“You’re done, brother. It’s over. You’re free. Full pardon for all that shit that happened in Miami and no responsibility for what happened last night. I got the girl, she’s gonna help me, we’ll get Tate, and you just have to stay out of the way.”
“I want to go talk to my boss in Denver, Jax. I need to talk to Ray and figure this shit out. I need to know what I should do next.”
“No. No fucking way. The FBI is all over that motherfucker. You can leave town, hell, you can leave the country for all I care. But you’re staying the fuck away from that case. You do not talk to anyone about anything we had going. You don’t know that those guys last night weren’t Company. You have no clue. So we’re handing it over to FBI, I’m going back to get Sasha so she can tell me where I can find Nick, and you’re gonna…”
He shakes his head. “I’m gonna what?”
“Recover. You just go recover.”
“Get over it, then?”
“Dude, I get it. You lost your friends—”
“I lost two fucking lovers!” He yells it. His words echo off the high ceilings. But at least he finally admitted it. “I want Nick Tate dead. Do you understand me? I know he’s behind this. I know he’s pulling all the strings like some kind of twisted puppetmaster. He just took everything from me, Jax. Everything. And he’s gonna take everything from you next.”
Fuck. Up until yesterday I didn’t have much left for him to take. But now I have Sasha. And like it or not, she’s officially his. So this threat from my brother hits me hard. A lot harder than he knows. But I have to keep him contained. I have to keep Jake out of this or he might lose his shit and start killing people. This whole case might end up like Miami.
So I keep my calm. I keep my fear for Sasha tucked away. And I give him good, solid, rational advice. “I know. I get it. But we took an oath to Max Barlow and that oath said we’re professionals, Jake. So you have to be a professional this time. Leave town. Spend money. Be patient. And I promise you, I will get enough revenge for both of us. I swear on Michael’s life.”
Jake scrubs his hands down his face and breathes deep as he considers my offer. “I trust you, Jax,” he finally says. “I do. So I’ll wait it out.” He takes his hands away from his face, revealing bloodshot eyes filled with pain and heartbreak. “I know you’ll make it right. You have to make it right.”
I swallow hard and nod my head. “I will.” I stare him in the eyes and say it again, and again, and again until he believes me. “I will. I will. I will.”
Now I have two promises—kill Nick for Jake and keep him alive for Sasha.
The only question left is… which of them do I keep?
My parents’ house is dark and empty, but it feels light and full the second I walk through the door. It’s weird to be greeted by silence, since we’ve had at least three German shepherds in this house since I came to live with them. But my dad takes them with the family on long trips. The cats stay with the neighbors since they don’t care for nineteen hours of flying across the world.
I head to the kitchen and drop my keys on the table, and then continue into the family room and flip on the TV. The couch is old and comfy, so I flop down and slide the spare laptop out of the drawer in the coffee table. Ash and Kate use this one when they feel like going online. Ford and Five have an entire room devoted to computers upstairs. But I don’t have the code for the security lock on that door.
I only need to check my email, anyway. So it’s not like I’d ever need it.
I flip through the channels until I find something mindless to watch, and then open my email.
Fuck. Seventy-two emails in two days.
I scan down the list to see if any of them need to be opened and sure enough, there’s one from Professor Brown. I feel sick just looking at her name. But she might be kicking me off the email server altogether, since they won’t let you have a university email if you leave school.
I open it and take