by Pam Godwin
“Well, I’ve spent a lot of time holed up in cubicles with detectives, but they don’t use evidence boards like this. Everything goes into advanced computer programs. It’s a more efficient way to connect findings.”
She tapped the marker on her chin, staring at her work. Her other hand absently drifted behind her to rest on his hip. It was a simple thing, just a casual touch, but it meant so much more. It was familiarity, comfort, and connection. It was everything.
“Right now, the one currency we have to work with is time,” she said. “There isn’t a serial killer on the loose or an abducted person held somewhere. No one’s breathing down our necks. So I thought the board would be helpful to kick around ideas.”
“Is this what you were discussing with Cole?”
“No.” She laughed uncomfortably and turned around, her eyes watching Cole head toward the hall for more supplies. “I talked to him about you, me, my failed marriage, and the woman he built that dance room for. Relationship stuff. I did the talking. He indulged me by not kicking me out.”
“He was listening.” He stroked his thumb across her pillowy lips. “Listening to a beautiful, brilliant psychologist.”
“Oh, my God.” She laughed again. “I’m a terrible therapist. Therapists listen.”
“You listened to me.”
“And changed my major because I thought I could fix things.” She touched his face, his gaze soft with affection. “Some things don’t need to be fixed.” With a small smile, she turned back to the board. “This has always been my dream. Investigation. Profiling. Criminal justice.”
“You’re in the right place for that. With us. I know it’s too soon to make demands—”
She snorted. “You’ve been making demands since day one.”
“Quit your job.”
“Done.”
“Just like that?”
“I took a sabbatical because I hate that fucking job. The detectives pull me into their sit-downs when they have questions, but I’m never part of the analysis or action. I watch from the sidelines, bored out of my mind. When I drove into the desert, I was searching for so many things. A new life, friendship, happiness, possibilities…” She pressed her lips against his chest. “You.”
He was a goner. Utterly, completely lost for this woman.
Pulling her close, he wrapped his arms around her and scoured his fumbling brain for something profound to say. “This is nice.”
Lame.
“This is nice.” She hugged his waist and perched her chin on his breastbone, smiling up at him. “I love the growly, aggressive, tough-guy thing you have going on, but it’s also nice to just be able to touch you like this, to hold you without expectation or agenda.”
Dishes clinked, voices murmured, boots scuffed—the din of family coming together for a meal.
He held her until she pulled away, turning back to her evidence board.
“Eat.” He grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward the table.
She sat with a harrumph and ate with a smile in her eyes.
Cole returned a moment later, found his plate, and carried it to the board.
“This is great, Rylee.” He took in her detailed lists and diagrams, the fork absently digging into his food. Then he went still. “What is this?”
“What?” Rylee wiped her mouth and joined him at the board.
“These words.” Cole pointed the fork at the guesswork she’d made from the hitman’s dying gibberish. “What does this mean? The bridge?”
“That’s what he said. I don’t know.” She stood taller, defensive, her expression tightening. “He said he was there because of the bridge. The rest…I don’t know. It sounded like Thursday or thirsty or—”
“Thurney.” Cole’s whisper shuddered the air, and the plate in his hand slowly tipped.
“Yes. That’s it. What—?” She grabbed the dish as it tumbled, unable to stop its descent. “Shit!”
Enchiladas and dishware exploded across the floor, but Tomas wasn’t interested in the mess. He was interested in Cole’s stark, ghost-white expression as the man spun, scanning the room for something.
“What does Thurney mean, Cole?” Tomas stood, his adrenaline spiking.
Cole’s shell-shocked eyes landed on a pile of burner phones. He snatched one and turned away as he punched in a number and held it to his ear.
Who the fuck was he calling?
In the next breath, he barked into the phone, “Call me back on a secure line.”
He hung up and stared at the device as muscles flexed across his back.
“Cole.” Liv broke the silence. “What’s going on?”
The phone buzzed, and Cole lifted it to his ear. “Your location?” A pause. “Lock it down. Where is she?” He gripped his hair, his voice plunging into a seething roar. “Fucking get her. Bring her to the safe house!” He pivoted, pacing, listening to whoever was on the other end. Then he slammed to a stop. “No, goddammit. I want her here. It’s Thurney. Yeah, you heard me. I’ll be in touch.”
He disconnected, and a sharp, icy hush lanced through the room. Tomas didn’t breathe. No one did as Cole stood frozen, staring at nothing.
Then he turned toward the table, slowly, too calmly, and slammed the phone down on the surface, smashing it into pieces. A collective flinch rippled the air.
“Thurney Bridge.” Cole raised his eyes, divisive and chilling. “It’s where I lost my life.”
A thousand questions piled up as Tomas put together everything he knew about Cole Hartman. It wasn’t much. The man had more secrets than friends.
One question was answered, though. Thurney Bridge, wherever that was, wasn’t Rylee’s bridge.
As that detail clicked into place, her lips parted, her gorgeous silver eyes round and glassy. She had nothing to do with this. At least, not at the foundation.
Someone had connected her to Cole and put a hit on her.
Why? Who was Cole Hartman?
