Page 83 of Protected By Duval
Bradley leaned on the arm of his chair, giving Hayden a wink. "They were all willing."
"Yeah," Donal chuckled, "Boy Scout's honor!" He held up his arm with a two fingered salute.
Jack had to roll her lips between her teeth to keep herself from grumbling that the 'Boy Scout' sign had three fingers, so either they were even more senile than she was already suspecting they were, or they were lying about being in scouts.
"We're just two men who enjoyed having a lot of pretty women around."
"We paid them well." Donal lifted his chin and smiled. "Hardly a complaint."
Jack caught sight of Hayden out of the corner of her eye. There was a decidedly green cast to Hayden's complexion.
Hardly.
That was the word that was upsetting her.
Hell, Jack wanted to throw up and punch their lights out.
Not necessarily in that order, but she kept herself in check with her hands in her lap, folded together like they’d taught her in cotillion class.
That was a memory she hated to have pop up in her head.
They let the men talk and reminisce about their own misdeeds, occasionally interjecting with questions, but there really wasn’t much about Aracely’s disappearance that seemed to be tied to the two men.
They were disgusting, groping, harassing employers, but murder?
“You know,” Donal looked into the glass of whiskey that he’d been nursing since they’d started to talk, “we weren’t the only ones with Roman hands and Russian fingers.”
Jack barely held back from vomiting at the word play that both of the Coolidge brothers thought was hilarious.
Bradley was just catching his breath when he frowned. “Who… who are you talking about?”
It took Donal a moment to digest his brother’s question. “You don’t remember?”
Bradley tossed back the rest of his glass and whatever liquor he had in it. He let out a loud sigh and shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say that I do.”
Donal rolled his eyes and leaned a heavy elbow on the arm of his chair. “You know…” He lifted a brow at his brother. “Our shadow?”
“Shadow?” Bradley’s brow furrowed and Jack wondered if it was going to crack like farmland after a long drought. “Who the… oh!”
Donal nodded and smiled. “Now you remember?”
Jack saw Hayden tense up in her chair.
It wasn’t a big movement or even one that Hayden might have consciously known she was doing, but Jack saw her sit up a little more than she had been.
There was a ramrod straightness to her spine that Jack was sure she couldn’t manage for herself.
She’d never been all that good at managing a ladylike posture, no matter how many books she’d tried to balance on her head.
Donal and Bradley weren’t twins, but they had a kind of synchronicity at times.
At that moment, they seemed to be locked into the glances of each other. Their brains, what they had rattling around in their heads, were connected.
Jack didn’t want to push them to speak just in case that ‘push’ caused them to shut down and refuse to speak.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to sit there and wait for one or the other to open their nasty mouths and let them in on the secret.
Duval, on the other end of the com device she had in her ear, wasn’t as patient as she was.
