Channing frowned. “That’s not good. Either says he’s stupid, reckless, or he doesn’t need to keep quiet anymore.”

“Before we left, I threatened him, said I knew people who could hurt his own mother if he talked.”

Channing nodded, his frown deepening. “I’ll call Lincoln, have him find the mom and sit on her a bit. My guess is that you’ll find that Mrs. Harper was sent on an extended vacation somewhere, probably overseas, and definitely off the grid.”

Shit.

Shit.

Shit!

That wasn’t good.

“Then we have a problem.”

He agreed, “Then you have a problem.” He went back to staring at his problem. “I gotta go back. Got work to do. Got a woman to love on, but my gut is saying I’m needed here.”

I turned to watch Bren, too. She was smiling.

“You’re glowing, Bren. Damned glowing…”

Her dad was right, and looking at him watching his daughter, he knew it. He had a slight smile holding firm. It’d been there the entire time. The only time it faded, and it wasn’t gone all the way, was when Channing entered the scene.

“We’ll take care of Bren.”

“I know. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

His gaze was still hard on his dad. It was more than obvious whom he was worried about hurting his sister.

“We’ll watch for that, too.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound appeased, not by a long shot.

Chapter Thirty-Five

BREN

My dad went to Roussou.

Channing went to Roussou.

And my life, weird as it sounds, had a new normal. Again.

The next two weeks, things were boring. Really boring. The only blip of action was that Sunday had her baby, a little girl she named Drayana. Zellman told us after a call to her that she was already calling her baby Dray, and I had to speculate that the nickname was purposeful. It wasn’t long after that phone call that Zellman decided he wanted to head back and ‘be there’ in case Sunday needed anything.

He was still bringing girls home. He was still heading out to parties, and enjoying college life, but Zellman didn’t hear from Sunday one day, and that’d been enough for him. I had no clue if he had midterms or not, but he went to Roussou. We weren’t given any word on when he was returning either, so it was a stay-tuned kind of situation.

As for my work, I was part of the team, but they had benched me because of my concussion.

I also met Bonbon, who decided to come back for a visit.

She walked in, her hair wild and looked like she combed it with a fork. Her eyes were dancing all around, and she stopped, seeing me. “Who are you?”

“I’m—”