by Skye Jordan
“Everly?”
No answer.
Confusion gave way to fear. Fear Everly had been injured by the jaguar before his team had scared Kujo off. Or that she was snooping somewhere she shouldn’t be.
A whispered I knew it rose up from the fear he carried with him every day. The fear of the Seavers sending another team after Bella.
In the seconds it took Austin to cross the room to the door, his imagination soared. His anger spiked. His sense of betrayal mounted. By the time he stepped outside to the bark of howlers, he was livid.
He was going to find that girl and make her tell him everything. Every last thought in Paige Seaver’s twisted mind. Every last method the woman planned to use to get Bella away from him. Then he would turn Everly over to Costa Rican police for trespassing and anything else he could think up between now and the time they carted her off to jail.
Damn, he felt stupid. Gullible. Naïve.
Him, of all people, naïve. How fucking ironic was that? After all he’d done, all he’d seen, how could he have simply fallen for a pretty face?
The soft sound of moving water touched his ear and interrupted his thoughts. His mind veered to the pool. He glanced right and found the path along the side of the house to the garage—and all his equipment—empty.
Repositioning his grip on the Glock, he quick-stepped to the edge of the house, sure to stay out of the detection angle of exterior lights. Even as he peered around the corner, the soft rhythmic sound registered, and he found someone swimming in the darkened pool.
Everly. Of course. Her strokes smooth, quiet, steady. When she reached the wall, she performed a flip with barely a splash or a sound, then continued her gliding freestyle the opposite direction.
All the stress leaked from his muscles. He exhaled heavily and lowered his weapon.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, running a hand down his face.
He was so damn keyed up over security. When he straightened, he must have moved into range of the sensor, and a floodlight on the corner of the house illuminated a one-hundred-eighty-degree area.
Everly stopped swimming and glanced around the yard.
Austin moved toward her. “It’s just me.”
Her gaze jumped to his, a hand covering her heart. “Oh my God, you scared me.”
He laid the Glock on the arm of a chair before approaching the pool. “You know it’s three a.m.?”
“I’m sorry, did I wake you? I was trying so hard to be quiet.”
“You didn’t wake me. The howlers and Kujo did.”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear it?”
She cut a look around the dark borders of the yard. “Hear what?”
Her utterly clueless expression eased another sliver of alarm. Austin dropped into a crouch and rested his forearms on his thigh. “The jaguar. He was pissed about something. My security team ran him off.”
She eased toward the side of the pool, fear brightening her eyes. “He was here? Right here? No. The sound of the water blocks everything, and I get lost in my thoughts. I know you said they hunt at night, but I didn’t think… I mean so close to the house…” She trailed off, clearly feeling the gravity of danger. Her chest rocked with quick breaths from the exercise, and Austin got an amazing view of her breasts swelling above the edge of the same suit she’d worn earlier in the day.
He forced himself to scan the dark borders of the property. He purposely hadn’t seen her much in the last two days in an effort to reestablish his inner equilibrium. Only one minute with her alone in the dark, and he was all out of whack again.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“No. It always helps to do something to burn off the extra energy. Guess I’ll need to find another way to get back to sleep.”
He could think of a few. And they all involved sweaty skin-on-skin action.
He eased to a seat and let his legs dangle over the side. The water was a cool seventy-eight degrees. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head and crossed her arms on the deck. “A new place. New people. New responsibilities. Old memories popping up. Sometimes it’s hard to wind down.”
“Was Bella all right for you today?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s no trouble. Took great to yoga.”
That amused him. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
“I know we’ve already moved that run around the property off a couple times for various reasons, but another day couldn’t hurt. Let you get some sleep.”
She exhaled. “Would that be okay?”
“Of course.”
The moonlight played over her face as she smiled. “Thanks.”
“What memories are haunting you?”
She looked past him, her gaze going distant. Her tongue slid over her lips, and she lifted a shoulder. “Talking to your guys the other day just brought up some of the rougher memories from my travels. And my mom is always a complicated ball of thoughts.”
“Miss her?” he asked, thinking of his own parents and how long it had been since he’d seen them. They’d never approved of him going into the military and criticized the way he’d handled the situation with Bella. He’d been at odds with them ever since.
“Yes and no,” Everly said.
That surprised him. “No?”
She pushed off the wall and floated a few feet away. In the dark, he couldn’t appreciate all the details of her body, but her silhouette alone was enough to assure his own sleep wouldn’t improve any. “She had issues. Our relationship was rocky.”
“What kind of issues?” he pressed gently.
Everly thought about it a second. “She has trouble with mood swings, personal barriers, and limits. She’d often overdo, overpromise, overtax herself. She’d get manic and work double shifts, then crash and burn. I’d end up taking care of her after already long days of my own. She didn’t stop when she got sick, and her resistance to taking care of herself drove a wedge between us.”
One word from that explanation stuck in his head. Has. Present tense. He tried to convince himself it wasn’t important.
“In my experience, do-gooders often overextend themselves,” he told her. “We met many a missionary during our work overseas. Too many worked themselves into burnout. They couldn’t understand how taking time to care for their own needs ultimately benefited the people they were there to help.”
