Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 813(@200wpm)___ 650(@250wpm)___ 542(@300wpm)
Jake sidles next to me. “Is something wrong?” His voice is a whisper.
“Stay here.” With silent footfalls, I approach the door, then rest a shoulder on the frame.
When Rocky breaks in with a bump key, the first thing he sees is my face.
I swing my head back to Jake. “That is breaking and entering.”
Rocky double-blinks hard when he sees Jake and me in his sister’s room. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “What is this?”
“Slumber party for the wicked,” I whisper, barricading him from entering with my arm across the door.
He glares at me. “Then why’s Jake here?”
“Corrupting him by the minute.”
Rocky rolls his eyes hard, then steps forward to intimidate me backward. Our chests meet. “Move.”
Yeah, no. I’m not going to budge. He’s about to bulldoze toward the bed. I put my hand on his sternum. Stopping him.
“Get out of my fucking way,” he snarls under his breath. “I need to talk to Hailey. This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” I walk him out the door.
“Oliver.” He rips my hand off his chest.
He clashes more with my brother than he does with me. I can swallow the rough, acidic pill that is Brayden Tinrock. I would’ve said nothing can hurt me, but I know that’s not true. I’ve always known there was a chance Hailey could.
I quietly pull the door closed. In the quiet hallway, Rocky glares at me like he’s either going to deck me in the face or shove me into the wall.
If Nova learned he did either, Rocky would have a black eye by tomorrow afternoon, so he won’t attempt it.
I guard the door. “You really want to deprive your sister of a beautiful deep slumber right now?” I absorb the guttural fury in his eyes. I can’t tell…if it’s his usual kind. “What’s going on?”
He suddenly notices my bandaged cheek. “What happened?” His head whips back to the door, like maybe Jake hurt me. Rocky has his moments. Even the core of a rotten apple is soft.
“Accident,” I say. “I doubt Jake would step on a spider, literal and figurative.”
Rocky doesn’t untense. “Get Nova to look at it.”
“That was my plan tomorrow morning.” My brother has the most medical training out of all of us. He’ll know if it’ll scar.
Rocky scratches at the collar of his shirt. “This, with Hailey, can’t wait. I would prefer she knows what’s going on now.”
I frown. “We agreed not to turn to her every time we’re looking for a solution.” She’s the mastermind, a moniker we made up as kids, but she’s also just Hailey. She feels too much responsibility when things go wrong, and I want this to change for her so not every fuckup and error drags her down into the rabbit hole.
“I’m not looking for a solution, man. This is about my sister.” He tips his head closer to me, his lips against my ear as he whispers most of what Varrick Wolfe told him in the smoking room.
Hailey marrying Trent?
It doesn’t compute. She’s never taken a role like this in any con. She would never. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I whisper. “It won’t happen.”
Except I know, in the back of my brain…anything can happen.
SEVENTEEN
Phoebe
I don’t need coffee. Both Rocky and I are wired on paranoia and rage. Three a.m.—two hours before my dad’s proposed meeting time—Rocky shows me the secret hideaway in the smoking room behind a bookcase.
“It looks like no one’s been in here for years,” I say, slipping inside the dark parlor. Painter’s cloth drapes over a long couch and what I assume are chairs. Moody damask wallpaper peels off the plaster. Weathered cardboard boxes are stacked in every corner. More canvas cloth covers up who knows what.
Rocky flips on the lights, and the cobwebbed chandelier rattles a little. “We check everything.”
“Yep.”
Rocky and I go to work searching for cameras and recording devices in angered silence. At one point, I even climb on Rocky’s shoulders to check the air vents. He holds my thighs as I reach up to peek through metal slats.
“All clear,” I tell him.
He grabs my hips and brings me down on my feet.
It feels like old times. Only our tension isn’t from refusing to be together, from a yearning so suffocating we both could barely breathe.
Our tension is from impending doom, which really just makes me crave slipping into his embrace. For Rocky to hug me so tightly that if all goes to hell, then at least we’re going to hell together.
Can’t waste time hugging. Out of all things you really crave to do, Phoebe. Hugging?
I check behind hung mirrors, trying to focus and not think about Hailey and Trent. Trent and Hailey. Varrick hard-launched a scheme without us. I can’t even wrap my head around what it means other than Fuck him.
Some of my fury sputters out when Rocky whips off a cloth, uncovering framed portraits sitting against the wall.