Re/Deemed (Doms of the FBI Book 8)

by Michele Zurlo

  Agent Lockmeyer was so serious she’d gone undercover and played the part of his loving girlfriend perfectly. If he was looking for a silver lining in the shit show that was his life, Brandy’s dedication had to be it. He knew what he had to do.

  Lukas matched Agent Forsythe’s pose and tone. “I’m prepared to give you everything I have, but I want a few things in return.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  He sat back. “You’re not authorized to make deals. Get me the District Attorney.”

  Chapter 18

  Brandy opened her eyes and took a moment to remember where she was. Small room. Pale walls. Lumpy bed with stainless steel rails up on one side.

  Hospital.

  She was in the hospital. They’d performed surgery on her perforated lung and broken ribs, and she had seven stitches in her cheek. Her bladder was so full, she felt like it was going to burst. She stirred, trying to sit up.

  Immediately someone popped up from the chair in the corner. Her mother. “Do you need something, sweetie? Are you in pain?”

  Pain meant she was alive, and the worst of her pain wasn’t the result of physical injury. “No, Mom. I’m okay. I just have to pee.”

  “Mitch, get up. Brandy needs help getting to the bathroom.”

  She pushed aside her covers and snorted. “Dad, stay there. I can walk by myself. My legs were never injured.” Lowering herself gingerly, she braced for the coldness of the floor through the padded, anti-skid hospital socks. Then she grabbed her IV pole and wheeled it to the bathroom with her. While she was in there, she freshened up. She couldn’t take a shower with the bandages still on her torso, but she could wash up.

  When she opened the door to leave the bathroom, she found her mother on the other side. “Mom, please. I don’t need you hovering over me every second. I’m okay. I’ll have a couple of scars to show off, but nothing really cool or interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Selina Lockmeyer lifted both eyebrows in an expression Brandy knew well. She was about to go off on a long lecture detailing everything Brandy had ever done wrong.

  “Start with that time I told Santa he was a creepy old man when I was three.”

  Selina sighed. “You’ve always been precocious.”

  Brandy hobbled past her mother. While nothing was wrong with her legs, every step jarred her ribs.

  Her parents had been at the hospital when she’d emerged from surgery. The FBI had flown them to Phoenix once the raid on Willowlands was over. They hadn’t left her side for a moment. Since she’d missed them a ton, she didn’t protest. But sometimes a lady just wanted some peace and quiet in the bathroom.

  “When are Reid and Kennedy due in?” Her brother and his husband had scheduled a flight for the day before, but the airline had postponed it.

  “In about an hour,” Mitch supplied. “Kennedy just texted me that they’re planning to take a taxi directly to the hospital.”

  Brandy leveled a look at each of her parents. “You can go pick them up. I’m not going anywhere or doing anything exciting.”

  “Knock-knock.” Avery’s voice called from the door. “Are you decent?”

  “Never.” Brandy grinned at the sound of her friend’s voice. “But you can come in anyway.”

  Avery came into the room, a huge smile on her face, and hugged Brandy lightly around the shoulders. “The guys are in the hall. Should I tell them it’s safe to come inside, or did you want me let them stew a while?”

  “Let me get all covered up.” She eased herself into bed.

  Avery and Selina arranged the covers over Brandy, and then Avery called out that it was safe.

  Liam Adair, Jed Kinsley, and Jordan Monaghan came inside. They were the crew she’d hand-picked to take down The Eye. This bust meant the world to all of them.

  They greeted her parents as they surrounded her bed and took up all the space in the room. Not only were they big guys, but they were all Doms, and they somehow appeared larger than they were.

  And Lukas had been even larger. Not just physically, but mentally. Emotionally he occupied a huge place in Brandy’s heart, one that had been left cold and empty, a lone question mark poking the sides and making the pain more acute.

  Her father got to his feet. “Selina, let’s go pick up Reid and Kennedy from the airport. I think Brandy will be okay for a couple of hours.” Mitch kissed her cheek and grabbed her mother’s hand. “Be good, Brandy. These guys have taken turns coming over or calling every day for the past six months. It’s hard to find good friends. Treasure the ones you have.”

