Dream Chaser (Dream Team #2) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,46
to get his hands on guns and fence them. He runs book out of his shop. He fronts loans, at very high interest rates, and he gets nasty when he doesn’t get paid. What I’m saying is, if he’s back in commission, Ryn, this is not a good thing.”
“I get that, Boone, and all that is bad. I get that too. So the cops can catch him for what he’s doing, not what he didn’t do.”
Boone had heard that recently.
He picked up his burger.
“Do you want me to call him?” she offered.
He looked at her over his bun. “Yeah, I want you to call him, but not when we’re in a bar. And I don’t want you to ask him over the phone. I want you to see if he’ll meet you somewhere. Somewhere safe for him. And I want you to tell him that I’ll be by your side when we meet.”
“Right. Cool. We’ll do that on the way to where we’re going next,” she said casually, and grabbed a ring.
He watched as she coated it deeply with ketchup before she bit into it.
And Christ.
This was getting a little freaky.
Never in his life had he thought this, but he was a condiments guy. Ketchup. Mustard. Mayo. Horseradish sauce. Soy. Relish. He liked it all.
And he didn’t go light.
“What?” she asked. “I like ketchup.”
She noticed him noticing.
So he grabbed a ring, reached to her pile of ketchup and gave it a thick coat before shoving it in his mouth.
She grinned at him.
No.
Not freaky.
Just right.
They didn’t get into anything heavy as they finished their food and drinks.
But they’d eaten in the back room.
And on their way out, he glanced at the bar in the front room.
There, he saw a man having a beer who was also a man who’d been walking to his car in the Cherry Creek mall parking lot when they were heading to Boone’s Charger.
Goddamn shit.
He’d barely gotten them on the road with Ryn giving him instructions to get on Speer before he said, “Cisco on the phone, babe. And tell him I’m here and you’re going speaker.”
She dug her phone out of her bag, called, but left a message, and when she was done, she began to state the obvious, “He’s not picking—”
Her phone rang before she finished.
She took the call with a “Hello.” Then, “Hey, Brett. Listen, Boone’s here…” and the man knew that “…and he wants you on speaker. Is that okay with you?” A pause before, “Okay, cool. Going speaker now.”
He saw her holding her phone up between them.
And immediately asked, “You got a man on Ryn?”
“Of course,” Cisco answered.
“What?” Ryn breathed.
“Corinne was killed,” Cisco stated. “I’m not taking any chances with my girls.”
Boone felt his fingers tighten on the steering wheel as a pulse beat through his temple.
His girls?
“They can stand down, Cisco,” Boone growled.
“Two women are dead. Like I said, I’m not taking any chances,” Cisco replied.
“Our girls are covered,” Boone stated.
Ryn read his mood, which was probably impossible to miss, so she said, “Brett, that’s sweet. But really, it’s not necessary. We have commandos at our backs.”
“I didn’t cover Corinne. I didn’t think she’d be a target. I can’t say I got it all going on, but what I can say is that I only make a mistake once,” Cisco answered.
“Corinne didn’t have a man who kept a sheikh’s son safe while they were extricating themselves from a volatile situation with their tribe sitting next to her in a car or sleeping next to her in her bed,” Boone returned. “Tell them to stand the fuck down.”
“You kept a sheikh’s son safe?” Ryn asked.
“Later, baby,” Boone muttered.
“Isn’t this a situation of more is better?” Cisco asked.
“You got a woman?” Boone queried.
“Not yet,” Cisco shared.
“When you do, you tell me if you want another man on her you don’t know.”
There was a beat of silence before, “I take your point.”
“Tell him to stand down, and if you got men on the others, they can take a hike too.”
“I’ll make some calls. Is that it?”
“No,” Boone told him. “We need to meet.”
Nothing to that.
“This is not a setup,” Boone assured him. “You can imagine I’m tweaked, Ryn’s friend gets executed and the cops are on her doorstep twelve hours later.”
“The man I had on Ryn is just a precaution,” Cisco said. “She has nothing to do with anything. Corinne was not the same. She was my attorney. I was in her home two nights ago. As I said, I’m just not taking any