ONLY ANGEL | JJ MAYBANK

TWENTY-ONE... and just like that

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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Collins shouldn't have been on a boat this late.

She should've been at home instead, cooking dinner for her and Charlie, sitting at the kitchen table with him while they filled out her scholarship application. She shouldn't have been riding alongside JJ as he drove the HMS Pogue down the outskirts of Figure Eight's shoreline before he pulled up to the dock near the Cameron's yacht. Charlie was going to kill her for not even leaving a note at the very least.

It wasn't like they'd had time to stop and grab a pen and paper or something. After John B came to his house to retrieve a gun, the urgency to stop him before he did something rash was greater than anything else in that moment. It was quite literally, life or death.

Everything else had been forgotten. Their whole plan to recover the gold went out the window, and they found themselves waiting in anticipation, fearing that their friend may have done something absolutely terrifying.

"What now?" JJ asked as they floated next to the Cameron yacht. "Do we just go up to the front door and ask, 'Hey, have you seen John B?'"

"Look, he lives at Tannyhill now, it's plausible." Kie insisted. "We can play dumb."

"Play dumb?" Pope raised his brows at her in disbelief. Did she really want to take a risk like that under the circumstances they were in? If Ward really did kill Big John, that made him dangerous. He already had the power and money over them, now he posed an even greater threat.

"I've never seen John B like that. We should honestly be going to the cops."

"And say what, Kie? We're worried about our friend because he's gone off on a rampage because Ward Cameron killed Big John? They're not gonna believe us!" JJ shook his head in dismay. It sounded ridiculous even as he said it, so imagine what the cops would think if they were to relay it back to them.

"JJ's right." Collins chimed in. "All we have is what John B told us, which hardly counts for anything without any evidence. And who's to say that he even has any to begin with?" Ward Cameron was not a man you wanted to start throwing accusations at without anything to back you up. He could ruin all five of them with one phone call.

"Hey, I see Ward." Pope alerted them, turning their attention onto him. He had a pair of binoculars held up to his eyes as he peered across the large expanse of yard that stood between them and the mansion. He passed the binoculars over to Kie so she could see for herself. "Doesn't look dead to me. Let's go home."

Whipping around in confusion, Kie frowned at the boy and his urgency to leave. "Wait, what?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Pope replied, "Obviously Mr. Cameron is fine, and even if John B was here, he isn't now. Plus, I have the biggest, most important moment of my life in six hours."

"Yeah, well our friend is in trouble." Kie shot back.

"I'm in trouble!" Pope protested. "Guys, I haven't been home in three days. My dad's probably put all my shit on the street by now."

Clenching her fists angrily at her sides, Kie glared at Pope. "Okay, so that's it? In a time of need, you're just gonna bail? You're just gonna walk away?"