by Jodie Bailey
Trey laid a hand on her shoulder, which only intensified the feeling. “You okay, Mace?”
She nodded and bolted from the chair, the quick motion drawing pain from her side. “Swallowed wrong. Need something to drink.”
But it was so much more than that. She went into the kitchen with her back to him, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t follow, and pulled a pitcher of tea from the fridge.
Trey was the guy who had her back. The guy she trusted more than she’d ever trusted another man. The friend who’d grieved with her when Olivia died.
He was not heart-thumping material. He couldn’t be.
Because he wasn’t interested in her, and if he found out she was skipping beats because of him, she might just lose his friendship forever.
EIGHT
“This is all way too easy.” Dana Santiago sat at Trey’s kitchen table with the alarm laptop and an array of devices Trey would never understand.
His backup had arrived in the late afternoon and had set straight to work. While Dana connected gadgets to the laptop and started searching, her fiancé and their teammate, Staff Sergeant Alex “Rich” Richardson, had helped Trey install Macey’s new door, complete with a deeper-set dead bolt. Nobody would be kicking that door in anytime soon.
As far as Macey knew, Rich was a buddy who’d shown up to help with the door. If only everything could be so simple. It was close to midnight now and, while Rich sat on the back deck and kept an eye on Macey’s house, Trey walked over to stand behind Dana and watch her work.
There were several open windows on the laptop screen and she aimed a finger at one in the top left. “Here there’s a series of emails to a random address from a free email service, setting up drops along with some extremely detailed locations and package contents. Someone out there is still sending messages using this account, too.”
“So they’re still active?”
“If this is real, then Macey is very, very active.”
“There’s no way. I’ve been with her almost every evening and every weekend. I’ve surveilled her at work and even when she runs errands. There is literally nothing out of the ordinary about her.” As much as the hard evidence said she was involved, the bigger picture pointed to an innocent woman. “Where are the emails from? Are they coming from this laptop?”
“I’ll dig a little deeper, but I’m guessing a trace will land us in an infinite loop of rerouting until we can’t determine where they originated.” Dana indicated a window in the lower half of the display. “This is a whole string of texts to an overseas phone number that I’ll guarantee is a burner. Some of them are recent but, again, they could be spoofed.” The bottom left window held a web browser with the search history open. “And here? Web searches for high-dollar vacation homes and a million other ways to spend a large windfall of money.”
Trey sank into the chair beside Dana, taking in all of the evidence. With just what was on the screen, they had enough to convict Macey and put her into maximum security for a very long time.
Yet, once again, it was all wrong. “No one is this sloppy.”
“Most middle schoolers can cover their tracks online better than this.” Dana pursed her lips and shrugged. “This is not how people who deal on the dark web and sell intel to the highest bidder operate. There would be coded messages and encryption. If this was real, it would be a slam dunk to put Macey Price away for life.”
“So she’s being set up.” Someone else had to see it. He couldn’t be the only one.
Dana sat back, ran her hands through her hair and then laced her fingers behind her head. It was a clear sign of frustration. “Unless Macey has an IQ in the bottom of the basement and the common sense of a squirrel crossing the road, then I’d lean heavily toward a setup.”
Any relief Trey felt at having his own suspicions voiced by another person flamed out quickly. It was their job to uncover evidence and turn it over, not to make judgment calls. If whoever headed up prosecution on the government’s side didn’t see things their way, then Macey’s life was over the instant they passed their findings on. “How long can we legally sit on this?”
Dana straightened and drummed her fingers on the table between the laptop and an external drive. “I’m still digging, so until I finish a thorough search, we’re safe. I want to comb this hard drive, see if there’s a partition that isn’t obvious. Maybe whoever is behind this left a back door. If they did, we might be able to trace it to our real culprit.”
Rich walked in Trey’s back door and shut it, glancing at his watch. Tall and broad-shouldered, the former Special Forces soldier turned investigator cut a commanding presence. “Midnight, Blackburn. It’s your watch.”
Trey pushed away from the table. “All quiet?”
“Quiet, but not dark. Every light in that house is on.” He crossed the room and flicked the laptop where Dana was working. “Speaking of sleep, you need some. The captain told me you were at the office until three this morning working on the Deering case.”
It looked like Dana started to protest, but then she visibly deflated. “I guess this can wait a few hours. I’m liable to miss something without sleep.” She looked up at Trey. “Where do you want me?”
“Guest room. Rich can take the bonus room over the garage. I know how he is about having the TV on at night.”
“Yeah, that’ll stop once we’re married.” Dana grinned and closed her laptop.
Trey snagged his phone and a water bottle off the island, then closed the back door behind him, giving the couple some privacy for their good-nights. It looked like they’d found the right stuff in each other, and while Trey was glad for them, it tugged at his own broken future.
He glanced at the door as he settled onto a deck chair. Then again, Rich had battled a horror story of broken dreams when his first fiancée was murdered. Somehow, he’d managed to love again.
