I’m pregnant. We were pregnant.
I pushed that thought away. I couldn’t fully realize it right now, not when my woman hurt so badly she shook. I rocked her against me, soft and careful. Let her cry out her agony, all while closing my mind off to the cause—because I couldn’t let that in yet. Not yet.
“I’m scared, Levi. I’m so scared.”
She repeated the words over and over, ripping me apart every time. It seemed like she cried forever. Slowly I relaxed my hold on her hands and moved to rubbing along her back, up and down, up and down. And all the while the feeling of helplessness grew in my chest. I’d built my life on being able to protect those around me. My family. And now the woman I loved more than life itself...
I squeezed my eyes shut, willed back my own tears. I hadn’t cried since I watched my uncle shoot my parents in the head. I wouldn’t cry now, when Abby needed me to be strong.
Minutes passed like molasses, but finally Abby’s crying came to a hiccuping stop. Emotion like that, you couldn’t sustain it forever, no matter how much you wanted to. Eventually you went numb just so you could survive.
I brushed her beautiful red hair back from her face. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t open her eyes, just breathed in and out through her mouth as if she were drowning and her next breath might be her last. I squeezed her neck carefully, reminding her she wasn’t alone. “I’m here, little bird.”
Abby’s eyes flashed open, the anger there hitting me like a punch to the jaw. And then her palm connected with my cheek.
Her limited range of motion was the only thing that saved me. The slap was more sting than pain, but the violence of it shocked me. I jerked back.
Abby rolled away from me.
We lay in silence for a long time.
“I’ve known for weeks,” she finally rasped into the quiet, voice like gravel with pain and tears. “I wanted to tell you. I mean, we hadn’t planned it, but...” Her voice cracked. “I was so excited.”
There’s still hope. Wasn’t there? But I couldn’t open my mouth to ask, too afraid of the answer. Too afraid to know if this was my fault. I hadn’t been here where she’d needed me.
I’d failed the one person that mattered most in the world.
I couldn’t make it right, but I could be here now. Fuck all that was going on—nothing mattered more than Abby.
Little late to learn that lesson, isn’t it?
“I’m sorry.”
Her laugh was strained. “Yeah, well, you probably don’t have to worry about it anyway.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe as panic hit me full force. “Don’t say that, Abby. Don’t think it. We’ll get through this.”
“Will we?”
I eased carefully closer, closer, until my heat could warm her back. “We will. No matter what. I’ll make this up to you, I promise.”
“You can’t,” she whispered. “You can’t keep our baby safe, Levi.”
Our baby. Fucking A.
“Our baby,” I said aloud. A tiny sliver of emotion broke through the hold I had on my heart. “I can’t believe it.” We made a baby.
Abby’s body shook. “Levi—” Her voice broke.
I wrapped her in my arms again, pulled her hard back against me. I loved her fiercely, would kill anyone that dared harm her.
But I couldn’t protect her from this fear. From what might happen.
“What did the doctor say?” I asked quietly.
A shudder shook her against me. “Spotting isn’t uncommon. Stay in bed and don’t exert yourself.”
The words were flat, hollow. They settled in my gut like bricks. In other words, there was nothing we could really do.
“Okay, stay in bed. We can manage that.”
The situation downstairs would have to wait. Nothing and no one mattered except Abby.
And our baby.
X gave you a deadline.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of Abby in my arms. Protect her here or protect her there? Which was more important?
As I held her through lingering tears and finally into an exhausted sleep, I knew the answer I had to give. It went against everything I was. I did the protecting. I did the hard work.
But that wasn’t possible right now. If taking care of Abby meant handing this business with X over to Remi and Eli, then that’s what would happen.
I’d protect my family with my life. Do anything. But I couldn’t protect Abby from this, couldn’t take it on myself and carry it for her. I sure as hell wouldn’t let her walk through it alone.
“Never again,” I promised, whispering the words in her ear. For her. For me. She’d paid the price of my selfishness the last few weeks, learning about our baby alone, worrying over our baby alone, learning she might lose our baby alone. I’d never let her be alone again.
Chapter Fifteen
Eli —
The words I’d read on Levi’s phone ran through my mind over and over as I watched Remi call his fiancée. I could sense the restlessness, the tension in Mikaela’s team, but that couldn’t matter right now. Abby mattered. That winter fire couldn’t be snuffed out this way—and yet there was nothing any of us could do to protect her. Or her baby.
Another child. I’m not sure why I was surprised. Maybe because Levi had already taken his turn at parenting when he’d raised us on the streets. But if my brothers were in committed relationships, children were a natural progression, weren’t they? I just hadn’t expected Levi to take that step yet. From the look on his face, he hadn’t either.
“Eli?”
I turned to Mikaela, steeling myself against the emotion churning in my gut. “Yes?”
She stood in front of me, a good half a foot shorter, but no one would doubt her strength. And if they did, I had no doubt they’d learn otherwise.
“What’s going on? Is it X?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to deny it, to explain. What was it about this woman that made me think I knew her? But just as Remi had stepped to the far end of the room to talk to Leah, I knew I couldn’t give details to strangers, no matter how trustworthy they seemed.
