Page 222 of Cross Checked
“I said if he shows up, I’ll make sure nobody has to guess who started it.”
For the first time, Rider spoke. “That’s a lawyer sentence if I’ve ever heard one.”
Briggs nodded faintly. “Very billable.”
Knox looked like he wanted to arrest all of us on principle.
I looked back at Ryker. “You find him first, you call me.”
He stared at me.
“I mean it,” I said. “You don’t go alone. You don’t hand him another weapon to use against Bliss. He’s already taken enough from her. We don’t give him your life too.”
Ryker’s face twisted with the need to argue, but the part of him with Emma, two little girls, and another baby on the way heard me.
Barely.
But he heard me.
“If I go,” he said, voice rough, “you go.”
“Same goes for me.”
His jaw flexed.
Then he nodded once.
“Same team.”
“Same team,” I said.
The words settled between us, ugly and simple and necessary.
Kellen looked at me then, his expression raw. “Thank you.” I shifted my gaze to him, and he swallowed hard. “For loving her.”
Emmitt nodded, eyes shining with a fury he was too young and too Bennett to hide well. “For seeing her when we were blind.”
“Don’t,” I said, because the words hit harder than they should have. “She was hiding from a man who knew exactly how to train her into silence.”
Lyon shook his head. “Still. You saw something.”
“Not enough.”
Ryan pushed off the wall. “Careful.”
I looked at him.
His face stayed calm, but his eyes cut through me the way they always did. Does this protect Bliss, or does it make her carry more?
I exhaled slowly.
“Not fast enough,” I corrected.
Ryker’s gaze softened by half an inch. “Fast enough to be here now.”
I didn’t know what to do with that either.
The Bennett family had a way of handing me things I had no practice holding.