  These guys weren’t just her friends—they were family, every bit as much as her parents, Kennedy, and Reid. “Okay, Dad. I’ll see you later. Love you, Mom.”

  Once they were gone, Liam closed the door to her room.

  Brandy’s questioning gaze zeroed in on Jordan. She noted his reserved expression, and she read it easily. “You didn’t give him my note.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and avoided eye contact.

  “Oh, hell,” Avery said. “Just tell her.”

  Jordan shuffled his feet. “I don’t want to.”

  Liam and Jed exchanged a look fraught with sympathy and dread.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Out with it.” She girded her loins to hear the worst. Lukas had obviously declined to read her note. He’d probably not wanted to talk about her at all. He was hurting for so many reasons.

  Nobody said anything, but a lot of guilty expressions happened.

  Dread pooled in Brandy’s stomach. Since the bust happened in Arizona, the prosecution team was completely different from the one she usually worked with in Michigan. She didn’t know the D.A. or any of the prosecuting attorneys working for the Justice Department in Arizona. Her team was responsible for keeping her in the loop.

  Lukas had committed a whole list of crimes, and he could even be charged with kidnapping her since he’d participated in keeping her captive after the fact.

  “Please don’t tell me they charged him. He should be treated as an asset. He hates The Eye. He’ll cooperate. He wants to see them go down.”

  Jed grimaced. “They’re treating him as an asset. In fact, he’s with the Marshals now.”

  Blood drained from her limbs, and she felt dizzy and faint. “He’s going into WITSEC?”

  Avery perched on the bed next to her and brushed a lock of hair away from Brandy’s eyes. “He already left.”

  Only the Marshal in charge of Lukas’s case was allowed to know anything about his new identity. She’d never get a chance to explain her side, to make him understand she hadn’t been pretending when she was with him. She was deeply in love with a man she’d never see again.

  She wiped away some wetness that appeared on her cheek. It was stupid to be so torn apart by a man she’d never really known, one who’d gone to Willowlands planning to die there. And he’d taken her along, knowing full well that she might meet the same fate. Wanting to comfort him, to hold him in her arms and soothe away the pain he’d carried for so long, was stupid.

  She turned her attention to Jordan. “You didn’t give him the note?

  Jordan shook his head. “He wouldn’t take it. In fact, he made it part of his deal that he left immediately and that none of the FBI agents who will question him are involved with you or this team.”

  “Oh.” She stared at the weaving on the cream-colored hospital blanket that really didn’t do much to keep in the warmth. The room seemed colder and dimmer.

  “I stuck it in his luggage,” Liam said. “He didn’t have any clothes or anything, so we had to put together a basic suitcase. I tucked it into a folded shirt.”

  All the agents stared at Liam.

  “What?” He met the incredulous stares with his usual defiance. “I’m a romantic at heart. Ask Tru.”

  Jed sighed. “He’s right. Tru has turned him into a pussy cat. He even watches those sappy TV romance movies with her. There was one last weekend where the guy hid a letter in the heroine’s suitc
ase, and she found it right before she got on the plane.” As the third member of their triad, Jed was in a position to know, and it sounded like he also watched sappy TV romances with Tru. “Not that I think he’ll find it before he gets on the plane.”

  “Even if he does, it won’t change his mind.” She sagged against the raised back of her bed. “This is the only way he can tell what he knows and stay alive. He hadn’t planned to live through this. The Eye still has hands where we can’t see, at least for now, and if they find him, they will kill him.”

  She could only hope that he read her note, and that it made him remember her with fondness instead of with bitter hatred.

  “It’s going to take a couple of years to completely dismantle their operation. It’s vast and far-flung. If we do it correctly, it shouldn’t create a vacuum for another criminal entity to fill.” Jed sat heavily on the chair where her mother had spent the night.

  He didn’t have to add that Lukas would have built a whole new life by then.

