Wilde for Her (A Wilde Security Novel) (Entangled Brazen)

by Burrows, Tonya

  Miguel lifted his brows. “We? You mean, in an official capacity?”

  Her stomach twisted. “Absolutely. We’re handling this the right way.”

  …

  By the time Miguel stopped his department-owned car in front of the Wilde Security office, Eva had worked up a good, frothing anger. Why would Cam not tell her everything he knew? He wasn’t involved in the murder, so what did he have to hide? And why the fuck would he hide it from her, of all people?

  She banged through the front door, the little bell on the jamb shuttering in complaint, and spotted just the person she wanted to unleash her anger on sitting at one of the three desks, working on a computer. “Cam—”

  “Vaughn,” he corrected without looking up and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Cam’s in with Greer.”

  She growled and stormed by him. “Dammit, grow your hair out again.”

  “Working on it.” Vaughn stopped typing and stood, his hands flattened on his desk. He glanced between her and Miguel. “What’s going on?”

  Ignoring him, she strode to the back of the room and shoved into Greer’s office. As the door slammed against the wall, Cam stopped talking with his oldest brother and did a double-take, slowly rising to his feet.

  “Hey. Is everything okay?”

  “No.” She pointed at him, indicating he should stay seated, and then nodded to Miguel to shut the door behind them. Except Vaughn stood between the jambs, arms crossed over his chest, and Miguel didn’t even attempt it.

  Greer scowled. “What the hell is going on?”

  “A murder investigation. You don’t like it, you can get the fuck out of my way. In fact, you should. I don’t need to talk to you.” She rounded on Cam, fury burning like acid in her throat. He watched her with calm, unreadable eyes, which only served to tick her off more. She hated—hated—that he was sitting there so calmly, all the while withholding information from her.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, directing the question to Miguel.

  She pinned her partner with a glare, daring him to answer. Miguel held up his hands and backed up a step. Damn right. This interview was hers. If anyone deserved answers from Cam, it was the woman he’d been fucking just about every night for the past week.

  She jabbed her thumb toward her sternum. “Me, Cam. You’re talking to me.”

  “All right.” Still completely unruffled, he turned in his seat to face her. “You want to start by telling me why you’re so pissed off at me? ‘Cause, I gotta be honest, I’m lost.”

  “Soup was murdered. Not an overdose. Murder.”

  Cam shut his eyes, breathed out a slow breath. When he met her gaze again, there was no shock. He knew. All along, he’d known Soup had been murdered, or at very least, he’d suspected it. And he hadn’t said one word to her about it. Fury and hurt warred for space in her chest. Fury won. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s my mess.” His voice was low with no hint of apology. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Hang on,” Greer said and stared at his brother. “Is this the same informant that told you about the contract on your head?”

  Eva’s breath caught in her lungs. “What?”

  From the doorway behind her, Vaughn cursed. “Cam, you didn’t tell her? Goddammit, that is so like you.” He moved into the room, putting himself between her and Cam. “Soup said someone tried to hire him for a hit, but Cam keeps brushing it off as no big deal.”

  “It is no big deal,” Cam said. “I’m looking into it, and so far, I’ve found little evidence—”

  “But you have found something,” Greer stated.

  “The only thing I know for sure is that Soup had five-hundred dollars after someone offered him a thousand to kill me.”

  Horror twisted Eva’s stomach, adding to the nauseating slurry of emotion inside her. “You lied to me.”

  Wincing, Cam shouldered past his twin and tried to touch her, but she jerked away. He dropped his hand to his side. “It wasn’t exactly a lie. More like an omission.”

  “Lying by omission is still lying!” All of the anger mutated into something much uglier. Something like betrayal. Oh, and hurt. Definitely a good dose of that swirling through her blood. “Cam, you lied to me during an official interview. That’s obstruction. I can arrest you for that. I should arrest you for that.”

