Ash's Darling | ✔

Chapter 27

~Ash~

"Are you coming?" Mae stopped walking towards the school as she realized I wasn't following her. After our date last night I was dropping her off at her house when she asked me if I could drive her to school today instead of her riding with Josie and Indi. I didn't have the heart to tell her I needed to be packing, plus I thought this would be the best time to tell her about the trip, so here we are.

I shook my head as she started walking back over to me. "I have to go on a trip for work with my team today. The guy we're going after lives along the border of South and North Dakota so we have to leave today if we want to get there on time."

My team and I were planning to wait until a few weeks to go get this criminal, Anthony Yarrow, but somehow he was informed of our plans and fled the house he was living in. We finally tracked him down a few days ago and our new plan is to get him now while he thinks he's safe. "When will you be back?" Esther stood a few feet in front of me while I leaned against my car.

I pulled her towards me and kissed the top of her head. "I won't be back until Friday morning, darling."

"Ash, that's a two day trip. What if something happens and you need to get back here but you can't in time?" I could see the worry in her beautiful green eyes as she looked up at me.

"Mae, it'll be alright, I promise. I'll be back before you get out of school on Friday and then we can spend the weekend together at my house, okay?"

She sighed and seemed to give up, knowing she wouldn't win. If it were up to me, I would choose to stay here with her in a heartbeat but I didn't have a choice. I needed to lead my team and I didn't trust anyone else enough to do the job. "Text me when you make it there and please be safe."

I leaned down and connected our lips as one of my hands snaked itself around her waist and pulled her body flush against mine. "I will, darling. Now go, before I make you late again." I playfully smacked her ass as she turned around and started walking towards the building once again.

After watching Esther walk into the school building and disappear through the doors I turned around and got into my car, pulling out my phone to call Seth. He picked up quickly so I guessed he either wasn't at our building yet or they had gotten everything packed already. "When will you be here?" He asked before I could say anything.

"I need to go back to my house to get my suitcase before I meet you guys at the building. I packed it last night so I shouldn't be long. Is everything that we'll need already packed?" As I held my phone with one hand, I used the other to drive out of the school's parking lot and towards my house.

"Not yet, I'm on my way there now to meet the rest of the guys. I think most of them are already there so I'll have them help me pack everything before you get there."

"Sounds good, I'll be there as soon as I can and we'll leave when I get there." I hung up before he could say anything else and put my phone down so I could focus on driving and working out a plan for this trip.

The drive is going to take a little over six hours which means we'll arrive at the hotel we booked around 3 or 4pm. We'll need to figure out our plan once we get there which will probably take the rest of the day. Thursday we'll need to figure out Anthony's schedule and catch him while he's at home and off guard. Hopefully he'll comply with us and this will be easy but since he ran when he figured out we were coming after him last time, I doubt he would want to comply with us now. I had a feeling it was going to take a miracle to make him comply.

After grabbing my bag from my house I got back in the car and drove to my building where everyone else was already waiting. I should've just brought my bag with me when I dropped Mae off at school so I could've gone straight to the building afterwards but for some reason I didn't think about it.