by Shayla Black
“Good for you.”
“Wednesday was a great day. Daddy seemed alert and happy. He loved that I’d brought Hallie to meet him. The way he looked at her… I could tell he loved her the moment he saw her.” Tessa’s bittersweet smile tugged at him. “He told me he was sorry for marrying so quickly after my mom’s death. At the time, he’d felt alone and lost and helpless—and he hated that feeling. He’d been married for so long, he didn’t know how not to be married. But he didn’t love Kathleen, and he especially hated that she’s jealous of my mom’s memory. But it was obvious to everyone that she knew she was always going to be second place. Once I understood that, I stopped giving a shit what Kathleen thought. Anyway, Daddy was set to get out of the hospital on Friday if he continued to progress, and I was going to stay a few extra days. But then…” She teared up and crystal drops started rolling down her face. “He went to bed on Wednesday night and died in his sleep. His heart just stopped.”
He curled his arm around her waist and squeezed her. “I’m really sorry, baby.”
She laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “I am, too. But at least I got closure. Dad and I were in a good place, and I got some great pictures of him with Hallie.”
“Then I’m glad you went.” But he’d missed her like crazy.
“Same. I just wish things had turned out differently.” Her voice broke.
Zy knew her breakdown was coming, so he turned to face her and opened his arms. “Come here, baby.”
Tessa went without hesitation, gripping his shirt as she hid her face in his chest. She was so quiet, so still, he didn’t think she could possibly be crying. Then she sucked in a jagged breath and her body shuddered. And she let go.
He brushed his palms up and down her heaving back in a comforting path as she released her debilitating grief. “Get it out. I’m here.”
She nodded. “I-I wished you were there so many times to help me. To hold my hand. To tell me it would be okay even though I knew it wasn’t.”
It sucked that he hadn’t been, but he’d be here with her now as long as she’d let him. “Why didn’t Cash come, at least for the funeral?”
Tessa snorted, and he heard her anger. “Why would he?”
Was she kidding? “Because he’s your boyfriend.”
She reared back with a scowl. “Who told you that?”
“He did.”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “And you believed him? He’s full of shit. But that’s no surprise. If his lips are moving, he’s lying.”
Zy’s heart stopped. “So…you’re not together?”
“No. We stopped dating shortly before I found out I was pregnant.”
“But not since then?”
“During the pregnancy we didn’t date. There was a time I thought we might get back together, but he wasn’t interested in me or his daughter, just in the sex. And once he decided I’d gotten too big for that, he was out.”
“What a douche.”
“Yep. I sure can pick ’em… When my dad asked about Hallie’s father, I said he wasn’t in my life anymore. To me, he’s not.”
“So why are you living together?”
“We’re not.” She held up a wobbling finger. “Well, we live under the same roof, but we’re not ‘living together.’ He moved in so we could supposedly co-parent. But he’s useless as a dad. There. I said it. I can’t pretend anymore.”
The tequila had definitely loosened her up and gotten her talking. Zy was glad. “So I’m guessing that when he told me you two fuck. All. The. Time, that was a lie, too?”
Her eyes went wide in horror. Her half-drunken expressions would be adorable if the conversation wasn’t so dead serious. “Eww. That asshole! It’s a giant lie. Oh, he tried. About three weeks ago, he did that fast-talking thing to convince me that we’d be a better family unit if he and I were…ahem, intimate. I said no. You know what he said then? That you might have wanted to fuck me, but he’d make love to me so much better. It was all I could do not to laugh in his face. I mean, I don’t actually have the real comparison, but I already know.”
Zy did his best to keep a straight face. “So you don’t have feelings for him anymore?”
“None.” Suddenly, she shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I’m starting to loathe him, like, a lot. I want him and his baggy boxer shorts and those balls he feels the need to scratch all the time off my damn sofa. And every time I see him across the house”—she teared up again—“I wish I was seeing you.”
Tessa might not realize just how much she was admitting to him, but he heard it—even without her saying the words.
I love you, too, baby.
He kissed her forehead. That was as close as he dared let his mouth near hers. Besides, she didn’t need sex right now. She needed to rest in safety, in comfort, so she could escape and heal and rejuvenate.
“It’s almost midnight. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”
“Because if I close my eyes, when I open them again, it will be morning. It will be time for me to go. And I don’t want to…”
Jesus, she was killing him. Honestly, he didn’t want her to go, either. They still had over a thousand days before they wouldn’t be fired for giving in to their feelings. Yes, he was counting. “You can stay as long as you want.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to be a—”
“Don’t say burden.”
Her lips curled into a crooked grin. “Or you’ll spank me? Now that you clued me in, I can picture all of our bosses being that kind of guy.”
It was probably a good thing that the tequila had her thoughts hopping from one subject to the next. If not, he probably would have asked her to move in and fuck the contract. And he knew without asking that she wasn’t ready.
“Do you want me to go over to your place and clear Cash out before you go home?”
