Sam raised his brows at me, a grin on his face.
I rolled my eyes and waved him off, my hands already busy getting us back home.
We stopped at the same place we’d stopped at last time to fuel up at the halfway point.
Long moments later, we were back in the sky and heading toward Texas.
We arrived and had barely touched down when a shaken McKenzie girl started running toward us.
Sam hissed in a breath, almost as if he was worried that I’d hit her, but before she could make it even a few steps, James, her uncle, one of the other men of Free, caught her around the waist.
He waited until the blades stopped spinning to let her go.
She wasted no time tearing across the field heading toward us.
Bayou caught her and wrapped her up in his arms, just like he’d done to the baby for the entire flight.
Phoebe was sobbing, and two other women stood on the sidelines with Sam’s wife, their mother, watching on. They were all crying silent tears.
Then there were the angry men standing off in the distance, watching the scene with enraged expressions.
Bayou relinquished his child to the mother, and then the three of them walked toward a ragtag group of kids that were peeking through the window behind all of the adults. Every last kid that was in the compound was in that room.
“You staying for dinner, Kobe?” I heard Sam ask.
I was already shaking my head. “No. I have to get this one home to her kid, and I have a shit ton of sleep to catch up on.”
Sam offered me his hand and shook it twice.
We made our way back to the copter, and after my fourth check of the day, we took off.
I was in the air when the distraught mother ran out into the field as if she wanted to say thank you but hadn’t realized I was leaving.
She waved, a radiant smile on her face.
I gave her a flick of the fingers back, then turned the helo around and headed back home.
“I just checked your mail,” she said as if snooping through my emails was a normal thing for her. “Do you think you want to respond to this one about a family meeting?”
I felt my anger rise, but surprisingly, not at my seatmate, at my father.
He’d sent me yet another email—he didn’t have my number or my location anymore—to try to get me to come home for my sister’s wedding.
I’d sent him a one-word reply the first time that he’d asked—no.
“Not really, no,” I said. “Anything else good in there?”
She hummed as she skipped through my private emails.
“The only one that might be of importance is one about your 401K. That’s a pitiful amount to have in there, though,” she pointed out.
I rolled my eyes. “That’s because becoming a billionaire isn’t made by padding your 401K. It’s all about investments.”
She snorted. “Is that it?”
“That’s it,” I confirmed.
“What about real estate?” she asked.
I sighed. “You know that I bought the block.”
“I know you bought the block,” she confirmed.
Not only did she stalk me day to day in the cyber world, but she also stalked me at work. She never came in or anything, but I would see her passing by my office two and three times a day.
At this point, I was convinced that she did it just because she knew it would annoy me.
I landed the helicopter and listened to the quiet ticking of the heated engine for a long moment before I said, “Thank you for coming and helping. That wouldn’t have been easy to do without you.”
I could’ve done it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to leave that child that long, unsecured in a car.
Though, I wouldn’t have had that insider information about him being unsecured in a car. I would’ve just known he was in that car. However, who knew how long it would take to get that information. The people could’ve been in Canada by the time I’d figured out where exactly they were.
As we walked toward my car, I realized something she’d been trying to get me to see for a very long time—she could help me. Easily. And all of these missing persons that I hunted down…they could be found.
This new world was a bit different than the old one that existed before I’d gone to prison.
Technology ruled it, and either I adapted with the times, or it buried me.
And I wouldn’t let stubborn pride or the dislike of the woman beside me run my life.
I looked over at the woman walking beside me. “I’d like to offer you a job.”
CHAPTER 4
The angel on my shoulder is purely decorative.
-Folsom’s secret thoughts
FOLSOM
“He did what?”
I grinned at my best friend’s disbelief.
Hell, even I was surprised by his turnaround.
But I’d proven myself today and he’d been forced to acknowledge to himself that I would be a good addition to his operation.
Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted to help him.
To be one-hundred-percent truthful, helping him in his cases meant he might ask to help me in my own case. Something in which I would have to fudge if I knew what was good for me.
Granted, I didn’t think that was the best possible way to go about this. Getting his trust and his asking me to help in one of the cases that he couldn’t solve was definitely one of those things that I should be very excited about. But there was one thing that came above all others in this world, and that was my daughter.
Speaking of…
“I’m headed over to pick her up,” I said.
Morrigan scoffed. “A, she and Aodhan and Bowie are busy watching Transformers, they’re on movie three. Just started. So I can guarantee that she won’t appreciate being picked up in the middle of it.”
I rolled my eyes. “And B?”
“B, I just ordered pizza, and you know how she never gets that with you,” she said.
I grimaced.
My best friend had no clue why I couldn’t order pizza. Hell, neither did my daughter.
Only I was privy to that information.
When I was pregnant with her, I’d been on the run for the last trimester of my pregnancy. At first, when they’d hired Kobe, he’d been close on my tail. And in the beginning, I hadn’t really been willing to do anything that would possibly put me in danger or break the law too badly.
That’d been when I was a Goody Two-shoes and thought that being a good person would get me further in life.
Well, needless to say, Kobe got so close to me that the night I’d had pizza, he’d almost caught me, even though I had a disguise on. I’d been two slices into a pepperoni in the middle of a Pizza Hut buffet when he’d walked in, eyes scanning.
That’s when I realized my mistake.
If I didn’t do the illegal stuff, then there was no way that I would stay away from him.
That night, I committed my first felony.
Then threw up my pizza after.
From then on, there was no looking back.
But pizza was a brutal reminder that I had to stay on my toes, and I had to make sure that I protected JP.
Another reminder? Kobe was smart. If I was going to help him—and yes, repent for keeping him guessing and searching for years upon years—I had to be extremely careful.