Which meant he probably knew I was there.
I started shivering.
“Kathryn!” Boone clipped, squeezing my hand hard and cupping my jaw, turning my face up to his.
“Do you know that guy?” I asked.
“No,” Boone answered.
“Who was that guy?” I asked.
“He didn’t have ID on him,” Boone answered.
“Why was he here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, baby,” he said.
“I don’t have anything to do with any of this,” I told Boone something he knew.
His lips thinned.
That wasn’t a great response.
“Boone,” I whispered.
“They’re moving the body and clearing out.”
I had not been around him much, but I knew that was Hawk Delgado’s voice.
I had a sense my freak-out could no longer be held back, and it was alarming to understand even at its start that it was going to have multiple layers.
“Hang around. Think Ryn has a few things to say,” Boone said low.
I turned.
The brigade was there. Mo, Mag, Auggie and Axl.
As well as Hawk.
It was a lot for a girl to take in.
I barely noticed it.
“Ryn.”
Hawk said this in his deep voice. It was short. Curt. Authoritative.
My eyes went direct to his.
“You’re safe and you’re going to stay safe.”
A thousand years ago, knights embarking on quests made vows in voices that sounded like that.
Leaders of revolutions made speeches in voices that sounded like that.
Star-crossed lovers made promises in voices that sounded like that.
I relaxed.
“Get her some water, would you?” Boone asked the brigade at large, and Axl and Auggie nearly bumped into each other, they both moved so fast to get me a glass of water.
Okay, I knew by nature of the fact that these were Lottie’s boys, and Mo was the salt of the earth and treated Lottie like gold, and she’d set up Mag with my girl Evie and they were solid as a rock, that these guys were good guys.
But now, all of them descending in a time of tribulation, sticking to me like glue and bumping into each other to get me a glass of water, I was seeing that these guys were really, really good guys.
Boone and I had stopped in my dining room.
He led me to the living room where he pushed me down on my couch.
Hawk and Boone then peeled off to deal with the last of the police leaving while Mo and Mag hung with me and then Mo, Mag, Axl and Auggie hung with me like I needed moral support while I sipped water.
And they were not wrong.
Boone and Hawk came back and Boone sat next to me, wrapping an arm around me and tucking me into his side.
The rest of the boys (and Hawk, who no one in their right mind would refer to as a “boy”) waited until he did this before Boone urged, “Right, what didn’t you tell the cops?”
Part of my multilayer freak-out was shifting places, rising to the surface.
“I should have told them,” I said to Boone.
“Tell us,” Boone said to me.
“I think you were kind of right about Brett.”
Boone’s eyes darted very briefly up to who I suspected was Hawk before they came back to me.
“Why do you say that?”
“He called me.” I swallowed. “After the gunshots.”
“Shit,” I heard, the voice was Mag’s.
“And he said the threat had been neutralized,” I finished.
“Fuck,” I heard, and that was Auggie.
But Boone was up from the couch, demanding of me, “Where’s your phone?”
I got up too, saying, “Boone, maybe we should just—”
“Where’s your fucking phone, Ryn?” he bit out.
“Boone,” Hawk said quietly.
“Fuck that,” Boone said to Hawk.
Axl’s brows shot up in a way I sensed that it was not often that anyone talked back to Hawk.
Like, never.
I felt my phone sliding out of my back pocket, where somewhere along the line, I’d stowed it.
“Get me in,” he ordered, handing it to me.
“Boone, I think—”
“Kathryn.”
I shut up and took the phone from him, thinking this was kind of good seeing as his bossy behavior and constantly interrupting me was breaking through the freak-out, and instead, I was getting pissed off.
But I didn’t want to have words with him in front of his boss and friends.
So I engaged my phone, stared at it, it opened up, and I gave it to Boone.
He took two steps away, turned his back on us, made his call and stared out the window.
“No, you’ve got Sadler, motherfucker,” he said to the window. “We need to talk, and you know why. You name the time and place and you better believe I’m gonna have my boys with me and we’re gonna be armed. So plan accordingly.”
My gaze flew to Hawk.
He had his arms crossed on his chest, his eyes on his man, and a carefully blank look on his face.
Ditto times four with Mo, Mag, Axl and Auggie.
“Right. I’ll be there,” Boone stated, and I turned again to him.
He didn’t look to me.
He looked to Hawk.
“Who’s on her and who’s with me?”
“Mo’s on her, the rest with you. Including me,” Hawk answered.
“We’re a go,” Boone then stated.
And with no further ado, he came to me, hooked me behind my head and pulled me in to kiss my forehead.
He leaned back and curled his fingers in my hair to give it a gentle tug.
When he caught my eyes, he ordered, “Call your girls, do whatever you need to do to deal. Mo’s got you until I get back and then I’ll have you.”
