Chapter Thirteen

Trick

W e all just sit there in silence for a moment, only a moment, and then the truck is filled with shouts of joy and yelling as we just let all the happiness out.

“Fucking hell,” Cash comments once we have all calmed down, a smile on his face that I haven’t seen in a long time.

“She’s home!” Rafe signs.

“Can’t believe it,” Luc adds, “but at the same time, I know that the parents wouldn’t lie to us.”

Riot shakes his head, “Not about this, they wouldn’t.”

“Guys,” Jensen says, worry in his eyes, “Jenny said that she had been through a lot and that her dad had just been shot.”

“And that she was going to be testifying against people he worked with,” Cash adds, his face falling into a deep frown.

Rafe starts signing, “I don’t think our hope that she had an easy and happy life is going to come true.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I say. “There is a chance that she lived a rich life and had no idea where her dad got his money from, and she is testifying against people that she knew just as his friends.”

“That’s flimsy,” Cash points out.

I sigh, “I know. I still don’t think that we should jump to conclusions, though. Her dad could be in trouble for a number of reasons, some of them aren’t too bad. Like money laundering.”

“Or stolen goods?” Jensen suggests.

“Exactly, they are illegal, but not too bad.” I reply.

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just get home and see her,” Cash suggests, his smile coming back.

We can worry about everything else later. Right now, all we want to do is see her with our eyes, damn I fucking missed her.

“What are you waiting for?” Jensen asks, “Put your fucking foot down.”

I don’t need to be told twice, and I grin as I pull out and do just that. We are going to get home a lot sooner than lunchtime.

We have been driving for thirty minutes and only have thirty left until we get to school. That first thirty minutes went really slowly except it didn’t, not really because that part of the drive took us nearly an hour on the way up here.

“I know that we want to get there quickly, but we still need to make sure that we time it for when the bus with the football team gets back,” Cash reminds me.

My foot eases up on the accelerator, “Shit. You’re right. We don’t want to raise suspicions, and the parents ground us from seeing Ever.”

“That wouldn’t go well for anyone involved,” Jensen mutters. “For a start, my dad will learn really quickly how good I am at sneaking out.”

“I don’t think they would.” Cash replies, “They all know how much Ever means to us and how much we miss her. I have spoken to my mom about it loads.”

“You have?” Luc asks.

Cash nods, “Yeah. Usually on Ever’s birthday or the day that she left. Mom always knew, of course, she loved Ever as much as we did, do, so we reminisced, and talked about seeing her again one day.” He frowns, “We haven’t done that for a couple of years.”

“I used to do that with my mom as well,” I say softly. “They wouldn’t stop us from seeing Ever. I think they would all realize that it wasn’t going to stick, and we would make sure that we could still see her. I mean, it didn’t work when we were little; why would it now?”

The truck fills with laughter.

“I had forgotten about that,” Riot smiles, “when one of us got in trouble, the others would all go and rescue them.”

I smile fondly, “Yeah, or we would sit with them in time out.”

The car is silent for a moment as we all reminisce in a new light, one that isn’t tinged with sadness anymore but is instead tinged with hope.

“We are way ahead of schedule,” I say, interrupting the silence.

“We could get coffee?” Luc suggests. “It would kill a little bit of time. I don’t think any of us are going to fall asleep any time soon, but we have been up for god knows how many hours now.”

As I said before, the job that we were on was more complicated than we thought it was going to be, which isn’t a new thing, but this time those complications meant that we ended up getting trapped in the building that the target was in. We were there for two days before we managed to do the job. It meant that we slept in shifts when we could sleep and even then, none of us slept for longer than an hour, it was too risky.

“Coffee wouldn’t hurt,” Cash replies, looking thoughtful, “we should really get some sleep, but I am definitely not willing to wait any longer than we have to see her. Coffee is our next best option.”

“I agree,” Jensen adds. “Even though it is like torture that we aren’t going straight to her. I don’t plan on sleeping until I do, and coffee is going to help that.”

“Coffee first,” Rafe signs. “Although, I agree with Jensen.”

With that decided, I pull off at the next place that does coffee and to waste more time, we all get out of the car and have a wander around trying to waste time that we really don’t want to waste. Plus, Jensen is completely incapable of staying still in the state that he is currently in, and he was bouncing the truck, as well as his leg, we had to get out.

“He’s like a dog,” Riot comments.

The comment is so out of the blue that we all just look at him like he has lost his mind and wait for him to explain himself.

He is too busy sipping his coffee and looking around to realize that we are all staring at him.

Finally noticing that it's silent, he says, “What?”

“Who is like a dog?” Cash asks with his eyebrow raised.

“Oh, Jensen,” Riot replies and then explains, “he gets too excited and needs to exercise so that he doesn’t misbehave in the car.”

We all burst out laughing while Jensen tries and fails to look indignant at the comparison.

“Dude, I take offense,” he exclaims.

Riot chuckles, “No, you don’t.”

“You’re right I don’t,” Jensen agrees with a shrug and then looks at me and starts bouncing on his toes, “can we go and get our Ever now?”

Our Ever.

That has a nice ring to it.

“Yeah, come on,” I reply with a smile.

I have to tell Jensen to stop running and drawing attention to us at least twice, but finally, we are on the road again.

An idea occurs to me, “Message one of our people, someone that we trust and see what they can tell us about her. Don’t mention her by name; just say that you heard there is a new girl, and we want info.”

“Good idea,” Cash replies as he pulls out his phone and starts typing.

“I miss Trev. I can’t believe he didn’t come back to school after the summer,” Jensen mutters.

“Me too, man. We wouldn’t have even had to ask; he would have already texted us the information. We most likely would have gotten it quicker than we did from the moms.” Luc chuckles.

“Exactly,” I agree with a smile. “I get it though, his mom needed better treatment than we have available here, so they had to move to the city.”

“I understand why he moved,” Jensen replies, “I just miss him, and not just because he is awesome at information gathering.”

“Our guy has texted me back,” Cash says, his eyes flashing with anger.

“Why do you look like you are about to murder someone?” Riot asks.

Instead of replying, Cash reads out the text, “He said: Yeah, there’s a new girl, and she is fucking smoking hot . . .”

He is interrupted by sounds of anger that come from the rest of us, apparently, we aren’t very fond of that and are a tad bit possessive. Who would have thought?

Cash smirks, knowing that we have reacted exactly the same way as he did. He continues to read, “She is hanging around with Rylie. Ralph tried to hit on her, and she handed him his ass; it was fucking epic.”

I grin, saying proudly, “That’s our girl.”

“Rylie?” Rafe frowns, trying to place the name.

“Wait, Rylie, that helped when we had that whole Ryan thing?” Luc asks, “She helped the girls and got them to write statements. Then, she got the statements to us, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Cash smiles. “Rylie is good people. Ever is safe with her.”

“Good, I liked her,” Jensen adds.

Cash looks down at his phone again and frowns, “Just got another text through. He says that the girl that has deluded herself into thinking that she means something to you, Trick, seems to have it out for her, Ever isn’t backing down at all.”

“Fucking Serena,” I curse. “She has become obsessed since we got back from summer break.”

“We are apparently trophies to be had now,” Cash chuckles. “What should I reply?”

“Ask him to keep an eye on Ever. Then add that he needs to tell everyone hands off or we will take theirs,” I grin sharply.