  “You’ll be busy,” Liam said. “We all will. There’s so much work to do. Malcolm is even staying on. He’s been reinstated permanently.”

  Brandy tried to smile, but she couldn’t summon the will. Malcolm Legato had always been one of her best agents, and she was glad he was back. “Good for him. He’s always loved being an agent.”

  Until that moment, so had she.

  The FBI had been her home for the past decade. She’d loved her job each and every day. No matter how challenging the task, she absolutely loved chasing down the bad guy and making the world a safer place. She hadn’t noticed too much the sacrifice of her personal life. Her parents weren’t happy with how little they saw her, and they let her know. Reid was nicer about it, and Kennedy hadn’t known her any other way.

  But now she felt the icy, stinging pain of loneliness. She felt Lukas’s absence as if someone had severed a limb.

  Avery squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, Brandy. We all understand. What you’ve been through is life-changing.”

  “We understand what?” The grim set of Jed’s jaw said he already knew what she was going to say.

  “Jed.” She held out a hand to him. Working as closely as they had for the past two years, reading him was simple—just as he could read her.

  He grasped her hand, squeezing it before setting it back on the bed.

  “A leave of absence,” Jordan said. “Try that first. You’ve got a ton of personal time coming your way.”

  “Yeah,” she said, though her mind was made up. They weren’t ready to hear that she was finished with the FBI. She’d given everything, and she had nothing left. “I’ll try that.”

  Jordan fished in the messenger bag slung over his torso, and he pulled out a familiar item. It was the stuffed elephant Lukas had bought for her just before Valentine’s Day. It was the first gift he’d given her.

  She reached for it and set it on her lap, and she ran a fingertip over the ribbon functioning as a collar on the elephant. Those last few nights without him, she’d slept with it in her arms.

  “Thank you.” She blinked as the tears came faster.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m not sure your note would have changed anything. Testifying puts his life in danger. WITSEC was really his only option.” Jordan smoothed her hair away from her forehead and pressed a brief kiss there.

  Lukas had been fond of doing that, and his action squeezed around her heart even harder.

  “I know,” she said. “I knew from the start that it was going to end. It had to. I wasn’t exactly being myself, and he was playing a role as well.”

  The words he’d thrown at her had been harsh, but they hadn’t been wrong.

  Before they left, Avery said, “You’re depressed. That’s to be expected. You need to talk to someone.”

  “Can it be you?” There was no therapist Brandy trusted more than Avery, and since Avery had been there for most of the last six months, she understood Brandy’s heartache and grief in a way nobody else could.

  Her friend no longer practiced counseling, but she nodded anyway. “For you, anything. We can even drink wine while we talk.”

  By the time Reid and Kennedy made it to the hospital to see her, she’d managed to stop crying.

  Chapter 19

  When I called you Daddy, I meant it.

  Exhaling hard, Lukas forced himself to fold the paper and put it back in his wallet. Blinding drops of sunlight glinted from the lake, sparkling like diamonds and leaving little black spots imprinted on his retinas. Trees provided plenty of shade on the jogging path, but on the jetty, everything was out in the open.

  It was a great spot to sit. He ran the path most days, and whenever he did, he stopped to sit on the long, wide dock. His legs, bent at the knee, dangled over the edge, but his feet didn’t reach the water lapping gently against the pilings.

  He opened his bottle of water and took a long pull.

  Firebrand would have liked it there.

  She would have loved the acres and acres of trees, the jogging path, and the lake. She would have especially loved his little cabin on the north end of the lake where the paths didn’t extend. It was twice as large as their apartment at Willowlands, which was plenty big enough for two—more, if she was so inclined. There was enough land to add onto the house as well.

  He wondered if she swam. The topic had never come up. He couldn’t do much more than the dog paddle, but it didn’t take much to imagine her splashing around, a huge smile on her beautiful face.

  Today was especially hard.

  One year ago today was the last time he’d seen her. He’d said some harsh things, many of them true, but none of them mattered anymore.

