“I will never think that. Will never look at people as a means to an end.”
“Then you will suffer for it. Don’t be stupid. Don’t throw your future away on some boy. You have a good job. Good instincts. You could be so much more than this.”
I couldn’t believe he actually thought he could sway me, that he knew so little about who I was.
“What? I could be you? No, thanks. I want no part in what you’ve done.”
“This is bigger than just me. You’re smart enough to know that. You won’t be safe forever. That boy has a target on his back, and if you’re with him, you’ll be caught in the line of fire.”
A chill ran down my spine. “I’ll take my chances.”
“You need to think really hard about what you’re doing. About the choice you’re making here. Regardless of what you’ve thought about me, I haven’t been your enemy. You don’t know what it means to have me as an enemy, and trust me, you don’t want them as your enemy.”
So it wasn’t just him and James Ryan. How deep did this thing go? Where did it end? Was he right? Was I naive? Was this merely the cost of doing business?
“Does it mean you’ll have me tortured to get what you want?” I jerked my chin, ignoring the thread of fear filling my veins. “You’ve been my enemy since you ordered to have Matt’s unit killed. I would have thought that a master strategist like you would have realized that a long time ago.” My voice rose, promise shining through as I made the vow I was determined to keep. “I’m going to take you down.”
“With what proof? You have nothing; you wouldn’t be here if you had what you needed. Do you really think I got this far by being careless and making mistakes? That I’m going to be outsmarted by a child? There is nothing to find.”
I still wasn’t giving up.
“If you think that’s going to stop me, you don’t know me at all. One way or another, you will pay for what you did.”
“Careful, Kate, that sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
I strode past him, not bothering to glance his way, crossing over the threshold, feeling like I could breathe as soon as I left his office, even as my shoulders buckled under the weight of the bounty on my head.
I walked down the hall, my footsteps growing faster, ready to get the hell out of this house. I hit the stairs, memories of all the other times that I’d felt like this, times when I’d choked on the manners and image of being a Reynolds. I reached the base of the staircase just as my mother emerged from the dining room, a frown on her face.
“This is unacceptable,” she hissed. “The Brysons are about to leave. You’ll come say good-bye to them and apologize for your rude behavior.”
I sucked in a deep breath, wondering if this was the last time I’d ever see either one of my parents. It was a shitty ending, yet strangely apropos.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that.”
Her gaze narrowed. “It was too much to hope you’d changed, wasn’t it? That you’d finally become the daughter I’ve always wanted you to be, rather than a rebellious, angry girl intent on destroying this family with her carelessness.”
I ignored the barbs. I wanted to believe it was just my father, that I at least had one parent who wasn’t wholly consumed by greed.
“Do you know what he’s been doing? Do you care about the blood on his hands? Or is it all just business as usual for you?”
Her lips pursed in a tight line. “You need to leave. Now.”
I ignored that, too. “He’s going down. He can’t keep hiding bodies and secrets, not in a town like this. Especially, if he’s going to run for president. Do you really want to stand next to him at some podium while he confesses his sins? Do you want to keep supporting him? How long do you think it’ll be before the blood spills over onto your hands, if it hasn’t already?”
I just wanted to see one flicker of emotion, one indication that she cared, wanted to feel like I had one parent I could rely upon.
“You need to leave,” she repeated, his eyes hard. “There’s nothing here for you anymore.”
And that was it. I’d known it years ago, but this was the final nail in the coffin.
I held her gaze. “There never was.”
I walked out of the house, each step taking me closer to Matt and farther away from an empire built on death and destruction, ready to topple it all like a castle made of sand.
Chapter Seventeen
An explosion rocked D.C. this evening …
—Capital Confessions blog
Matt
For the first time all night, it felt like the fucking anvil had been removed from my chest, the sight of Kate walking toward me, blue and white dress swaying around her, blonde hair waving in the breeze, making it possible to breathe again.
I got out of the driver’s seat of her car, wrapping my arms around her and pressing a swift kiss to her temple.
“Thank god you’re safe. I’ve been going crazy just sitting here.”
I’d parked a few blocks away from her parents’ house, close enough to be in range of the panic button, but far enough away to keep from attracting attention.
I released her and opened the passenger door, the urge to get her to safety overwhelming. I didn’t want to be here any longer than I had to be. She settled in and then I swung into the driver’s seat and started the car, my hand finding hers across the console as we drove away. Her fingers were ice.
“Did you find anything?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from the road to sneak a peek at her.
She seemed pale. Worn. Like she’d come through a battle.
Her mouth tightened, her voice strained. “He knew the whole time. Knew what we were up to. Suspected me from the beginning. He caught me searching his office.”
Fuck.
Fear slammed into me. “Why didn’t you let me know? Why didn’t you press the button?”
“Because I had it handled. He wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“Fuck. Kate.”