  “Whoa, hold up,” Cam said, and his own temper sparked in his eyes. “I didn’t lie during the interview. You asked me what I had met Soup about that night, I told you it was in regards to a case we were working. That was the truth. I just didn’t go in to specifics about which case. You asked me where Soup got my jacket, I told you I gave it to him. You asked me about the money he had, I told you I didn’t know where it came from.”

  “But you did. If someone paid him—”

  “No, I didn’t know that at the time. I suspected a lot of things, but until you came in here and told me definitively that Soup was murdered, I had no proof to substantiate any of my suspicions.”

  “Bullshit.” Her voice wobbled and she hated herself for it. She threw back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and nailed him with a glare. “You lied to me.” And the pain of his betrayal cut so deep into her chest, she didn’t know if she’d ever breathe normally again.

  Cam rubbed his face with both hands. “All right, yes.” His arms dropped back to his sides in a gesture of defeat. “I lied. To you, to my brothers. I didn’t want any of you involved. I can’t risk anyone else getting hurt just because some asshole thinks I’d look better in a casket.”

  “It’s my job to be involved. And I can handle myself, fuck you very much.” She shoved him hard enough that he staggered. “You, of all people, should know that.”

  “I know you can,” he said, straightening himself. “Believe me, I know. But no matter how well you’re trained, horrible things can happen. Look at Seth Harlan. And my Dad? He was career military, and he and Mom still wound up bleeding to death in a gas station parking lot because someone wanted their car.”

  He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. Abruptly, she realized everyone else had vacated the room.

  “I can’t risk losing you, Eva. I just…can’t.”

  Christ, she’d fucked this up. She was supposed to come in as a law enforcement officer and get an official statement. Instead, she’d let her emotions get the best of her and now here she stood, clinging to Cam like he’d vanish if she let him go.

  And it took a helluva lot more willpower to yank out of his embrace than it should have. “News flash, Cam. You can’t lose what you don’t have.”

  His eyes, now more gray than blue, sparked with a flare of temper. “Nobody can take care of Eva like Eva, that it?”

  “Damn right. I’m not yours to protect.”

  He laughed, but it was a nasty, sardonic sound that raked over her nerve endings. “Because God forbid you ever let anyone close enough to care for you.”

  She stared at him, her breath sawing in and out of her lungs with the force of her fury. “Don’t you fucking dare turn this around on me. You’re the one lying about everything and you’re the one in danger. Not me. Not your brothers. So get your head outta your ass, Camden.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he didn’t move, didn’t say anything more, and for a half second, she felt like a complete bitch for throwing his fears in his face.

  But, no. Dammit, she wasn’t going to feel guilty for pointing out the obvious.

  Unable to stand the deepening silence between them, she backed to the door. “You need to make an official statement. Again. We’re going to have to investigate Soup’s claims.”

  “It’s a dead end,” he said, jaw still clenched.

  “That will be for us to decide. Miguel will take your statement.” Blindly, she reached out for the door, found the handle, and all but fell through. Miguel waited on the other side, his expression grim. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Can you find out what’s going on?”

  “Sure. Are you
okay?”

  Not in the least. Cam lied to her. The only person in her life she could count on to always tell the truth, and he’d lied.

  “Yeah,” she answered, telling a whooper of a lie herself. “I’m just…taking a personal day.”

  He nodded and patted her shoulder. “Good idea, chica. It’s long overdue.”

  Chapter Twenty

  In the short distance to the door, Eva got three offers for a ride back to the police station from Greer, Reece, and Vaughn, and declined them all. She didn’t want to be around any of Cam’s brothers, and especially didn’t want to be cooped up in a car with them for any length of time, so she walked a couple blocks until she found a taxi. Her phone started buzzing, vibrating against her hip, the moment she slid into the cab’s backseat and told the driver her destination.

  What now?

  She snapped it up and checked the screen. Preston. Right. She definitely was not in the mood to talk to him…

  But instead of hitting ignore, her thumb hovered over the answer button.