I cleared my throat. “It’s a personal matter.”
“More secrets?” she asked.
I met those brilliant green eyes—and ignored the instinct to spill out everything. I wouldn’t risk my family, no matter what strange emotions this woman generated inside me.
At my silence, she glanced to Remi, then to the stairs, then back to me. “Is Levi returning?”
“No. Not right now.”
Some spark of something—concern, fear, doubt?—lit in her eyes. Behind her, Rhys and Monty looked suspicious. And impatient. They had a deadline, and our personal crisis wasn’t part of that, not for them.
I dropped the arms I’d tightened across my chest to hold myself together. “We should begin working on a plan.”
“I’m still not convinced this is the best step to take,” Rhys argued.
Remi hung up as he crossed back to us. An almost imperceptible nod told me Leah was on her way. “I don’t understand why this has come up at all,” he said.
Knowing the past few minutes had taken over everything else in our minds, I jerked my chin at Mikaela. “Show him the e-mail, please.”
She found the e-mail on her phone and passed it over. In the meantime I summarized. “X has given Mikaela’s team seventy-two hours to get this job done. And we are no closer to finding a single clue to his identity, much less location. Our only lead is Sullivan, and if someone else takes him out...”
“Our only lead dies with him,” Mikaela finished. Her long black hair was tied into a simple ponytail at the base of her neck, the end hanging over her shoulder. I noticed that whenever she was thinking, working out an issue, considering her options, she ran her fingers through the hair and her eyes would go unfocused. I wanted that look in her eyes at other times too.
Not right now, Elijah.
Remi handed her phone back. “X is as much a threat to
us—”
“For reasons you refuse to disclose,” Rhys growled.
Remi raised a so-what? brow and kept going. “As he is to you. We have as much incentive to find this asshole as you do—and if anyone could find a lead, it’s Eli. Which means it’s not going to happen.” He looked to me, face grim. “I say let’s get Sullivan and figure this thing out.”
We settled at the conference table with the intel we had on Sullivan. “The bank is out,” I began. “Too much security to try and take the man there on such short notice.”
“What we need,” Mikaela said, “is a time when he’s alone. Which is almost never.”
“Our boy has an active social life,” Monty added.
I already knew that from the information I’d gathered on his computer. I also knew we only had three days—or two and a half, now—to make this happen. “Any chance he’ll be at home tonight?”
“Might be our best bet,” Remi agreed. It was easier to take someone when they weren’t holed up in their personal fortress, but we’d done it before, with scarier targets than a bank CEO, even one this powerful.
Maris cleared her throat. I looked to her, noticed once again how like Mikaela she was despite their different coloring. No one would miss that they were related. Right now she was carrying on a wordless conversation with her sister. “Tell us, Maris,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. The woman didn’t seem timid, but after spilling the beans in the Humvee, she was probably being extra careful of anything that might come out of her mouth.
Maris cleared her throat again. “I noticed something peculiar about Bram’s electronic calendar.”
“What was that?” Remi asked.
Seeming to get the picture that we weren’t dismissing her, Maris reached for the printout of Sullivan’s calendar among the papers on the table. “I noticed he has a weekly event scheduled at a downtown country club sort of deal, same night every week, a guys’ night or socializing to benefit his connections, maybe?”
“Right,” Monty said. He sat to her left, Titus on her right. Monty tapped the paper. “You were going to verify all the events on his calendar. That one checked out, right?”
“They do have a weekly meeting,” Maris agreed. “But it’s not on Tuesday. It’s on Wednesdays.”
Rhys grunted. “So Sullivan’s hiding something on Tuesday nights.” And today was Monday.
Maris nodded. “Right.”
Mikaela pulled a tablet toward her, eyes narrowed. “What if...”
I glanced at Remi next to me, noticed how he watched Mikaela. Like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. I knew the feeling.
Quick typing filled the silence at the table. “Maris, check these dates.”
Mikaela rattled off several dates, which Maris scrambled to look up on her phone. A smug grin tugged at her mouth. “They’re all Tuesdays.”
Mikaela turned her tablet around. “I guess we know what Sullivan is hiding, then.”
The images the CEO had saved to the cloud stared back at us. It looked like Mikaela had pulled the metadata to get dates. “He’s having a fetish party?” I asked.
“Or meeting a lover, possibly a professional,” Remi mused. “Any evidence of another party in those photos?”
“Nothing conclusive,” Maris volunteered. “Hands, usually. The occasional side, leg, or something, but nothing identifiable except as female. No birthmarks, tattoos, clothing we can identify...”
Monty shook his head. “Maris and I combed through the albums. There are no leads there.”
“So we don’t know who he’s going to see, but we know he’s going somewhere,” Titus pointed out. “If he was staying in or having someone brought to him, it wouldn’t be in his calendar.”
I considered that. The calendar was for syncing staff to the boss’s schedule. If Sullivan was using a driver for his rendezvous, that was a weak point—we could replace the car service, though getting everything in place by tomorrow might be a bit tight. The other option was taking him at his destination. Or—
“We have till when exactly?” I asked.