“That’s exactly what I tried to explain to her, but she never stopped and never sought help for her mental health. Our last words were angry words.”
They relaxed into the silence and Austin was surprised to find that he didn’t want to go back inside. Back to his lonely bed. He found himself fighting an inner battle. Part of him wanted to let go of his fears and suspicions, let his guard down and get to know her. The other part kept erecting red flags, making him search for discrepancies and warning him to keep his barriers in place.
She held his gaze and tilted her head. “Why isn’t there a Mrs. Hix?”
He huffed a laugh. “There’s really no time for a Mrs. Hix. Besides, I’m not exactly the marrying kind.”
“Weren’t you married to Bella’s mother?”
“No. Bella was a surprise to both of us.”
“Where’s her mother now?”
“She died.”
“Oh.” A frown pulled at her brows. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “Thanks. We weren’t together when it happened. Hadn’t really been together for years. We dated in college, you know? Nothing serious. More friends than lovers. She got mixed up in drugs. I wanted to go into the military, and I knew I needed a clean sheet, so we went our own ways. We’d connect now and then when I came home on leave.”
“And one of those connections created Bella,” Everly said.
“Yeah.” He looked down at his clasped hands. “I didn’t know about her. I was overseas, doing classified work. Dawn, her mom, couldn’t reach me. Two years had passed by the time the news caught up to me, and then only because Dawn’
s parents wanted custody.”
“Bet finding out you had a kid that way shocked you into cardiac arrest.”
“For sure.”
“Well, she’s here with you. It must have worked out.”
“Not amiably, unfortunately,” he admitted. “I would have let them see her, but that wasn’t enough for Dawn’s mother. She wanted all of Bella. No joint custody. No visitation.”
“Why?”
“I have a few ideas, but nothing I could prove and nothing she’d ever admit to. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with quality of care, because that woman works from sunup to sundown, and she had no plans on leaving the Senate.”
“She’s a senator?”
He nodded. “Her current husband, I think he’s number four, travels for business a lot. Bella would have been with a nanny ninety percent of the time. Seaver may have been seeking revenge against me for getting Dawn pregnant. Hell, maybe she blamed me for Dawn’s drug abuse. All I know is that she was as rigid as steel.”
“Was her mother, Dawn, using when she was pregnant with Bella?”
He heaved a sigh and nodded. “The doctors say that’s why she’s behind.”
“I’m so sorry.” Everly floated to the side of the pool again. “That’s a lot to have thrown at a person.”
He shrugged. “I’m tough. I can handle it.”
A quick smile brightened her face. “So the court gave you custody.”
“Yes.” With that answer, he went silent. If he continued with the story, he’d have to say the courts then took custody away. And he’d have to expose a lot of ugly details that really didn’t matter. At least not to Everly.
But she asked, “Are those kidnapping threats you talked about related to Bella’s grandmother? Would she try to steal Bella?”
She already had, but that news might scare Everly off. “I believe she would.”
She pressed a cool hand to his knee. The touch was compassionate, not sexy, but Austin couldn’t take his gaze from the sight of her small, feminine hand on his thickly muscled thigh. “How can you and Bella live with that kind of threat hanging over you?”
Austin covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “It won’t last forever.”
“Eighteen is a long ways away.”
He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure she’ll lose interest in Bella after the next primary. Maybe sooner.”
“You’re saying her interest in Bella is political?”
“Time will tell.” He slid her hand off his knee and pulled his legs from the water. He popped to his feet and offered his hands. “Come on. Time for bed. Bella’s going to beat us both to the breakfast table.”
She took his hands and let him draw her from the pool. She easily gained her footing on the pool deck. And then, there they were, in the warm, dark night, nearly naked, alone, inches away from each other…
For the longest, most sexually charged moment, neither of them stepped away. Austin had a split-second flash of fantasy. A white-hot image of wrapping his arms around her, pulling her against his body, and kissing her until neither of them could breathe.
Some survival instinct kicked on, making him turn and reach for one of the folded towels from a nearby chair. He grabbed one end, let it unroll, and tossed it around Everly’s shoulders. He fisted the ends of the towel, drawing it tight around her shoulders.
Austin’s mind tried to dart in a dozen highly inappropriate directions. But he dragged it back and met her gaze deliberately. “If you want to swim, ask one of the security guards to hang near the deck. You can’t be out here alone at night.” When she didn’t respond, he prodded, “Promise?”
She smirked and shrugged. “I guess Kujo’s not giving me much of a choice.”
6
Everly strolled down an aisle of just-picked fruits and vegetables in the open-air market. After she’d been working with Hix for five days, Sunday finally rolled around and Everly had ventured into town to meet Ian.
Because Decker had followed, she and Ian switched up their plans. They now strolled along with Sunday shoppers, talking with Roman over earphones.
Luckily, Decker thought he was being covert, which meant he didn’t get close enough to hear the conversation between two seemingly unrelated people milling among vendors.
