Page 69 of Selling Innocence
“That’s not it. You just shoot people so often the threat has lost its sting.” His smirk infuriated me, testing my already frayed nerves. The last thing any person wanted when as wound up as I felt was to have someone tell them to calm down.
That was the verbal equivalent of a nuclear launch button.
That’s probably why the asshole said it.
Leave it to Dane to push me as a way to get my mind off whatever worried me. If it had been any other problem, it might have worked. This wasn’t just any problem, though.
We weren’t talking about a missing informant or someone who owed me money.
We were talking about my flesh and blood, here.
Instead of entertaining Dane any longer, I hit the button on my phone that connected to Kenz’s number. I had it saved under Fox since I couldn’t risk having her real name in my phone. Given that we had faked her death, I couldn’t do anything that might cause others to catch wind of the truth.
I had too many enemies, too many people who would use her to hurt me if they only knew about her.
Even without me being an issue, how many would gladly try to turn her into a pawn? To marry her or otherwise sell her off because of her name, because of her bloodline?
Far too many, and no matter how much faith I had in myself, I knew it only took one lucky moment for a person to succeed.
The phone went straight to a voicemail, with just the number repeating since I’d told Kenz not to set a message.
“If Kenz went to the police, she could get you arrested for stalking,” Bray muttered. “You’ve called her at least twenty times a day for two weeks.”
I turned toward him, but his eyes were glued to the screen of his laptop instead of looking at me. Somehow that felt normal for him. In fact, I felt like I recognized him the most when the screen of a monitor bathed his face in a blue tint. “Like you aren’t worried, too.”
He sighed, then turned toward me. “We agreed to give her space, just like Jarrod said. You don’t want her feeling trapped. Besides, she’s an adult.”
“Barely. She’s nineteen!”
“Nineteen is an adult,” Bray pointed out, his voice flat as mocking me for having to point out something so obvious. “You should have more faith in her.”
“It isn’t about faith. I just… I worry. She doesn’t have as much life experience as we do.”
“And how do you expect her to get any if you’re always on her ass?” Dane asked.
I went to argue with them when it occurred to me just how stupid this was. “This is rich coming from you all! I don’t know a more overprotective group than you all. Do I need to remind you that you, Bray, have trackers all over her phone. Dane, you like to call her school and apartment pretending to be other people just to spy on her and get information.”
I turned to find Colton and Rune both sitting on the large sofa at the far end of my office, neither looking all that worried about becoming part of my targets. “Colton, when you heard that there was a teacher known for using his position to blackmail favors out of his students, you convinced him to quit before Kenz started at that school. And Rune?”
Rune lifted his eyebrow as if to tell me to bring it.
Fine. “You’re the one who has a weekly subscription for pepper spray delivered to her apartment. I don’t think any of you get to pretend you’re innocent here, that I’m the overprotective jerk.”
Rune let out a low chuckle, but it came out strained. The truth was, they might be trying to act fine, but I could read each of them.
They were worried.
“It’s only been three weeks,” Colton said. “She said she wanted more freedom, right? She said she wanted us to give her some space.”
“Space is one thing. Falling off the face of the Earth is another. How do we know she isn’t in trouble? That something didn’t happen?”
“When I called the school, they said she’s been attending classes,” Dane said. “If she was in serious trouble, she wouldn’t be going to class.”
“But she hasn’t gone to her apartment. The sensors only went off one time over these weeks. If she isn’t sleeping at her place, where is she?”
“She is nineteen…” Bray pointed out, the only one brave enough to utter such a suggestion.
The thought of my precious little sister sleeping at some man’s apartment made me want to reach for a knife and gut the idiot who even thought about touching her.