TRIGGERED: A Romantic Suspense Bundle (5 Books)

by Evie Nichole

  “A drug exchange?”

  He nodded, looking scared, as if he was anticipating another outburst from her at any minute, or, perhaps, a swift kick.

  “Illegal drugs?”

  He nodded again and then closed his eyes, as if he knew what her next question was bound to be and he really did not want to answer it.

  “Who are you investigating?” she asked, but she knew in her gut exactly what his answer would be.

  He opened his eyes slowly, looking tremendously apologetic. He answered in a low voice, “Alan.”

  Chapter 7

  “HE WHAT!?” Monica was walking so fast down the sidewalk that she felt she could burn tracks into the concrete. Her jaw was so tight her head was starting to hurt and tears were streaming down her face; all of the ones she hadn’t needed after Alan dumped her and Mr. Johnson forgot about her were flooding out now. She didn’t wipe them away; she just shook her head every few moments to clear her vision and dislodge the drops from her jawline.

  “Zoe, please don’t make me say it again.” She was walking in the direction of Zoe’s apartment, which was fifteen minutes away. She started out pacing in her apartment, trying to calm down enough to explain to Zoe what had just happened, but she’d suddenly felt watched and then claustrophobia had descended on her so quickly she’d started to panic. She’d grabbed her flats and a cardigan that she’d thankfully dropped under the table the day before and stormed out, letting the door slam. She’d realized when she was three blocks away that she’d forgotten her keys, but she wasn’t planning on going back there tonight, and she’d just have to get the Super to let her in her place.

  She wished that love and emotions and attraction didn’t exist. She wished they would all go away. She wished that she could shut them off in herself forever. It wasn’t as if she was in love with Jason, but she did like him. And she wasn’t exactly in love with Alan either, but she’d enjoyed being with him a lot of the time, and she had trusted him. She’d trusted both of them. She wished she could turn that off in herself, too. This feeling, this crushing devastation, and over someone she barely knew, was unbearable. She remembered her first breakup. Because it was years ago, it didn’t feel as bad as this feeling she was having right now, but she knew it had been. She knew it had been worse because she had spent days in bed doing nothing but crying. She had gone what felt like months without smiling. Looking back, it seemed manageable. That’s the problem, she thought, we forget and it happens again. She remembered her mom describing childbirth, saying that after a while she’d forgotten how intense the pain was when she’d had Monica’s brother so she hadn’t thought twice about getting pregnant with Monica.

  You forget the pain. I’m going to remember this, she thought. This is never going to happen again. Not to me. Not ever. In the very back of her mind, she knew that probably would not last at all, but in this moment, she was done with all of it and all of them for good.

  “What the hell, Monica? What the HELL?!”

  “I know, Zo.” She was finding it hard to form any more words than necessary. Her mind kept replaying the entire night, beginning to end. The cowboys. The kiss. His shirt. The phone call. His voice on the other side of the door. Her body shaking. Yelling at him. Everything he’d said. Alan.

  “Alan is a part of a drug ring? A freaking drug ring, are you kidding me?”

  “Apparently” was all Monica could manage. She was replaying the moment right after he’d said Alan’s name.

  “Alan?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no way.”

  “There is. We know it’s true; we’re just looking for, you know, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ We need solid, substantial evidence to take the whole exchange down, not just a few people we know for sure are involved.”

  “You know for sure Alan is involved?”

  Jason nodded. “He’s not a leader, but we’re pretty sure he’s the right-hand man to the American head honcho, so we’re trying…they’re trying to get information on him in the hopes that he’ll lead them to that guy.”

  “Not they,” Monica said, quietly; it was almost a growl.

  “What?”

  “Not they,” she said more firmly. “You. You’re trying to get information on him. You’re on the team. You’ve been using me to get information on my ex-boyfriend. That’s why you came up and started talking to me in the bar in the first place, isn’t it?” She paused, replaying that day in her mind. He opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, she shouted, “WERE YOU STALKING ME?”

  He looked ashamed. She knew that meant that the answer was yes.

  “JESUS CHRIST. FUCK YOU, JASON. FUCK YOU.” She’d started to slam the door, but he’d caught it with his arm, angling his body with one foot just over the threshold.

  “Wait! Monica, listen. Yes, I was there on assignment. Yes, I was assigned to talk to you, to see what you knew. But from the time we left the bar, it stopped being a job.”

  “Have you been recording our conversations?” she asked suddenly, bypassing everything he’d just said.

  He looked at her, desperate and apologetic. “Only the first one, I swear.”

  “Oh, well, if it was only the first one. FUCK. YOU.”

  She tried to close the door again, but he was stronger than she was and had his weight fully against it.

  “Monica, what you just heard, that conversation I was having right now, that was me telling my boss that I couldn’t work this case anymore. It was me telling my boss exactly what I told my team the day after I met you. I told them that I couldn’t work the case because…because…and I tried not to call you. I planned on not calling you and never seeing you again, but, I don’t know, I justified it that that would hurt you after that jerk had already hurt you so much, and your stupid boss. But really, I just wanted to see you again. I just told my boss that I wanted to be taken off this case, officially, but I haven’t been working you since that night. You have to believe me.”