“Ian,” she said, “come in behind me and pick up the floorplan sketches of the house.” She bought a basket of strawberries from the man, then handed him the folded sketch along with a fifty-dollar bill. “¿Podrías darle esto al hombre detrás de mí, por favor?”
The man’s eyes widened. “Si, si. Gracias, señorita.”
Ian lingered at another booth until Everly continued on, then moved in and picked up a basket of strawberries to hide the paper as he took the sketches from the farmer.
“What did you find out about the vehicles?” she asked.
“They’re registered to five different shell corporations,” Roman told them. “Sam’s found three different properties also owned by the corp. He’s still looking. When do you think you’ll be able to get into his office?”
“I’ll need a little support on that.” She ate the strawberries as she strolled. “He turned off the motion detectors and door sensors in my suite, but his office is going to be as much a fortress as his garage.”
“Just tell me when,” Ian said, “and we’ll find a way to shut down his system, even if it means taking out a fucking power grid.”
“Please.” She shot him a look across the aisle. “Talk about a red flag.”
“Let’s put our heads together and figure something out,” Roman said. “The Seavers are pressuring Gianna for answers. They want that girl back last month.”
Ian and Roman talked logistics of shutting down Hix’s system while Everly chose mangos from one stand, pineapple from another, and lime from still another.
“Shaw?” Roman said.
“Right here, boss.”
“What’s going on? You’re too quiet.”
She smiled at the vendor and gestured to a bouquet of flowers. “¿Puedo tener dos, por favor?”
“Si, señorita.” He smiled, took her money, and wrapped the two bouquets in newspaper.
Everly turned away from the man and lowered her voice. “How deeply have you looked into Paige Seaver?”
“Sam did due diligence,” Roman said. “Finances, legal issues, family, friends, acquaintances.”
“What about politics?” Everly asked, easing toward a topic that obviously wasn’t at the top of Roman’s radar.
“She’s a moderate Democrat, well respected, in good standing in the Senate.”
“Does she have aspirations for the next primary?”
“That’s still two years away,” Ian said.
“Which is when the talk about candidates gets serious,” she told him.
“Where are you going with this?” Roman asked.
“I was on the internet for hours last night,” she admitted.
In fact, she’d barely slept at all. Between fantasies of tasting Hix until those proper manners of his shattered and mulling over his words from the previous night, she’d been lucky to get a couple of hours sleep.
“From what I can tell, Seaver looks like a decent candidate for the Dem’s VP ticket. She garnered a huge amount of sympathy when her daughter went into rehab. And when she took in Mirabella, her approval rating skyrocketed. She’s got the perfect sympathetic trifecta going—death of her opioid-addicted daughter, raising her granddaughter, who she claims is challenged by her mother’s drug use during pregnancy, and now, fighting to save Mirabella from the evil baby daddy who stole her away. One article called her the left wing’s American sweetheart.”
“Sam didn’t pull any of that,” Roman said.
“It’s not his fault. I didn’t think of it either. Not until Hix said he didn’t see Seaver’s interest in Bella lasting much longer. Do you think Gianna knows if she’s got political ambitions?”
“If she did, she would have told me.” He pa
used half a second before adding, “Should have told me.”
“She’s entrenched in politics,” Ian said. “Hard to believe she wouldn’t have heard rumors on the Hill.”
The vendor handed Everly her flowers.
“Gracias. Buenos tardes, señor,” she offered before moving on.
“I’ll call her right now,” Roman said, his voice crisp and clipped.
“Roman,” Everly said before he signed off. “Seaver’s political aspirations aside, I’m telling you what Gianna’s told us about Hix and what I’m seeing with my own eyes aren’t matching up.”
“Understood. I’ll keep you posted,” Roman said before he disconnected.
Ian and Everly stayed on the call while they wandered. Everly kept track of Decker from the corner of her eye.
“Someone needs a refresher in surveillance,” she muttered. “Speaking of, I got a look at the information Hix is pulling from body sensors and EEG leads. Amazing stuff, man. The kind of thing Roman would want to invest in for training.”
“If Hix weren’t a criminal,” Ian said, a smirk on his face.
She shook her head, letting her gaze slide over vibrant peppers, carrots, papaya. She stopped at a stand and picked up a few candies for Bella. “I’m starting to wonder if the history between Roman and Gianna is clouding his judgment.”
“Everyone has blind spots,” Ian said. “Roman knows that. It’s why we have Sam digging into everyone and you on the ground. If Roman were going to be rash, the kid would already be back in the States. What’s really bothering you?”
She sighed. “Hix. He’s so hyperaware. So hypervigilant. And the kid is tedious,” she half lied. Bella’s activities might be a little on the mind-numbing side, but the kid was a damned jewel. She had come in and woken Everly with a kiss that morning, then pouted when she found out Everly was going into town without her. “I just wanted this assignment to be an easy in and out.”
Ian cut a look at Everly, grinning like he knew she was lying.
“Knock it off,” she said. “I’m going to have to tell Decker you were trying to pick me up. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself tied to a chair in a basement somewhere, having the shit beat out of you until you tell him I’m a Russian spy.”