  A little voice told her she’d regret it. That she was only considering answering his call out of hurt pride and spite.

  Fuck it.

  She hit answer and pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello.”

  Preston’s shock carried over the line in his voice. “Eva! You answered. I mean—how are you?”

  Yup, she already regretted it. “What do you want, Preston?”

  “Have you given any thought to what we talked about last week?”

  “No,” she admitted. “And I don’t think—”

  “Please,” he interrupted, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Just one date. Dinner. That’s all I ask.”

  Eva stared out the window at the piles of gray snow lining the road. Cam lied. Preston cheated. What made one any different from the other? They both hurt about the same.

  “Eva, are you still there?”

  She heaved out a sigh. “Okay. One date.”

  …

  Cam dropped into a chair after Miguel left with his statement, pressed his fingers into his eyelids to push back his thundering headache, and cursed himself out in every way he could think of—and a few he made up. He still stood behind his reasoning for not telling Eva about his suspicions, except maybe he could have gone about the whole thing differently. No idea how, but there must have been a way to keep her out of it without hurting her. He knew she saw him as her rock, something stable to cling to when her life got too hectic and his lie had ruptured that foundation. And, dammit, he knew how she felt about lies. How many times had she told him over the years that she loved his honesty? How much she loved that, no matter what, she could always count on him to tell her the truth?

  And the most fucked up thing about that? He’d done nothing but lie to her since day one. Friendship? Hell, he’d never wanted that from her. He loved her and had kept his lips sealed, never once opening up and telling her the truth about his feelings.

  Like she’d said, lying by omission was still lying.

  She was never going to forgive him.

  He felt three huge bodies crowd around him and groaned without opening his eyes. His brothers saw him the same way as Eva had. He was always the steady one, the reliable one. And, honestly, he was fucking sick of being everyone’s support system. What did he have to hold onto?

  “So…” Reece said, drawing the word out.

  Greer wasn’t as patient. “Wanna explain to us what the fuck you were thinking, Camden? You told me this wasn’t a big deal, and I believed you.”

  Vaughn smacked him upside the head. “That was for lying to us.” Another smack. “And that’s for lying to Eva.”

  Cam shot to his feet and pushed through the barricade his brothers made before his twin decided to smack him again. “I fucked up, all right?”

  “I’ll say.” Reece, the outwardly calmest of the three, crossed his arms in front of him and perched on the edge of Greer’s desk. A stack of papers fell to the floor. He raised an eyebrow at the mess and then spared his oldest brother a disgusted glance. “We need to hire you a secretary.” Then he returned his attention to Cam. “And we need to figure out this problem of yours before anyone else ends up dead.”

  “I have it handled, guys.”

  “You’re not handling it alone,” Greer said through his teeth. “I already told you, that’s not how this family works.”

  “Yeah, and you’re not Dad.” As soon as the words left Cam’s mouth, he wanted to take them back. After their parents died, Greer had filed for emancipation, worked his ass off to finish school early, and got a fulltime job, then did his best to cobble together a semblance of the family they had lost. On his seventeenth birthday, he’d joined the military solely so he could better support them. He’d taken on more responsibility than any teenager should ever have to and it wasn’t fair of Cam to condemn him for it now.

  Greer remained as stoic as ever, but the words must have been like a physical blow. Cam opened his mouth to apologize, but what could he really say? The damage had been done and I’m sorry wasn’t going to fix it.

  “Tell us everything you know about Soup’s death,” Greer said after a long moment. “Do you have any suspects?”

  He nodded. Soup and the hit contract were so much easier than the minefield he’d stepped into with his heartless remark. “I went through some of my old cases, focusing on the recent parolees that had threatened me in the past, and came up with three names—Arnold Mabry, Tom Lindquist, Gordon Dunphy. I’ve already eliminated Mabry. He didn’t even remember me, and I never considered him a real suspect anyway. His was a crime of passion, and he was drunk when he made those threats against me.”

