you that he could have taken me.” The fear I felt at that realization didn’t really sink in yet, but I knew it would. Probably at night when I tried to sleep.
“Yeah,” Rogue answered, his intense, dark eyes watching me.
I swallowed and looked away from him to pick at my nails. “You have their evidence, and they want it back,” I said, more to myself than to them. “They’re running a sex slave operation, kidnapping girls, hurting them, killing them, selling them…” My voice choked up, and when I felt the bed dip beside me, I knew it was Rogue, but he didn’t touch me. He didn’t wrap his arm around me or pull me close, even though I could tell by the way his hand dug into his knee that he wanted to.
I couldn’t sort through my emotions. I could barely breathe. There was an ocean of dangerous what-ifs that poured down my throat and filled my lungs with sodden shock. I was going to drown in my own turmoil.
“Is there anything else?” I asked, my voice sounding