Page 125 of Direct Action

I knew that would be his answer. More pain receded.

“I’m on my way to the bar now. Please tell me Pete hasn’t been shuffling shit around my desk again?”

“Nope. He’s been too busy with the liquor stock.”

“That’s good news,” I muttered.

I heard him chuckle before he worked his magic and completely dulled the ache in my chest. “See you when you get here. Love you, Chloe.”

“Love you.”

He disconnected the call.

I drove.

Then, since my thoughts were no longer heavy, I cranked up my music and sang along with this kickass new artist I’d just discovered.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“It’s been four months, Ryan,” Chloe unhappily snapped.

“I know.”

“It’s time for us to do something.”

This had been her constant refrain for the last three months.

At first Chloe had given Poppy the space she’d asked for. That lasted a month. By month two, she was texting Poppy once or twice a week. It was a fifty-fifty shot if Poppy texted back. By month three, Chloe started adding calls to go along with her weekly texts. These calls were never answered.

Now we were deep into month four, and Poppy was still ghosting everyone except Beck. And since she was ghosting, she hadn’t been back to work. Not that she had a job at the Vault to go back to. After Muriel was murdered and Blackwell was arrested, as part of his plea deal, he’d talked. And the man had a lot to say. Of course he’d blamed everything on Dex, whose real name was Daniel Tuttle. After all, dead men can’t tell tales or defend themselves. Not that that motherfucker had a defense for being a total piece-of-shit sick fuck, but Blackwell had pinned it all on him. And since Daniel Tuttle owned the Vault as well as the property in Utah—something that took the feds months to unravel and only managed it because Shep kicked in—he was the face of the racket.

Muriel had been in charge of picking the girls and briefing them.

So far, Mercer was in the clear. The only service he’d provided was running background checks and processing membership dues. Neither were illegal.

But since Poppy hadn’t come back to work at the Plank either, we’d paid her rent to keep her current. Until last month. Beck told us he was moving her stuff into one of the old bunkhouses on the property and she’d remain living with him.

I still wasn’t sure if it was healthy for those two to be feeding off each other’s trauma. However, in the last few months Beck seemed different. Not better, but willing to take steps to come back to the land of the living.

“Ryan!”

I waited until I pulled into a spot close to the front door of her father’s home. Turned my truck off before I turned and hooked her around the back of the neck. Like I did dozens of times a day, my gaze dropped to her throat. The bruises were long gone, but I’d memorized every mark. And I knew if I tried, I could call them up and see the purple marks in stark relief against her creamy skin. Seeing as I no longer called up those marks, I was considering that progress. Maybe one day my eyes wouldn’t do that to her throat to reassure myself my woman was safe and uninjured. Or maybe I’d need that for the rest of my life. Either way, we’d moved on. She was mine every way she could be, and I was hers.

That was all that mattered.

“It’s not time.”

“Ryan—”

“Chloe, baby, I know you don’t want to hear this, but Poppy gets to decide when it’s time. You know she talks to Beck. He’s working on getting her to a place where she feels she can face us. In the meantime you got one job—love her. That’s it, just love her, and when she’s ready, she’ll know she never lost that love, and that will make it easier for her to come back.”

“I know you’re right, but I hate it.”

“That’s because you love her.”

Chloe nodded and lifted her sad eyes to roam my face. She did this sometimes. Just looked at me, and I knew that she found what she needed when she’d smile and look away.

“You know I love you, right?” she asked.