  The Eye’s operations had been dismantled in twenty-nine countries. Except for a few small cells, they’d been effectively wiped from existence. Lukas had flown back to Arizona to testify, and the D.A. had kept up her end of their deal—Brandy and her team had already finished their testimony the day before and were already back home in Michigan.

  Brandy.

  She’d told him her name, he remembered, her real one. She’d wanted him to know who she really was. She’d slipped up, but she’d recovered.

  Or maybe he was reading too much into it.

  No matter. He would never see her again.

  He had a new life, one he liked. It came with a new name, a new profession, and no roots. It was a fresh start, and he badly needed a fresh start.

  The hollowness in his heart ached, but he was becoming used to the pain.

  A dog barked, and the steady cadence of four paws galloping on wooden planks filled the air.

  Lukas turned toward the sound.

  A dog ran toward him, his leash trailing behind like a freedom flag. Lukas noted the ears and snout, and the veterinarian in his brain catalogued the breed as German shepherd mixed with something a lot smaller, maybe a terrier.

  He reached out and snagged the leash.

  Not that it mattered. The dog had headed straight for him. It sniffed his chest and neck, and then it stuck its nose in his face.

  “Hey, buddy. Where’s your human?” He craned his neck to read the tag on the dog’s collar, but it only had an identification number and the phone number of the township that had issued the tag. He also had a chance to figure out the dog’s gender. “You’re a sweet, pretty girl. I bet someone is missing you right now.”

  The dog sat down as a woman emerged from the woods, following the jogging path. She was too far away to determine anything about her except that she was female and had a smoking hot body. The summer day was hot, and so she wore a blue tank top over a bright pink sports bra, tight Lycra shorts that terminated mid-thigh, and shoes.

  He was guessing at the shoes because he was too busy checking out everything above them. He knew that body like the back of his hand. He’d spent hours kissing it, running his hands over it, wrapping his body around hers and holding her tight.

  No. It couldn’t be her.

  Lots of women were me
dium height with athletic builds. He’d been longing for her, and so he was projecting his preferences onto a stranger.

  She spied them, and even from that distance, he saw the relief in the set of her shoulders.

  “I’ve got her,” he called.

  She jogged closer, and Lukas’s heart lodged in his throat.

  That strong body with miles of curves to explore.

  That stunning, hypnotic face.

  Those haunting green eyes.

  She crouched down, petting the dog and taking the leash from him. “You can’t go running off like that. You’re going to make me twist my ankle.”

  To him, she offered a regretful smile. “Sorry. She’s never done that before. Thanks for grabbing her.”

  Too stunned to process much, his animal brain still recognized the dog he’d saved at Willowlands. Firebrand had been bereft to see him go—and then she’d been fine. Agent Forsythe was the person to whom she’d handed over the dog. She’d trusted her friend to see that the dog was cared for.

  “Waldo?”

  Brandy laughed, the husky sound enveloping his consciousness like a comforting fog. “Gretel. She’s a she. Maybe I’ll get her a friend, and we’ll name him Waldo.” Then she stuck out a hand. “Hi. I’m Brandy. I just moved to the area a few days ago. I love this jogging path. I imagine it’s just as beautiful in winter.”

  Still bewildered, he stared at her hand, his brain unwilling to process what to do with it.

  The smile on her face faltered. Light dimmed from her eyes, and her hand dropped to her side. “We didn’t mean to bother you. Thanks again.”

  She led Gretel away.

  Three steps, and his brain kicked into gear. He shot to his feet. “Wait. I’m sorry. I was surprised. I—um—I was lost in thought.”

  Thinking about her wasn’t a new thing. Not a day passed when she didn’t invade his mind a hundred times.

  But—seeing her? His mind was still reeling.

  She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “It’s a beautiful spot for contemplation.”

  “Yeah. It is.” He was afraid to breathe, afraid to move. If he’d suffered a horrible accident and this was the trauma-induced fantasy his brain wanted to offer, then he had no plans to ever wake up. He cleared his throat and welcomed her into his new life. “I’m Andre. Andre Corona. I teach biology at the local high school.”