She looked at him as if she wanted to cry, press him to her chest, and thank him profusely. So he was shocked when she shook her head. “It’s really sweet of you to offer, but no. It was my screwup for believing him. I need to be the one to tell him to go. I just…can’t right now.”
No, not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. Zy didn’t blame her. She’d endured a lot. And now that he knew the truth, he could handle Cash living at her place without feeling homicidal…kind of.
“Get some rest, okay? Here.” He guided her to her back and laid her head on his pillow. “Close your eyes.”
Tessa tried to sit up. “I can’t take your bed.”
“I want you to.”
“I only want to be here if you’re with me.”
Fuck, he was running out of strength. “Baby…”
“Just lie next to me. That’s all.” She blinked solemnly, looking as if she’d cry if he refused. “Please.”
It was going to kill him, but better his pain than hers.
With a sigh, Zy toed off his shoes and lay down beside her. “All right.”
She turned her head, looking at him with a heavy-lidded smile as she reached for his hand. “Thanks. Since the colonel called you to my house, my life hasn’t been the same.”
“Mine, either, baby.” And as awful as seeing her every day and knowing he couldn’t have her was, he wouldn’t trade it for the world.
November 3
* * *
“Come in, Garrett,” Hunter called from the far side of the conference room. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
Logan motioned him to an empty chair.
Joaquin watched him with those expressionless eyes that gave him the heebies.
He had no idea what the fuck they wanted, and he’d never stepped a toe over the contractual line with Tessa—no matter how badly he’d ached to. So why were they crawling up his ass first thing on a Monday morning?
He planted himself in a chair in the middle of the room. “What’s up?”
“We have a problem.”
To be honest, they had a lot of problems. Cutter and One-Mile were at each other’s throats constantly. Rumors
were flying that the sniper had gotten the Boy Scout’s girlfriend pregnant. The insults they kept slinging around the office were ugly enough for Zy to believe it. It wasn’t his problem, but the bosses had called him in here, so they obviously thought he had a solution to at least one of their issues.
“And you need my help?”
“Yeah.” Hunter nodded, pacing and looking serious as a motherfucker. “There have been some new developments over the weekend.”
“What he’s trying to say is we’ve had this shitty situation that’s been confusing, but now we have more light on it, and it’s clearly beyond fucked up.”
“Exactly.” Joaquin’s seldom-used voice sounded like a growl.
Zy sat up straighter in his chair. “What’s going on?”
“My brothers and I spent Sunday together looking at the chain of events this year relating to Valeria Montilla and all our missions to Mexico.”
“You still think we have a mole?”
Logan shook his head. “Now we know it.”
Dread started gnawing at Zy’s belly. If they wanted to tell him this shit, there could only be one reason. “It’s not Trees.”
“Shut and listen before you say anything else,” Hunter snapped.
Zy clenched his teeth.
“We had that failed mission back in March, remember? You said at the time it felt like they knew you were coming.”
“Yeah. But if Trees tried to set us up, why did he abort at the last minute?”
Logan shrugged. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that someone somewhere told Montilla exactly when, where, and how we were coming in.”
Zy couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t. “Okay.”
“Then One-Mile and your bestie took that trip to Mexico in August that went to shit before it even started. And Walker got taken while Trees walked away with hardly a scratch.”
“He explained that.”
“Yeah.” Hunter raised a brow. “He had a story and everything.”
One they didn’t necessarily believe.
“We’ve been watching your buddy closely, waiting to see what else materialized. But September rolled around, and we got the info that allowed us to go in and rescue One-Mile. Everything went off perfectly. It couldn’t have worked out better if we’d drawn a fucking picture.”
“Exactly,” Logan jumped in again. “And remember who wasn’t on that mission because of truck-stop sushi?”
“That’s a damn coincidence.”
“Is it?” Hunter asked. “It looked fishy”—he smirked at his own pun—“but we were willing to believe it was possible his absence had nothing to do with our success.”
“Until this past weekend.” Logan sent him an acidic smile that said the SOB had the proof they’d been looking for.
Zy wracked his brains for something that had gone down the past two days. “What happened?”
“We sent Walker on an errand for us week before last.”
They had. Zy didn’t know much about it. The bosses had been pretty hush-hush, and he hadn’t cared enough to be nosy. “And?”
“Recently, Emilo Montilla was spotted just a couple of miles from his estranged wife’s safe house.”
Zy leaned in. “He came onto US soil?”
Logan nodded. “Alone. To find his wife and son. How could he possibly have known to look in St. Louis?”
Suddenly, Zy remembered a snippet of news he’d caught over the weekend. “Did he have anything to do with the five dead cops at that precinct in St. Louis?”
“Bingo. Someone get the guy a prize.”
“Shelve the sarcasm,” Hunter demanded. “It doesn’t help.”
“Fuck you.” Logan scowled at his older brother.
“The only ones getting fucked right now are us if we can’t get it together,” Joaquin snapped. “Finish your damn explanation.”