“I was fine.” She hesitated. “We have bigger problems. He knows that you’re alive.”
Fuck.
“Your father knew, too,” she added. “He said that your father was the one who was sending me the papers. When he ordered the hit on your unit, he didn’t realize it was yours. I guess he felt guilty and started digging into the circumstances surrounding your death and realized you were still alive. I think he was trying to right the wrong he did to you, and my father had him killed to keep the truth from coming out. I’m so sorry.”
I clenched the steering wheel, my knuckles white, her words pouring through me. I wasn’t naive; my father was still a bad fucking guy, but if I could find solace in any part of this, it was the knowledge that for all of his many flaws, he’d attempted to do the right thing, even if it had been far too late. Even as it angered me to hear that he’d been willing to pull Kate into this, ready to risk her safety.
“How did you end things with him? He can’t have just let you walk out of his office.”
She was silent for a moment, and I knew her well enough to recognize when she was stalling.
“He threatened you, didn’t he?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
I was going to put a bullet in him.
“What did he say? Tell me exactly what he said to you.”
“He told me that you had a target on your back, and that if I sided with you, the target would be on me, too. He said that this thing is bigger than him and that he’s been protecting me—apparently the stabbing was a case of an overzealous attacker and not intentional—but if I continue to push, all bets are off.”
Fuck.
“I’m going to leave—”
“No,” Kate interjected.
“What do you mean, ‘no’? I’m going to get you killed.”
“You aren’t leaving. If you leave, I’m just going to keep investigating. I’m not giving up on this, whether you’re here or not. This is bigger than you and me, and I would never be able to
live with myself if I didn’t expose him for what he’s done. How many innocent people will die because of him if we don’t do anything? How many people will lose their loved ones because of his greed? How am I supposed to live with that kind of blood on my hands?”
She was right, but she was also someone I loved. And I couldn’t lose her.
“You can’t save the fucking world. I know you want to fight, but you have to be smart about this, have to pick your battles.” My fingers gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “He’s been ahead of us every single step of the way. What do we have left? We’re all out of plays here.”
“I’m not giving up. You can stay and help me, or you can run, but either way, I’m seeing this through to the end.”
“Which is what, exactly? Your body lying in a morgue somewhere?” I snapped.
“It’s watching his power crumble. It’s us building a life together. It’s putting all of this behind us. Time is running out here. They’re getting desperate; killing your father was sloppy. If the authorities investigate his death too much, who knows what they’ll find? That tells me they’re losing control and willing to do whatever it takes to tie up loose ends.”
It told me they were beyond dangerous. You couldn’t predict desperate.
“I’ll take you back to your apartment, and then I’m going to go meet with the guy who was working for Intech,” I interjected. “I’ll press him harder. See if he has anything else he can give me. He’s the last lead we have.”
“I’m going with you.”
She was insane.
“Absolutely not.”
“Do you think I’m safe in my apartment anymore? We saw how easy it was for them to get into my place. I’m safer with you.”
I grimaced. Fuck. She was right; I hated leaving her alone. Jasper, the guy I’d had watching her when I was in Afghanistan, was on a job and there wasn’t anyone else I trusted. I could see if she could stay with Jackie and Will, but they wouldn’t be able to keep her safe if an assassin did come after her, and I doubted Kate wanted to put more people in danger.
“Fine. But we’re going in armed. We’ll go back to your place and get more supplies. I need to get the rest of my stuff from the hotel I booked when I came back to town. I didn’t trust the security on your apartment after the break-in, but we need to keep travel documents on us in case we need to leave.”
“Does this mean that you’ve accepted the fact that no matter where you go, I’m going with you?”
God help me, I had.
“Yes.”
“How long will it take to have documents made for me?”
“I started working on them before I left town last time.”
She shook a head, a smile playing at her lips. “So all of your protests were what exactly?”
“Me trying to get you to see logic and sense. Clearly I forgot how stubborn you are.” I took my eyes off of the road for a second, my gaze connecting with hers. “We’re in this together. Promise.”
She squeezed my hand and for a moment, it felt like we were kids again, like we could face anything as long as we were together.
It was late by the time we reached Kate’s apartment—just after nine. Now that her father had shown his cards, I didn’t want her staying at her place anymore. I needed to find a safe place where we could stay while we waited to see if we could get any information from my father’s former employee.
“Just grab whatever you need for a few days.”
“Should I stop going to work? I mean, how much of my routine needs to change here? Are we going underground now?”
She sounded scared, and I searched for some reassurance to give her.
“I don’t know. I think work is probably fine considering the security, but I would try to break up your habits a bit, make an effort not to frequent the same places. Patterns make it easy for someone to find you.”
I parked the car and opened the door for her a block away from her apartment building.
“I wish you would let me get the stuff for you.”
