The worry clouded in his steel gray eyes intensifies. “If this is about the agent—”
“It has nothing to do with him,” I lie. “There’s just stuff I have to take care of. My sister. . . and brother. You know,stuff.” I’m two seconds from punching myself in the throat for how stupid I sound. “Do you think you can hold down the fort until I get back? I’m sure it will only be a few days.”
I’m not running away like a coward. I want to fix the mistakes I made. But I can’t do that here. Just seeing Alex for those two short minutes upended the courage I built this morning to tell Isaac about the FBI’s unfair investigation into his empire.
Although I’m still planning to update him on everything I know, I refuse to let Alex make me look like an idiot for the third time in under twenty-four hours. I need to ensure all my t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted before I come clean to Isaac.
I doubt he has anything to be worried about, though. I scoured the evidence Alex had in his phone for hours this morning. He has nothing on Isaac—not a single fucking thing. And he’ll never get anything—because I’m going to make sure he doesn’t.
I didn’t study to the point of exhaustion for seven years to let a man with no morals judge Isaac’s integrity. I did it to stop precisely this: the corrupt, unworthy men and women who don’t care whom they have to trample to get what they want.
Isaac pays me extremely well, and he’s about to get all his money’s worth in one sitting.
27
Atechnician I’ve never met before jumps out of his skin when I throw open the surveillance van door half a block down from Regan’s apartment. I’m not here to spy on her or soothe the sting my ego just sustained. I’m here to amass evidence, to prove I know my girl better than anyone.
She’s angry. Rightfully so. She caught me in a lie. But she’s not an adulteress. She doesn’t believe in tit for tat or seeking revenge because she knows it causes more harm than it does good, so I’m confident she’d never stoop to those levels.
She’s mad, that’s all.
I remind myself of that time and time again as I flash my ID at the stunned agent before taking his spot in front of a bank of monitors. I remember the lazy smiles she gives me when she wakes, how she smells like flowers while her skin tastes like honey, and although shock was the first expression that crossed her face when I told her I loved her, it wasn’t her only response. She was pleased—somewhat angry—but mostly pleased.
The confidence hardening my spine bristles when I rewind the surveillance footage back far enough to discover the identity of the man in her apartment. Isaac greets Regan in his usual way, with a kiss on the cheek and a brief hug, but his caress this time around goes a little longer than I feel comfortable with.
“They’re just colleagues,” I remind myself. “She has no interest in him whatsoever. . .”
I stop talking out loud when Isaac cups Regan’s jaw. Because the security dome is directly above them, and Regan’s head is hanging low, I can’t see what his thumbs are caressing. I assume it is her cheeks, but I can never be called rational when jealousy is sluicing my veins.
“What’s he doing?” I ask the techie, my tone blunt.
He stops quivering in his boots to assess the surveillance footage. “Rubbing her lips?” he suggests a short time later.
My furious roar bellows through the van. “Why would he do that?”
The techie shrugs. “I saw him do it last night before he said goodbye to his date.”
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down when my growl ripples through the air.
“Or he could be wiping her cheeks? I can’t tell from this angle. He’s probably caressing her cheeks.” He sounds as if he is striving to convince himself as much as he is me. “Yeah definitely a cheek rub. He would have kissed her by now if he was going to. . . ”
Silence overtakes his words when Regan shifts her head upwards for the quickest second before she drags Isaac into her apartment by the lapels of his suit jacket. Although pain was the first thing I registered in her eyes, there was also a snippet of deceit in them.
While working my jaw side to side, I take a mental note of the time in the far right corner of the monitor. That scene was recorded over an hour ago.
It doesn’t mean anything. I trust her. She wouldn’t hurt me like this. Rae is many things, but she could never be accused of having a cold heart. She’d let her heart stop beating before she’d use it against anyone.
“What other activities have been recorded today?”
The technician’s eyes drop to the movement register we log into evidence every day. “Not much. I just reestablished our connection after a glitch, and before that, Isaac was recovering from a late night.” The waggle of his brows expresses the words he didn’t say.
“What was this delivery?” I point to a note he jotted down on a separate piece of paper. Since the delivery wasn’t for Isaac’s apartment, it isn’t documented the same way.
“It wasn’t really a delivery, more an installation.” The quiver of his lips mince up his words. “Here’s a copy of the invoice.”
He is gripping the paper so hard, I nearly rip the one page document while accepting it. His panic is respected when I scan the business name at the top of the invoice:Naughty Boys and Girls.
The reflux I’ve been struggling to ignore the past hour triples its burn when I discover the product Regan ordered to have installed. There are no fancy codes to decipher or cryptic names. It is as obvious as the sun hanging in the sky:one premium leather interwoven sex swing.