Although when one (that one being me) was riding the edge of a multilayer freak-out after a dead body was removed from one’s back door, one could say the goodness of Boone Sadler uttering the words “I’ll have you” was as off the charts as the intense face scan he’d given me earlier. I nevertheless had no chance to let loose that first word or even open my mouth before Boone prowled out with Hawk, Axl, Auggie and Mag prowling with him.
I’d pivoted to the doorway to watch them disappear through it.
And once I heard my front door close, I pivoted back to Mo.
“You want me to call Lottie?” he offered.
“What are they gonna do?” I asked.
“Make it clear shooting someone on your back porch isn’t acceptable. Now, you want me to call Lottie?”
“How are they gonna do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you lie to me about not knowing how they’d do it?”
“All I can say is Boone wouldn’t do it like I’d do it because Boone’s not me. I just know however he decides to do it, it’ll be clear.”
“How would you do it?”
“Not sure you want to know.”
I decided to abandon that line of questioning. Mo had resting terrifying face even though he was a big softie. I didn’t want to have reason to believe he was anything else.
“When it was all going down, Boone told me to go to the bathroom, not out the front door,” I shared. “Why didn’t he tell me to escape out the front door?”
“Because sometimes there’s a guy at the back making his presence known solely in order to flush you out the front. And it is not a good scenario to be freaked, thinking of nothing but escape, and doing precisely what they want you to do. Running right into a bad guy you do not expect to be there.”
No.
That would not be a good scenario.
I kept going.
“Would he have some reason to believe there would be someone at the front?”
“Those cops that visited you, there were two. So yeah.”
Fuck.
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“How am I in the middle of this mess?” I asked.
“Because Cisco is a fuckwad.”
Hmm.
It was occurring to me that Mo was saying more words to me now than I think I’d ever heard him say in the entire time I’d known him.
As noted, he wasn’t unfriendly.
He was just not talkative.
“Don’t you have something better to do than look after me?” I asked.
“No.”
There was the knight’s vow, revolutionary’s speech and lover’s promise voice.
And it was then I realized I could no longer hack it.
“I think I’m going to freak out now,” I whispered.
Mo didn’t hesitate.
One second, that big mountain of a man was four feet away from me.
The next, I was in a tight bear hug.
I slid my arms around his thickly muscled waist and started shaking.
I also said, “I think it’d be good to call Lottie now.”
“Whatever you need.”
Yeah, these guys were really, really good guys.
And some random man got dead on my back deck for reasons I did not entirely understand.
And that was extreme.
So I knew only one thing in that moment, holding on to the mountain of Mo.
I was really, really lucky I had these really good guys.
Chapter Eleven
Mamá Nana
Boone
The asshole was twenty minutes late.
So even though not a one of them was in a good mood, Cisco fucking away their time made their moods significantly deteriorate.
Matters didn’t improve when Cisco walked into Mamá Nana’s tiny kitchen, two of his henchmen at his back, two of Mamá’s henchmen (or more accurately, one henchman, one henchwoman) at their back, to add to the two of her guys in the little kitchen with Boone and his crew (making space scarce), and he immediately said direct to Boone, “You left me no choice.”
“Is that a joke?” Boone asked.
“You left her alone,” Cisco returned.
Boone had no reply.
He had left her alone
But she was in her home.
She told him she wasn’t going to go work on her house. She was going to hang, try to get a nap in, and chill.
She was going to work on her house tomorrow.
Which would have given him time to arrange a man to be on her tomorrow.
As for that day, he was taking her to work later and bringing her home.
So in a sense, he thought she’d been covered considering he was unaware of how significant the threat was, most specifically because, boiling it down, she was entirely ancillary to all the shit swirling around Cisco.
A threat Boone now obviously knew.
It was next level, breaking into someone’s house, someone who had nothing to do with the shit swirling, in order to do them dirty.
He was not so far gone to his anger that he didn’t realize that was his fuckup.
He was also not so far gone that he wasn’t thinking rationally, including the fact that Cisco knew the depth of Ryn’s need for coverage, Boone did not, and Cisco had not thought to share that intel with him.
So something else was at play here and that had not been communicated to the man who was sleeping in Kathryn’s bed.
“There’s something you aren’t giving me that I need, and you knew I needed it, and Ryn faced a threat today unprotected because I didn’t have it,” Boone told him something he had to know.
Cisco actually looked guilty.
“I honestly didn’t think they’d use her,” he admitted. “I was just taking precautions.”
But a word he said made Boone’s gut tighten.
And he dug into that right away.
“Use her? For what?”
Cisco didn’t answer.
He looked to Mamá Nana, who was at the stove, frying empanadas.
She had her back to them, and she didn’t turn around when she murmured, “Mijo.”
Oh shit.
Mijo?
Boone got tight and he felt Hawk do the same beside him.
Cisco was white.
Mamá Nana was the most Mexican woman in Denver, and she worked hard for that title.
She was all about community, she lived it, breathed it and took care of it.
As far as anyone knew, she did nothing illegal.
But that didn’t mean what she did wasn’t dangerous.