“Fine.” Logan crossed his arms over his chest. “Walker moved Valeria, her son, and her sister, Laila, to a new safe house in another state. He was supposed to stay with them for a week and ensure they weren’t followed. But you know Walker…”
They all did. He had a big mouth and really piss-poor listening skills, especially when it came to authority figures. “He didn’t stay a week?”
“Not even close. He decided he’d rather bait Montilla, so he hauled ass back to St. Louis and set a trap. He already knew we suspect we have a mole in this office, so he took it upon himself to kill two birds with one stone.”
“How?” Zy knew the sniper was crazy, but that sounded beyond insane.
“He decided to send Trees an email as a ‘professional courtesy’ because he was on that mission in which he was captured. In it, he told Trees the location of the St. Louis safe house and even helpfully provided a floor plan. And Montilla showed up for his wife, with murder on his mind.”
Hunter nodded. “Prior to that, Montilla had sniffed around for days. But the minute Trees got that email, Montilla showed up to Valeria’s abandoned safe house in the middle of the night, sneaked in the back door, and went directly for the master bedroom—without a second of hesitation or a flicker of light.”
“Then Walker, that crazy motherfucker, knocked him out, hogtied him, put him face down in a bathtub, and started the water—after threatening to hook him up to a car battery.”
Yep, that sounded like Walker.
“That’s all circumstantial. It doesn’t mean Trees is the mole,” Zy argued. “What about a hacker? That Stone guy was here a few months back.”
“Stone didn’t put anything on our network. He was here for a favor.”
“It’s still possible we have some virus that allows someone to spy on our communications? Maybe they can read all our instant messages and emails.”
Logan gave a halfhearted shrug. “Anything is possible. In theory. But if someone else had done that, shouldn’t Trees have eradicated it?”
Since Trees was their tech guy, yeah. He’d put a metric shit-ton of security on the platform. “Nothing is foolproof.”
Logan turned to his brothers, who both shrugged.
“Fine.” Hunter stood. “We’ll have Stone scan it from top to bottom and see if there’s any digital trace of an information-stealing virus. But since we’re ninety-nine-percent sure that’s not the issue, you need to do something for us now—before anyone else gets hurt.”
Zy dreaded where this was going. He didn’t believe Trees would sell them out. He wouldn’t until he saw it with his own two eyes, and even then, he knew there would be extenuating circumstances. “What?”
“You keep insisting your buddy is innocent.”
“Because he is.”
“So we won’t make you look for clues that he’s guilty.” Hunter sounded almost magnanimous. “You just have to prove he’s innocent.”
“What? Why me? It’s your fucking company.”
“And he’s your fucking friend. If we start looking, it will be to prove his guilt. But you’ll do anything to show that he’s innocent. Besides, Trees is kind of paranoid. He’d know if any of us sneaked into his computer, truck, or house. But if you snoop around, he won’t think much of it. Just bring us concrete evidence that he’s not dirty and—”
“Like what? This is fucking ridiculous.”
Hunter shrugged. “Since we nearly lost one team member, we don’t think so. But if you can’t handle it, we’ll have no choice but to let him go.”
And that would crush Trees. He loved it here, and despite his hard outer shell, his buddy had a marshmallow center. “And if I refuse to do it?”
“We’ll still let him go, but it will be on your head.”
What motherfuckers. Zy hated being manipulated, but he had to play the hand he’d been dealt. “What constitutes ‘proof’ for you?”
“Let’s start with his financials. If they look clean, we’ll talk more. But we’re going to want to know who he’s talking to after hours, who he’s hooking up with, who his connections are. If you can give us a thorough forensic exami
nation of his communications and they’re as squeaky clean as you claim, then we might be willing to admit we’re wrong.”
No, they wouldn’t. They were convinced, so his better bet was to figure out who might be guilty and work from there, because as much as he hated to admit it, the series of events from March to November made his buddy look guilty as fuck.
“How long do I have?”
“We’ll give you some time,” Logan assured.
Was that supposed to make him feel better about spying on the guy who was closer than a brother?
Hunter glared at his younger brother. “But not too long.”
“This is bullshit,” Zy growled.
“Well, as of right now, this is your only assignment.”
Hunter nodded in concurrence. “Better get busy.”
Joaquin didn’t say a word, just sent him a stoic expression, brow raised and smile tight.
Fuck. “You know what? Fine. I’ll take this stupid-ass assignment. And I’ll prove you assholes wrong.”
“Good. We expect your first report in two weeks. Now get the hell out.”
November 14
Another fucking Friday night alone.
Zy shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he wandered down the crowded, wind-whipped street. What the hell was he doing here? It certainly wasn’t looking for a place to eat. His stomach was in too many knots, and the dead silence of his apartment bugged the shit out of him. As it turned out, busy downtown Lafayette wasn’t distracting him, either. He’d been here twenty minutes, and the music spilling from open bars, along with the nondescript chatter and honking horns from hell-raisers ready to party, all grated on his last damn nerve.
He wasn’t comfortable anywhere—not in bed, trying to catch some z’s. Not riding around the city. Definitely not in the office.
