“Shane! Conor!”
The sound of my brothers’ shouting wakes me with a jolt. Instinctively, I grab for my gun and jump out of bed. I almost crash into Mikey as he comes running into the room.
“What?” I scowl at him.
“She’s gone!” he says and my world stops turning.
“What do you mean? Gone?” I shout. She was in bed with him and Liam, so what the fuck is he talking about?
“I woke up and she wasn’t there. Her clothes and shoes aren’t there, either. She’s gone,” he stammers, his face full of anxiety and concern.
“She left a note,” Conor pops his head inside the door and I look up at him. My insides fucking sink through my knees. Not another fucking note.
“What kind of note?” I snarl.
“Come see,” he walks out of the room and Mikey and I follow him to the front door of the house. Sure enough, in bright red lipstick, she has scrawled us a note.
Find my iPhone
I feel a rush of relief, anger, frustration and fear all at the same time. “She’s gone to find him,” I snarl.
“Jessie!” Conor sighs and shakes his head while Mikey and Liam stare at the two of us, waiting for answers.
“I will tan her fucking ass when we get hold of her,” I snarl. This woman is going to give me a fucking heart attack, or at least turn me gray before I hit forty.
“Someone pull up that fucking tracking app,” I snap as I head back into the house. “And let’s go find her.”
Twenty minutes later, we are driving as fast as the car will take us towards Paul’s house in Antrim where, according to the Find my iPhone app, Jessie is. I am so pissed at her for taking off and putting herself in danger, but my anger is far eclipsed by my fear that he is going to hurt her or that we won’t make it in time and they will disappear.
“We should have listened to her plan,” Mikey says with a sigh from the back seat. “We should have known she’d pull something like this.”
“How the fuck did she sneak away from you both?” Conor snaps.
“I don’t know,” Liam shakes his head and leans back against the seat and my heart breaks for him. Jessie Ryan is a law unto herself. She is the most stubborn woman I have ever met in my life. She is fiercely independent and way smarter than any man in this car. She might submit to us in bed, but she makes her own choices in every other aspect of her life.
“Now isn’t the time for finger pointing,” I say to Conor. “We all know Jessie does what Jessie wants to do. Maybe we should have listened to her.”
“You for real?” Conor snaps.
“Well, we wouldn’t be hurtling through Antrim at ninety miles an hour looking for her right now if we had, would we?”
He glares at the road ahead instead of answering me and I know that he is as consumed by his anger and worry as I am.
“Well, just so we’re clear, are we all okay with shooting Uncle Paul in the head?” Mikey asks and I bristle at him calling him that. If I told them the truth now, would it help or hinder the situation?
“A bullet in the head is too good for the cunt!” Liam spits.
Hinder! This is not the right time to be revealing long buried secrets. Maybe we can even get through this whole thing without them discovering the truth, because I’m not sure it’s something they would want to know. There’s a reason they say ignorance is bliss, right?
