Page 31 of Grave Stone

Hadley clapped her hands. “Focus, ladies. If they want to speak with you, they are going to strategically search for you by checking places you might be, like here. So, are we staying or making a run for it?”

“Staying,” I said. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to spend the foreseeable future running from Glenn’s enemies. If they were going to catch up with me and try to kill me, I’d rather get it over with.

“That’s my girl!” Stevie cheered and jumped up from the couch. “I’ll get the weapons.”

“You’re entirely too happy about that.”

“Says the person who already got to hold a biker at gunpoint and make him dance.”

“I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t say that.”

“It’s not healthy to lie to yourself,” she said over her shoulder before she headed downstairs.

“When do we think they’ll get here?” I asked Hadley.

“I don’t know. Anthony called right after they left, so the earliest they could be here is roughly an hour. But that’s assuming they know the address and think we’re here. I think it’ll be a couple of hours at least.”

“Not again,” I groaned. “It seems like all I do lately is spend hours anxiously waiting for someone to arrive.”

“Hopefully, this will be the last time.”

“Knock on wood or something after you say some shit like that,” I told her as I knocked my hand on the table three times.

Hadley laughed but did the same. “Knock on wood.”

“Thank you! Feel free to jinx yourself all you want, but please leave me out of it. I have enough bad luck as it is.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “you kinda do.”

Stevie returned to the main level with two duffel bags full of guns—little guns, big guns, bigger guns. “What in the hell is all that?”

“It’s better to have too many than not enough,” she said seriously.

She wasn’t wrong, but I really didn’t think it was necessary. If Stone wanted to hurt me, he would’ve done it at the lake house. I may have had a shotgun pointed at him, but he could’ve taken that away from me any moment he wanted to. Instead, he complied with my ridiculous demands to give me a false sense of safety and left as soon as I gave him the video. He was probably coming to get his shit back and tell me it was okay to go home. At least, I hoped that’s what it was.

It wasn’t.

13

STONE

Who the fuck have you gotten us involved with?

Sin’s words played on repeat in my mind during the forty-minute drive to Hadley’s house in Jolly Beach.

The truth was I didn’t know, and I didn’t have a reasonable explanation. It wasn’t like me to take a chance on a random person, but something about her made me want to help her.

Just like you wanted to help Kim.

Kim was different. It didn’t matter if I wanted to help her; I was obligated to, so I did.

Fuck! I was ready to be done with the shit with Whitney so I could go back to not thinking about Kim every day. She hadn’t crossed my mind in years, until Whitney showed up in the casket. It made sense, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

“I’m gonna drive by first and check it out before I pull up,” Sin announced. “It should be coming up on the right.”

“That’s it. The one with the gate,” Tomb said. “Damn, Stone, you know how to pick ’em. This bitch has loan sharks, killers, bikers, and billionaires circling around her.”

“And lawyers,” I added. “Her ex-boyfriend is a lawyer. Was a lawyer.”