CHAPTER THIRTY SIX: EASIER SAID THAN DONE

( episode one: the gold )

✲*'。

"Wait hold on! Why does she get to tickle?" JJ pouted, dropping his head onto Arden's shoulder as she spied Pope leaning over Kie's phone to dial Gavin's number.

It was night time, and so far, it took everything and anything within Arden Kim to not launch across the chair and personally attack Haven Murphy and Brec Buchanan. It was probably harsh to also place JJ on this list, but Christ was Arden sick of her boyfriend consistently sticking up for his cousin. Yes it was selfish. Arden could freely admit it. However, she couldn't help the frustration that was bubbling over every time JJ disagreed with her over Haven. Could he not see how Pope was hurting? Could he not see how Kie was tense at her appearance? Was he blind to the way Arden was barely in control of herself?

Quite frankly, it was annoying the fuck out of her.

Back to the present, Arden was interrupted from her thoughts as JJ harshly elbowed her in glee. It was an annoying habit he had picked up towards the end of her pregnancy. Arden had a habit of spacing out, 'thinking too deeply' as JJ declared it. He liked to force her back into the present by physically touching her. Depending on his mood, JJ ranged from pecks, to smacks and now elbowing her.

Just great.

It didn't a take a genius to work out Pope was being teased by JJ. Forcing a smile onto her lips, Arden muttered 'smooth' through fake, muffled laughter.

She had a role to keep up after all. Arden refused for the facade to fall now.

Kie, very stupidly, Arden might add, shot her a look before asking, "Should I do an accent?"

Kie knew Arden was one of the resident idiots of this group ... right?

"Oh, definitely disguise your voice." Arden replied, a genuine mischievous smirk fluttering onto her lips. She was excited to see what Kie would come up with.

She needed a good laugh. It was the only way Arden was able to keep her sanity these days.

"Disguise my voice how?" Kie questioned, her voice rising in pitch as she put on one of the worst British accents Arden ever heard and she lived with one JJ Maybank. "How would you like me to talk? Like this?"

"Not like that," Haven and JJ winced in unison. Then, to top it off, they turned to each other at the same time, Haven sighing to herself as JJ hurriedly smirked and exclaimed, "Jinx! You owe me weed!"

The conversation was momentarily paused as everyone looked at him in disbelief. "What?" he huffed to himself, frowning as Arden sighed and patted him on the shoulder like he was a confused puppy.

He was her idiot, her beautiful fool who deserved so much better than her, if Arden was being honest. Now was probably not the right time to be thinking this ...

"You know that's not the saying, right?" Haven snickered behind her hand, forcing Arden to close her eyes momentarily as she counted to ten in her head so she would stop seeing red.

"Well, duh," he scoffed, jutting his onto Arden's shoulder like a child who was trying to convince everyone he was right. "That was just my take on it. Cool, right?"

"Look, can we get back to the tickling, please?" Pope said, gaze locked firmly with Kie's as he stubbornly ignored JJ and Arden's childish grins as she reached up to fix his hat.

"Batman," Kie growled, startling Arden prompting a breathy giggle from JJ as he began to squirm in excitement, holding her hand in utter glee.

Pope smiled proudly. "Spot on. Let's do this."

As the phone began to ring out, once, then twice before the call was accepted, Arden buried her head into JJ's chest, forcing her eyes shut as she tried to ward off the memories of Peterkin's death.

Just like Gavin, Arden was the other witness. They needed his testimony if Arden's was to hold up on court, since Liam refused to come forward.

However that's a story for another day.

"Hello?"

"Hello," Kie said in her Batman impression, forcing Arden back into the present as she cocked her to the side, sighing in exasperation. Like she expected, Kie's voice lowered into a whisper as she turned to the group. "Guys, I can't."

"Just talk," Pope hissed as Gavin asked who he was speaking to.

Kie cleared her throat and said with as much confidence as she could muster, "Is Gavin there?" Bloody hell, that sounded much better.

"This is Gavin. Who's this?" the man replied, suspicious. "Hello?"

"I know what happened on the tarmac."

There was a long pause as Gavin comprehended what she'd just said. After a moment, he chuckled uneasily, voice breathy with rising panic. "Um, who is this?"

"It was Rafe Cameron," Kie exclaimed, on a warpath. "But you already knew that, and you lied about it."

Harshly, Arden bit her lip to keep her erratic breathing to herself as she tried to keep her gaze trained on JJ's side profile. Arden didn't want to think about that day ever again. She didn't want to think about the terror she felt when she saw that crazed gleam in Rafe Cameron's eyes. She didn't want to remember the way the life was slowly fading from Peterkin, nor did she want to remember the way Arden had been terrified for the life of her daughter.
Arden didn't even want to remember how on that day she learnt about the truth about her fathers death and thought she would die herself at her mother's hands.

"Okay, who is this?"

