More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2) (29 page)

“Maybe we forgot to tell you, but back in the day Luke here used to play baseball at college. He was quite the batter I tell you,” Ren spoke up from behind me and the fucker sobbed louder. 

“Answer me,” I yelled making everyone jump. 

“Steve Rake,” he whispered. Pulling up the chair that had been sitting behind me, I sat down and placed the bat across my lap. His knee looked fucking awful and I had no clue how he was still conscious. 

“Right, Steve, today you shot my wife, who is pregnant with my twins.” 

His head shot up and he looked at me in shock and then rapidly started shaking his head. “No, they didn’t tell me she was pregnant. I swear!” 

Quite literally everything that he’d just said had us all staring at him trying to process it bit by bit.  

“You could see she was obviously pregnant, asshole,” Mace said from behind him and Steve’s head swung round to look at him. 

“She was behind the guy, I didn’t know,” he insisted and part of it made sense because Graham had said that she was standing behind him when she was shot. 

“Who is they?” Coleman asked the question before I could, but my eyes never left the bastard in front of me. 

“I was in a bar in North Carolina yesterday, two chicks came up to me and offered me money to do it. I wasn’t gonna kill her so I went for her arm! They didn’t say she was
pregnant
!” The last word was almost a scream and it took everything in me not to wince. 

“What did they look like?” I asked, although I had an idea what he was going to say. 

“One was old, big blonde hair but looked rough. The other one was younger. They both looked like they slept rough, ya know? The younger one came up first and tried to get me in the stockroom for a BJ, but I wasn’t gonna go there. She looked… weird,” he babbled and we all looked at each other knowing exactly who he was talking about.  

Coleman came forward and asked him for every detail he could remember about them and wrote it all down giving us a firm nod and then walked in the direction of the door while pulling his phone out of his pocket. We were now looking for Jodie and Calista. 

“Are the babies okay?” He whispered, looking tormented, but then, he should fucking feel that way for even shooting at Isla. 

“Yeah, and so is my wife!” I snarled. 

Baz walked over and with Mace standing on the opposite side of the guy, he cut the ties and handcuffed his hands behind his back.  

“We’re gonna lift you out of here, get you in one of the vehicles and take you to the 

ER. You’re gonna say that you were in a car accident and my men are going to be beside you the whole time. After they assess you, the police are gonna visit and you’re gonna tell them exactly what you told us here. Do I make myself clear?”  He nodded his head vigorously back at Baz and then dropped his chin.  

I sat staring at the dirty floor thinking over what he’d told me and my gut turned so violently that I had to run to the corner, making it just in time to throw everything up. Once I got to the empty heaves, I took a big gulping breath and wiped my mouth on the short sleeve of my shirt. I was going to need to change before I saw Isla again and brush my teeth. I was about to turn around when a cold bottle of water was held under my nose and I turned around and saw Mace standing beside me.

“Thanks.” 

He shrugged and then looked back at when Baz’s men were lifting a screaming Steve out of the chair. “I’ve got a spare shirt in one of my saddle bags. I’ll give it to you before we leave.” 

I stepped away from the corner and saw Coleman, Brett, Cole, and Ren walking toward us.  

“Well, that was short and sweet wasn’t it?” Brett said as he reached us. “I was sure that it was going to be much harder than that; obviously you still have a good arm on you man.” 

Coleman frowned at me and then looked at Mace. “Need you to track them down. Can you do it?” Mace gave a sharp nod of his head. “Good because the most recent sighting of them was in a motel twenty-five minutes outside of Piersville.” Mace’s head snapped up and a small smile appeared on his face before he clapped me on the shoulder and headed out of the door. 

“You okay, man?” Ren asked. This was a good question. 

“Shoulda killed him,” Cole whispered sounding angrier than I’d ever heard him sound. “Shooting a pregnant woman. Shoulda killed him.”  

I wasn’t sure if I agreed, but I did know that it was going to take me a while to process everything that had happened today from Isla getting shot to me shattering someone’s knee. My first step on processing it was getting back to my wife, though, and that’s where I was headed. 

“Let’s go,” I said and turned toward the door, getting hit in the face with a white tee as I walked out the door. Turning around, I saw Mace and his Unit roar out of the space, leaving a cloud of dust. The SUV with Steve in it had already left to get him to the ER, and I had no doubt that Mace would get the two cunts responsible. 

