He sighed. “It’s not a matter of trust, Ty.” He stood and covered the short distance between them. He stood just inches from her and looked down. In the pale moonlight, she could see tension and fatigue etched into his hard features. “You, Mad Dog and D are the only family I have. The only people I care about. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
Her fingers curled into tight balls against the coarse wood railing. “But D needs help. By not allowing me off the island, you’re hurting him.”
Jonah shook his head. “I won’t trade you for D.” His words echoed Mad Dog’s statement of a few days ago. “We’ll find a way to help him that doesn’t involve you chasing after Eli Chance or his team of shifters.”
He reached out and gripped her shoulders. “Do you understand that, Ty? Do you honestly think any of us could be happy that Damiano was saved at your expense? It doesn’t work like that, and if you think it does, then you don’t know us very well.”
Shame crept up her spine. Tentatively she circled Jonah’s waist with her arms and pressed her cheek to his chest. He hesitated for a moment then slid his hands from her shoulders and hugged her tightly against him.
After a few seconds, she shifted uncomfortably and pulled away. He stepped back and shoved a hand to the back of his neck. It was more up close and personal than either of them felt comfortable with. She chuckled softly. Boneheads, the both of them.
“Thanks, Jonah,” she said.
He reached out and ruffled her hair. “Get some rest, okay? You look like hell.”
“Gee thanks.”
She watched him walk back inside and expelled a pent-up breath when he closed the sliding doors behind him. It was as if he’d read her goddamn mind and knew exactly what to say to make her feel about six inches high.
For a brief moment, she contemplated chucking her carefully thought-out plan, but the image of Damiano writhing on the floor, in so much pain, shut the door on any guilt she felt.
Jonah’s anger, his disapproval, she could face. She couldn’t face herself if she let Damiano down. Jonah might well toss her out on her ass once this was all over with, and she wouldn’t blame him. No one in FMG crossed him. What he said went. But as long as Damiano got what he needed to survive, she was okay with the fallout over her actions.
Chapter Nine
It wasn’t easy to pick a time when either Mad Dog or Jonah wasn’t skulking about. Tyana sometimes wondered if they slept at all.
She picked an hour before dawn, typically when Mad Dog had just gone to sleep and Jonah was holed up in his office doing what he did best. Brood.
She put on a muscle shirt, a pair of shorts and her running shoes then walked out of her room, prepared with a story that she couldn’t sleep and was going on a run. Something that, as it happened, occurred frequently.
First she’d swing by and check on D.
When she found two guards posted outside his door, she frowned. When she tried to move past them and open the door, they moved to block her.
“Sorry, Jonah’s orders. No one goes in without his say so.”
Anger exploded within her. She wanted to kick their asses and then go tear a strip off Jonah’s hide, but she had to remember her objective.
She glared at them both before she stalked down the hall to the stairs. When she was stopped by another of Jonah’s security team, she let out a hiss of impatience.
“I’m going running. Or is that allowed?”
“Let her go,” Jonah called from his office door where he stood watching Tyana.
She turned her resentful stare at him and had to make herself forget about the fact he’d barred her from Damiano’s room. Otherwise they’d be in each other’s faces again, and she wouldn’t get anything accomplished.
Squaring her shoulders, she walked calmly down the stairs and headed for the French doors leading to the back patio. She stepped outside into the cool morning air and jogged down the path that led to the beach.
She knew despite Jonah’s acquiescence that she was being closely watched. She’d have to be fast.
As she rounded the northwest corner of the island, she slipped between two large rock outcroppings, inaccessible when the tide rolled in. She dropped to one knee to fiddle with her shoelace and carefully looked around to see how visible she’d be from the house or other lookout points.
Feeling that she was as obscure as she was going to get while on the island, she reached into her shorts, slid the earpiece into her ear and palmed the tiny receiver, bringing it to her mouth in a casual gesture.
“Tits, you there?”
There was a long moment as she waited for a response.
“Tyana, my girl. What brings you knocking?”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “How much would it be worth to you to annoy the piss out of Jonah?”
Tits chuckled. “For that pleasure? Consider whatever it is you need on the house.”
“I need a boat on the east side of the lesser island. Tonight. Oh two hundred. Arrange for a helicopter exchange five miles out. I need cash, a fake passport and the first flight you can get me on to Paris.”
“You got it.” There was a slight pause. “You can catch me up on the whys and wherefores later.”
“Will do,” she said before removing the earpiece and tucking it back into her shorts.
She set back out on her run, and just to make it look good, she circled the island twice before she headed back up to the house.
When she walked in, she saw Mad Dog standing at the breakfast bar, rummaging through the M&M bowl.
“You better not be eating my orange ones,” she grumbled as she walked over. “I saved the green ones for you.”
“And I appreciate it,” he said around a mouthful of chocolate as he turned in her direction. “All oranges are accounted for, see?” He pointed at the bowl that now only housed the brown and orange M&Ms.
She reached for a handful and plopped on a barstool to stare at him. “Don’t you ever sleep? I could swear you just went to bed.”
He grunted in response and dug back in the bowl, looking for another green one. He gave a disgruntled sigh and snagged a brown one instead. “I got an hour. That’ll do for now. What about you? What’s got your panties in a knot this morning?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t I go for a run without you and Jonah on my ass?”
His eyes widened and then narrowed as he looked her over suspiciously. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
“I’m pissed because I tried to go see D and got blocked by two of Jonah’s henchmen.”
“Ahh.” Mad Dog turned back to the M&M bowl and fingered one of the orange ones.
She shot him a quelling glare, and he picked a brown one instead. “Ahh? Is that all you can say? This sucks, Mad Dog, and you damn well know it. Locking him up like a fucking animal? Forbidding me to see D like I’m some kind of goddamn child he has to babysit?”
Mad Dog stared pointedly at her.
She blew out her breath in frustration. “Okay, forget the babysitting part. I know I fucked up, but the keeping D locked up and me away from him bites, and you know it.”
He reached out and chucked her lightly on the chin. “I know it sucks, baby. But in this…this time I support Jonah’s decision.”
Tyana looked away, trying hard not to be angry with him. It wouldn’t change anything, and she really didn’t want there to be bad feelings between them. Or with Jonah for that matter, though after tonight, she knew there wasn’t a lot she could do about that.
“I want to see him today, Mad Dog,” she said softly. “I need to see him and make sure he’s okay. If I have to fight my way through that goddamn door, I will.”
He sighed. “I’ll make sure you see him after Marcus has been through to check things out, okay?”