“So he’s contained for a few hours.”
“Yep.”
“If you follow him on the front nine, I’ll take the back. That should sync up pretty well with our work schedules.” Rafe openedthe desk drawer, then thumped a big leather case onto the desk. “You’ll need these.”
“What?”
“Binoculars. I found ’em a few weeks ago. Guess Frieda’s husband is into bird-watching.”
They sure didn’t look like the tiny, powerful scopes Rafe used to bring home “from work” whenever they went to a game. “Geez.Are they from the prospectors on the original Oregon Trail? I’ll have to hide behind two trees to keep something this bigfrom being spotted. Can you text Mollie and ask her if I have to worry about ticks out here?”
“No. Because then she’d ask why you’re spending the afternoon skulking in trees, and I won’t lie to her.”
“You can leave out the skulking part,” Kellan pointed out.
“And Flynn can do a damn Google search.” He handed over the case. “So why are you two here?”
Suddenly Flynn felt awkward. Rafe’s nerves were obviously stretched as tight as his own with O’Connor in town. Maybe thiswas the wrong time to change up their situation.
Or maybe it was the perfect time. He’d worried on the drive last night that one car wouldn’t be enough if, God forbid, O’Connordid mean danger had found them. The car could get the Maguire brothers out of Dodge. But not Mollie and Sierra, too.
Kellan elbowed Flynn’s biceps. “Flynn wants to buy one of those junkers you’ve got in the lot out back. I’m gonna make sureyou don’t scalp him raw in the negotiations.”
Rafe stood. Slowly, this time, but it was still obvious that it wasn’t a casual stretch. “You want to buy a car?”
“Yeah.”
A couple of steps forward brought Rafe to the front door, which he locked. Great. Added privacy meant a guaranteed fight.“I thought we agreed to share a car—and a house—until after the trial.”
Flynn shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Because, damn it, Rafe was right. “We didn’t swear in blood. We agreedbecause it made sense at the time. It no longer makes as much sense. Not with Mollie and Sierra in the picture.”
“My take?” Kellan raised one hand in the air, wiggling his fingers. “I’d say that Flynn needs a place to screw his sweetheart,but he already threatened me once this morning about putting ‘Sierra’ and ‘sex’ in the same sentence. Even though it’s obviousthey’re doing it. Having all the sex.”
“Shut up,” Flynn ordered. He didn’t need Kellan’s back-assward help. He could fight his own battles.
“We made the decision to share a car under Delaney’s guidance. This isn’t a smart move.”
Was it the end of the fucking world that he wanted to be able to drive his girlfriend home every night so she wouldn’t haveto ride her bike?
Flynn tried to keep his voice level, not let his temper slip out. “Our rent is paid for by WITSEC. They give us a living allowance.I’m banking my whole payroll. I can afford to buy a used car. Or, here’s a thought. I can put it on a credit card. Buy a freakingBeemer and pay it off once we retrieve the millions we hid in Chicago after the trial.”
Rafe’s eyes turned from dark blue to black with fury at Flynn’s suggestion. “That’s to pay for an emergency, and you damnwell know it. It’s to keep us alive if we have to go on the run. Not to blow on a hot sports car because you miss spendingmoney.”
Really? Rafe thought this was about Flynn missing buying trendy gym clothes, or dropping a hundred on lunch without blinking?Did his brother really see him as that shallow?
That accusation pushed Flynn over the edge. Pushed him to the point of blurting out what he’d been holding in for so manyyears.
“I’d say I miss making my own decisions, but I never really got to do that, did I?”
Kellan sucked in a short, sharp breath. Flynn swore he almost, almost heard the grind of his eyeballs shifting to glare at his big brother.
After enough beats that Flynn could barely inhale through the thickening tension, Rafe tunneled a hand through his dark hair.“The money isn’t why we’re sharing a vehicle. It keeps us close. Safe. Able to keep tabs on each other.”
“You can text, can’t you?” Rafe’s attempt to calmly de-escalate the situation pissed Flynn off even more. “Or is your thumbso far up your ass that you can’t manage it?”
Rafe smashed his palm against the wall. “Why have you been so fucking angry at me since we left Chicago?”
“I’m not,” Flynn shouted. “I’m mad at myself. And that’s a hundred times worse.”
Fuck.
That tense silence a minute ago? It was flannel-covered puppy nuzzles compared to the atmosphere filling up the room now.Dark. Choking.
Not that Flynn wanted to let one more word force its way up and out of his throat.
“Why?” Rafe finally shook his head. “I don’t like it, but at least I get why you’ve been mad at me all these months. I made the decision to put us into WITSEC. But you’re saying that’s not it?”
Flynn fisted his hands around the collar of his green tee shirt. “Hell, no. You saved our family. You did what you’ve alwaysdone. When McGinty warned you he’d make me take the fall and go to jail for a crime I didn’t even know went down, you fixed it. You got us out of trouble and kept us together. Of course I’m not mad at you for that.”
“I’m really trying here, Flynn, but you’re not making any sense.”
What didn’t make sense was how Rafe had thought Flynn was worth the sacrifice for all of them. Worth throwing his whole life,and Kellan’s aside just to keep Flynn’s ass from sitting behind bars for a few years. Yeah, it
