"How are ya, sweetheart?" he made sure to pass his hand against her back as he leaned into her shoulder, curving comfort into her side. Lyla was the softer sort and while she wasn't necessarily naïve, she was a few shades brighter in innocence than the rest of them.

The blonde just shrugged and shook her head slowly as she straightened her shoulders and aimed her back up from the way she'd been working at Red Woody's accounting books. She angled the Scot a slow shrug before wiping the heel of her palm into her jaw, head shifting back and forth in a speechless round of grieving.

"Aye." Chibs nodded as he leaned over her paperwork and lifted the half emptied bottle that was perched beside her. "Me too."

"The funeral costs for the girls are going to be astronomical." She spoke slowly and intentionally gently. "You guys need to be prepared for that. Because I'm not sure which stone you want me to squeeze blood out of here."

"We know." He nodded in response as he cracked open the spin top on the whiskey bottle. "It'll be handled."

"Chibs - "

"I said," he interrupted her rushed frustration. "we'll handle it. When Bobby finds you the funds you use 'em. Got it?"

Her too wide eyes suddenly flared in what he could only see as a mixture of grieved accusation and fear. "And don't ask questions?"

He just took a long swallow from the bottle before nodding, stepping away before the knowledge in her young face was too much for him to brush off.

She didn't realize she'd slammed the door closed until the frames on the wall rattled and echoed behind her. Ally forced herself a slow exhalation, breathing back in through her nose as she aimed each boot step in a balanced line toward her desk. She faced it squarely, avoiding the cocked imbalance of the empty chair before leaning her palms into the edging of the aged desk. Her glance scattered quickly over the files that she'd spread over it, left hand shifting the lamp farther to the edge so that she could line the photos from Diosa into the center, banking the files for various players and shot callers in an outcropping spiral around them. Lin's crew, both those alive and deceased, that was where she was trying to focus.

Trying, anyhow.

She forced another calming round of oxygen through her lungs as she tugged at the most recent statement from Teller regarding the massacre, scanning it quickly. She didn't mean to let anger become a visceral thing, but it swelled up warm from her lungs anyhow. Her fingers brushed the report momentarily before she reached for the surveillance shots she'd ordered up of the street outside Scoops and the parked vehicle that had been readily identified as one of Lin's.

She wasn't above using the resources she had at hand to try to do the job.

She wasn't above playing a few rounds of robbing and paying with Peter and Paul.

But then, that was the snag…

She'd been feeling more like a Judas in the wake of a dead harem of hookers.

Jarry ran one hand over her face and bit into her bottom lip, letting her arms curve against her torso as she banked a glance farther to the right and the statement from Gemma Teller, Queen Crow. Ally chewed deeper into her lip and slowly shook her head back and forth.

She wanted it all to be legit, she wanted it all to be so goddamn easy. That Lin had made such a bold and brazen move, and that Teller's mother had just been in the right place at the right time. And that everything that had come falling down was the domino affect of Jericho's walls. She wanted to believe that there would soon be a settling of this dust. And she wanted to believe that, of all the possible lingering lies, she could believe in the truth of a certain Scot.

But beyond the blood-pool rippling out around them she'd told herself maybe she could. Maybe on the frayed up edges of this thing, he was fighting toward her instead of against. Reality told her that really, there were only two possibilities. One, that he was playing her far farther than general expectations would imply. That she was just a fuck he was taking along for a ride in case he planned on being a part of the fallen rubble when the dust came down. Or, the second option, that he was feeling in darkness for a grappling point to pull himself back up from something she just didn't have enough information to understand.

Sure, there were other variables, but none that she was naïve enough to believe in. She didn't for a moment believe that they trusted one another all that far for throwing. And even less likely was the possibility that in a few short days they had built enough of a chemistry to be anything more than comfort in an unforgiving environment.

But he had caused her to question just often enough – with his worry that she was using him, his accusation of greed, his body block when the world shattered and scattered up around them. The apology that was so often dark in his eyes when he blatantly lied to cover for the club, as though it were an intentional tell to imply some truth.

The fact that in the daylight, when she'd unthinkingly and stupidly grabbed him into her for a kiss, he hadn't pulled away from the reaching.

Instead, he'd given back what he got. He was all fair play in leather and the taste of him was becoming a certain sweetened opiate that maybe she should cut cold.

She wondered fleetingly if she even could.

And where did that leave them?

She glanced back to the desk, not knowing where an awkward a match as they made would piece into the puzzle of photos and reports and death certificates that were piling up. The unnatural law that ruled over Charming dictated that in short order, she could very well be one more of those certificates, apologetically signed off by her boss – very sorry to her family for the loss. And she was reminded with that thought that he'd clearly told her to lay low, that he didn't want her hurt in the middle. It had been his weak moment warning. And she was doing her best not to see it as anything more than his better angels and guilt. Or, even worse, a fear for losing a possible in to the law.

She was doing her best to not see anything in any of his actions.

Unfortunately, her best was coming up shorter than she'd like.