It wasn’t loving again that had Trey tied up in knots. It was trust. He glanced at a sky scattered with stars. “How is it that I can trust You and not...” His chin tilted down and his gaze leveled on Macey’s dining room window. And not her.
Not any her.
He could blame God for what had happened with Gia, but no. She’d made her own choices and followed her own path. God had had nothing to do with her betrayal. For a while, Trey hadn’t been able to say that, but then God had put the right person in Trey’s path at the right time to pull him out of a pit that would have killed him otherwise.
A shadow passed Macey’s window and Trey gripped the phone tighter. It was late. Did he dare?
Yeah, he dared. He pressed the screen and hit her contact number.
She answered before the phone rang once. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“Shouldn’t you?” He propped his feet on the deck railing. “Your house is lit up like you’re calling in 747s for a landing.”
“Where are you?” The sound of her settling into the leather recliner came through the line. It was a familiar sound, one he’d heard a hundred times over the months. One that shouldn’t bring him a measure of comfort, although it definitely did.
“Sitting on my deck. Couldn’t sleep. Are you okay? You’re sure you don’t want me to crash on your couch?” Maybe if he did, she’d get some rest. If she was planning to return to work tomorrow, she was going to need it. He still questioned the commander’s judgment on that one, but keeping her home would arouse suspicion. And surely the team watching her would be operators the commander trusted.
From inside Trey’s house, Rich’s footfalls came from the stairs and the sound of running water could be heard from the guest bathroom. Neither Rich nor Dana would miss him if he left, but they might have questions about how emotionally invested he was if he did.
Well, if Macey needed him, then they could question all he wanted. He really wasn’t sure at this point what his answer would be anyway.
“I’m good. Eventually I’ll probably pass out on the couch. But can I ask you a favor?” Macey’s voice was warm and had settled into something different, almost like talking with him eased some of the tension in her vocal cords.
It made him feel strong in a way he hadn’t felt since Gia had chosen another man, had walked away and left him an empty shell who questioned everything he’d ever thought himself to be.
“Trey?”
Great. She’d busted him thinking. “I’m here.” His voice was too deep. There was something about sitting on his deck on a spring night and talking to Macey while knowing she was on the other side of those lights next door. It was personal. The darkness peeled the job away. The physical walls between them made his internal walls feel insignificant. “Do you need something?”
“It’s dumb really.” Her voice grew smaller.
Trey would do anything to make her feel like she was safe, even if it meant sleeping on the mat by her back door.
She sighed. “I’m home and everything is locked, but tomorrow I have to drive to work. It’s so open, and I feel like, with all that’s happened, I don’t want to be totally alone. I should be stronger than that.”
“There’s a limit to what anyone can bear. Don’t beat yourself up.” She’d been through so much, and the physical assaults had to be taking a mental toll. He’d felt it himself when he’d returned from deployment and back to life on home soil. Overseas, he’d had a gun and a team to back him up. The first few times he’d driven alone down the road at home or been in public, he’d felt vulnerable and exposed, with no way to defend himself. Even Macey’s own home wasn’t safe. “What time do you need to be at work? My day’s flexible. I can drop you off and pick you up.”
“Thank you.” This time the smallness in her voice was relief, not fear.
She did feel safe with him. Something cracked inside Trey. Something that left him breathless and dazed, maybe even a little scared. Something he hadn’t even felt when Gia had agreed to be his wife.
This was soul deep and heart heavy.
“You’re breathing funny. Are you okay?” Her voice came again, caressing his ear, gentle and caring.
He worked to regulate his breathing as he slid down into the chair. He really should get off the phone, but talking to her as he sat watch was infinitely better than sitting alone. “Just getting comfy. I feel like you’re going to need to talk for a while.”
“We don’t have to.”
“I want to. It’s fine. I might as well talk to you as lie inside and stare at a dark ceiling, right?”
“Same here. Except my ceiling is apparently lit up like a runway.”
He chuckled. “So, want to talk about the Stanley Cup playoffs? The fact that they’re remaking your favorite ’80s movie, and it’s a total disgrace to all of humanity that they would even consider such an awful, awful thing?” He finished in a high-pitched whine, desperate to hear her laugh.
She rewarded him with a soft chuckle. “We’ve talked both of those to death. I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Like what?”
“You.”
The single word pierced his soul. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had personally asked about him.
He was in so much trouble. He’d have to be very careful with his answers. It was easy to forget she didn’t know the real him. That her “Trey Burns” existed only for this op. “Sure.” The word splintered on the emotion she’d loosed inside him. He took a long drink of water, nearly draining the bottle. “Fire away.”
“I was just wondering, because I had a lot of time to kind of lie around and think today... What is it with you and hospitals?”
“What?” How had she landed there? And how had he let her?
“Most people hate them, but you? You were positively white today. It made me realize you’re probably my closest friend in the world since Olivia died but I know nothing about you.”
By design. Because he couldn’t let her know who he really was. Because eventually he would be reassigned or she would find out he was an investigator and hate him for the rest of her life.