“About five a.m. Thursday morning,” Mikaela said. Energy vibrated through her body, the need to act, to protect her team. They might not be family like my brothers and I were, at least not all of them, but their bond was tight; I could see that. I could respect that.
“So we make it seem like you’ve done your job, and you stay safe.”
“For now,” Mikaela agreed, “but I don’t see how we can make it look like Sullivan is dead.”
“Car accident?” Remi asked, seeming to follow my train of thought.
“I’m thinking so,” I said. “X wants natural causes. What’s more natural than an accident? We grab Sullivan first, of course...”
“And then we have direct access with less pressure.”
“X will want the body,” Rhys pointed out. “He’s not sloppy, and he won’t leave anything to chance.”
“And that’s where we get him.” I stood up to pace beside the conference table, my brain starting to work through scenarios. “Use what we know about him against him. He wants to see the body? He’ll need to come to where the body is. And we’ll be waiting.”
Remi scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Makes sense—assuming he comes himself.”
“We could also make sure finding a body would be difficult.”
“Waiting for forensics to verify an identity could give us time to question Sullivan, figure out his connection to X,” Mikaela said. “Every piece of the puzzle we gather could give us a hint as to where to find him.”
“You’re assuming a lot,” Remi said, “including that we are willing to house prisoners in order for you to question them, then find X.”
Mikaela shook her head, frowning. “I wouldn’t ask that of you, not here at the mansion. Not with women and children here.” My estimation of her team rose at the concession. “But let’s not forget, you have as much at stake as we do. A secondary base of operations could give us time with Sullivan or anyone else we need time with.”
Remi considered that a moment before nodding.
“Are we assuming X is here in Atlanta?” Maris asked.
“If he’s military, there are certainly plenty of bases in Georgia to accommodate him if he needs access.” I considered the options as I paced. “But even if he’s not officially hooked up locally, it makes sense that he’d be close, able to act quickly.”
“And he’s targeted two teams in this area,” Remi said. “There may be more, but considering this seems to be some kind of trial or race, I would think he’d be close to the action.”
“Some kind of trial,” Mikaela repeated slowly. “He didn’t pit us against each other directly because he didn’t tell us about each other, but... He’s wanting a long-term team, obviously. One of us wins and the other gets burned?”
“An audition, maybe?” Rhys said. “He wouldn’t want another team possibly interfering in anything he sets up in the future, so he could get rid of the team he doesn’t plan to keep.”
My gaze met Remi’s, heavy with worry. Mikaela’s team had been given a deadline—did that mean X wanted to keep them and burn us, or vice versa? Could we keep our family safe, either way?
Not without help. We needed Mikaela and her team right now much more than they needed us. Our roots were here, our home. We couldn’t pick up and go as easily—too many dependents. And now, with Abby...we might not be able to leave at all. We were two men carrying the weight. We needed help.
We needed Mikaela’s team. Desperately.
I stopped directly opposite of Mikaela, just behind Remi’s shoulder. He looked back at me. Nodded. I met Mikaela’s eyes across the table. “It looks like we know what we have to do,” I said. “Let’s get it set up.”
“And Levi?” she asked. She was smart enough to know he headed our team just like she headed hers.
“He has more important things to worry about right now.”
“More important than a threat to his family’s survival
?” Rhys asked, the rise in his tone telling me just how much he believed that.
I thought of Abby, how frantic and scared she must be. “Our family, Rhys,” I reminded him. “And he’s fighting for our survival just as hard as we are. Let’s go to work.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nix—
We had a proximately thirty-six hours to plan this op and put it in motion. That didn’t leave a lot of breathing room, but sometimes you worked with what you had. By dark we knew every detail of Sullivan’s driver’s life, and Monty, Titus, and Rhys were headed out to place a tracker on the town car the man used to ferry his boss around.
“This doesn’t require three of us,” Rhys groused as they gathered what they needed.
Eli approached just in time to catch the complaint. His stern look at my teammate said he didn’t give a shit. “You’re welcome to sit down here twiddling your thumbs.” He handed over a small black box that I knew contained the state-of-the-art tracking device, nearly undetectable, that Eli had promised. One of Hacr Tech’s latest projects. “Don’t forget, your team lost the toss-up. We cook dinner; you run the errands.”
As if tracking the man we planned to kidnap—not to mention staging his death—was as simple as a run to the grocery store.
Rhys grabbed the box and shoved it into the pocket of his fatigues with ill grace. “You won’t be laughing about it tomorrow when you have to supply the body for the car.”
I grimaced. Rhys had a point. First responders would realize the car was empty at the wreck site. Short of planting a bomb and blowing the car to bits—far more attention than we wanted—we had no choice but to substitute a body. It wouldn’t pass a DNA test, but we didn’t expect it to. Just buy us a little time. Since Eli and his brothers were local, they had easier access to a corpse than we would. I refused to ask where they planned to get it.
“Truth.” Eli raised a fist in Rhys’s direction, knuckles out. “Keep us informed.”
Rhys hesitated, then fist-bumped with Eli. “Will do. We expect dinner when we get back.”
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