Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            Like DJ’s predecessor, who now lived at the bottom of a lake outside Oroville. Dumping him there had been DJ’s first test of loyalty. The threat of joining the dead man was always present.

            So DJ bit his tongue, stowing his irritation at seeing Kowalski sprawled on his sofa. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said instead. “I don’t have any food to offer you.”

            Kowalski tipped the foot he rested on the coffee table, motioning to a pizza box. “I saved you a slice.”

            Sitting in the chair adjacent to the sofa, DJ dumped his backpack and the guitar case on the floor and pulled the box to him. “Thanks, but I’ll need more than a slice. I’m starving.”

            Kowalski tilted his head, making no secret of the fact that he was assessing DJ’s physical condition. There was nothing sexual about his perusal. It was one hundred percent business with Kowalski. He was assessing the strength and fitness of one of his many minions.

            DJ was getting tired of being a minion. “Well?” he asked around a mouthful of pizza. “What’s the verdict?”

            “You look like shit,” Kowalski said baldly. “You should have called me when you got shot.”

            “I did,” DJ said, sounding petulant. “I told you I’d be laid up for a while.”

            Kowalski’s brows lowered in a warning frown. “I meant right after you’d gotten yourself shot. Not days later, once that ‘healer’ of yours had gotten you in her clutches.”

            “I wasn’t thinking straight,” DJ admitted.

            Because revealing the existence of Sister Coleen had been a mistake. DJ hadn’t given her name, but he’d called her their “healer” when he’d phoned Kowalski to tell him that he’d been shot. He hadn’t wanted Kowalski to know he was hurt—weakest member of the pack gets eaten first—but he’d had no choice. When he’d regained consciousness, he’d been on a pallet in the back of the box truck, bumping over the mountain roads, surrounded by packing crates, alone and burning with fever from his wounds. He’d been with it enough to know this might be his only opportunity to talk to Kowalski without Pastor or one of the others overhearing.

            But the fever had loosened his tongue, giving Kowalski glimpses into the community that the man hadn’t had before. Because Eden itself was a liability and DJ wasn’t about to give the Chicos any ammunition against him. He needed them to stay out of Eden, because that fifty million was his, goddammit. He wasn’t going to share it.

            At least his satellite phone couldn’t be tracked, so Kowalski still didn’t know where the community was hiding. That sat phone had saved him, though. If he hadn’t informed Kowalski of his injury and probable recovery time, he would have been declared AWOL and shot on sight when he resurfaced.

            Which could be why Kowalski sat in his living room right now, he realized, a shiver running down his back. Of all the people in his life, only Kowalski truly scared him.

            “No, you weren’t thinking straight,” Kowalski agreed, his tone still mild. “I’ll forgive it this time, but only because you regularly reported in.”

            I’ll forgive it this time. The words stung even as they relieved DJ. He didn’t want to be beholden to anyone for anything, but he was in with Kowalski up to his eyeballs.

            Regular reporting was nonnegotiable, and for this reason, the sat phone was a godsend. Pastor only knew about the cell phones, which operated off Wi-Fi generated by Eden’s satellite dish. The sat phone, which connected directly to an orbiting satellite, had become DJ’s only link to the outside world, because Pastor couldn’t be allowed online for any reason right now. There was too much media coverage of Mercy and Gideon. So far they weren’t mentioning Eden, but Ephraim had murdered too many people for the Feds to completely hide his killing spree from the general public. Mercy and Gideon had been news for weeks.

            DJ closed the now-empty pizza box and frowned. He must have been tired because, like Mrs. Ellis’s words, Kowalski’s had just sunk in.

            “How did you know what Mrs. Ellis said to me? We were in the backyard.”

            Kowalski hit a few buttons on the TV remote, bringing up a camera feed. Of the rooms of this house, his backyard, and the basement—which was empty of the boxes he’d left there.

            That the pot was gone—and with it, his cut—was infuriating, but not all that surprising. That Kowalski had cameras was a greater concern.