But until then, he’d give her what he could. He couldn’t deny her.
And that might be his undoing.
* * *
Had she really asked him that question? Macey pulled the quilt that had once belonged to her grandmother over her head and burrowed deeper into the recliner. It had been on her mind all afternoon, but really? He’d given her the easy conversational suggestion of sports or movies and somehow she’d gone deep. Her cheeks heated, and it wasn’t from the warmth beneath the blanket, either. She opened her mouth to take his offered way out and discuss hockey, but he’d already started to speak.
“You’re sure you want to go there?” His end of the line shuffled as though he were settling in or sitting taller, probably stressed out by her question. It was hard to tell.
He’d offered another way to cut this conversation, but the truth was, she didn’t want to take it. She wanted to know what had hurt him, wanted to somehow slay the dragon that had wounded a man who typically stood taller than any mountain she’d ever seen. It didn’t seem that anything should be able to make him look the way he had today, uncertain and defeated. Scared. “You go where you feel like going. You can talk about whatever you want. I doubt either of us is sleeping tonight, so we might as well talk.” She pulled in a deep breath and went for it. “But I really would like to know if you’d be willing to tell me. It’s up to how you feel.”
“Well then, I feel like you need to open your front door and let me in.”
Macey’s pulse jumped. The whole reason she’d denied him earlier was that looking him in the eye was too hard when her emotions were jumbled up and completely confusing. But how could she tell him no when he was standing on her porch, wanting to talk about something that was obviously difficult for him? That allowed her deeper into his life?
This was dangerous. Not for her life, but for her heart. This crush she was nursing was going to get her into deep trouble.
But right now, she didn’t care.
Macey stood and let the quilt pool at her feet, staring at the door. She ought to say no, but her feet moved on their own, and next thing she knew, she’d turned the dead bolt and pulled open the door.
On the other side of the glass storm door, Trey stood with his phone still to his ear. He spoke into it instead of directly to her, his eyes never leaving hers. “So I was married before. A long time ago.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. His gaze was direct and honest and tinged with a pain she’d never seen before. Her fingers gripped her phone tighter, but then he glanced at the door handle. Oh yeah. It was locked. And it was foolish to stand there and stare at each other while they talked on the phone. Guess this conversation was happening face-to-face after all.
When she shoved the door open, Trey pocketed his phone and walked into the room the same way he had a thousand times before. Only this time was different. There was an air about him that said he was about to hand her something he’d been holding back, some truth about his history that he’d never shared before. Maybe because of the late hour or the stress of the past couple of days. Maybe because he’d saved her life twice. Macey had no idea, but she did know she wouldn’t deny him the opportunity to unburden himself. She owed him that much and more, even if it turned her heart inside out.
Trey stepped over the quilt she’d dropped and settled on the couch, removed his phone from his pocket and rested it on the wide arm of the sofa. He stared at the dark TV screen and waited for Macey to resume her seat.
She eased her way into the recliner, careful of the stinging ache in her side, and pulled the quilt up to her chin, trying to shield herself from this new vibe she’d begun to pick up from him.
“So. Married?” It was hard to picture Trey married. Hard to picture him as anything oth
er than...well, just Trey. She struggled to keep her voice level and surprise-free. Maybe his wife had died and that was why he’d answered her hospital question with a statement like that. “How long ago is a long time?”
Without looking at her, Trey picked at the seam of his blue jeans, near his knee. He flicked an imaginary piece of lint away. “Divorce was finalized five years ago, which is about how long I was married in the first place.”
He was thirty-one now, so that made him a young married. A young married who’d had dreams and hopes and had loved someone enough to share them. A prick of jealousy stung, but Macey shoved it away and waited for him to keep talking. This wasn’t about her. Not in the least.
“When I was deployed for the second time, she found someone she liked better than she liked me. Met him in a bar after I’d only been gone about two weeks.”
“Trey.” Macey’s heart broke for him, and all of her own troubles seemed to dissolve. She’d had her house invaded and been injured by an assailant, but he’d almost literally had his heart cut out of his body, had been betrayed by someone he’d trusted with his life, with his name. “I’m so sorry. She sent you a letter while you were fighting a war? That’s awful.”
His laugh was sharp and laced with bitterness. “If only. That would have been easy. What she did was about a thousand times worse.”
NINE
Seriously. What was he thinking? Macey had been through enough without dealing with his sob story. He should leave it at that and head back to his house, where he could watch with a safe distance between them.
But he’d opened this box and he was powerless to close it. Something about hearing Dana say she agreed Macey might be innocent had freed his tongue. The knowledge made him want to give something back for all of the months he’d been hiding his real life from her. Something real in a mountain of falsehoods. He couldn’t tell her everything, but he could give her something.
The selfish part of him ached to spill this story to someone who hadn’t been there and who would hear it with unbiased ears. Someone who didn’t have to rescue him the way Captain Harrison had.
