If Kitsch was rolling up on you, we’d be giving you like at least an hour warning. She’s likely fine.”
Rosie was a good liar. Better than me, and that was saying something.
“She is, because I know she’s sitting right beside you.”
Rosie frowned, taking her eyes off the road for a disturbing amount of time checking random spots in the car for what I guessed was a hidden camera. “You couldn’t possibly know that,” she snapped. “I have this car swept for bugs weekly.”
“I don’t need a bug to know that my woman got the fucking wild idea that she’d be saving us by running away and getting out of danger. I also don’t need a bug to know my woman is smart, so she likely went into my phone, found the number of the one person fucking stupid and reckless enough to drive across the country and take her fuck knows where for revenge.”
Rosie blew out an impressed breath. “Dude, no offense, but that sounds like you think a lot of a movie star who doesn’t know a thing about danger and just the right amount about me, who does. But I’m a mother and wife now. I wouldn’t dream of doing something so stupid.”
“I called Luke first,” Duke shot back, without even a pause. “Said he woke up to a note that said, and I quote, ‘gone to do some vigilantism. Be back later.’”
Rosie scowled, pressed the end call button and muttered “that fucking traitor.”
She tapped at the screen, only paying vague attention to driving as she swerved through traffic. Arguably, I should’ve feared for my life, but I felt as safe with this woman as I did with Duke. That, and I was fascinated to see what she was doing next.
“Calling Husband/Traitor” lit up the car screen.
There was barely a ring before a voice answered.
“You’re in deep fuckin’ shit,” a voice growled. The voice was attractive, like caramel, smooth, manly, all-over alpha.
It belonged to the man who had been sitting next to Rosie that night a million years ago. He was the only one who’d never been on my mental list. Something about him just seemed too...good. He wouldn’t participate in something like this. And he definitely didn’t sound like he wanted his wife to be doing it either.
“Right back at you, honey,” Rosie said in a sickly sweet and deadly voice. “You really think you’re going to get away with ratting on me?”
“It’s not fuckin’ ratting when I wake up to my wife gone and figure out that she’s involved herself with one of the deadliest organized criminals currently operating in the country.”
Rosie scowled. “It’s like you don’t even know me. I’m the deadliest criminal currently operating in the country. Just because I married a former cop, and popped out some kids, people think I’ve gone soft. Well, I haven’t. So you stay home and be dad; I’m going to go out and kick some ass.”
On that, she hung up the phone.
The drive with Rosie didn’t suck.
In fact, I would go so far as to say I had fun.
Had fun driving away from the one and only man I’d ever loved, the one family I’d ever known, and into a quite possibly deadly situation that I was nowhere near equipped for.
That was Rosie.
She didn’t seem like she was driving me to violence or death. It was like we were on our way to fucking Coachella.
We took turns driving since we couldn’t exactly stop, not with Duke on our tail.
“I consider myself smarter than all those men put together, but that only gives us a day’s head start. If that,” she said. “And when a man loses the woman that he’s gone batshit over—thanks for that, by the way, it won me a thousand bucks—that time frame is even more unpredictable.”
I winced at that, trying my best not to think about what I’d done to Duke and his family right after they celebrated Tanner’s child.
He was going to hate me.
They were all going to hate me, probably think that the movie star couldn’t handle the spotlight being on someone else so she ran off dramatically in the middle of the night to find more attention.
That was the plan, at least.
He hadn’t called again. I wasn’t sure if that was because Rosie had blocked his number or if he knew he wouldn’t get anything out of the woman.
She was active enough, calling people almost constantly including someone called Gwen to make sure she had plenty of alcohol ready for