Tomas had learned some things about the man over the past two weeks, but nothing about losing his life on Thurney Bridge. Except he remembered a conversation they’d had in the desert.
I was sent out in the field for a while. Mistakes were made, and I was forced to fake my death to protect her. By the time I cleaned up the mess, quit the job, and returned home to her, she’d fallen in love with my best friend.
Whatever Cole was mixed up in—then and now—put Rylee and the entire team at risk.
“Are we safe?” Tomas met Cole’s eyes. “Right now, in your house, are we safe?”
“Yes.” Cole straightened and ran his hands down his face. “This is the safest place in the world.” He surveyed the room, taking in the disbelieving expressions around the table, and sighed. “The man I just called was my handler. He was also my best friend until he married my fiancée.”
“That sounds deliciously nasty.” Van didn’t smile.
“The point is, while Danni is no longer my…” Cole’s hand clenched. “While she’s no longer mine, I still protect her. She was a target during my last mission. A mission that ended with me taking a bullet on Thurney Bridge. Now she’s in danger again, and there’s nowhere I’d rather her be than in this house.”
Tomas was surprised to finally hear the name of the mysterious woman who’d leveled Cole’s world.
“Is she coming here?” Rylee tilted her pretty head, concern softening her eyes. “Did your best friend agree to bring her?”
“No.” One word and Cole’s face clouded over.
“Let’s go back to the bullet,” Tomas said. “Is that when you faked your death?”
“Yeah. I was wearing bullet-resistant clothing. High-tech stuff.” Cole tapped his sternum. “The bullet broke skin, fractured ribs, but didn’t enter my body. I fell into the river below and swam out of sight. If I hadn’t faked my death, the perpetrator would’ve killed Danni.”
“Where’s the perpetrator now?” Rylee asked.
“She’s in prison. That is a fact I can one-hundred-
percent guarantee. I monitor her status. She’ll never see daylight again.”
“You were shot by a woman?” She arched a brow.
“She was my partner,” he growled, his eyes dark and murky. “A traitor to the agency.”
“Which agency?” Tomas leaned over the table. “No more secrets, Cole.”
“Those aren’t my secrets. It’s classified, and sharing classified information is punishable by law.”
Tiago’s dark laugh turned all heads toward the corner of the kitchen, which was darkened merely by his presence and the deadly look in his eyes. “You can’t scare this group with threats of your law.”
“It’s not my law.”
“Who the fuck cares? The only law we follow is our own. You’re one of us. Now tell us what you were involved in.”
“Espionage.”
“We need more than that,” Liv sang in an eerily melodic voice that crashed into a spine-tingling command. “Trust us, Cole.”
Cole paced to the windows and laced his fingers behind his neck. The entire room seemed to strain toward him, tense with anticipation.
He made them wait, building the silence into a volatile, rumbling thunderstorm. Fingers drummed. Shoes tapped. Molars sawed. Patience thinned.
At last, Cole turned and faced them, decision made.
“I retired from a special unit, a clandestine group, that goes by many names.” He folded his hands behind him, feet braced apart, voice monotone. “OGA, ISA, Optimized Talent, Gray Fox… Whenever there’s a classified spill, the designator changes. But those inside refer to it as the activity. I was a deep undercover operative, deployed to foreign nations to collect information. Crucial information. The kind that changes the outcome of wars. Or prevents them, as it were.” He rolled his neck, cracking it. “I was the eyes and ears in the shadows, and I was fucking good at it. Until Thurney.”
Tomas’ head pounded as he came to terms with what they were dealing with. The Freedom Fighters had taken down some scary motherfuckers, solidified a trusted relationship with the Restrepo Cartel, and learned the ins and outs of the criminal underground. But top-secret espionage and government corruption? This was way out of their league.
“What happened on Thurney Bridge?” he asked.
“I was embedded deep within the enemy’s ranks. But the enemy, as it turned out, was my partner. She was ambitious and power-hungry and turned her back on her country to make some money.” He gripped his neck. “Everyone connected to her was apprehended. No stone left unturned. The activity was thorough in this.”
“Not thorough enough,” Van drawled. “Someone knows about Thurney and put a hit on Rylee, who happens to know everything there is to know about us.”
“I can’t even begin to guess who it is or what they want.” Cole’s gaze swept over the laptops and gear that littered the long table. “I need to sit down, pore through the findings, and make decisions on how to proceed.”
“We need to do that.” Tomas pointed a finger around the room. “We’re not from your world, and we don’t know shit about your tech. But we’re your team now. Train us. Put us to work.”
“All right.” Cole nodded, his expression thoughtful, maybe even relieved. A split-second later, he snapped into full-on work mode. “We need to scrape through every detail of my last mission. Identify the actors—enemies, allies, informants, and everyone in between—and run a cross-connection between those actors and Mason Sutton, Paul Kissinger, and Daniel Millstreet.”
“Daniel Millstreet?” Rylee asked.
“The cunt you killed in the motel room. I received confirmation on his identity an hour ago.” He strode toward the mess of food he’d dropped on the floor.
“I’ll get it.” Tomas held out his hand, itching for something to do. “You’ll tell us how you found his name?”
“I’ll show you everything.”
