Page 62 of Diary from an Inked Throne

“Now, now, lad. Is that anyway to answer ye phone when an old friend calls to say hello?”

I screwed my face up. “What do you want, MacGregor? Make it fast, because I sure as hell have better things to do than try to decipher your too-hard-to-understand English.”

He chuckled down the line, though I didn’t see how anything I had said was funny.

“Seems you’ve gotten yourself into a wee bit of mischief, haven’t ye? On the run with a bairn. The whole country searching for ye after your nephew went and put a million-dollar bounty on ye head.” He laughed and whistled down the line. “You’re definitely in a pickle, lad.”

“Thanks so much for your concern,” I said dryly. “If all you rang for was to gloat, I’ll be hanging up now.”

“Hold your horses, hold your horses. I called to offer my assistance.”

I leaned back against the booth, wincing when the cracked leather stabbed me in the back. “Your assistance? What makes you think I’d want your help?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because your nephew has to have the entire Guerra army out hunting ye. Even if ye paid off the police to look the other way, your brother’s men will only follow the lead of the next in line. And what a pity that wasn’t ye, now, was it?”

I ground my teeth, hating that this asshole could get under my skin.

And that he was right.

I’d stayed a step ahead of Luca, the Guerra soldiers, and the police only by moving around constantly.

It was fucking exhausting, always looking over your shoulder. Always wondering when someone would drag me in for the reward money, or not even bother, and just put a bullet straight through my chest. “Why would I trust you?”

“Ah, see, that’s where ye and I have some things in common. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.”

Tired, I rubbed a hand over my face. “Just get on with it, MacGregor.”

“Aye. Ye aren’t one for the dramatics, huh, Enzo? Fair enough. Luca hates me. It’s no secret I’d quite like his lass in my bed. But he has all the power right now. Ye and I? We’re stronger together. And as I see it, ye need somewhere to lie low. Somewhere your nephew and his men aren’t going to come, because I have plenty of men of my own. So, I’m offering ye a place to lay ye head until this all blows over, or until ye can have Luca killed…I assume ye are having Luca killed, are ye not? So ye can actually return with the heir?”

“You’re so smart, you figured it all out.” The sarcasm dripped from my voice.

But he wasn’t wrong. About any of it.

Including how desperate I was getting.

A truck idled in the parking lot outside the window, and I stiffened, recognizing them as the group of red neck bounty hunters who’d been tracking me for the past few days. I could spot them now, the teams who were out there, hoping to make a quick buck by dragging me back to Saint View.

“Get your shit,” I hissed at Priscilla. “We’re leaving.”

She glanced out the window, and her lips pressed into a tight line at the sight of the men circling our vehicle. “Shit.”

Yeah, shit indeed.

We were going to have to make a run for it out the back door on foot. Or steal one of the other cars sitting out there in the lot. For fuck’s sake. Either way, we needed to leave now.

MacGregor was still on the line. “Got some trouble there, Guerra?”

“You always were so perceptive.” I stayed low, out of sight of the window, and shoved Priscilla and the baby toward the back door. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck, the damn thing so stiff it hurt to turn it.

The front door opened, and I knew it would only be minutes before the bounty hunters were on us. I screwed up my face and pressed the phone harder into my ear. Even if we got away this time, there’d be another. And another. As long as that bounty was on my head, then they would keep coming, and eventually one of them would capture us.

I was already completely out of bullets and cash.

I forced the words out of my mouth. “Fine, MacGregor. I’m in some Podunk town called Esther Mountain. Tell me where to go.”

I could practically hear the snakelike charm in his voice, the sharp smile I couldn’t see but felt anyway. “It just so happens I have a place not too far from there.”

“Yeah? You have a place in the middle of nowhere?”