Grateful he’s at least trying, I give his snooping ways some leeway. “What about snail-mail? Emails?”
His ticking jaw is heard in his reply. “Although I’d rather Brandon not reach out to you at all, I haven’t interfered with him contacting you in any way.”
Isaac’s dislike for Brandon grows when he sees how much his statement hurts me. I thought Brandon was my friend. He always had my back, and I had every intention of having his until he vanished without a trace.
Confident I’m not a horrible friend, I try to downplay Brandon’s lack of contact. “Perhaps he was undercover, and it was too risky to contact me?”
“Or perhaps he isn’t the man you think he is.” Isaac’s tone still has the authoritative edge it always has, but with a snippet of annoyance. “Have you ever wondered how he got the photo of Ophelia he gave you?”
I shake my head, truly baffled. “I assumed he found it in my uncle’s files.”
Isaac’s brow arches sardonically. “In the files you went to Tiburon to retrieve? The ones Brandon didn’t have access to?”
I often feel stupid around Isaac, but nowhere near as much as I do now. “Alex was only interested in the files that surrounded you. Because Ophelia’s death was kept a secret, those files wouldn’t have been seconded to our division.”
The harshness on Isaac’s face softens. “My point exactly. Brandon had no reason to investigate Ophelia or your uncle. He merely stumbled upon something while snooping for information on both of us.”
My heart rate skyrockets. “Us?”
Isaac nods without pause for thought. “Brandon didn’t want to take me down, Isabelle. He wanted to come between us.”
“Brandon was jealous of you, Isaac, but I don’t see him purposely setting out to antagonize anyone, especially me.”
“Especially you? Shouldn’t that answer my suspicions without needing additional clarification.” I’d usually find his jealousy hot, but today, it is more confronting than libido-spiking. “He helped you more than a standard agent would. Went beyond protocol to ensure you didn’t face either the IA’s prosecution or those brought forward by the courts and for what? Because you made sure his coffee had an extra clump of sugar?”
I shoot him a wry look. My glorified coffee-girl months still irk my nerves, and he’s more than aware of that. “He was my friend—”
“Who didn’t know a single thing about you, except your mutual dislike of the man in charge of your division.”
Even with the plane not fully ascended, Isaac releases his seat belt so he can gather the tablet he’s rarely without lately. It isn’t your standard iPad or universal tablet but a prototype Hunter designed from scratch. It’s so advanced, NASA technicians would cream their pants to get their hands on it.
“Do you recall what happened when we bumped into each other at the airport?”
The last of the strain on his face clears away when I jest, “Your corny how-many-fingers-am-I-holding-up ruse? Or how you shamefully collected my tampons off the floor?” I don’t want us to fight. We’ve fought enough.
Even with his gills whitening, Isaac says, “The last one.” When I nod with a smile, he confesses, “I saw your boarding pass. It told me everything I needed to know to ensure I not only got on the same plane as you but that you were bumped to ride in first class with me.”
I freeze as a conversation from months ago filters through my mind. “Brandon said Alex paid for my ticket to be upgraded.”
Never one to sugarcoat things, Isaac states matter-of-factly, “Brandon lied.”
When he hands me his one-of-a-kind tablet, the same document Brandon showed me at the shady hotel months ago is on the screen, except it doesn’t have Alex’s details in the payee section. One of Isaac’s countless business names is cited—Colt Enterprises.
“I had your ticket upgraded after purchasing my own. I needed to see if the connection we had was because your fear sparked my incessant need to help others, or if it was something much more.”
He doesn’t need to say it was much more than he ever comprehended. His eyes divulge the entire story. Isaac has the right to strut like a peacock, but the only time his feathers fan is when he’s referencing our relationship. I love that.
Realizing I’m two seconds away from stopping a conversation I’ve waited months to have, I get back to the task at hand instead of kissing Isaac like I really want to. “Then why did Brandon say it was Alex? And are you sure it wasn’t someone else? Maybe Theresa changed the form, and Brandon only unearthed her switch-up instead of the original?”
I’m seeking a gold nugget in an over-drilled mine, but it’s got to be better than clutching at straws. I trust my intuition. It has guided me through turbulent storms many times the past eighteen months, so I really don’t want it to be proven faulty. Brandon is a good guy. I’m certain of it.
“You know how obsessed Theresa is, Isaac? Not even the threat of adding three years onto her five-year sentence has weakened the intensity of her badgering. She demanded another paternity test just last month.” My voice sounds pained. It’s understandable. My heart pains for Jeremiah.
Even after Isaac was proven not to be his father, Jeremiah’s mother continues to lie to him. He’s so convinced Isaac is his father, he wrote to him the week before Easter, begging for him to visit. I wish the people in charge of his care would take him out of that volatile situation before Theresa harms him so much, he’ll lose the ability to become an upstanding member of society.
Isaac returns to his seat. Even with tension high, the hairs on my arms bristle from his closeness. “Theresa’s obsession is why I knew I had to tread lightly with Brandon’s obsession with you.”
“Brandon isn’t obsessed with me.” I almost choke on my words, repelled by the idea. Brandon is a great guy, but there’s never been anything more than friendship between us—not even during our kiss.