Over the next two weeks, Tomas sat side by side with his team, absorbed in congressional documents, private phone records, and handwritten reports of Cole’s undercover missions. Handwritten by Cole. Godawful penmanship. The scrawl was so terrible it made Tomas’ eyes cross. It was also really goddamn impressive.
Under U.S. law, Cole couldn’t make copies of briefings or anything related to his job. But on the heels of each operation, he’d written everything down by memory, filed it meticulously, and kept the notes in his armory.
Cole hadn’t just given them the key to his entire life. He’d literally put details of national security in their hands. In the filthy hands of vigilante criminals.
If that didn’t say trust, nothing did.
The first week of digging through reports was an eye-opening experience, the entire team engrossed in their newfound knowledge of government inner-workings.
The classified intel didn’t interest Tomas, but it opened a portal into Cole’s extraordinarily unique skill set. Bottom line, Cole was a master at milking information. He knew how to talk to informants, manipulate dangerous adversaries, and use social engineering to obtain what he needed.
He no longer had access to government systems and confidential records, but he never needed that access. He only had to identify who had the access and massage them into unknowingly leaking the information he was after.
That had been the core of his job in the activity. He slipped behind enemy lines, deep undercover, and went to work, befriending and inveigling.
That was how he’d learned the identity of the hitman. He’d convinced someone, a lot of someones, to feed him innocuous pieces of information until he had enough to put it all together.
Fucking mind-blowing.
Tomas pushed back from the table and rubbed his hands down his face. He’d been bent over documents for hours, and the words were blurring. Stiffness knotted his neck, and his body screamed for exercise.
The house was equipped with a weight room, and they all used it daily. But they weren’t accustomed to this type of work. They were the feet on the ground, the fingers on the triggers, and muscle on the front lines. They weren’t analysts.
Cole sat beside him, flicking that coin-shaped GSM bug between his fingers, eyes on his laptop. He’d been focused on the bug’s technical components, reaching out to unknown contacts, subtly asking around about it, and collecting data. He was convinced the tech in that device held all their answers.
Tomas looked around the living space, taking in the bodies sprawled on couches and chairs, holding laptops and reading through reports. In the kitchen, Tiago and Van prepared lunch while arguing the finer points on how to properly chop cilantro.
Definitely not a typical day for this group. But not once in two weeks had anyone suggested going home.
They didn’t know who the enemy was, what this entity wanted, or if it had anything to do with them. Maybe his emails were out there somewhere in the hands of someone who intended to exploit them. Maybe his emails didn’t factor in at all.
It didn’t matter. They were here, sticking together like wet on water.
His gaze fastened on his favorite brunette across the room. She lay face-down on a rug, her fingers clicking on a laptop and legs bent, rocking her delicate feet in the air. It was a girlish thing to do, reminiscent of Caroline lounging lazily on his bed. But that was the only similarity between the two.
The feelings Rylee stirred in him were so much deeper, darker, and deliciously grown-up.
He rose from the chair and prowled toward her. She hummed as he stretched out over her prone body, bracing his hands on either side of her shoulders and lowering into a push-up position.
“Take a break,” he said at her ear.
“I could use some fresh air.”
Outside, they took the bridge that led from the terrace to the dock below. The tree-lined shores wrapped around calm water that stretched for miles. Several boats bobbed on the horizon, too far to venture near this inlet.
As they made their way to the water’s edge, her hand slipped into his, and he felt a pull in his chest, a breath of undiluted ha
ppiness.
At the end of the dock, benches faced the water. He lowered onto one and guided her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, warming her skin in the chilly air.
He’d fucked her on this very bench yesterday. Over the past two weeks, he’d taken her in every corner of this property, in every position. His need for her was unquenchable, and she had the enthusiasm to match.
Being cooped up together had given them a lot of time to explore. Not just their bodies. He’d never been one to vocalize his feelings, but she had a way of opening him up and riling not only his temper but also his fears, joys, and hardest memories.
She’d demanded to hear every detail of his mission with La Rocha Cartel in California, including an explanation about the girl on the meat hook. He didn’t want to revisit that, but after he shared the story, he realized he could tell her anything. Not just in an email, but in person, while looking into her eyes.
It was another first for him.
They talked a lot, argued plenty, and sometimes, they communicated without saying anything at all.
She curled up on his lap, her nose buried in his neck, choosing the view of him over the stunning vista of the lake. She loved him. The words hadn’t left her lips, but he felt them. He felt them in the weight of her stare, the caress of her constant touch, and the sigh of her breaths.
She leaned up, her gaze fastening on his. “I’m going to sell my house.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll need a place to live.”
“I’m your home.”
She nodded, smiled, and her chin quivered.
He kissed her lips. “Scary, huh?”
She nodded again.
Her dirtbag of an ex-husband had put that fear in her.
Deep down, he hoped that Mason Sutton was behind the hit on her so that he would have an excuse to murder the son of a bitch. He might just gut the fucker anyway.
“Which is scarier?” he asked. “Living with me? Or living alone?”
“I don’t want to live without you, so I’ll take the scary. I’ll take whatever comes as long as I’m with you.”
