It frightened her a little when Robert took her from the house. Tice tried to go find her mother, but he told her not to be silly, they were only going for a short walk. Just down the street.
He wouldn't let her ask if Kyle could go with them.
She went silently, wishing Dallas were there. Her brother never would've allowed her out of his sight with this man near-by. She held no bad feelings against Robert except the ones Dallas instilled in her. Dally told her to stay away from him. Up until then, she'd obeyed to the letter.
"So what's up with that Dom guy, Ticey? Did your mother tell you anything about him?" Robert asked when they were out of earshot of the house.
"No," she said softly, keeping her eyes on the lines of the sidewalk as they passed under her feet.
"Are you sure?" he asked, the undertone of his voice irritated.
She nodded quickly, starting to feel uneasy. She glanced over her shoulder. The house was still in sight.
Robert sighed, his mouth tightening to a thin line as he stared off into the distance. Ticey didn't know why he was mad, but she didn't want to find out, either.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she said, trying to sound casual in her lie. She turned, forcing herself to not break into a run toward the house. She could hear his footsteps behind her, coming faster than a walk.
"Ti, wait," he called.
Fear overcame her and she started to sprint as fast as she could, but she could hear him gaining on her. He got a hand on her just a few feet from the front door. To her relief it swung open, revealing the Dark Man, standing tall and intimidating. He easily dwarfed her pursuer, and Robert's grip on her immediately released.
Not thinking, she threw her arms around the Dark Man's waist. Her breathing came in ragged gasps, and her heartbeat sped out of control. She could feel the strength of the man she'd latched onto, even through his clothing. His body hummed with power, but she wasn't afraid of him. Not after she'd seen how he'd held her mother through the night.
He reminded her of Dallas. Big, strong, and ever watchful.
After a moment of hesitation, the Dark Man's hand came to rest on her shoulder, gently holding her to his side.
"Your mother's looking for you," he said to her, breaking the silence, but not the tension hanging in the air. His stare rested on Robert, and never faltered. "Go upstairs and find her, before she starts to worry."
Ticey didn't want to leave him, but he tapped her arm, gently pushing her behind him. Reluctantly, she let go, heading for the stairs. She paused half-way up the stairwell, bending down to watch Robert attempt to pass Dominic.
The Dark Man grabbed him by the front of his shirt with one large paw, halting his progress inside. "Stay away from the kid," he growled.
Robert used both hands to shove off the man's grip. "It's none of your business, but we were just playing a game. What do you care anyway? You're just the hired help. Muscle for money. You got a thing for kids?"
"What I don't like is you going off without telling anyone while I'm trying to do my job. For all I know you're involved with these people. Go for all the walks you want—but if you take that girl out of this house one more time, I'll make sure you never come back."
Robert's eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?"
The Dark Man grinned, but it wasn't a nice grin at all. "Now you're catching on," he said, sounding morbidly amused.
Ticey couldn't help but smile when she saw the blood start to fade out of Robert's face.
"So, sweetheart. You decide yet if you're gonna leave me for your wife?" Cody asked, yawning big as Kade took a seat beside him.
Vale had spent the entire day running a brute-force decryption program on the message header packets. Eventually he'd find the right hash for decoding and break the encryption making the information illegible. Kade popped in on a regular basis to check up on him—sitting next to him and moping, mostly.
Dom shook his head, rubbing at his eyes with the fingers on one hand. "That might be hard, considering," he said, reaching into his cargo pocket with his free hand and pulling out a mess of folded blue papers. He tossed them onto the desk.
Cody picked them up, unfolding and skimming quickly, immediately realizing the legal jargon went way above his head.
"I don't read good enough to understand what the fuck this says," he said after a minute, flicking the edge of the paper with the back of his fingers to indicate the writing he meant.
Kade took them back, stuffing them back into his pocket. "Divorce papers," he explained shortly.
Cody nodded, raising one shoulder slightly. "So, am I supposed to, like, feel sorry for you or somethin'?"
Dom smiled for the first time in days, reaching over to ruffle Cody's hair. "Na. I don't need a girl. I've got you to suck my dick."
Cody scowled, swatting at his hand. "Man. You say that again, I'm gonna slice your balls off in your sleep."
Kade smirked, rubbing at his neck and cracking it to each side. "Yeah, that's what Pace said too." He kicked back in his chair, setting one boot on top of the other on the edge of the desk. "So, you got anything, or are you persisting in being a worthless piece of shit?"
Cody shot his work partner a nasty look. "You really don't pay me enough to take this much abuse. But yeah, I'm getting close. The last hash I tried at least gave some order to the jumbled mess. I'm just wondering when we should break it to the rest of these people that whoever these guys are, they ain't in this thing for the ransom. You know what I'm talking about, right?"
Kade nodded, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You don't demand money from people who don't have it. You want thirty million, you take a kid from somebody who's got thirty million sitting in a bank. The way they've baited us has me thinking they're either retarded, or way smarter than I want to deal with. Either way, there's something to this we're missing. Just keep looking, and don't talk to anyone but me. Got it?"
Cody flexed his overused fingers, cracking his knuckles before starting back to work. "Yeah, don't worry about that. I'm not the talker out of the two us anymore, remember? You're the one who always says too much."
"Oh, yeah?"
"You know it, bitch," Cody said, pulling up the brute force application and setting up a new file of hashes for it to read from. "So, about this kid, Dallas..." he broached.
Kade shook his head, the embers in his black eyes dulling to ash. "Don't start, Vale," he warned, looking away like he couldn't stand to hear another word on the subject.
Cody held up a finger to stop him. "Just tell me one thing. Do you want to bring him back alive?"
Kade shrugged, thick fingers on one hand lacing into the short bangs of his dark hair. "It's a job. We took the advance, we gotta see it through..."
Cody snorted. Just when had Kade started living in the State of Denial, and why hadn't he noticed sooner?
"Na, man, it isn't just a job. You fathered one of the kids we're going after, and from what I've seen and heard, you're not straight with what you did to him and his mother however many years ago. If you've gotten to the point where you can imagine your son as an affordable loss of life, then we aren't going on this job. You remember what Mako used to say? If there's any doubt in your mind that you want the mission to succeed, then it won't. So, this kid, Dallas... How bad do you want to see him survive this?"
Dom turned his head to look him straight in the eye. "You need assurance my head's in the game? Fine. Here's how this is going to go. Those three kids don't have a reason in the universe to be afraid. Whoever's got them isn't half as frightening as the man out to bring them home. Good enough?"
Cody gave it a minute before shrugging, turning back to the blinking computer screen. He wouldn't admit it, but sometimes when Dom talked tough, it scared the shit out of him. Vale still remembered the day they met, and that moment when those devil-like eyes stared into his while Kade's hand tightened around his throat, squeezing the life out of him without remorse.
A shiver went down his spine just thinking about that, and he quickly tried to shake it off. "I guess we'll find out soon enough," Cody said. "We just broke the encryption. I think we have a location."