  She stared at him. He was panting a little from his monologue. Her voice was cold. “I believe you.”

  He gave a sigh of relief. “Good.” She felt him relax his stance against the door, a little.

  “I believe you, Jason. But I don’t trust you.” She paused, tears starting to fall down her face. His face, too, had fallen. He looked like he was about to start another speech, but she shook his head and he fell quiet. “I can’t trust you. Please. Just…leave.”

  He looked at her for a long moment; her anger was momentarily abating as tears fell freely from her eyes. She held back a sob, feeling it quiver in her belly. His eyes were wet, too, and she felt herself soften momentarily. She clenched her jaw, however, refusing to give in. He closed his eyes as if bracing himself but then pulled his weight off the door and stepped back. She stumbled forward slightly when the door shifted, but she pulled it back to look at him. She hoped he saw the pain in her face. She shook her head disappointedly, clenched her jaw, and slammed the door in his face.

  “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” Monica said. They’d both been silent for several long moments, processing this surreal bit of information.

  “This is not your fault, Monica.” Zoe was adamant; Monica could hear anger in her voice that matched her own. “He’s a liar. He’s, like, trained to lie, to get confessions and information out of people. It is not your fault that you couldn’t read him. He’s supposed to be unreadable.”

  Monica nodded, but she did not feel consoled. She looked around, spotting a street sign and realizing she’d just passed Zoe’s apartment building.

  “I’m downstairs. Can you meet me? I need to go somewhere.”

  “Sure, grabbing my shoes. Where do you want to go?” Monica heard muffled movement as Zoe gathered her things and opened her door. “A bar?”

  “God, no.” Monica’s tears renewed, flowing for every event of the last two and a half weeks, both good, bad, and unbelievable. “How about the fountain?” She pictured the fountain downtown that they someti
mes had picnic lunches at during the summer. She didn’t want to be inside. And she definitely didn’t want to be anywhere where it would be easy to track her down.

  “You got it,” Zoe’s voice came from inside the phone, as well as from just behind Monica, who had turned to look at the street. She turned, ending the call and slipping her phone into her bra. Zoe tossed hers into a cotton shoulder bag that seemed quite full; Monica spotted some sort of liquor bottle and smiled sadly. Zoe grabbed Monica’s arm, linking it through her own, and led her to the curb to hail a cab.

  Chapter 8

  She’d been lied to by two men she had instilled her trust in blindly. One was apparently selling or buying drugs on a massive scale, and the other had just been using her to get information about that drug ring. She was no longer allowing herself to feel stupid for trusting them; Zoe had said that no one expected this kind of thing to happen ever and that there was no way she could have seen it coming, from either of them.

  “Though I did think Alan was a sleezeball from the get-go, but I thought he was just cocky. You can’t blame yourself, Mo; no one could have guessed this.”

  Monica knew she was right, so she was doing her best not to beat herself up—but she was still pissed. She was angry with both of them for so many reasons it sent her head spinning. She was angry with Alan for lying and for getting her involved in a mess like this, for putting her at risk.

  “Drugs are so dangerous, though, especially when it involves international crap, he really put you in danger with this. People kill girlfriends to get to someone they want to punish, what if he had pissed off the wrong drug lord or something?” Zoe took a deep swig of the tequila she’d brought and handed it to Monica who took an even deeper one. She didn’t respond, but she agreed. That was part of the reason she hadn’t wanted to stay home; she had no idea who could be watching her. She stared at the still water reflecting the glistening lights of the city around them.

  Alan should have told her; she knew that for certain. He should have given her the chance to willingly become the girlfriend of a drug dealer, to know what she was actually getting herself into.

  She was angry with Jason for taking advantage of her, for tracking her down and for using her, for seeing her in a moment of vulnerability and still going through with his plan. She was angry with him for lying, too, for knowing how Alan had treated her, for knowing that Alan was a criminal and still treating her basically the same way. She was angry with Jason for letting her think he was different.

  “Monica?”

  She jumped a little in her seat and looked around. She’d been sitting in her cubicle, staring at the wall. She must have been sitting that way for almost an hour, seething.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Johnson was at the entrance to her cubicle and looking at her with concern.

  “I’m fine,” she said, curtly, turning toward her computer with no real sense of purpose, and mostly hoping that he would leave her alone if she looked busy enough. She didn’t hear him walk away, however, and knew she shouldn’t be rude. She took a quietly deep breath and turned back toward him.

  “I’m sorry, did you need something?” She knew her attempt at friendly professionalism sounded forced, but it was the best she could muster at the moment.

  “It’s three o’clock,” he said, confusion etching itself across his face.

  “Yes?” she prompted, allowing a hint of exasperation to enter her voice so that he would get that she wanted to be left alone.