  “And the other two?” Reece asked.

  “I haven’t had any luck finding Lindquist. He’s skipped out on his parole officer and there’s a warrant for his arrest.”

  Everyone looked at Vaughn in silent question.

  “Yeah,” Vaughn said, “I’m on Lindquist.”

  Cam’s stomach twisted and he faced his twin. “You should sit this one out, bro. It’s too—”

  “If you say ‘dangerous,’ I am going to hit you again. And this time, it won’t be a love tap.”

  Fuck, he hated this. If something happened to Vaughn or any of his brothers because of this case…

  Unable to stay still, he paced across the office. “I need some air.”

  Greer stepped in front of the door, blocking his exit. “We’re not done. Tell us about Dunphy.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I haven’t looked into him yet. I had a restraining order against him for a while after he attacked me in a bar, but it’s not active anymore. And, honestly, he doesn’t have any reason to come after me now. I have no influence over his brother’s case.”

  Greer nodded once. “I’ll take a look at him. Reece, dig into Cam’s old cases and see if you can’t find us more suspects. We’re gonna turn over every rock and see what comes scampering out.”

  …

  The air hit Cam like an icy hammer to the face when he stepped outside, and he gratefully sucked it down until his lungs burned from the cold. Something damn near panic had sunk its claws into his heart, and he hadn’t been able to draw a full breath inside the office.

  He had to fix this. Throw himself into the investigation and figure out who was behind the contract before his brothers had time to get in too deep. Whoever it was hadn’t had a problem killing Soup, so that person would also have no qualms about offing a handful of private investigators for asking the wrong questions in the wrong places.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  But first, he had to find Eva. Explain himself. Beg forgiveness. Then ask her not to pursue Soup’s information because the thought of her getting caught in the crossfire just about crippled him.

  And it was time to come clean about more than this case. All these years, he’d kept his relationships few and far between—just enough to take the edge off because his heart had never been into any of t
hose women. His heart belonged to Eva and, fuck it, he wanted her too badly not to give this thing between them a shot. So he couldn’t give her exactly what she wanted. Maybe his love would be enough. At least, he hoped it’d be enough. And if it wasn’t—well, maybe he could try to do things her way. Marriage, two-point-five kids, a dog, a minivan, and a motherfucking white picket fence. Either way, he couldn’t let his personal demons paralyze him into inaction anymore.

  If he did, he got the sickening feeling he’d lose her forever.

  …

  The restaurant wasn’t anything Eva would have picked for dinner, casual but with a faint enough whiff of upscale that she wasn’t one-hundred percent comfortable. Preston was all smiles as he pulled out her chair for her and settled across the table. He’d ordered them red wine, which she hated. She took a sip anyway because she thought a splash of alcohol would do her good.

  Then again, alcohol is what got her into this mess in the first place.

  She nudged the wine glass away precisely because the temptation to get drunk was so great. Like mother, like daughter.

  “I’m so glad you agreed to meet me,” Preston said, shaking out his napkin.

  God, this was a mistake. She pushed away from the table. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “No. Eva, wait.” He scrambled around the table and caught her hand. “Please, hear me out. Garth Brooks will come on the radio, and I’ll remember that town in West Virginia, the one we got stranded in when my car overheated? Remember you played darts at the dive bar with all those bikers? You impressed the heck out of me that night.”

  She smiled, relaxing a little at the memory. It had been a fun trip, one of the best she’d ever taken with him. “They loved us until they found out I’m a cop.”

  He released a breath as if relieved that she remembered. “And I can’t even watch a Nationals game anymore because you’re not sitting beside me making inappropriate comments about the opposing team. I miss us. I miss what we had.”

  She pulled her hand from his grasp. “How can you say that? You cheated on me. After I specifically told you when we first started dating that cheating is a stupid, high-schooler thing to do, and if you ever found someone you’d rather be with than me, you should just tell me.”