"And we're going to prove it. You're guilty—"

"You're gonna tell me who this is right now," he snapped.

"You could've saved her, Gavin, and you didn't. And you're not getting away with this." Kie hissed, her voice full of the pain wreaking havoc on Arden's body at this current as she continued to bite her lip so she wouldn't make a sound.

"Listen to me!" he was screaming now. Kie just rolled her eyes, finger hovering over the end  button. She had nothing else to say. They'd gotten what they needed. "Who is—"

She hung up. There were no signs of movement in Gavin's house, but Arden prayed he would leapt into action, give the pogues the evidence they needed to exonerate John B.

Then and only then would Arden Kim be able to move on.

"How was that?" Kie asked as she pocketed her phone with a smile. No traces of her previous anger in sight.

"That was..." Haven trailed off, unsure the right word to use.

"You are terrifying when you want to be, Kie," Arden breathed out, trying to keep the memories of the past at bay.

"So what next?" Kie asked, leaning forward in her seat with new-found eagerness that Arden wished she could muster right now.

Pope just glanced at her before saying, "Well, we tickled the wire, so phase two is complete. Now we wait and listen."

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. JJ had annoyed Haven into a game of tic-tac-toe while they waited, but Arden knocked their hands down as the door to Gavin's house slammed shut and the headlights of his car tore through the darkness like beacons of brightness to fight off the shadows.

"He's on the move," she hissed, not so
oblivious to the way that Haven's glare lingered on the side of her head.

She wouldn't give Haven Murphy the satisfaction of seeing her volcanic eruption. Not yet.

"Stay down," Pope added, the group ducking down low to avoid Gavin seeing them as he drove past. Arden didn't hesitate to push JJ to the ground, pinning his body underneath his so he definitely wouldn't be seen.

Arden couldn't lose him. She didn't dare try to move until she were sure Gavin was nowhere in sight of them.

"He didn't see us, right?" Brec asked as she inched back up into her chair from where she had been hiding with Haven.

JJ shook his head, wrapping his arms around her waist in silent assurance and support. They would get through tonight together, as a team like they had been doing for months now. "There's no way he did."

"Then let's get out of here," Haven said. "Before we lose him."

With Pope urging her to 'hurry up' and everyone staring her down impatiently, Kie hurriedly reached for the keys and the engine spluttered to life. The van was off to a slow start, the tires clearly unused to so much movement, a fact that clearly unimpressed Arden, who glowered at a sheepish JJ.

Of course this stupid fucking can would ruin their teamwork.

"You're going to have a lot to fix in this junker, you know that, don't you?" Arden hissed in annoyance, not wanting to consider how much it would cost to fix this hunk of junk by a qualified mechanic.

He nodded quickly. "I'll get right to it."

"Yeah, you better."

"Guys, be quiet," Pope snapped as he adjusted Kie's airpods in his ears again. Fortunately, this time Arden made no comments about it. She needed to be focused. "He's calling someone."

"Calling someone?" JJ frowned, sharing a look with her.

Pope narrowed his eyes at him. "That's what I just said." But he went quiet as a faint murmur was heard in the earphones. "It's Ward. He's talking to Ward."

At the mention of Ward Cameron, Arden abruptly wrapped her arms tighter around JJ once more, not even bothering to try and hide the ugly possessive feeling she had to protect her family when Ward was mentioned. Her mother has actually wanted Arden to join that family full of psychopaths, leaving her own daughter and granddaughter into a cave full of wolves.

Ward and Rafe were responsible for all of this. Arden was determined to see them behind bars, or better yet dead at her feet if that meant protecting her daughter, JJ and the other pogues. Ward would never get his hands on her family; that was something Arden was sure of.

She would die before she'd ever allow Ward to lay a single finger on their head. Never again.

"Kie, you gotta get closer," Pope huffed with a frustrated frown forcing Arden back into the present. "I can't hear."

"Okay," she sighed, and pushed harder on the van's accelerator. It wasn't much of a difference, they'd seemed to hit the vehicle's maximum speed already, but Pope sighed in relief so it must've worked.

"He's talking about negotiating something," he told them. "Renegotiating..."

So whatever deal Gavin had with Ward wasn't good enough, wasn't worth his own prison sentence. Interesting...

Suddenly, Pope's eyes went wide with shock and something akin to hope, like an idea had formed. "Gavin's got the gun that Rafe used to kill Peterkin."

"Jesus christ," Brec murmured, biting down on one of her nails anxiously. Not that she would ever admit it, but in this moment Arden felt the exact way as Brec Buchanan.

"I think he's trying to use it as extortion, as leverage."

"No wonder Ward hired him," Haven scoffed.

The voices filtering through Kie's airpods were so loud, they could pretty much hear everything that was being said. Gavin's frustration seemingly got the better of him, for his car began to slow down until he came to a stop by the side-walk, wanting to chew out Ward without needing to focus on his surroundings.