  “Monica, it’s time for your meeting. The team is gathered. I want to sit in for the first one, but I have another meeting at three thirty so I really need you to get started.” She could tell he was frustrated but that he was trying to refrain from showing it too much because he was worried about her. She’d been silent and cold for the past three days at work, talking to no one unless absolutely necessary, communicating in emails that were just as curt as her verbal conversation just now. Her eyes widened as she absorbed what he was saying. She jumped up, wrenching open her large bottom drawer to pull out the drafting pages she’d stored there on Monday. Seeing them made images of Jason, ones of his bare chest as she straddled him mingled with his body blocking her door as he pleaded with her to understand, swam before her eyes. She stopped, suddenly, mid-movement, the whole night replaying for probably the thousandth time. Tears sprang to her eyes as her brain started bouncing from Alan to Jason and back again once more.

  “Woah, Monica, what’s wrong?” Mr. Johnson moved inside her cubicle, lowering his voice so her colleagues wouldn’t hear. He reached out to place a comforting hand on her shoulder but seemed to think better of it and dropped it again halfway there. “What is it?” he asked, slowly, his voice carrying genuine concern.

  She turned to him, wiping the tears away viciously with her free hand. She didn’t want to go into details with him; she was now pissed at herself for letting him see her break down like this. That was no way to impress the boss and get a promotion, she was certain of it.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I had a really…dramatic weekend. I’m not dealing with it well. But I’ll be okay, I promise.”

  She started to walk past him, eyes staring wide and unseeing in front of her, red from all of the crying she’d done since slamming the door on Jason. Her mind had been a constant loop—Alan-promotion-Jason-Alan-promotion-Jason.

  This time he did touch her, reaching his arm across her path, past him, and stopping her momentum. He used his other hand to swivel her to face him and looked into her face until she was forced to meet his eyes. “Monica, hey, listen to me. It’s okay. You don’t have to be okay if you’re not.”

  She shook her head, forcibly trying to stop herself from crying. Not here, she thought, not in front of my boss. “I’m fine, really,” she said, unconvincingly.

  He didn’t let go of her and continued to hold her eye contact. She was definitively losing the crying battle.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go in there and tell everyone you’re not feeling well. We’ll reschedule the meeting for Monday, okay? I’ll tell them the gist of your plan, show them the presentation you emailed me, and have them come up with some preliminary ideas of their own by then. In the meantime, you’re going home today and you can take tomorrow as well. I know you have sick hours and I want you to take them. I can’t order you to, technically, but I’m ordering you to, okay?”

  She stared at him, her face wet, her eyes puffy. She felt an immense surge of gratitude at what he was saying, but she was angry with herself, still, for not being able to snuff it because of two jerks who should mean nothing to her. Even as she thought it, Jason’s smiling face swam before her eyes and she knew that, despite what he’d done, she still didn’t really feel like he was a jerk.

  “No, Mr. Johnson, thank you. I need to do this. This is important. It’s my job. I can handle it.” She tried to pull away, but he maintained his grip on her shoulders. He wasn’t forceful, just firm, and she didn’t have the energy to fight to get away, though she knew it would be easy.

  “Monica, I know you can do it. I have no doubt whatsoever that you can handle anything I throw at you and then some. And I know that you’re going to be okay, and that whatever is going on won’t defeat you. I promise you, I will not think any less of you or your abilities when you go home and take some time for yourself. We all need that sometimes.”

  Looking at him would only make her crying intensify. She stared at his shoulder, shaking her head. “You don’t mean that,” she said quietly, her voice stumbling out of her tightened throat.

  “What am I to you, a monster? Of course I mean it.” He was smiling, still looking at her in an attempt to maintain eye contact.

  She smiled a little and finally met his eyes again. He looked sincere. She knew he meant what he was saying. She didn’t want to abandon the job, but she knew she didn’t have the focus right now to give it her best. That wasn’t fair to her team or to Mr. Johnson.

  “Okay” she said. He kep
t his hands on her shoulders for a moment, looking at her as if he wanted to ask again what was wrong, but he couldn't find the words and he didn't want to force her. She felt another surge of gratitude and sort of fell into his chest, hugging him. When she felt him hug her back, her crying redoubled and suddenly she was sobbing into his chest.

  He patted her back awkwardly and muttered, “You'll be okay, Monica, I know you will.”

  He released her—and even though she didn't feel like letting go, she did. She wiped her face halfheartedly with her hand, staring at the floor beside him. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You got it,” he said, nudging her shoulder with his fist. “And listen, if you need company, Charlotte and I would be happy to have you over for dinner. You’ve got my number. Now get out of here.”

  He turned and walked out of her cubicle without looking back. She stood staring at the place where he been without really thinking for a long moment. Then she slid the drafting pages back into the drawer. She grabbed her things, turned off her computer, and walked out of the office quickly without looking at anyone.

  Chapter 9

  “You were right about him.” Zoe was seated on the floor of Monica’s living room, with her back against the couch. Monica was laid out the length of the couch with her head propped up on the headrest. They each held a shot glass, and the same bottle of tequila from the night at the fountain sat, nearly empty, on Monica’s coffee table.

  “What?” Monica’s words slurred a little; she’d been on the verge of falling asleep. She’d called Zoe as soon as she got out of the office, and she had been sitting on Monica’s stoop when she got there. On the floor to the left of Zoe was an open pizza box with a half-eaten, cold pie in it. Zoe looked at it, pondering the level of her hunger, as she spoke.