Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3), Kristen Ashley [reading eggs books txt] 📗

it was just a creepy phone call.

Nothing to get excited about, right?

Though, they’d never shared in full, but when they found out who was sending Lottie sinister threatening letters and put him out of commission, the vibe with Smithie was super off for a while.

It wasn’t just a crackpot.

It was worse.

And then there was the thing with Evie and her brother, the result of which got all of us (save Lottie) kidnapped.

Which carried on to Ryn having her thing, and a guy was shot dead on her back deck and a friend of hers was murdered.

So, I mean, it seemed like if shit could happen, it would.

And he knew my name.

My number.

Probably, if he was talking about my ass, where I worked.

And he could follow me from there to where I lived.

I shouldn’t take any chances.

I reengaged my phone.

Went to Contacts.

And scrolled.

I hit the button to make the call and put the phone to my ear.

“Hey, beautiful,” he answered.

“Brett, um …I think I need you,” I replied.

CHAPTER THREE

Don’t Give Up

AXL

He knew something was up the minute he walked into the offices the next morning after he laid into Hattie.

All his buds, Mo, Mag, Boone and Auggie, were in a huddle at Auggie’s workstation two rows up in the large theater-style main space that made up Hawk’s operations base.

Workstations ran across each row and were aimed at a variety of monitors on the front wall that someone watched 24/7.

And Auggie’s station was the one next to Axl’s.

Elvira, their operations manager, had an office on the first floor left, and there was a big conference room across the space opposite. A smaller conference room in the midsection left, with Hawk’s office at the top. Walls to all of that space were windows.

To the right, the side space on the upper levels was closed from view, secured with keypads and retinal scanners and held their gear, meaning tech stuff like listening, comms and tracking devices (as well as other), protective equipment like Kevlar vests and body armor, and some weapons and munitions.

Axl looked left, saw Elvira’s office empty, looked top left, saw Hawk’s office dark, and this didn’t make him happy because he really wanted to avoid the huddle and he had nowhere else to go.

He wanted to avoid it because first, he’d thrown down with Hattie the day before, and she was no longer tight with her girls, but he’d been such a dick, and that was something she might share.

And his brothers were not big on guys treating women like dicks generally (and the same with him, but when Hattie ran away from him after that dance, compounding it with dissing Lottie on her party—he was far from proud, but it couldn’t be undone—he’d lost it).

Definitely the men were not okay with someone being a dick to a woman in their crew.

Or second, he wanted to avoid them because this could be about the dirty cop situation they were investigating that Brett “Cisco” Rappaport dragged them into when he’d kidnapped the women, a situation that couldn’t be ignored, because … dirty cops.

Enough said.

And since there was absolutely zero movement on that, just like all the men, Axl was frustrated as fuck about how that was not going down.

And he wasn’t in the mood to talk about either, but his workstation was next to Auggie’s.

Fuck, Mag was standing right in front of it.

Axl was less in the mood when his friends caught his eye and he didn’t like the change that came over their faces.

Mo and Mag, concerned and alert.

Boone, annoyed.

Auggie, prepared.

Considering whatever it was, it was better to get it over with, but regardless, they all worked in one room, and it was a big room, but they were at his station, so there was no way to avoid it, he made his way to them.

“What’s up?” he asked when he got close.

The answer waited until he was there, standing among them.

“Right, brother, not sure I got a bead on where you’re at with this anymore, but we’ve been talking and we figure you should know,” Boone started it, doing that ominously. “Ryn’s ride was in for servicing so I was at the club last night to bring her home, and as we were getting in my car, we saw Hattie coming out.”

Terrific.

It was about Hattie.

The topic he least wanted to talk about.

Mostly because he’d been a dick, and he’d been that standing next to that statue she’d made that shared just about everything there was to Hattie Yates, and none of it was good, but none of that was on her.

And then …

Yeah.

Even standing by that piece, he’d dug right in and acted like a dick.

“And?” he prompted when Boone didn’t continue.

“She got in the back of a Lincoln town car. With Cisco.”

Axl felt his eyes do a slow blink.

Then, quietly, “What?”

“Don’t know what that’s about,” Boone said. “The women are pretty pissed at Hattie for dissin’ Lottie on her party so they’re all about the cold shoulder. But Ryn called Cisco and demanded to know what was going on, and Cisco told her it wasn’t his to share. She should ask Hattie. My woman can be stubborn so that was the end of that.”

“Wasn’t his to share?” Axl asked.

Boone shrugged. “No idea, man.”

Axl took in a big breath.

Right.

He wanted to know what was Hattie’s that wasn’t Cisco’s to share, but Cisco knew it and the girls did not.

No, he needed to know.

But bottom line, it wasn’t his business.

It really wasn’t.

That said, Hattie fucks with his head dancing to that song for him, afterward running away, and then, a week later, she’s with fucking Cisco?

Denver’s top crime lord and the man whose actions landed all of them in a load of shit?

What the fuck?

“Okay, I’m getting a bead on where you’re at with this now,” Boone muttered, watching him closely.

“Not my business,” Axl forced through his teeth.

“Axe, bud—” Mo started.

“I can’t kidnap the woman and make her go out with me,” Axl pointed out.

The reactions to that would