I was nervous about having her out in public, on edge about what her father would do next. I didn’t want to leave her alone in the car, but taking her with me seemed dangerous, too. Each option before me felt like a choice between bad and fucking worse.
Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between my days in Afghanistan and life back home. It felt like there was still a threat around every corner, like I was in someone’s crosshairs. And now I had Kate with me, dropped in the middle of a war zone.
I kept my body between hers and the street, tucking her against me in an attempt to shield her from any threat that could come her way. Adrenaline pumped through me, mixing with fear to create a cocktail that filtered into my veins. I kept my gaze sharp, scanning the streets, my fingers itching to grab the weapons I had on me.
Something felt off—a prickling under my skin and a tightening in my balls that fucked with my head.
“You okay?” Kate murmured, her hand reaching out and grasping mine.
I nodded with a sharp jerk. “Just ready to go inside. I don’t like being exposed like this.”
We lengthened our strides until we turned the corner, the glass doors of her apartment building a few feet away. I waited while she entered the security code and followed her into the lobby, my gaze sweeping the interior.
All clear.
We hit the staircase and I gave up the pretense of looking like a normal couple out for an evening stroll and grabbed the gun out of my waistband, clutching it in my hands with white knuckles while I led Kate up the stairs. With each step that took us closer and closer to her apartment, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, unease sliding down my spine.
I froze on the third floor landing, pressing Kate against the wall, keeping her body behind mine.
This was not good.
“What’s wrong?”
I gripped the gun even tighter. “I don’t know. Something just feels off.”
Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe it was the PTSD. But no matter how I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that it was all in my head, I couldn’t make my body go up those remaining steps. My instincts had kept me alive for four years and every single instinct in my head told me that something was not fucking right.
Kate clutched my hand tightly, her nails digging into my skin. Her breath hitched. “Do you think someone’s up in the apartment?”
I hesitated. That was the worst part of all of it—my instincts had kept me alive and at the same time, my instincts had gotten me “killed.” I hadn’t felt any special sense of awareness that day I watched my friends die around me, hadn’t seen the danger coming my way until it was too fucking late. Whatever confidence I’d had in my abilities was now called into question by the one glaring time I should have seen the threat coming and missed it entirely.
“Matt.”
Kate’s hand on my arm jolted me back.
“Are you okay?” she asked, worry threading through her voice.
I nodded, not entirely sure that was the truth, but not knowing what else to say. These were the moments when I felt the most fucked up, when I didn’t know what to do, and I ended up frozen with indecision. And the worst part, the hardest part, was that I’d always been someone she trusted, someone she’d looked up to when we were younger. Now I felt broken.
She pushed her way through life, making no apologies, not letting anything stop her. I didn’t want her to see what it was like in my head, to know that the things I’d survived had messed me up more than I cared to admit, and that I didn’t always know when it would trigger, when I’d feel fine one minute and off the next. That was the part that frustrated me the most, the side of it that made me want to scream. I couldn’t manage it; it managed me.
“Matt?”
Her voice pulled me out again.
“We need to go,” I muttered, flight taking over.
Kate didn’t argue, following my lead down the stairs. Maybe I was overreacting, but all I k
new was that each step made me feel like fresh air filled my lungs, like I could suddenly breathe again, like I’d left the cloying decay of death behind me in the staircase. We hit the lobby, my arm wrapped protectively around her waist.
“I’ll see if I can come back for your stuff. It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s just an instinct thing …”
“Matt?”
“Yeah?”
Kate’s gaze met mine, compassion in her brown eyes. “You don’t have to explain.”
The compassion did me in. It was too close to pity, too close to her seeing inside me—all of my fears, all of my weaknesses. To her looking at me like someone who was weak rather than someone she could lean on.
That night I’d burst into her apartment, I’d been so determined to keep her safe, so focused on getting between the guy who’d broken in and her, that I hadn’t had time for doubts, had just acted. But now I was reduced to this giant fucking weight dragging me down, quicksand beneath my feet, and the action that had once been so easy fled me. That was the thing about this—it snuck up and sucker punched you when you weren’t prepared.
I opened my mouth to answer her, when all of a sudden, a loud boom exploded around us. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, just hit the ground, my body covering Kate’s.
Chapter Eighteen
We’ve received reports that tonight’s explosion took place at the apartment of Kate Reynolds, Senator Edward Reynolds’s daughter. Our thoughts go out to Kate …
—Capital Confessions blog
Kate
I hadn’t truly appreciated how big Matt was until he was lying on top of me, his hard body pressing me into the concrete sidewalk. I didn’t think I’d ever seem someone move as quickly as he had; one minute I was standing there, the next I was roadkill.
My ears rang, smoke billowing around us, the faint sound of shouts mixing with the bell-like noise pounding my head. I gripped Matt, trying to get his attention, feeling like I was about to suffocate under his weight.
“Matt.” I shook him gently. “Matt.”
Falling For Danger Page 17