And what she did was build such loyalty in her community by looking after them in big and small ways, doing this utilizing the proceeds of her other endeavors, they gave her what she needed to see to her other endeavors.
This being providing information for sale to the highest bidder and acting as a mediator in some tricky situations (like the one right there in her kitchen).
She had her finger so firm on the pulse of the city, she could bring down the biggest player in Denver (which explained her bodyguards).
Boone knew she could do this because she had.
Recently doing it by assisting in the takedown of Benito Valenzuela.
Not a surprise, considering Valenzuela came from her ’hood—direct from her ’hood—which she’d spent decades protecting, and he’d turned his back on it. But still a surprise because she’d sided with Chaos to do it.
A war between a Latino man and an all-white motorcycle club would usually be something she wouldn’t get involved with.
Unless her principles set her firm on the side of the Latino man.
Or someone paid her.
And then she’d go on to give a woman with a gifted child the money to send her daughter to private school. Or she’d pay the medical bills of someone who was under-insured. Or a variety of other shit that she did because it was her life’s mission, but in doing it, it earned her loyalty.
But she got involved in Chaos’s war with Valenzuela.
There was a lot of speculation as to why, but Boone thought it was simply because Valenzuela was a sociopath.
Brett “Cisco” Rappaport being mijo, an endearment meaning “my son,” was an uncertain surprise.
And it also might explain, at least in part, his rocket rise to the top of the heap of felonious assholes in Denver.
When Cisco didn’t take her clear prompt to share, Boone informed him, “Ryn didn’t include your phone call in her report to the police.”
That bought him Cisco’s eyes, as well as Mamá turning from the stove to face his way.
“Somehow you conned her into thinking you’re a decent human being,” Boone went on. “The problem with that is, if you get nailed for having a part in that guy getting dead on her back deck, and anyone finds out you phoned her after and essentially confessed to arranging a man being murdered on her back deck, she can be charged with accessory after the fact or even aiding and abetting.”
“Brett,” Mamá said low in warning.
“Mamá,” Brett said firmly in denial.
They went into staredown.
Boone was not surprised when Cisco then turned to him and spoke.
“I have three siblings,” he announced.
That wasn’t what Boone was expecting.
“A brother and two sisters,” Cisco continued. “My brother is a radiology tech at National Jewish. One of my sisters lives up in Alaska. Her husband is in salmon. And my baby sister, who used to be a bookkeeper and lived here in Denver, now lives up in Alaska with my older one.”
Seemed Cisco was the definition of a bad seed.
“As much as I’ve been dying to know details about your family, at this juncture this doesn’t mean dick to me,” Boone returned when Cisco quit talking.
“Cabe,” Mamá said quietly.
Upon which Hawk, whose real first name was Cabe, murmured, “Boone, rein it in and let the man speak.”
In the genealogy stakes, Hawk was a mutt. There was Puerto Rican in him, Cuban and Italian. Hawk, and his top guy Jorge, had a thing with
Mamá Nana. A good thing.
Hawk treated this relationship like it was what it was to a man in his business.
Pure gold.
But it went deeper with Hawk and especially Jorge.
Jorge worked for Hawk because of Mamá Nana. A long, complicated story that ended with a young kid on the road to becoming common street thug turning his life around to become Hawk Delgado’s top lieutenant.
Something none of the men questioned that Hawk felt indebted to Mamá for, rather than the other way around.
Jorge was that solid of a guy.
Mamá saw that when he was young, turned Jorge onto the right path, and gave Hawk a man he and his men could trust with their lives.
And they did.
But that wasn’t the only reason Hawk had mad respect for the woman.
Boone had that respect too.
Everyone did unless they were idiots, worked opposed to her purpose, or she could help someone and the information she had on you allowed her to do it which made you not dig her all that much.
In other words, Boone shut his mouth.
“What I’m trying to say is, their efforts are escalating,” Cisco said.
“Efforts at what?” Boone asked.
“Trying to get me to come forward and take the rap for the dead cop so that can be swept away, and no one will look too closely at that murder or what that dead cop was doing before he got whacked,” Cisco explained.
There it was.
Tony Crowley had been looking into Bogart and Mueller and they’d put a very definitive stop to it.
“And why did you share about your family?” Hawk asked.
“Because my baby sister is in Alaska due to the fact she got herself a stalker who made life unlivable here in Denver. Her stalker was an ex-con Kevin Bogart arrested five years ago. My guess, they have something on him. So, probably like the guy today, he had no choice but to be their puppet. My problem with that is, him being their puppet scared the fuck out of my sister, to the point she quit her job, gave up her apartment and moved to Alaska.”
The kitchen was dead silent after this information was shared.
Because that was not good.
But they all knew what had come next.
“You know what happened to Corinne,” Cisco reminded them of what came next.
Oh yeah.
They knew.
And this gave new meaning to why Cisco had that man killed on Ryn’s back deck instead of handling him in a less final way.
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