"Shit, he's pulling over," Kie panicked. "Do I pull behind him? What do I do?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Arden hissed in protest. "He'll see us!" Her family were well and truly fucking crazy!

"Well, I don't know what I'm meant to do, Arden!"

It was a lose-lose situation, one they should've accounted for. Gavin was in no state to drive, and if they pulled up behind him, they risked him noticing the suspicious white van that had followed him all around the block and was now waiting behind him for no reason. He'd surely let Ward know, the dots would be connected and everything would go back to how it was before.

"Just go around the block," Pope let out a sigh, knowing they had no other choice.

"Okay, okay," Kie nodded, though she didn't sound certain the further they drove and the more Gavin's car became nothing but a dot in the distance. "Guys, we're gonna lose him..."

"Shit!" he exclaimed just as they drove around a corner and completely out of range. "I can't hear anything now. I'm losing the signal."

"Should we turn back?" Brec asked.

Arden narrowed her eyes, voice thick with sarcasm. "No shit, sherlock. How else are we supposed to hear him?"

"I was just saying! God, what is your problem with me?"

Finally Arden could lash out! As she opened her mouth to rip a new one into Brec JJ practically screamed for her and Brec to shut up as he gestured to the orange 'road closed' sign and the truck that was blocking the road ahead, leaving them no way forward.

"Just pull in here and back up," he exclaimed, pointing to an empty driveway to their right.

Right. Arden needed to focus. She couldn't lose her temper. Not now. Not when Sarah and John B needed her.

"Okay, I'm just gonna back up," Kie repeated frantically, reaching for the hand break just as some sort of bulldozer pulled out onto the road behind them. She had to slam on the breaks to prevent herself from hitting them, her hands smacking against the wheel in pure anger. They were trapped with no way forward and no way back. "Are you kidding me!?"

"That's it," JJ snapped, crawling over Arden's lap to open the door and stick his head out. "Hey, we were about to back up! Did you seriously have to do that right now?"

The workers barely even spared him a glance, just continuing to inch out across the road and seal them in. Pope huffed before throwing open his own door. He would run back to Gavin's car if he had to. They couldn't just be stopped like this.

"Pope, what are you doing?" Haven shouted, eyes wide in confusion.

"We've gotta know where they're meeting," he shrugged, already half-way up the road.

"We're going after him, right?" JJ asked the girls.

"Obviously," Arden said. In another poor attempt to get under Brec's skin, she turned to her and Haven with a sickly sweet smile. "Why don't you two stay and watch the car?"

There was no way in hell Arden trusted them right now. Who was to say Haven wouldn't leave them again? Who was to say she wouldn't fuck with John B and Sarah like she did with the remaining pogues?

Haven scowled and pushed her way out of the vehicle with Brec right behind her. "Why don't you?"

"Just stop fighting for five seconds, please!" JJ scowled, slamming the door shut and taking off with Kie down the side-walk. "We gotta go!"

Arden huffed, unintentionally falling into strife with Haven as the duo passed out the bulldozer and workers with one of the men glaring at them with his nose in the air.

"You can't leave that car there," he screamed with a reddening face. "Move it now!"

"Maybe you shouldn't have blocked us in then, dumbass," Arden shouted back, sticking her finger up at him in an action that Haven mirrored. "We've got places to be so move the piece of shit yourself!"

"Would you two stop terrorising people?" Kie snapped as she circled back to them, JJ and Brec already out of sight. She apologised to the glowering man before ushering them in front of her, leaving them no choice but to run. "Honestly, you'd think you two were back to being friends again."

Arden couldn't help but scoff, shaking her head at the thought. Never again would
she be friends with Haven Murphy again. "Don't be stupid, Kie."

Their wild-goose-chase following Pope lead them into a random person's backyard. He hopped the fence and bolted through the bushes followed by Brec dragging a puffed-out JJ along with her and the other girls bringing up the rear.

Arden really hadn't signed up to run a fucking marathon.

"Sean?" JJ gasped as he recognised the boy glowering at them. "Oh, so this is where you live, you kook."

"JJ, stop taunting people," Haven snapped, as Arden lingered behind them with Kie. "Pope can't be too far ahead. Let's go."

Of course Ms fucking Murphy was right. They rounded the side of the house and found Pope crouched down behind a rosebush, one of Kie's airpods gone while he held the other up to his ear with shaking hands. He turned to them with wide eyes, and Arden honestly thought that he could be high again ... or drunk.

"What did you hear?" The pogues pressed asked through breathless pants. "Pope, what is it?"

"He's meeting Ward right now," he exclaimed. "We've gotta go."

"Now?" Arden repeated with a sigh, her face red and sweaty. Christ she wasn't made for all this running, not when she was still incredibly unfit, trying to bounce back from her pregnancy.

"Yes, now!"

And they were running again. Fucking Great. Arden just needed to remind herself John B and Sarah were worth it.

Easier said than done.

✲*'。