Ripping off my tee and putting Mace’s on, I got into the car and sat thinking about Isla. Half way there, I felt a nudge on my shoulder and turned around to see Cole holding out a stick of gum.  

“Thanks!”  

There was silence and then Cole said, “I wasn’t doing it for you, I was doing it for us and poor Isla. Motherfucker, what did you eat? Death?” He made some gagging noises before pressing the button to lower the window beside him. Two seconds later there was a smack followed by a thud and Baz shot forward in his chair slightly. 

“Owwwww,” he whined.  

“Well, if you’d sit back in your fuckin seat, Rumple foreskin, you wouldn’t smack your face off the one in front of you,” Ren growled, sounding pretty satisfied.  

Switching off as Cole started bitching at Ren in the back, I closed my eyes and for the first time in my life thanked God for keeping Isla and the babies safe.  

Just as we were pulling into the hospital parking lot, Baz’s phone rang and he looked livid as he listened to whoever was talking to him. Hanging up, he turned and looked at me with a grim face. “They weren’t at the motel and no one’s seen them.” 

The severity of what he was saying sank in slowly. Jodie and Calista were out there still. 

Chapter

TWENTY-THREE

? 

“
I
thought you said
to back off them?” He snarled into my ear. 

Sitting upright in my chair, I gripped the phone so tight in my hand that it cracked.  

“Tell me!”  

If that piece of shit after the Townsend’s had fucked with my orders, he’d be breathing his last breath, sooner than I intended. 

“Isla Montgomery was shot today.” 

“What the fuck?” Had the bastard gone for my target? 

“Hired hit. You didn’t order it?” 

I thought about the move I’d made a couple days before and saw red. I’d told them they were to wait for my instructions, but obviously they hadn’t understood when I said ‘or else’.  

“The stepmother and stepsister,” I said and waited for it to click with him. “Clean up the mess and get rid of the loose ends,” I snarled. “And don’t fuck this up!” Pacing in front of my desk, I almost missed the quiet knock on my door. “Enter!” 

My beautiful assistant poked her head in and said in her normal shy voice, “Mr. Montgomery can’t make it. Apparently there was a family matter and he’s had to postpone.” 

Nodding, I flicked my hand dismissing her and sat down thinking about what to do next. I needed to get the focus off of the Montgomery’s so that they would relax and then I could strike. Deciding on a plan, I got the burner back out and rang the asshole back. 

“Go to Dallas. I’ll send you a number and you call it when you arrive; they need some of your knowledge.” 

“But…” 

I hung up on him and put my plan in action.

Chapter

TWENTY-FOUR

L
uke
 

I
t had been five days
since Isla had been shot and, because of the pregnancy, her OBGYN had advised her to stay on bed rest for a week. So I left her in bed to take my morning shower and then go downstairs to work on some of the shit that I hadn’t had a chance to work on while she’d been recovering. I had deadlines that were coming up quickly and amendments to make to plans that needed done as soon as possible, so I was going to clear them so that I could focus on Isla over the weekend. Mace was still out hunting for Jodie and Calista and had his men and some of Coleman’s looking everywhere. So far, they hadn’t been found and it was weighing on both of us, so I planned to spoil her this weekend to cheer her up. 

Walking downstairs, I got myself a coffee and then went to my desk that we’d had set up in the living room so that I could be around Isla while I worked. She was lucky, she had one of those lap desks that she put her laptop on so that she could work on the couch, so I kept her company as much as I could. 

Sitting down at my desk, I noticed that Leanne must have dropped off my mail because there was a stack of it sitting on the desk alongside a box from one of our suppliers. Opening the mail first, I sorted through what needed to be dealt with this afternoon and put the rest in a folder with post-its on them telling Leanne what I needed to be done with them. She was due to come over this afternoon for a meeting, so I’d pass it over then. 

One of the letters was to do with the project that I was working on, so I changed what they’d requested and added in the extra room and then went into my emails to see if the builder working on my and Isla’s house had sent an update. This was currently the priority build for one of our teams, so they forecasted that it would be finished within the next ten weeks, which suited me perfectly. Isla had been looking through nursery designs for when we could move back into her house, but I’d sent the ones she’d chosen to Maya and she was going to design the nursery and pass the details onto her team to complete as soon as they could get access to the house. She’d also discreetly been asking Isla about dream designs and was working on other rooms in the house so that it would all be over by the time that I took Isla to see it when it was completed.